The next morning broke with a sky like smudged ink—gray, heavy, and watching.
Tian Rui sat by the cave entrance, staring at the mark on his palm. The sigil from his dream didn't fade with the sunrise. It pulsed softly, like a heartbeat. It wasn't just a brand—it was a direction. A map etched into his skin.
Lyen joined him, handing over a canteen. "You were shaking in your sleep."
He drank slowly. "They weren't just shadows. They were cultivators once. People who fell trying to grasp what I now carry."
"You're still you, right?"
"I hope so."
She didn't press him, but her silence was thick with worry.
---
They traveled deeper into the steppe, following the pull of the sigil. The land grew stranger with each mile—trees with leaves like glass, rivers that flowed backward, bones half-buried in salt-crusted soil. The world itself felt… wrong, like it had been rejected by the heavens and left to rot.
At midday, they found an abandoned watchtower. Its wooden frame groaned in the wind, but it stood—a sentinel from a forgotten age. Veylan climbed it first and descended slowly.
"Ruins up ahead," he reported. "Not clan-built. Older."
Tian Rui nodded. "That's where it's taking us."
---
They arrived by dusk.
Stone structures spiraled out of the ground, overgrown with thornroots and lichen. At the center stood a monolith etched in an unknown language, and behind it—a gate. Not a spirit gate. Not quite physical either.
The air around it shimmered. Faint whispers echoed, but not in a language anyone spoke.
Veylan studied the carvings. "This is beyond the Nine Paths. This… is from the age before roots."
Lyen narrowed her eyes. "What does that mean?"
Tian Rui approached the gate. The sigil on his palm flared—and the whispers silenced. The wind died.
The gate… opened.
Inside was not a room, but a void filled with light and sound, swirling together. A space untouched by time. And within it, a man sat cross-legged—suspended in the air, body wrapped in living vines, eyes closed in eternal meditation.
Tian Rui stepped forward.
The man's eyes snapped open.
"You are late," he said.
---
The void stilled. Lyen and Veylan stood frozen at the edge—they couldn't follow.
Only Tian Rui could enter.
"Who are you?" he asked.
The man studied him. "I am the last of the Rootless Sages. The one who refused all paths. The one who survived without heaven's favor."
Tian Rui's pulse quickened. "And why am I here?"
The sage's eyes narrowed. "Because you walk the line between origin and oblivion. Because your root is not granted—it is stolen. And those who steal must pay… or surpass."
The vines around the sage unraveled, revealing a ring of floating stones. Each burned with a different kind of energy—fire, water, metal, shadow, void…
"You will choose," the sage said. "Not an element. Not a style. A principle. A truth that will anchor your broken root."
Tian Rui stepped into the ring. The energies hummed with intensity.
"Choose carefully. What you become begins here."