The corridor did not just shake. It screamed.
The white stone walls flashed with pale writing, like a thousand rules waking up at once. The Execution Bell floated in the air by itself, spinning slowly, as if the world was trying to decide what Qi Shan Wei was allowed to be.
Then the Returned Gate opened wider.
Cold light poured out. It was not warm like moonlight. It was not sharp like lightning. It was clean and dead, like a page that never got ink.
Qi Shan Wei stood in front of it, calm as a mountain. His silver hair moved only slightly, even though the air was raging. The Heavenpiercer Ruler was steady in his hand.
Inside his chest, his name-circle burned.
Not from heat.
From a pull.
A split.
The Execution Bell rang again—twice in the same breath.
The first ring struck his current name.
QI SHAN WEI.
The second ring struck something older.
A name that did not belong to this life.
A name the world did not want to say out loud.
The corridor air tightened like a rope around his soul, trying to tear him into two people.
Qi Shan Wei's eyes narrowed.
He felt it clearly now. The Silent Bell Monastery was not only using time. They were using identity. Using "law-writing" to force the world to accept one version of him, and erase the other.
The monk in white robes stood behind the bell mask, holding the apple bell high. The monk's voice stayed calm, but the pressure was cruel.
"Double-name strike," the monk said. "One life must be chosen. One life must be sealed."
Qi Shan Wei's voice was low and controlled.
"I choose both."
The monk rang the apple bell again.
The corridor floor lit up with a pale circle, and the word SURRENDER rose like a wall of pressure. The cells along the corridor flashed. The prisoners inside shook like they could feel the same rule being forced into their bones.
Qi Shan Wei did not bend.
He did not shout.
He simply lifted his free hand and drew a prismatic glyph in the air—three simple strokes, clean and firm.
ONE-SELF.
The glyph sank into his name-circle like a lock.
The pressure wall hit him… and cracked.
The monk's bell hand paused for the first time.
"You are resisting a monastery rule," the monk said, voice tighter now. "That is not something mortals do."
Qi Shan Wei answered calmly.
"I am not here to be allowed."
He stepped forward and entered the Returned Gate.
The cold light swallowed him.
For one heartbeat, the corridor vanished.
He stood in a different place.
A hall made of white stone and silent shadow, stretching too far to see. The floor was covered in bell symbols, carved deep like scars. Above, there was no sky—only pale emptiness, like time had been scraped clean.
In the center of the hall was a bell the size of a house.
A real Execution Bell.
And chained to it… was a man.
The man looked like Qi Shan Wei.
Silver hair. Golden eyes. The same sharp face.
But his eyes were older.
Not older like years.
Older like cycles.
His wrists were wrapped in bell chains that cut into the skin. His chest had a carved circle like Shan Wei's name-circle—but it was cracked, like someone had tried to erase it and failed.
The man lifted his head slowly.
His lips moved.
His voice came out quiet, but it filled the hall like a law.
"I am you."
Qi Shan Wei did not step back.
He did not flinch.
His face stayed calm, but his eyes sharpened like a blade.
"You are a prison echo," Qi Shan Wei said. "Or a stolen mask."
The chained man gave a small, tired smile.
"That's what you said last time," the man whispered.
The words hit like a cold needle.
Last time.
Qi Shan Wei's name-circle burned again, and for a blink, he saw flashes—broken and fast. A battlefield under white bells. Drakonix bleeding prismatic fire. A woman's hand slipping from his grasp, frost on her lashes. A bell ringing over a city that had become ash.
Qi Shan Wei forced the flashes down.
He did not let his breathing change.
He walked closer to the chained man, stopping just outside the bell's shadow.
"Speak," Qi Shan Wei said. "What did they steal?"
The chained man's eyes flicked to Shan Wei's chest.
"They didn't steal your power first," he said. "They stole your bonds."
The bell symbols on the floor flared.
The hall shook slightly, like it didn't like that truth being spoken.
The chained man continued anyway, voice calm and bitter.
"They call it a Consort Thread audit," he said. "They act like it's balance. Like it's safety. But it's fear. They fear what you become when you are not alone."
Qi Shan Wei's grip on the Heavenpiercer Ruler tightened.
Far away, in another place, Ling Xueyao's wrist chain had loosened for one heartbeat because of Shan Wei's prismatic shield.
That mercy did not last.
In the ice hall, a new chain appeared from nothing—thin, pale, and cruel. It did not wrap her wrist this time.
It slid into her shadow.
It hooked her soul thread.
Ling Xueyao's eyes widened, just a little.
The air around her turned colder.
Her breath became fog.
The chain tried to write a rule inside her: SEVER.
Ling Xueyao did not scream.
She lifted her chin and pushed frost into the chain like a sword thrust. Her cold was not normal cold. It carried law.
