White swallowed the battlefield.
Not light.
Not fog.
Not snow.
Absence.
The anti-causality lattice flooded the ring zone like a silent tide, and the world inside it began to lose its edges—like a painting being washed clean by invisible hands.
The air became blank.
The ground became uncertain.
Sounds thinned into nothing.
Shan Wei felt his own heartbeat stutter—as if the universe was briefly considering whether his heart had ever been allowed to beat at all.
Xueya's Lunar Frost Domain flickered—
and for one terrifying breath, her moon turned transparent, as if it forgot why it existed.
Jin Wei's runes screamed and then went silent for half a beat, overwritten by the white.
Drakonix's Monarch Flame sputtered, not from weakness—but from the white trying to delete the cause of fire.
Yuerin's shadow veil frayed at the edges—shadows needed history to cling to, and the white was erasing history.
Outside the ring zone, the Tribunal enforcers watched in rigid stillness.
The Mirror, Chain, and Quill Judges held their breath.
The True Judge's halo rotated like a clock with no mercy.
He spoke a single sentence, calm as execution:
"Erasure completed."
1. Inside the Whiteout
Shan Wei couldn't see the sky.
Couldn't see the vault's crimson beam.
Couldn't even see his own forearm.
But he could feel the brand—burning like a star being forced to deny its own existence.
The white tried to peel his identity away layer by layer:
Name — "Qi Shan Wei"
Path — "cultivator"
Bond — "brother"
Purpose — "survive"
Each concept blurred, as if the world wanted to forget the story that held him together.
His internal monologue thinned, nearly dissolving—
until a single thought remained, sharp as a blade:
I build what you erase.
He reached outward, not with qi, not with flame—
with formation logic.
Shan Wei's fingers moved through nothingness, tracing prismatic glyphs in air that barely existed.
Fire. Ice. Lightning. Shadow. Light. Wind. Void.
But the white tried to wipe the glyphs the moment they appeared.
So Shan Wei did something different.
He didn't write them in the air.
He wrote them in himself.
He drew the glyph pattern across his meridians, using the brand as an anchor nail hammered into the void.
Pain lanced through his veins.
His bones rang like metal in a forge.
And then the edge of Prismatic Overdrive—already open—split wider.
Not fully.
But far enough that reality shuddered.
Seven afterimages flickered around him—micro-positions, micro-timelines—each one a possibility refusing to be deleted.
The whiteout rippled for the first time.
Like paper resisting fire.
2. The True Judge Watches… and Frowns
Outside the whiteout zone, the True Judge's eyes narrowed.
The white should have remained perfectly still.
Perfectly blank.
But now it trembled.
Tiny rainbow fractures formed at its edge—prismatic cracks in the anti-causality field.
The Mirror Sigil Judge's voice was tense.
"True Judge… the erasure zone is unstable."
The True Judge's halo rotated, reading, measuring.
"He is… persisting."
The Chain Sigil Judge swallowed.
"That's impossible. Anti-causality deletes the cause."
The True Judge's voice was colder now.
"Unless the cause is being rebuilt faster than we delete it."
His gaze sharpened.
"He is stitching the river as it dries."
The Quill Sigil Judge's fingers tightened around his script.
"Then we must overwrite the anchor."
The True Judge's eyes locked on the whiteout's center.
"The brand."
3. Yuerin Turns the Whiteout Into a Weapon
Inside the blankness, Yuerin couldn't see Shan Wei.
But she could sense him—like a star behind clouds.
Her voice was low, steady, dangerous.
"Shan Wei."
No answer—only the white pressing in.
Yuerin's eyes darkened.
Her shadows had been fraying, but she refused to let them die quietly.
She inhaled once.
And for the first time, she didn't tease.
She didn't play.
She claimed authority.
"Shadow Authority…"
A black moon flickered behind her—still incomplete, but real enough to make the white hesitate.
"…does not require history."
Her fingers snapped.
"Memory Forgery: False Record."
The whiteout shuddered.
Because Yuerin didn't try to fight the erasure.
She gave it something else to erase.
A decoy.
She forged a false karmic record in the white—an illusion so perfect it looked like truth:
A phantom "Qi Shan Wei" standing one step to the left, branded and glowing.
The anti-causality field surged toward the decoy—
and erased it cleanly.
For a heartbeat, the white believed it had finished its job.
The True Judge's halo rotated—confused by the sudden completion signal.
Yuerin whispered, satisfied:
"Erase that."
Then she turned her face slightly, eyes narrowing.
"And miss the real one."
Xueya felt the shift and tightened her Lunar Frost Domain around Shan Wei's presence like a protective shell.
Her moon regained clarity.
Not by power.
By meaning.
"Don't you dare vanish," she whispered into the white.
4. Jin Wei Locks Onto the Vault Crack
Jin Wei's runes had gone silent for half a beat in the whiteout.
But puppets were not ruled by fear.
They were ruled by command and logic.
Inside the blankness, Jin Wei's chest core pulsed crimson.
