"Erase her again."
The True Judge's words didn't travel through air.
They dropped straight into the world's rulebook.
The sky-eye above the ring zone rotated once—hard—like a lock turning. Pale-gold lines snapped into a new configuration, and the light around the moon-masked girl didn't brighten…
…it thinned.
As if reality was being scraped away layer by layer.
The beasts in Drakonix's witness ring snarled in unison—instinct screaming that something sacred was being stolen. Even the wind stopped, as if afraid to be recorded in the same moment.
The girl's fingers were still hooked beneath the edge of her smooth white mask.
Half lifted.
Moonlight spilling from behind it like a secret.
Shan Wei felt his brand flare—violent and hot—imperial memory pushing against the seal as if it had recognized that gesture from a life that was not supposed to exist.
The Heart behind the micro-gate purred, thrilled and tense.
"Yes… erase… and watch what survives."
Shan Wei's jaw clenched.
"Shut up," he hissed under his breath.
The girl turned her masked face slightly toward the True Judge.
Her voice remained calm.
"You already erased me once."
The True Judge's halo rotated faster.
"And the world became stable again."
The girl's moonlight sharpened like a blade.
"Stable… or controlled?"
The True Judge lifted both hands.
The Mirror Sigil Judge stepped forward, palms raised.
The Quill Sigil Judge's ruined scroll floated up, trembling, pages turning with frantic hunger.
The Chain Sigil Judge drew pale-gold script across the air—tight knots of inevitability.
Three authorities aligned.
Three tools.
One execution.
The True Judge spoke the full ritual line:
"ERASURE PROTOCOL.CASE: LUNAR.METHOD: RECORD NULLIFICATION.SCOPE: ALL WITNESSED THREADS."
The pale-gold light snapped inward.
And the girl's outline began to blur.
Not like illusion.
Like forgetting.
1. Erasure Begins — When Reality Pretends You Never Happened
Shan Wei felt it in his bones.
This wasn't an attack that killed the body.
It attacked the fact that the body existed.
The girl's moonlight aura flickered, and for the first time, her calm shifted—just slightly—into something colder and older, like a survivor who had learned the shape of the blade that once cut her out of the story.
The Quill Sigil Judge's scroll twitched and emitted pale-gold ink like smoke.
Words formed in the air around her:
NULL.REDACTED.UNWITNESSED.REMOVED.
The Mirror Sigil Judge traced a circle—an empty mirror without reflection.
"Mirror Null," he whispered.
The air around the girl became a zone where light refused to "confirm" her presence.
And the Chain Sigil Judge snapped a knot of script into place.
"Causality knot," he hissed.
A thin pale-gold cord wrapped around the girl's ankles—not binding her feet, but binding her timeline to a dead end.
Shan Wei's pupils tightened.
They're cutting her future and then rewriting her past.
The sky-eye pulsed once more, trying to seal the conclusion:
ERASED.
The girl's body blurred.
Her moonlight dimmed.
Her presence thinned—like mist being forced into nothing.
Behind Shan Wei, Xueya lay unconscious, protected by Zhen's barrier—breath still steady, but trembling faintly as if her lunar domain recognized the violence being done.
Yuerin's Null Page shuddered.
Her face tightened with raw disgust.
"Even the Tribunal's filth has standards now?" she spat.
Drakonix's Monarch Flame surged, the cub's wings flaring wide. The witness beasts backed a half-step—not from fear of him, but from fear of what he was about to do.
Shan Wei moved.
Instantly.
Seven afterimages snapped into a single line.
He stepped into the Fate-Lock globe's trembling interior and thrust his palm outward toward the erasure field.
"WITNESS-SEAL FORMATION."
Prismatic glyphs exploded into the air like shattered rainbows, forming a tight ring around the girl's fading outline.
Not to protect her body.
To protect the world's ability to remember her.
The True Judge's eyes narrowed.
