The morning sun pierced the mist like silent spears of gold, casting thin shafts of light through the canopy as the Shrek Team continued their journey. Li Wei held the serpent-scale scroll in one gloved hand, his Diendriver slung but ready. Each step forward seemed to vibrate faintly with the residue of the encounter with the Serpent-Eyed.
Zhu Zhuqing walked beside him, her gait steady but thoughtful. Her fingers brushed against her side every few moments, unconsciously checking the harmonization crystal still nestled in its velvet pouch.
"They watched us for days," she murmured.
Li Wei nodded. "And we will let them for now. Because they weren't looking to strike us. They were looking to see what we would become and decide."
Behind them, Xiao Wu hummed absently, her ears twitching with every shift of the forest. Ning Rongrong and Meng Yiran spoke softly, poring over what details they remembered from Serpent Fang words. It was Ning Rongrong who finally said what they were all thinking.
"The fifth convergence. The Axis. All of this... it's beyond anything my Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda clan and Spirit Hall ever warned us about."
"Because they doesn't know," Li Wei replied. "Or if they do, they've chosen to ignore it as they do not cause any harm to them. Personally I think that most of the person that know about this Serpent Eye Organization already gathering dust. Most spirit master less likely to die of old age, most die by hunting spirit beast or by ambush from other spirit master."
Meng Yiran adjusted the strap across her shoulder, her serpent cane glinting faintly. "And the Mistborn Archives? What do we expect from that place?"
"An answers to our question," Zhu Zhuqing said, voice quiet but firm. "Or the destination for our next thread."
______________
The Mistborn Archives lay at the heart of the Lotus Veins, a marshy region choked with reeds and glimmering lotus blossoms that never bloomed. It was a place of silence, despite the calls of frogs and insects. Even sound felt filtered here.
They stood before a half-sunken gate built into the roots of an ancient tree, its doors carved with a lattice of runes and circular grooves. It looked like it should not have survived the weathering of time, and yet it pulsed faintly with spirit resonance.
Li Wei unwrapped the scroll.
"Place it here," he instructed, pointing to a narrow depression.
Zhu Zhuqing slid the scroll into the slot. The moment she did, the runes around the door shimmered with violet light. The tree groaned.
Click!
And then the ground opened.
A stairs spiraled downward, etched firmly into luminous stone wall. The team then descended without hesitation, led by Li Wei, who watched every shadow for any harm.
____________
The interior of the Mistborn Archives was not what they were expecting. There were no shelves of books, no piles of tomes. Instead, the room just expanded into a circular chamber—smooth walls of obsidian glass covered in glowing spirit inscriptions.
In the center, suspended in the air, appear to be a mass of thread.
Not rope. Not fiber. A literal thread that seem to be form from spirit energy, twisting like smoke, connecting between two floating anchors of crystal.
Xiao Wu reached out, her fingers brushing the air near it.
"I think this thing it's alive," she whispered.
"Not just alive," Li Wei corrected. "It's also to be aware." Li Wei felt that his own danger sense to be blaring non-stop ever since they enter this chamber.
A voice echoed through the chamber. Not in the way a person voice sound, but something else. Toneless. Wordless. Yet it can be understood.
[You are not yet the weavers. But you are no longer only strands.]
Ning Rongrong stepped forward. "Are you the Axis?"
[You named me in the tongue of shaped thought. I can... accept it.]
Li Wei narrowed his eyes. "You seem to be exist as an observer. Are you also a guide?"
[Guides are chosen. Not assigned. The choice is yours. But know this: each pattern has a cost.]
Zhu Zhuqing asked, "What do you want us to do?"
[Preserve the weave. Or sever it. That is the only true choice any who reach this place are ever given.]
Silence fell.
Then the floating thread shimmered.
[Place your spirits into resonance. I will test if you are ready.]
Li Wei looked to the others. One by one, they nodded.
They stepped into position. Li Wei in the center. Zhu Zhuqing and Xiao Wu to his left and right. Ning Rongrong and Meng Yiran completing the ring.
Zhu Zhuqing took a breath. Her martial spirit flared to life, and in that instant, her eyes glowed with golden light.
Each of them followed. Five flares of power.
The thread pulsed.
Then split.
Each strand wrapped around their forms, intertwining spirit energy not with the body, but the soul. Visions flickered before their eyes. Memories not their own. Future glimpses. A sense of being woven into a larger shape.
Li Wei felt it first: a flash of a battlefield under three suns, his gun broken, but still standing.
Zhu Zhuqing saw herself diving into shadow to protect a girl who wore her face but not her name.
Xiao Wu felt joy and agony as time twisted, dragging her through the memory of lifetimes not yet lived.
Ning Rongrong stood before a shattered tower, her pagoda broken—yet shining brighter than ever.
Meng Yiran... heard a voice calling her Empress.
Then it ended.
The thread snapped.
The chamber dimmed.
[You are not yet weavers. But you are now loom-touched.]
A single tile descended from the ceiling, carved with the image of five stars and a coiled serpent.
Zhu Zhuqing took it reverently.
[Take this to the city that remembers no name. There lies the next shard of truth.]
The voice faded.
Only silence remained.
But the embers in their hearts—from the loom, from the Axis, from each other—burned just a little brighter.
The fifth convergence had begun in earnest.
___________________
Meanwhile at the place where the times do not flow, the place cannot be trace, existence cannot be found, there stood a chair that seem to contain the world itself.
The seem to be wearing gold color, sometimes black and sometimes silver. It look like the color changing itself.
The person raise it hand and push it behind. The scenery that depicted an unknown place change into a universe.
At the center of the place there stood a loom that seem to be gathering from countless place into it.
[Who are you? There should be nothing that will be able to come to this place.]
"I am your end. The story that I see after seem to be a boring one so I came to reset it."
[Is that so? The loom were infinite there nothing can stop it from existence. So Axis will always be here.]
"Then I will do it."
The person then wave his hand toward the loom. The wave itself seem to be just a casual wave with nothing unusual about it.
But.
The loom that can be said to be indestructible then can be seen to be disintegrating into a particle.
This world where the loom exist also beginning to disintegrate also.
That's existence then exit the stage without any fanfare.