He spoke, voice vibrating through the empty air:
"MASTER ANCHOR SIGNAL DETECTED.VAULT LINK: PRIORITY."
He slammed his palm into the ground.
The Formation Ring Network—though partially erased—flickered, then reappeared as a skeletal outline of golden geometry.
Then the ring-link surged toward the horizon like a wire reconnecting to a forbidden engine.
It latched onto the vault crack.
The world hummed.
A new formation logic seeded itself in the network—one that didn't belong to this battlefield scale.
It was a prototype.
Not a full structure.
A concept.
A future mega-project's first heartbeat:
Realm Gate Spire logic.
The vault tremor steadied—briefly.
The crack stopped widening for one breath.
And in that breath, Shan Wei felt something incredible:
The whiteout's erasure no longer covered the entire ring zone cleanly.
Because the ring network now had a second anchor.
Not just Shan Wei.
The vault itself.
The anti-causality field was being forced to erase two contradictory authorities at once—
and it didn't like contradictions.
5. Drakonix Roars Again — and the Region Bows
Drakonix stood in the whiteout like a living crown of prismatic scales.
His Monarch Flame sputtered—then stabilized.
His eyes narrowed.
He could sense the world outside the white: beasts, spirit creatures, bloodlines trembling at the vault's imperial command.
He refused to let that command rule the region.
He inhaled once.
And roared again.
Not as a cub.
Not as a pet.
As a Monarch.
The roar expanded through the whiteout, through the ring network, out across the region—
a bloodline authority ripple so sharp it made distant mountains tremble.
Across the continent, spirit beasts dropped their heads instinctively.
Beast clans felt their ancient blood stir.
Even humans with beast contracts felt their spirit pets whimper.
The True Judge's eyes narrowed harder.
"Beast submission ripple… continent-scale."
The Silent Bell monk whispered, awed:
"This is a legend being born… in the wrong place."
Drakonix's roar did something else too:
It created a memory imprint.
A declaration so strong the whiteout struggled to erase it.
Because now the region remembered—
a dragon-phoenix hybrid had roared against heaven.
And that memory became a new kind of anchor.
6. Xueya's Moon Cracks… Then Stabilizes
Inside the white, Xueya's Lunar Frost Domain shuddered again.
The dead-star edge whispered louder.
🌌 Freeze everything. Become the end.
She felt her moon cracking—thin fractures spiderwebbing across it as anti-causality tried to delete the meaning of frost.
Her lips trembled.
Her sword hand shook.
She could step into forbidden cold and seal the whiteout in absolute winter.
But she remembered Shan Wei's words:
Then we invent it.
She whispered into the blankness, voice soft but iron:
"I will not disappear."
Then, like a vow carved into her soul, she added:
"And I will not let you disappear."
Her moon stopped cracking.
Not because it became stronger.
Because it became anchored—to him.
To trust.
To a shared refusal.
The Lunar Frost Domain stabilized, forming a cleaner arc of moonlight that cut through the white like a line of meaning.
7. Shan Wei Speaks From Inside the Whiteout
The True Judge lifted his hand outside the zone.
His halo rotated into the final configuration.
"Confirm," he ordered, voice cold.
"Is the paradox erased?"
The whiteout pulsed—trying to answer yes.
Yuerin's forged false record had been erased.
The decoy was gone.
The field wanted to declare completion.
But the prismatic fractures grew.
Because something inside the white refused to accept being rewritten.
Then—
a voice spoke.
Not loud.
Not dramatic.
Just steady, unmistakable, alive.
From inside the whiteout:
"I'm still here."
The Tribunal enforcers stiffened.
The Mirror Sigil Judge's eyes widened.
The Chain Sigil Judge took an involuntary step back.
The Quill Sigil Judge's script trembled.
The True Judge's gaze hardened into something sharp enough to cut fate.
The whiteout trembled violently.
And then—
seven prismatic afterimages flickered at the center like a prism being born.
Shan Wei emerged from the blankness.
Not fully transformed.
But changed.
His eyes were brighter, gold threaded with prismatic sparks.
His robes glowed faintly with living glyphs.
His branded forearm burned openly again—shadow veil stripped away—yet the brand looked… different.
Not weaker.
Not erased.
Claimed.
He lifted his arm slowly.
And the air around him—still within the white—began to regain edges.
Reality stitched itself back together in his presence.
The True Judge's voice was flat, colder than before.
"So you persist."
Shan Wei's gaze locked on him.
"I do."
The True Judge raised his hand.
"Then you will be erased again."
Shan Wei's lips curved into a slow, dangerous smile.
"Try."
Behind him, the vault's crimson beam flared brighter.
The prismatic hand at the horizon tightened.
And the voice from within the vault whispered—soft, pleased:
"Yes…"
Shan Wei's brand pulsed.
The Heart beat.
THUM.
And the whiteout, once a weapon meant to delete him, became a battlefield where the world itself didn't know which authority to obey.
To be Continued
© Kishtika., 2025
All rights reserved.