"You cannot witness what has been nullified."
Shan Wei's golden gaze burned.
"Then I'll carve her into the battlefield."
He flicked his wrist and dragged his finger through the air—forming a new prismatic pattern, one he invented on instinct, merging formation logic with karmic anchoring.
A weaponized sentence.
A seal that forced reality to acknowledge a presence once it touched it.
"KARMIC IMPRINT ARRAY."
The air trembled.
The ground beneath them cracked slightly under the pressure of competing authorities.
The Quill Sigil Judge screamed as his scroll spasmed.
"He's trying to brand her into the terrain!"
The True Judge's voice remained cold.
"Then remove the terrain."
He lifted a hand.
The sky-eye rotated into a slicing configuration.
A pale-gold edge formed—not Law Severing now, but Record Severing, aimed at cutting Shan Wei's imprint away before it could finalize.
Shan Wei felt the fatal timing.
Too slow, and the girl would be erased.
Too fast, and the Heart would push through the micro-gate in the chaos.
A perfect trap.
Then Zhen's voice—deep, layered—cut through the battlefield like a bell.
"CORE INTEGRITY: CRITICAL."
Shan Wei's chest tightened.
Zhen swayed slightly.
Cracks widened across his chest plate, crimson light leaking.
He was out of time.
Shan Wei's mind split into three burning priorities:
Stop the erasure.
Keep the Heart sealed.
Save Zhen before he collapses and becomes Tribunal property.
The True Judge watched him, eyes sharp with the cruelty of procedure.
"Choose," he said softly. "A puppet… or a phantom."
Shan Wei's jaw clenched.
He didn't answer.
Because he refused the premise.
2. Zhen's Last-Ditch Move — Imperial Guardian Transfer
Zhen took one step forward, each movement heavy.
His mask-face turned to Shan Wei.
"MASTER."
Shan Wei met his gaze.
"No," Shan Wei said, already understanding what was coming. "Don't do it."
Zhen's voice didn't change.
"DIRECTIVE: PROTECT THE EMPEROR'S FATE."
Shan Wei's throat tightened.
"You're not a directive," he said low. "You're family."
Zhen paused—just long enough to feel like a heartbeat.
Then the ancient puppet king spoke a second line, quieter.
"FAMILY… PROTECTED."
And his chest plates split.
The crimson core light inside him flared—exposed for the first time, raw and vulnerable like an open heart.
A sphere of compressed authority hovered in his chest cavity, etched with imperial runes.
The True Judge's eyes sharpened.
"Seize it."
The Chain Sigil Judge raised his hands.
Pale-gold chains—thin and hungry—shot toward Zhen's exposed core.
Shan Wei moved to intercept—
but Zhen moved first.
He reached into his own chest, grabbed the hovering core sphere, and slammed it forward into Shan Wei's hands.
"IMPERIAL GUARDIAN TRANSFER."
The sphere hit Shan Wei's palms like a sun made of metal and law.
Shan Wei's arms shook under its weight.
Not physical weight.
Responsibility weight.
Then Zhen's voice came again—dimming.
"HOST… ACCEPT."
Shan Wei's breath hitched.
Host?
Before he could protest, prismatic-gold lines snapped outward from the core sphere and wrapped around Shan Wei's forearms—seeking a stable anchor point.
Shan Wei acted on instinct.
He spun and pressed the core sphere against the flat of his Heavenpiercer Ruler's black-iron blade.
"ANCHOR TO WEAPON-SPINE!"
Primordial runes on the ruler flared.
The core sphere sank into the weapon like molten gold sinking into iron.
A heartbeat later, the Heavenpiercer Ruler hummed—as if it had just accepted a second soul.
Shan Wei felt it:
Zhen's guardian system was now embedded into his weapon's structure—partial, unstable, but alive.
Zhen's body swayed, suddenly hollowed.
His runic crown flickered and dimmed.
"TRANSFER… COMPLETE."
