The wind howled across the high cliffs of the Riftlands, where the stars seemed to hang closer and colder. Mingyao stood at the edge of the world, the fragmented scroll in his hand burning with ink that shimmered like gold and void.
The prophecy had always been their guide—spoken by oracles, whispered by spirits, written into the stones of sacred ruins: "The Child of Both Suns shall remake the sky." But now, he knew the truth.
It was incomplete.
Or worse—manipulated.
It began with the scroll he recovered from Mount Sheng. Shiye, the Spirit Who Forged Heaven, had shown him a piece of it—a fragment left behind by the first fate-weaver. The symbols, once thought absolute, now twisted before his eyes, revealing gaps, scratched lines, and additions made centuries after the original ink had dried.
Mingyao sat before the fire with Liuxian, Yanshi, and Grandmaster Hefu. The scroll pulsed faintly in his hands.
"It's not just incomplete," Hefu said, squinting through ancient lenses. "Someone tried to change it. See this glyph? This isn't even from the divine tongue—it's demonic."
Liuxian scowled. "Someone didn't want the real ending to be known."
Mingyao's voice was low. "Then we find the rest."
"How?" Yanshi asked. "This is millennia-old. Where would the missing pieces even be?"
"Not where," Liuxian said. "Who."
They journeyed to the Glistening Library of Avamaris, an ethereal archive kept within a collapsed star. A place only accessible through dream-walking, where knowledge had breath and memory.
The librarian was no ordinary being—Azarethiel, a fallen seraph who had once guarded the threads of truth. Now bound to the library's endless echoes, she appeared to them as a woman woven of parchment and flame.
"I remember your mother," Azarethiel said, drifting toward Mingyao with a mournful gaze. "Lianhua came here once, long ago. Searching for a future not written."
"You knew her?"
"She was one of the only ones brave enough to question the Loom. And she paid for it with exile... and silence."
Azarethiel guided them through vaults of thought—pages floating in starlight, songs bound into metal spheres, blood-inked memories sealed in bone.
They uncovered three verses of the original prophecy:
"He who walks with storm and silence shall pierce the veil of the false."
"The suns above are not alone. One burns in shadow."
"The child shall not be chosen—but shall choose."
Yanshi frowned. "That last line... that's not in any of the versions we've ever seen."
"Because it was erased," Azarethiel said. "The gods feared what it meant. A world where fate bowed to will."
But even in the dream-library, the final verse remained missing.
"There is one who might hold it," Azarethiel said hesitantly. "But he is dangerous. Broken."
"Who?" Mingyao asked.
"Kalthor, the Ink-Eater. A former scholar of the divine realms, turned mad after glimpsing the unwritten verse. He hides in the ruins of the First Loom, where thought and reality decay."
Liuxian's grip tightened around her blade. "I've heard his name in old prayers. They called him the First Heretic."
"Because he claimed there was no destiny. Only story."
The journey to the Loom-Ruins was unlike anything they had faced.
The air itself bent, reshaping memories. At one point, Yanshi forgot her own name. At another, Mingyao nearly killed Liuxian in a daze where she looked like Nüxi.
Only Hefu's anchoring rites kept them from losing themselves entirely.
When they found Kalthor, he was… beautiful. And terrifying.
An ageless figure wrapped in robes stitched from scripture, with ink bleeding from his eyes like tears. He floated above a black pool of thoughts, whispering to himself.
"I know why you've come," he said without turning.
"You remember the missing verse?"
"I am the missing verse."
His madness was a shield, but within it lay a core of crystalline truth. With great effort, Mingyao reached him—not with power, but with honesty. He shared his doubts, his fears, his anger at being chosen for something he never asked for.
Kalthor listened.
And then, he wept.
"I remember now," he said, voice shaking. "The final line…"
And he spoke:
"The heavens shall fall not by wrath—but by remembrance. For the child shall carry every forgotten thread."
When they left the ruins, the prophecy was whole.
But something darker stirred.
A cloaked figure watched them from the edge of unreality—her eyes like dying stars.
Nüxi.
"They know too much," she whispered to the abyss.
And the abyss answered.
"They must not live to weave."
Back at their camp, Mingyao sat with the scroll unrolled before him.
The Child of Both Suns was not a destroyer or savior by design.
He was a mirror. A vessel.
Whatever he chose next would become prophecy.
He looked to his allies—Liuxian sharpening her blades, Yanshi staring into the stars, and Hefu meditating beside a lantern.
"I won't just follow fate anymore," he said aloud.
"I will become the one who writes it."
And far above, for the first time in centuries, a constellation shifted.
The heavens blinked.
And changed.