Not sinking. Not suffocating.
She was being "held." Suspended, like a speck of dust trapped in somber amber.
There was only darkness, an absolute stillness, and an invisible pressure weighing on her spirit.
She opened her eyes.
The last sight she saw before consciousness faded returned, sharp and clear.
A ruined palace. A faint golden light.
And him.
The god, nailed to the dragon's lair.
She was no longer seeing with mortal eyes. Ling Luo was "seeing" the god with her Shaman-Blood.
The "loneliness" she had sensed on the bank now had form. It was a colossal sorrow, crystallized from thousands of years, radiating from that figure. He was not just chained. He was in agony.
And as she realized this, he opened his eyes.
Golden eyes.
No wrath, no mercy. Only an endless emptiness.
A sound echoed, not in the water, but directly inside her mind. It was not words, but a command, as cold as the metal of the chains.
"You are late."
Ling Luo recoiled instinctively. She tried to pull back, but there was nothing to push against.
"Return it."
"Return... what?" she screamed, but only water bubbles escaped her mouth.
"Your life-mandate." The god's voice did not change. "It belongs to the seal. That is The Pattern."
"The seal?"
She looked down. The dais he was bound to was not stone. It was a translucent surface, like ice.
Below was an abyss.
In that abyss, tens of thousands, millions of red eyes opened, staring up at her, screaming in silence.
The Drought Demon.
Her Shaman-Blood shrieked. She could feel them. A hungry ocean of resentment, waiting to tear everything apart.
And the only thing holding them back... was the golden chains.
Ling Luo looked closer. She saw the chains didn't just bind Xuan Yuan. They impaled him, then plunged deep into the abyss, forming a net of light that imprisoned the demons.
But the net was fading.
She saw, along the chains, faint specks of light. They were being drawn in, like food.
Souls.
Hundreds of souls.
All of them wearing white burial shrouds. The "Brides" from past rites. They were hollow, pulled toward the chains, dissolving, becoming fuel.
Ling Luo held her breath.
She saw a familiar shape.
That thin back. That long hair.
No.
She tried to rub her eyes—a useless, living gesture. The image did not change.
It cannot be Mother.
But the Shaman-Blood inside her screamed. It knew. It recognized. It was her mother.
That soul... slowly turned. A vacant face.
Empty.
Ling Luo's throat seized. The air (though there was none) was sucked from her spirit. She opened her mouth.
Silence.
Grief was not a scream. It was a black hole that swallowed all thought.
Then.
A wordless shriek tore from her spirit.
"NO!"
She lunged for her mother's soul, but an invisible wall—Xuan Yuan's Dragon Qi—threw her back.
"It is The Pattern." His voice remained level, unfeeling.
"The Pattern?" Ling Luo slammed against the barrier, her tears dissolving in the river. "That is slaughter! You're using them as fuel! You lied to everyone!"
The god was silent. He looked at her, as one might look at a speck of dust that had clouded the air.
Ling Luo stopped hitting the wall. Her rage cooled, replaced by a truth even colder.
The Shaman-Blood was showing her.
She had been wrong.
She looked back at Xuan Yuan. She saw the golden chains. They were not just consuming the sacrificed souls.
They were consuming him.
His pure, golden Dragon Qi was being pulled from his wounds, flowing along the chains, merging with the souls.
He was also fuel. He was the primary fuel.
She snapped her head up, staring directly into those empty golden eyes.
"If this seal draws upon the souls of the sacrificed... why is it also drawing upon your Dragon Qi?"
The god did not answer.
But for the first time, the endless emptiness in his eyes... rippled. Like the surface of a lake, struck by an unseen stone.