He took one last step back—standing like a silent guardian even as his shell began to lose cohesion.
Shan Wei's eyes burned.
"Zhen—!"
Zhen's mask-face turned slightly, like an older brother refusing to fall where the younger can see.
"MASTER… LIVE."
Then Zhen's body went still.
Not destroyed.
Not dead.
Dormant.
A golden-black statue standing in the ring zone—cracked, empty-chested, yet somehow still terrifying in presence.
The witness beasts growled low, uneasy.
Yuerin's smile vanished entirely.
For the first time, her eyes showed something raw.
"He just… gave you his heart."
Shan Wei's grip tightened on the Heavenpiercer Ruler.
The weapon's hum deepened.
The guardian core inside it pulsed once—like a vow.
The True Judge's eyes narrowed.
"Interesting."
He lifted his hand again.
"But irrelevant."
Erasure continued.
The girl's outline blurred further.
Moonlight dimmed.
Her mask was still half lifted.
And Shan Wei's time was running out.
3. Yuerin Breaks the Line — Shadow Authority Glimmers
Yuerin stepped forward, shadow ink cracking off her Null Page like flakes of burnt paper.
Her voice came low and dangerous.
"You're erasing her while he's bleeding and choosing."
The Mirror Sigil Judge sneered.
"Shadow Queen. You should have died with your contract."
Yuerin's eyes snapped toward him—cold and bright.
"You want a mask?"
Her shadows surged.
Not like illusion now.
Like authority.
For a heartbeat, the air behind Yuerin rippled, and a black halo—thin and sharp—formed like a crown made of absence.
The battlefield chilled.
Shan Wei felt the shift instantly.
This wasn't a technique she had refined calmly.
This was an awakening glimmer—triggered by disgust, despair, and the sight of an erasure happening in front of witnesses.
Yuerin's voice deepened, layered.
"Shadow Authority…"
Her pupils dilated.
A moment too close.
Too dangerous.
The Reaper silhouette flickered behind her—taller, clearer.
Her fingers twitched.
Then she clenched her fist hard enough to draw blood from her palm and forced the authority to collapse inward.
"Not yet," she hissed, trembling. "Not yet."
But she still acted.
She snapped her fingers.
"Null Page: WITNESS-RECALL."
A wave of shadow surged outward—not erasing, but preserving.
It latched onto the minds of the beasts.
The hidden Pavilion watcher.
The distant Ruin Court mirror.
The Auction Conclave's floating lens.
Even the Silent Bell monk's calm gaze.
It was a shadow imprint that whispered into every witness:
Do not forget what you are seeing.
The Quill Sigil Judge's scroll spasmed violently.
"What—what is this—?"
Yuerin's smile returned, thin and murderous.
"I'm making your erasure expensive."
The True Judge's halo rotated faster.
He felt the witness network strengthening.
His voice turned colder.
"Then we erase harder."
The sky-eye pulsed.
Erasure intensified.
The girl's moonlight dimmed to a thin thread.
Her mask lifted further—
and Shan Wei's imperial memory surged like a tidal wave.
4. Unmasking — One Heartbeat of a Face That Breaks Certainty
The girl's fingers slid the white mask upward.
For a single heartbeat, the mask cleared her face.
Moonlight flared.
And Shan Wei saw her.
Not clearly—erasure was already scraping at her outline—but enough.
Silver-black hair falling like night water.Eyes like pale moons hiding storms.A mark at the corner of her eye—small, prismatic, like a star pinned into flesh.A face Shan Wei did not know in this life—
…and yet recognized like a wound recognizes the blade that made it.
Shan Wei's breath caught.
His brand screamed.
Imperial memory detonated behind his eyes:
A throne hall.Her standing beside him.Her hand on his shoulder.Her voice saying his name in a way that made the universe feel smaller.
Not "Qi Shan Wei."
Something older.
Something forbidden.