For a blink, a pale moon appeared behind her—half-formed, shaking, unstable.
Her near-awakening pulled at the world.
The ice hall floor cracked.
Frozen lines spread across the stone like white lightning.
Those lines did not fade.
They stayed.
"Frozen law scars," a monk voice whispered in the hall, nervous now. "She's too close…"
Ling Xueyao's lips parted.
She whispered, almost too soft to hear.
"Touch my soul again… and I will freeze your bell."
Back in the Returned Hall, Qi Shan Wei felt that cold flare through the bond like a warning flame made of ice.
The chained man noticed.
He smiled faintly.
"She's strong," he said. "That's why they cut her first."
Qi Shan Wei's voice was calm, but every word was heavy.
"If they try to kill her through me, they will fail."
The chained man's smile faded.
"That's what you said," he whispered again. "And then they made you choose."
The hall's giant bell rang once, by itself, like it was laughing without sound.
Qi Shan Wei's name-circle burned again, and the split-pull returned—harder.
The double-name strike was still happening.
The Silent Bell Monastery was ringing the bell in the corridor while Shan Wei stood inside the gate.
They were trying to tear him apart while he was "in-between."
Qi Shan Wei understood the trap.
If his identity split, his bond threads would slip. If bond threads slipped, Ling Xueyao's chain could tighten and sever. If she was severed, the Court would call it "balance."
Qi Shan Wei's eyes went colder.
He lifted his free hand and drew another prismatic glyph—simple, sharp, and new.
THREAD-HOLD.
The glyph did not go to his chest.
It went into the air between him and the chained man.
The air tightened like a net.
The chained man's eyes widened slightly.
"You can forge inside this hall?" he asked.
Qi Shan Wei answered calmly.
"I can forge anywhere."
Outside, the battlefield screamed again.
Zhen's dome had entered full hold state. His cracks spread like spiderwebs across golden-black armor plates. His shield did not get weaker.
It got harder.
The Imperial Shield Matrix made the dome thicker, like layered walls sliding into place.
The dome moved as the group moved—protecting cocoon, protecting Mei Yulan, protecting everyone.
A Court envoy hovered above, bell mask watching.
The envoy's seal tried to press down again.
Yin Yuerin lifted her hand, and shadows bloomed like ink in water.
Her eyes were cold and bright.
She did not joke.
She did not tease.
She made a mask in the air—a thin shadow face with no eyes.
Then she pushed it onto the Court seal.
The seal tried to stay pure and "lawful."
The mask made it reflect.
Not light.
Debt.
The Court seal flashed.
For one heartbeat, the envoy's bell mask cracked with a thin line.
The envoy's voice came out sharp and shocked.
"That is forbidden—"
Yin Yuerin's voice was soft and deadly.
"You tried to erase cost," she said. "You cannot."
The shadow mask tightened.
The seal shook like it was choking.
A word appeared on the seal—one the Court did not want to show:
DEBT.
The envoy went still.
Because a debt meant the Court could be judged too.
And judgment was supposed to belong only to them.
Below, Mei Yulan's hands trembled. She pressed a palm to her chest, trying to hide her weakness.
But it was real.
The years she spent were not "gone like mist."
They left an empty space in her cultivation flow.
And emptiness has a smell.
A hungry smell.
High-level enemies could sense it.
Mei Yulan swallowed and forced herself upright anyway.
"I'm fine," she whispered again, stubborn.
Zhen looked at her.
"LIE DETECTED."
Mei Yulan almost laughed, but her eyes watered.
Zhen added, very serious.
"YOU ARE WEAK. STAY INSIDE DOME."
Mei Yulan whispered, "I hate you," but her voice was soft, and she did not mean it.
Zhen paused, then said something that sounded like a rule… but felt like care.
"HATE NOT REQUIRED. SURVIVE REQUIRED."
Drakonix, half out of the cocoon, gave a low growl again—angry at pain, angry at chains, angry at anyone touching what belonged to his brother.
His prismatic wing spread wider.
The wing was not fully formed, but it was real now.
One full arc of prismatic feathers shone like burning glass.
Drakonix's flames rose—clean and cruel and bright.
They did not burn stone.
They burned writing.
Contracts.
Seals.
The last time-chain holding the corridor stable began to melt.
A Silent Bell rune in the sky popped like a bubble.
The battlefield air "loosened" for one heartbeat, like the prison around them had a crack.
Back inside the Returned Hall, Qi Shan Wei felt that crack too.
He used it.
He stepped closer to the chained man, and his voice stayed calm.
"If you are me," Qi Shan Wei said, "then tell me the truth."
The chained man's eyes flicked toward the giant bell behind him.
"That bell is not just a bell," he said. "It is a cage for emperors."
Qi Shan Wei's eyes narrowed.
The chained man continued, voice low.
