The All-Seeing Celestials' warships blotted out the sun, their hulls groaning with the weight of celestial artillery. Su Ling'er descended from the lead vessel, her robes white as funeral silk, eyes reflecting the Eclipse Codex's black flames. Behind her, a battalion of golden-masked warriors leveled spears crackling with heavenly lightning.
"Zhuo Tianfeng," she intoned, her voice echoing with the hollow resonance of a puppet's strings. "The Well has decreed your end. Will you kneel… or will we carve your name from the annals of time?"
Moran laughed—a sound that cracked the stones beneath his feet. "The Well?" He raised the dusty jug of ancient wine, its contents swirling with trapped starlight. "Tell your masters I'll piss in it when I'm done."
Xia Qingyue stepped forward, her moonlit dagger trembling. "Su Ling'er… Why? We trained together! Ate together!"
The celestial commander's mask faltered. For a heartbeat, the girl beneath the dogma surfaced. "The Su Ling'er you knew died when he—" Her blade flicked toward Moran, "—burned my clan to ash. What remains is the Celestials' blade."
"Blades can be reforged," Moran said, crushing the wine jug. Liquid starlight dripped between his fingers, sizzling where it struck the earth.
The Eclipse Codex erupted from his soul, its obsidian pages fanning outward like wings. Moran's fingers traced sigils older than the heavens themselves, and the ground beneath the warships shuddered.
"You built your fleet atop the Grave of Ten Thousand Swords," he said softly. "Did your masters forget who buried them?"
Rusted blades erupted from the earth—relics of Moran's third incarnation, still singing with the rage of butchered gods. They speared through warship hulls, celestial steel dissolving like paper under their cursed edges. Soldiers fell screaming, their divine armor melting into their flesh.
Su Ling'er lunged, her sword blazing with the Celestial Judgment Art—a technique he had invented during the Primordial Wars. "Predictable," Moran sneered, catching her blade bare-handed. Voidflame surged, liquefying the celestial steel. "You wield my own creation against me?"
Her composure shattered. "Why did you spare me?" she hissed, her voice raw. "Why let me live as their puppet?!"
"To remind the heavens," Moran said, his grip tightening until her bones creaked, "that even their perfect weapons… bleed."
A sudden frost crackled across the battlefield. The air itself crystallized as Luo Xuewei descended from a glacial vortex, her ice-blue robes flaring like the wings of a frost phoenix. Behind her, a dozen cultivators clad in frost-forged armor knelt, their breath frosting the air.
"Eclipse Sovereign," she said, her voice colder than the void between stars. "The Frost Phoenix Palace offers an… alliance."
Bai Zhu'er materialized in a swirl of ash and embers, her eight tails lashing. "Lies!" she spat. "Her ancestors bathed in Sovereign blood during the Godfall Wars!"
Moran studied Luo Xuewei's soul—a flicker of familiar frost. "Your ancestor was Bing Meilan," he said, naming the traitorous frost empress who had poisoned his fifth incarnation. "You inherited her Frozen Nirvana Dao… and her cowardice."
Luo Xuewei's gaze didn't waver. "And you inherited Zhuo Tianfeng's pride… and his blindness." She raised a hand, and the frost coalesced into a mirror showing a vision—a mountain of black ice, at its peak, a figure shrouded in chains. "Your third disciple lives. Frozen in the Glacial Tomb for ten millennia. Ally with us, and we'll free her."
The Codex screamed in Moran's mind—a sound he hadn't heard since the day she'd betrayed him.
Xia Qingyue's dagger clattered to the ground. "You… you have someone else trapped?!"
Before Moran could answer, Su Ling'er struck. Her shattered sword became a dagger of condensed starlight, aimed not at him—but at Xia Qingyue's heart.
"NO!"
The scream came not from Moran, but from the Codex itself.
Voidflame erupted in a maelstrom, swallowing the battlefield whole. When it cleared, Su Ling'er knelt impaled on her own blade, blood pooling around her like a corrupted halo. Xia Qingyue stood unharmed—protected by a cage of black flames.
"Foolish girl," Moran said, lifting Su Ling'er's chin with a Voidflame-tipped finger. "You thought to make me choose? I am the Eclipse. I take."
As the surviving Celestials retreated, Luo Xuewei's frost mirror shattered. The vision of the chained figure lingered.
"Well, Sovereign?" the frost cultivator pressed. "Will you let history repeat… or rewrite it?"
Bai Zhu'er's claws dug into Moran's arm. "She's playing you! Your disciple betrayed—"
"Silence." Moran's gaze never left the frost phoenix emblem on Luo Xuewei's chest. "Prepare your tomb. We leave at dawn."
Xia Qingyue recoiled. "You'd trust them? After everything?!"
Moran turned, his eyes twin abysses. "Trust is for mortals. I wield inevitability."
Above them, the first snow began to fall—blackened ash from the burning heavens.