The Heart behind the micro-gate shivered with delight.
"There she is."
Shan Wei's jaw clenched hard enough it hurt.
The girl's eyes met his—just for that heartbeat.
And in those eyes, Shan Wei saw something that made his blood run cold:
She was not surprised to see him.
She had been looking for him.
Then the erasure slammed down like a guillotine.
Her face blurred.
Her features smeared into moonlight.
The mask vanished from visibility as if it had never been lifted.
The air tried to forget.
The world tried to pretend that heartbeat had not happened.
Shan Wei roared inside.
No.
He thrust the Heavenpiercer Ruler forward, guardian core humming within it.
"IMPERIAL GUARDIAN — WITNESS-LOCK!"
Zhen's embedded system responded.
A prismatic-gold ring flared from the ruler's spine and latched onto the girl's fading outline.
Not strong enough to stop erasure.
But strong enough to delay it.
A single breath of time.
The True Judge's eyes narrowed sharply.
"That weapon now carries imperial guardian architecture."
Shan Wei's voice was low, lethal.
"Yeah."
"And it doesn't like you."
The True Judge didn't flinch.
He simply raised his hand higher.
"Erase the ring."
The sky-eye rotated.
Pale-gold record-severing light descended toward Shan Wei's guardian ring.
And Shan Wei felt the Heart behind the micro-gate shift.
It stopped purring.
It stopped laughing.
It drew a breath.
The micro-gate pulsed wider—not by force, but by choice.
Shan Wei's eyes widened.
"Don't you—"
Too late.
The Heart spoke.
Not into Shan Wei's mind.
Out loud.
Into the air.
A single name—ancient, imperial, forbidden—spoken with the tone of a throne that had waited too long.
"XUAN-CHI."
The name struck the battlefield like a meteor.
The Fate-Lock globe shattered into flickering routes.
The sky-eye stuttered violently.
The Quill Sigil Judge's scroll screamed, pages tearing at the edges.
The Mirror Sigil Judge staggered as if punched.
The Chain Sigil Judge's knots unraveled like cheap rope.
And across the region—far beyond the ring zone—something answered.
A deep, distant sound rolled through the world:
DONG.
A bell.
Not near.
Not human.
Not local.
A time-bell echo from the Silent Bell Monastery—responding to the forbidden name like a relic recognizing its owner.
The monk's eyes widened for the first time.
"So it's true…"
In the distant shadows, the Heavenly Auction Conclave lens flared, recording, transmitting.
The Prismatic Ruin Court's compass mirror spun wildly.
The Thousand Masks Pavilion watcher stiffened—then lowered their head, just slightly, as if recognizing a legend they had only read about.
The witness beasts howled.
Moonlight surged.
And the girl's fading outline snapped sharper for a breath—pulled back into existence by the name that had just been spoken.
The True Judge's expression finally cracked—just slightly.
His voice came cold and urgent.
"Seal that word."
But the world had already heard it.
And the world had answered.
Shan Wei's chest heaved.
His brand burned like a star being branded into his bones.
The Heart's voice echoed, satisfied and terrible:
"Now you cannot pretend."
Shan Wei stared at the girl's outline—no longer fully erased—moonlight trembling around her like a returned route fighting to stay written.
The girl's voice came soft, steady, and razor-sharp:
"You spoke it."
Shan Wei's jaw clenched.
"I didn't."
The girl's moonlight eyes narrowed.
"But the world heard it anyway."
Above them, the sky-eye shook, trying to reassert control.
The True Judge lifted his hands again—anger now sharp enough to cut.
And Shan Wei realized the nightmare had evolved:
They weren't just fighting chains anymore.
They were fighting names that wake worlds.
And now the Tribunal would do anything to bury what had just been spoken.
Because if Xuan-Chi became legend again…
heaven's record would no longer be the only story that mattered.
To be Continued
© Kishtika., 2025
All rights reserved.