"Every time you rise too fast… every time your bonds start to form… every time Drakonix burns the rules… the Monastery tries to 'fix' you. If they fail, they don't kill you."
He gave a faint, bitter smile.
"They recycle you."
Qi Shan Wei's name-circle pulsed, and the split-pull stabbed again.
The Execution Bell's double strike tried to force a choice: be a "mortal Qi Shan Wei," or be the "Prismatic Emperor" that the world feared.
Qi Shan Wei lifted the Heavenpiercer Ruler slightly.
His voice did not shake.
"I am both," he said. "And I will not be recycled."
The chained man stared at him like he was staring at a storm that refuses to die.
Then he whispered the sentence that made the hall go colder.
"The lost thread… isn't lost," he said.
Qi Shan Wei's eyes sharpened.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
The chained man breathed out slowly.
"They marked it 'lost' to give themselves permission," he said. "Permission to cut. Permission to execute. Permission to call it balance."
He lifted his chained hands slightly, and the chains rattled against the giant bell.
"And the reason the audit hurts you so much," the man whispered, "is because the thread they marked… is tied to a name you still haven't remembered."
The floor bell symbols flared again, angry.
Qi Shan Wei felt something in his chest react—his Heart, his prismatic core, his fate.
It beat once, hard, like it recognized a shadow.
Outside, the Silent Bell monk in the corridor raised the apple bell again. The monk's voice was cold.
"By Silent Bell law," the monk said, "the next ring will lock the choice. One life. One name."
Qi Shan Wei closed his eyes for one blink.
Not in fear.
In focus.
Then he opened them.
He raised his free hand and drew a prismatic glyph so simple it looked like a child's mark.
But the air shook when it formed.
NO-CHOICE.
The glyph burned into the air like a new law.
The double-name strike hit again.
And cracked.
The Returned Hall trembled.
The chained man's eyes widened.
"You… you wrote 'no' into the bell law," he whispered.
Qi Shan Wei's voice stayed calm.
"I wrote the truth."
The giant bell behind the chained man rang once—deep, heavy, angry.
The chain around the prisoner tightened and pulled him back, like the hall itself tried to silence him.
The prisoner's face twisted in pain.
But he forced his head up and spoke fast, urgent now.
"Listen," he said. "They will make your bonds look like a crime. They will say your love is obsession. They will say your loyalty is instability. They will say—"
The hall shook hard.
The prisoner choked.
A pale bell chain formed in the air and wrapped around his throat.
Qi Shan Wei's eyes went cold.
He lifted the Heavenpiercer Ruler.
He did not swing wildly.
He cut the throat chain with one clean strike.
The chain snapped.
The prisoner gasped, free for one breath.
He looked straight at Qi Shan Wei and whispered the last line.
"The Monastery is not the only one watching," he said. "The Court is scared of what's under the bell."
Qi Shan Wei's heart beat once, sharp.
"Under the bell?" he asked.
The prisoner's golden eyes turned haunted.
He whispered a name—barely.
A name that felt like a door trying to open inside Shan Wei's skull.
Then the Returned Hall screamed.
Because the corridor outside finally rang the apple bell again.
The double-name strike slammed down like a mountain.
The Returned Gate tried to close.
Qi Shan Wei felt his identity being pulled apart one more time.
And in the ice hall far away, Ling Xueyao's soul chain tightened hard, trying to sever her bond in the same breath.
Qi Shan Wei moved.
He stepped forward and grabbed the giant bell chain connected to the prisoner—connected to the hall—connected to the Monastery's law itself.
He poured prismatic flame into his hand.
Not wild.
Not loud.
A clean burn made to erase writing.
The chain hissed.
The bell symbols on the floor began to melt.
The hall shook like it was in pain.
The Silent Bell law did not like being burned.
The prisoner stared at Shan Wei like he was seeing a real emperor for the first time.
Qi Shan Wei's voice was calm and absolute.
"I will not choose," he said. "I will not be corrected."
He pulled.
The chain snapped.
The giant bell behind the prisoner rang—
Not like a rule.
Like a scream.
And the Returned Hall cracked down the middle, revealing something dark underneath, like a hidden throat of the world.
A black space where bells do not ring.
A place where rules go to die.
Qi Shan Wei felt his Heart react again—harder this time.
Like it heard an ancient enemy breathing.
The prisoner's eyes widened in fear.
"Don't—" he started.
Too late.
From the black space under the bell, a whisper rose.
Not the monk's voice.
Not the Court's voice.
A voice like quiet metal.
A voice like time itself smiling.
"Prismatic Emperor…" it whispered.
Qi Shan Wei's eyes narrowed.
The voice said one more line.
A line that hit like a knife.
"We found you again."
To be Continued
© Kishtika., 2025
All rights reserved.