The veil had parted—but what lay beyond refused to stay hidden. Li Tian awoke with the taste of old truths lingering on his tongue. Not dreams echoes. Names. Places. Faces long buried by time. The forest around him felt smaller, quieter, as though it, too, had heard what stirred in the silence between worlds.
Mei Lin watched him carefully, unsure whether the man who opened his eyes was still the one she had journeyed with.
"You crossed the threshold," she said. "Did you… see them?"
He nodded once. "Not just them. Us."
A tremor ran through her, but she said nothing. He stood and gazed toward the horizon—red clouds bleeding into the sky like bruises. The air pulsed. Something was coming.
It didn't take long.
By dusk, they reached the outskirts of Henghua village but the place Li Tian remembered was gone.
Smoke spiralled from blackened wood. The shrine had collapsed into ash. Silence reigned, heavy and haunted.
And at the heart of it five robed figures in crimson.
The Crimson Order.
They moved slowly through the ruin, hands outstretched, pulling memories from broken walls and bloodstained stones. One of them stopped beside a fallen child and pressed a finger to her forehead—not in kindness, but as if extracting something unseen.
"Li Tian…" Mei Lin whispered. "They're looking for you."
He didn't answer.
Not with words.
Instead, he stepped forward, drawing the Soulbane Edge. Its metal shimmered faintly almost alive.
The tallest figure turned at once. His voice was smooth and sharp as a blade. "So the exile returns."
The others followed, forming a semicircle, robes fluttering in a wind no one else could feel.
"Do you remember us?" the man asked.
Li Tian's voice was low. "I remember the night you lit the sky with our blood."
A flicker of recognition passed through them—but not fear. Excitement.
"Then you know why we're here. The seal is broken. The gate weakens. The soul has awakened."
Li Tian said nothing.
Instead, he moved.
Like a memory reborn, he swept through their formation, blade a blur, footsteps a whisper. Crimson runes flared around them symbols of binding, extraction, domination but the Soulbane Edge tore through them like they were mist.
Two fell before the others reacted.
The third conjured chains of red light, but Li Tian shifted through them, his strike cleaving both spell and spine.
Only two remained—the tall one, and another whose hood had fallen, revealing a face tattooed with ancient glyphs.
The glyph-marked one snarled, chanting a name not spoken in centuries: "Tianshou Yun."
Li Tian froze. His heart clenched. The name was his. His true name is a name from before the veil, before the rebirth.
The moment cost him.
The glyph-marked cultist struck, not with magic, but memory projecting a vision into Li Tian's mind. Flames. Betrayal. A blade through his own chest. Mei Lin's voice calling out across lifetimes.
But this time, Li Tian held the memory.
He didn't run from it.
He answered it.
Power surged from his core not rage, not vengeance, but clarity. Soul and body aligned. Past and present merged. He turned, parried, and drove his blade through the cultist's chest not to kill, but to anchor him.
"See what you tried to erase," Li Tian whispered.
And the man screamed as if every life Li Tian had ever lived poured into him at once.
He collapsed.
Only the leader remained.
"You've become something else," the man said, unfazed. "But you're still bound. You only caught a glimpse. We live beyond the veil. We command it."
Li Tian raised the Soulbane Edge, which now pulsed with a new glow violet, like the energy from the space between worlds.
"I glimpsed more than you ever dared," he said.
Their clash shook the village. The man fought like someone wielding borrowed time precise, impossible to pin down. But Li Tian no longer fought to win. He fought to remember. Every parry, every pivot, pulled fragments from the shadows. A ritual circle. A betrayal at dusk. A child hidden behind temple walls.
A key.
And then the strike landed. Clean. Quiet.
The cult leader staggered, blood blooming on his robe.
"You remember," he said, falling to his knees.
Li Tian stepped forward, blade steady.
"But do you remember why we sealed the gate?"
The man collapsed before he could finish.
The wind carried whispers.
Mei Lin approached, trembling. "They'll come after you now."
"They already are."
The System's voice echoed:
[Crimson Order Subdivision Defeated – Veil-Signature Detected][Memory Reforge: 15% Integration Achieved][Soul Skill Unlocked: Temporal Echo – Glimpse of Past Lives in Combat][Warning: Tier-2 entities have marked your resonance.]
Above them, the crimson skies deepened.
The veil was no longer torn.
It was calling.