Snow didn't fall in the Forsaken North like it did elsewhere. It screamed.
Each flake carried whispers—echoes of old curses, brittle memories of dead gods, and silent screams of ancient cultivators frozen mid-breakthrough. The cold wasn't just elemental. It was sentient. It clung to the soul.
Ren Zhe stood at the edge of the Bleeding Glacier, his black robes flaring in the shrieking wind. Meimei stood beside him, wrapped in layers of Thornflower silk, her hands trembling beneath the sleeves. Behind them, the boy Jin stumbled forward, each breath misting from his cracked lips.
They had crossed too many dead lands to count. The Hollow Woods, where trees whispered secrets that made men mad. The Ashen Peaks, where the snow fell in the color of bone. And the Whispering Vale, where even their reflections had turned against them.
And now, at last, the glacier.
A vast stretch of crimson-veined ice sprawled before them, glowing faintly beneath the storm clouds. The blood-colored veins pulsed like arteries, feeding something buried deep beneath.
"This is where you said the shard lies?" Meimei asked, her voice muffled by the wind.
Ren Zhe didn't answer immediately. His gaze was fixed on the glacier's heart, where the ice darkened into near-black and steam rose in irregular hisses.
"It's not buried," he said finally. "It's dreaming."
He stepped forward and pressed his hand to the ice. For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the ground pulsed.
Just once.
Slow. Deep. Like the beat of something ancient and not entirely dead.
Meimei recoiled.
"What… was that?"
"Recognition," Ren Zhe said. "The shard remembers me."
He reached into his robes and retrieved a fragment of obsidian. The first shard—the one he had reclaimed in the Ruins of Hollow Sky. As he held it toward the glacier, the crimson veins reacted, writhing faster like something alive.
The glacier groaned.
A crack spiraled outward from beneath his feet, snaking through the frozen surface until it revealed stone steps leading down into the earth.
He turned to the others.
"Follow. Carefully."
They descended into darkness.
The light died five steps in.
The cold grew sharp enough to bite.
And then they entered the heart of the glacier.
The Womb of Cold Flame.
It wasn't a cave. It was a cathedral sculpted from ice and sorrow. Pillars rose from the ground like frozen spines. Glacial runes flickered beneath their feet, ancient and pulsing. At the chamber's center floated a crystalline cocoon wrapped in colorless fire.
Within that cocoon slept the second Grave Shard.
This one burned not with flame, but with a cold so ancient it radiated frost across Ren Zhe's vision. Unlike the first, this shard had a will that throbbed in the space around it, an awareness like an eye trying to open.
Meimei pulled Jin closer. The boy was shivering violently now, his skin pale as bone.
Ren Zhe stepped forward.
The flames stirred.
"You returned," said a voice. Not spoken, but pressed directly into the soul. "After ten thousand winters. After forgetting us."
The air around them went still.
"Who's speaking?" Meimei whispered.
"The shard," Ren Zhe replied. "Or the will sealed inside it."
"You lit the first flame," the voice continued. "And let it die. You buried us beneath your shame."
"I didn't come for forgiveness," Ren Zhe said. "I came to claim what's mine."
The cocoon flared.
The flames burst outward, and Ren Zhe disappeared into the light.
Meimei reached for him, but an icy barrier rose between them.
A figure of snow and smoke stepped forward from the cocoon—a woman-shaped mirage with a face carved from grief.
"He has entered the Trial," the figure said. "You may not follow."
Within the fire, Ren Zhe stood on a landscape that was not real, but felt more vivid than life. Ash blanketed the ground. The sky was a mirror cracked by lightning. Mountains of bone loomed in every direction.
He saw himself.
Younger. Arrogant. Scarred. Hollow.
Versions of himself walked this place—each a piece broken from the whole. Each one radiated failure.
"You let her die," one said.
"You trusted them," said another.
"You begged," whispered a third.
Each word dug into his skin, leaving bleeding script across his chest.
Ren Zhe did not deny them.
He walked through them.
And when he reached the center of the dreamscape, he knelt.
He placed his hand on the ground, and it trembled.
He drew from the ash a knife—rusted, ancient. His first blade, forged as a child.
And he drove it into the earth.
The fire bowed.
The ghosts vanished.
And the shard accepted him.
The cocoon shattered, and the shard drifted into his palm.
It was jagged, pulsing with energy that felt like frozen time.
The moment it touched him, it stabbed into his chest beside the first.
His veins darkened.
His breath left him.
And the frost etched sigils across his skin—runic tattoos no living man could read.
He staggered once, then stood taller.
When he opened his eyes, one burned golden. The other shimmered icy white.
Meimei stepped back. "Your aura… it's changed again."
"It's only the beginning."
Far to the south, in a city of jade towers and floating citadels, the Empress dropped her goblet.
"It's awake," she whispered.
Across the continent, a chained man beneath the earth tore free from his shackles and smiled.
In the skies above, crows changed direction, spiraling toward the glacier.
And back within the frozen cathedral, the boy Jin collapsed.
Runes flared across his chest—hidden marks, dormant since birth.
Ren Zhe crouched beside him, fingers tracing the glowing lines.
"These aren't ordinary bloodline seals. These were designed to suppress."
"Suppress what?"
Ren Zhe crushed one rune, and the boy jolted upright with a gasp.
His eyes flashed silver.
The air warped.
Ren Zhe stood slowly.
"He's not just a godborn," he said. "He's something older."
Meimei stared at Jin, who now floated an inch above the ground.
"What is he?"
Ren Zhe's expression darkened.
"The son of the Grave General."
A low horn sounded.
Not near. Not far.
Not human.
Ren Zhe turned toward the tunnel above them.
"It's begun."