The clouds gathered thick over the plains of Shiyu, a darkness that rolled across the horizon like the coming of an age's end. The sun dared not break through the ash that now hung in the air, remnants of the ancient forest fires that had devoured half the Eastern territory in the wake of the last battle. Thunder echoed in the distance, not from the skies, but from the stampede of troops being organized across the far hill — the final remnants of the Allied Flame Guard, the Dragon Lotus Sect, and the broken royal militia of the Shenwu Dynasty.
Zhao Lianxu stood still at the peak of the old shrine of stone and bone, his eyes locked on the horizon. Beneath the weight of his royal cloak and the centuries-old armor laced with glowing sigils, he was no longer just the exiled prince of a fallen dynasty. He was the convergence of three bloodlines, the inheritor of a shattered world's last hopes, and a cultivator on the edge of divinity.
But more than that, he was haunted.
Behind him, the footsteps were soft — not the rustling of spies or the hasty stride of a messenger, but the measured, composed tread of someone he had once trusted with every thread of his being.
"You shouldn't be alone," said Shuyin, her voice carrying a heaviness that time had not dulled. "Not tonight. Not before what's coming."
Lianxu didn't turn. "I've always been alone. Even when I was surrounded."
Shuyin stood beside him now, arms folded tightly against the rising wind. Her eyes followed his gaze, toward the mountains that bled smoke, toward the horizon where the Demon Realm's armies were said to be gathering.
"Your mother's people are coming," she said.
"My mother's blood might run through my veins," he said quietly, "but they are not mine. Not anymore."
There was silence for a moment. And then — "You've changed, Lianxu. The boy I once knew believed even a traitor could be forgiven."
"That boy died," Lianxu said bitterly. "The day the princess of the Amber Moon stabbed him in the heart."
She flinched. There was no mask for it.
"I didn't want to," she whispered.
"And yet you did."
He turned now, slowly. His gaze met hers — the woman he had loved, the warrior who had betrayed him, the one who had conquered the known world in his absence, ruling in shadows while pretending to serve the light.
"I had no choice," she said.
"There's always a choice."
"Not when your father's life depends on it. Not when a thousand innocents hang in the balance. I traded my soul for peace, Lianxu. And then I buried myself in the crown."
His voice was low, measured, and yet it shook. "You ruled the world from behind the veil. You created the Central Order. You made them forget the dynasties, the old names — even me."
"I kept the world from tearing itself apart."
"At what cost?"
Shuyin stepped forward. "I never stopped loving you."
He laughed bitterly, and yet his eyes shimmered with unshed tears. "Then you should have died with me. Or killed me cleanly. But instead, you left me half-dead, cursed to remember everything while the world forgot."
The wind howled around them, and the ground beneath trembled slightly — a prelude to what was coming. Far to the west, a pillar of shadow-light rose into the sky, the mark of the Demon Realm's high general arriving on the battlefield.
"You don't understand what's at stake," she said.
"No," Lianxu said. "I understand better than anyone. The multiverse is bleeding. The balance of light, dark, and chaos has broken. And the child of three bloodlines — the one who was meant to bridge the worlds — was cast into exile by the one person he trusted most."
She reached for him. He stepped back.
"I'm not that child anymore," he said. "And I will not be your weapon."
"You are no one's weapon," she said fiercely. "But you are their hope. Our hope."
He turned away again. Below, the armies were gathering. Across the mountains, the sky shimmered with demonic portals.
"I will fight," he said. "But not for your empire. Not for the dead dynasties. I will fight to give the next generation a world where they don't have to choose betrayal over love."
Shuyin's voice trembled. "Then we fight together."
He didn't answer.
In the hours that followed, preparations moved like the tightening of a giant's grip. Formation circles were drawn across the hilltops. Archmages and talisman masters of the Five Petal Sect summoned ancestral spirits. Dragons, once bound in the old treaties, answered the silent call of the Flame Crystal, their wings blotting the sky with shadow and light.
And at the center of it all, Zhao Lianxu knelt in meditation — not as a prince, not as a warrior, but as a cultivator straddling the threshold between mortality and the heavens.
Within his soul sea, three lights danced — crimson, violet, and golden — each representing his bloodlines: the Prime Minister of the Multiverse, the Demon Queen of the Abyss, and the ancient Sword Emperor who had sealed the Tianmo World.
He reached inward, unlocking the final gate of the Multiuniverse Destructive Body.
Pain unlike any before erupted within him. His bones screamed. His veins ignited. His mind fractured into a million thoughts — memories, echoes, lives he had never lived.
But through the agony, he saw her — Shuyin — in all timelines. In one, she stood beside him, bearing his child. In another, she wept over his grave. In yet another, she never betrayed him — and the world burned for it.
When he opened his eyes, he was changed.
His aura was no longer a single flame but a storm — lightning, fire, darkness, and void — all coiling around him like celestial dragons.
From the skies above, the heavens trembled.
As night fell, the armies gathered at the Valley of Final Dusk. Lianxu stood at the vanguard, Shuyin beside him, the generals of old dynasties kneeling before him not as a prince, but as the last hope of creation.
"Tonight," he said, "we face extinction. Not just of a race, a dynasty, or a sect — but of memory itself. The enemy seeks to erase all that was, is, and will be. They come not with swords alone, but with oblivion."
He drew his blade — the Astral Severance Sword, gifted by the legacy of the one who sealed Tianmo.
"But we are the heirs of light, of blood, of pain. And we do not kneel to oblivion."
Roars echoed across the battlefield.
He raised his sword. "Let them come. And let the abyss know that even in the deepest darkness, we are the flame that will not die."