The silver thread glowed faintly, its shimmer barely cutting through the thickening dark.
It wasn't moonlight that guided them anymore—it was memory.
Jin followed the thread as it danced like a living serpent through the trees. His footsteps no longer echoed. His breath felt weightless. The air had changed—not cold, not warm, just… wrong.
Ren Zhe suddenly raised a hand. "Stop."
Meimei froze beside him. Jin halted just in time to avoid stepping into a ring of dead grass.
"What is it?" he whispered.
Ren Zhe pointed. "This isn't a natural clearing."
Jin's eyes adjusted.
They stood at the edge of a perfect circle. Not carved by blade or shaped by spell—but erased.
No wind touched the air inside. No sound echoed across it. At its center floated a stone monolith—black, cracked, humming with buried voices.
Jin took a step closer.
"Wait," Meimei hissed.
Too late.
The monolith pulsed.
And the world broke again.
He stood inside a memory. But this time, it wasn't someone else's. It was his.
A little boy, barefoot and coughing in a rat-infested alley. Holding a rusted dagger. Watching men laugh as they passed him.
"Don't let them see you cry," his older sister had whispered once. "They only respect monsters."
But she was long gone.
Gone the night soldiers in silver masks had raided their slum, searching for "lineage anomalies."
He blinked—and the scene changed.
A different memory now. Deeper. Older.
One he had never lived.
A throne of vines and bone. Men and women kneeling before him, eyes hollow, mouths sewn shut with golden thread.
Above him hung a crown of black branches. And carved into the sky itself, in fire and blood—
THE NAMELESS ONE.
Jin gasped.
This wasn't his memory.
It belonged to something inside him.
A voice rang out.
"You shouldn't have come here, Graveborn."
Jin spun.
A man stood across from him. Or what was left of one.
His body was cracked, skin flaking like parchment, eyes burned clean of pupils. Yet he moved with the grace of a cultivator who had once ruled heavens.
"Who are you?" Jin asked.
"I was the First Guardian of the Paradox Vault," the man said. "My name was sealed long before your ancestors were born."
Jin's mind reeled. "Then this place…"
"It's the border of the Forgotten Realm. Where memory itself is unbound. Where names become weapons."
Jin narrowed his eyes. "Is this the sanctuary the Ash Monk spoke of?"
The Guardian smiled, and his teeth were made of ruin.
"No. This is the key. The sanctuary lies beyond the Echoveil. But to pass, you must give up your name."
Jin recoiled. "What?"
"In the Forgotten Realm, names are anchors," the Guardian said. "Memory obeys only those who relinquish their past. If you wish to survive the Sovereign's hunt, you must become nameless."
Jin hesitated.
If he surrendered his name… would he lose himself? Would he still remember who he was? What he fought for?
Or would he become one more ghost wandering the ash of time?
Before he could answer, the vision shattered.
He awoke with a gasp.
The clearing was gone.
Ren Zhe knelt beside him, brows furrowed.
"You touched the monolith," the older cultivator said. "You disappeared for ten seconds. Then the thread flared and pulled you back."
Jin sat up, dizzy.
"I saw something," he murmured. "A Guardian. He said I'd have to give up my name."
Ren Zhe's jaw clenched. "Then the rumors are true. The Paradox Vault still exists."
Meimei swore softly. "Is this really worth it? We could keep running."
"No," Jin said. "We can't run forever. The Sovereign devours memory. He won't stop until there's nothing left of the old world."
He stood.
"I'll do it. I'll give up my name."
Ren Zhe's gaze lingered for a moment. "Then prepare yourself."
He handed Jin a shard of obsidian, cut from his own blade. "When the thread stops, place this into the earth. It will open the gate."
Jin nodded.
They followed the silver path deeper into the woods.
Hours passed—or maybe none at all. The forest blurred into impossibility. Trees twisted backward. Time unraveled in reverse. Jin saw stars that hadn't shone in a thousand years.
Finally, the thread stilled.
A clearing.
Inside it: a mirror.
Seven feet tall, framed in bone, polished to a perfect shine. But it reflected no trees, no stars—only Jin.
And behind his reflection, a door.
A door without a handle. Without hinges. Without anything that made it real.
Jin stepped forward.
He placed the obsidian shard into the soil.
The ground rumbled.
The mirror cracked.
A voice echoed—his own voice.
"What is your name?"
Jin hesitated.
His entire life flashed before his eyes.
The alley. The dagger. The betrayal. The grave. The darkness.
And the awakening.
"I…" he began. "I was Jin. But that boy died in a grave."
The mirror split open.
And the door behind it opened into darkness.
He walked through.
And the world shifted.
Gone were the trees.
Gone was the wind.
He stood on a vast plane of silver mist. Floating islands drifted above him. Time itself wept here—moments frozen mid-breath, forgotten by the heavens.
He was inside the Forgotten Realm.
And something was waiting.
A throne of salt and bone rose before him.
Upon it sat a woman.
Tall. Wrapped in bandages of time. Her face covered by a shroud of silk. Her fingers wove threads of memory into the air.
"You have arrived," she said.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"I am the Weaver of Forgotten Names," she replied. "And you are my last hope."
Jin took a step forward. "I need to hide. From the Sovereign. From the Veilborne."
"There is no hiding here," the Weaver said. "Only remembrance denied. You must pass the Trial of Shards. Only then will your identity be erased and rewritten. Only then can you walk among forgotten kings."
Jin nodded.
"Then let's begin."
Behind him, unseen, the Veilborne watched.
Through eyes that no longer belonged to it.
It had followed him across time and thought.
It now knew his soulprint. His blood resonance.
And most importantly—his weakness.
He feared forgetting who he was.
The Veilborne smiled inside the stolen flesh.
Because soon, Jin would give up everything.
And when he did?
The Sovereign would be waiting.