They traveled by moonlight.
No path. No road. Only the whisper of leaves underfoot and the wheeze of wind between shattered ruins. Every breath of night air tasted like the calm before a storm. Jin kept close behind Ren Zhe, while Meimei scouted ahead with barely a sound.
"Are you sure it's still there?" Jin asked, watching the shadows shift.
Ren Zhe didn't look back. "The Mausoleum doesn't move. But the world around it does."
They passed a crumbling arch of stone, broken by time and battle. Glyphs older than history crawled across its face, flickering faintly.
"Old World symbols," Meimei whispered. "This entire region's under temporal erosion."
"It's worse than erosion," Ren Zhe said. "This is a battlefield frozen in paradox. The war between the Hollow Crown and the Immortal Dynasty left scars reality still hasn't healed."
Jin looked around. "So... why would anyone build a sanctuary here?"
"Because no one sane would follow," Ren Zhe said. "That's why the Mausoleum remained hidden for ten thousand years."
They moved in silence for a while, Jin's mind racing.
The events from the tomb replayed in flashes—his own voice, not his own, calling out ancient names; the Sovereign's twisted expression; the world burning in light and shadow.
He touched his chest.
The silver sigils that had floated around him were gone now. But deep beneath his skin, he could still feel them—echoes of a bloodline awakened.
"What was the Hollow Crown, really?" he asked.
Ren Zhe stopped.
He turned slowly.
"They were kings," he said. "But not rulers. Not of cities. Not of armies. They reigned over memory."
Jin frowned. "Memory?"
"They were born from the Dreaming Depths," Ren Zhe said. "A part of the world no map dares to mark. The Hollow Crown could pass through memory the way we walk through air. They didn't cultivate like we do. They shaped their power from forgotten truth."
Meimei rejoined them, eyes alert. "I saw something moving. Behind the ridge."
Ren Zhe drew his blade instantly. "How many?"
"Just one. But it wasn't walking. It was gliding."
They ducked low as the moonlight bent.
Not dimmed. Bent.
A ripple passed through the forest—like wind, but too slow, too deliberate. The trees whispered in languages that hadn't been spoken in millennia. Jin felt his blood chill.
Something approached. It wasn't walking.
It was remembering its way forward.
A figure stepped into view.
Clad in white bone robes. Eyes covered by a porcelain mask shaped like a weeping child. Hair long and silver, trailing behind like smoke. Around its body floated hundreds of burning memory fragments—scenes from forgotten dreams, looping endlessly.
Ren Zhe stepped in front of the others.
"I thought they were extinct."
"Who?" Jin asked, heart hammering.
The figure raised one long-fingered hand in greeting.
"The Ash Monks," Ren Zhe whispered.
The figure spoke, voice echoing with thousands of overlapping tones. "Graveborn. Hollow-heir. Flame-thief. You trespass."
Jin flinched. "It knows who we are."
Meimei's hand went to her dagger. "What do they want?"
"Silence," the Ash Monk said. "The Sovereign listens."
A burning sigil flared on its hand.
And the world fell away.
The forest vanished. The sky vanished. The ground crumbled.
They stood in a memory.
A white field of ash, beneath a sky of red dust.
Jin looked down. His feet left no prints. Ren Zhe gripped his blade—but the metal shimmered like a dream.
"We're inside a memory field," he said. "Don't believe anything you see."
The Ash Monk appeared before them again, floating.
"The Sovereign awakens," it intoned. "Its hunger cannot be stopped. Its reach cannot be severed."
Ren Zhe narrowed his eyes. "Then why are you warning us?"
The monk tilted its head.
"We were the last Keepers of the Hollow Crown," it said. "We remember what the world forgot. We remember the Price."
A gust of wind blew across the ash.
Shapes appeared—armies marching. Cities burning. Children screaming as their names were devoured.
"The Sovereign does not kill. It consumes memory. To be touched by it is to be erased from history. Forgotten by blood and world alike."
Jin staggered. "That's why I dreamt of people calling me someone else. Why no one remembered the tomb. He's already been feeding on the past."
The Monk nodded.
"You carry the Crownseed," it said, pointing at Jin. "Your awakening is premature. You will burn unless sheltered."
"We're going to the Mausoleum of Roots," Ren Zhe said. "He'll be safe there."
The Monk tilted its head again. "Not anymore."
A new vision erupted across the ash plain.
The Mausoleum in flames. Its statues cracked. Its guardians dead.
The Sovereign standing atop its gates, arms open, shadow swallowing light.
"It's already been found," the Monk said.
Meimei cursed under her breath. "So what now?"
"There is one place left," the Monk said. "A place that even the Sovereign cannot enter. Because it was never remembered."
Jin blinked. "That's a paradox."
The Monk smiled, though the mask did not change. "Precisely."
It raised a finger. A thread of silver memory spun into the air.
"Follow this echo," it said. "And beware. Others hunt you now. Not just the Sovereign."
Ren Zhe stepped forward. "Who?"
The sky above the ash plain screamed.
And suddenly—a name burned into the memory world.
"The Veilborne."
The moment the name was spoken, Jin felt his blood ripple.
A shiver that wasn't his own. A memory that had been buried so deep, even his ancestors forgot it.
"Who… are they?" he asked, voice hoarse.
The Monk whispered: "The final traitors of the Hollow Crown. They who devoured dream. They who sold memory to the Emperor for immortality. They wear masks of flesh. They hunt the living."
The sky cracked.
The memory field collapsed.
They were back in the forest, panting.
The Monk was gone.
Only the silver thread remained, glowing gently.
Ren Zhe picked it up, holding it between thumb and forefinger. "A living memory. It'll guide us to the paradox sanctuary."
Jin nodded, still shaken. "The Veilborne…"
"We'll deal with them when we must," Ren Zhe said. "Right now, we move."
They pushed deeper into the night, following the silver thread as it weaved through impossible paths—turning where no road existed, slipping between trees that were no longer there.
Each step pulled them further from the known world.
And closer to the one that memory forgot.
But none of them noticed the shadow that followed.
It didn't walk.
It remembered itself forward.
Its eyes glowed behind a stolen face.
A Veilborne had found them.
And it was already learning their names.