The Inner Shadow Pillar was not a prison in the usual sense.
It had no chains, no guards, no cold bars or iron locks. And yet it imprisoned something far more sacred than body—it stilled the soul.
Deep beneath the main sect complex, the pillar was a solitary chamber carved from obsidian stone, carved before even the Dawnyu Sect bore its name. A place used only for those whose path strayed into realms too distant to be understood.
Here, no ZEN flowed. The Conservation Lines etched into the walls siphoned even the echoes of energy, silencing all but thought.
Zhen Hu sat cross-legged in the center of the cell, breathing slow, deeper than he had in days.
And yet… not deeper enough.
His thoughts wandered like beasts without masters. They circled images of faces—Mie Xian's tear-rimmed eyes, the look in Zhen Xun's face as judgment won over fatherhood, the whisper of fear in every disciple's silence.
And above them all—
Aelira.
Though she stood just behind him, cloaked in near-invisible starlight, he did not speak to her.
He hadn't in hours.
She could feel his thoughts trembling. Not from rage, but from that far deeper wound—the one without a name.
And still, he did not ask her for comfort.
He didn't believe he deserved it.
Time blurred in that stillness.
At some point, Zhen Hu whispered, "I should not exist."
His voice cracked like a frozen branch. "I should've died in the Dark Forest. The zenless boy... That would've been easier for everyone."
Aelira stepped closer, though her feet made no sound. She reached out—not to correct him, not to chide him, but to place her hand just above his heart.
Her touch did not connect.
It couldn't.
Not yet.
But still she lingered, fingers hovering like a breath over the skin.
She whispered words he could not hear:
"You are not here because the world wanted you."
"You are here because the world feared what would happen if it did not make room for you."
Zhen Hu trembled. Somewhere inside his soul, Nytherion stirred—but not violently. Not as a predator. More like a mirror, cracked in too many places to reflect anything whole.
He remembered Mie Xian's kindness.
He remembered the warmth of her hand when she helped him up during sparring, the way her voice wavered when she thought he'd been hurt.
It made him want to scream.
Because she didn't know what he was.
Because if she did… she might turn away like the others.
"I'm tired," he whispered. "Not of fighting. Not of hiding. Just… tired of not knowing whether I'm still human."
His head fell forward, and for a moment, he let himself break.
No resistance. No resilience. Just the hollow echo of what was left.
And then, as the tears began to fall—quiet, angry, and ashamed—Aelira did something she never had before.
She sang.
A lullaby, half-forgotten even in the oldest Zen scripts. A song of stars drifting across dying skies, of ancestors who watched in silence, of gods who once mourned the humans they had failed.
Zhen Hu didn't understand the words. But he stopped trembling.
He couldn't hear her.
But he felt warmth.
Something impossible in the cold tomb of the Shadow Pillar.
And he wept harder.
Not because he was weak.
But because for the first time… he thought maybe he wasn't alone.