Echoes of the Hollow Domain

"You touched it?"

Luo Qinghan strode closer, eyes flashing between Shen Jin and the monument. Her voice carried something rare — something like reprimand.

He nodded, still dazed.

"You heard it too?"

She didn't reply.

Instead, she threw the sealing charm forward and raised her fingers. Gold thread slithered from the talisman, wrapping the new crack in tight spirals, forcing the stone toward stillness.

But the monument trembled.

Not a physical quake —

a shudder in the spiritual plane.

The very breath of the forest shifted.

Luo Qinghan's eyes narrowed.

"No. It's reacting too fast."

Light surged from the charm.

But the crack bled mist faster than she could contain it.

Runes twisted, writhing — and one old glyph surfaced.

A half-burned sigil.

She forced a second seal into the weave, muttering the binding verse.

Shen Jin stared.

The glyph sharpened.

Two characters burned themselves into his vision:

"Gui Yao."

They pierced like metal through the mind.

Then the world tilted.

The mist. The stone. The trees —

all gone.

He stood beneath a sky torn open by light.

A golden ring bled from the heavens, dragging shattered temples and ruined bridges down into its orbit.

A vast court sprawled before him, its stones cracked, its surface slick with blood and broken bone.

And from behind him, a voice:

"Lord Guiyao…

The key is lost.

The gate is broken…"

He turned.

On the ground — a shard of bronze mirror.

In it, he saw a face.

Not his.

Familiar, and not.

Brow marked with a gold crack. Eyes like bottomless stormwater.

Timeless.

"Shen Jin!"

Luo Qinghan's voice snapped the world apart.

He gasped. Sweat soaked his back.

The monument stood before him again.

The crack was dim now. The mist slowed.

But something inside it still watched.

She studied him, her voice low.

"What's inside you?"

He looked at the stone.

"I don't know," he said.

"But I think… I've seen it before."

"Let's leave," Luo Qinghan said.

The fear in her voice was subtle — but present.

Rare.

Whatever essence had surged from the monument… it wasn't something even she could suppress fully.

Shen Jin nodded, but lingered.

His eyes fell to the base of the stele —

a fragment had chipped off, half-buried in the dirt.

He bent to pick it up.

The moment his fingers touched the stone—

Hummm.

A whisper brushed against his ear:

"…bone… of the burning star…"

"…Guiyao… has not… returned…"

Not words. Not language.

A memory.

Forceful.

Impossible to block.

He jerked back, hand trembling.

"You're pale,"

Luo Qinghan noted.

"Just the cold."

He slipped the shard into his sleeve.

The crack still pulsed faintly.

Light like thread glinted beneath its surface — not spiritual energy, but something older. More fundamental.

She stared at it.

"This monument isn't originally from the Archive Tower. It may have risen from a deeper layer — one sealed far below."

"Deeper?" he asked.

She nodded.

"The Archive sits atop a sealed zone. Only the Division's inner circle knows the way in. What we saw may just be… its fingertip."

He said nothing.

Fingering the shard, Shen Jin couldn't shake the feeling —

the vision and this stone were bound together.

They walked back through the veils of spelllight and fallen beams, leaving the circle of steles behind.

Behind them, unseen —

a thread of mist slithered from the crack, curling into the dark.

And in the heart of the monument, a glyph blinked open —

two ancient characters flickering in silence:

Yao Yuan.

—

The night was deep.

Back at the guesthouse, Shen Jin did not sleep.

He lit the stove.

Spread a blank talisman paper across the desk.

With slow, steady hand, he began to draw.

Not lines, but memories.

A ruined sky.

A fallen palace.

Bones in the mist.

A ring-shaped altar, surrounded by symbols no one living had ever named.

They came from his dreams.

He paused often, lost in a strange familiarity.

Not recollection — but certainty.

His fingers knew what came next.

Even if he did not.

At the center, he sketched a massive corpse —

headless.

Wings torn.

Spine impaled.

"Lord Guiyao…"

He whispered.

A knock.

He folded the page into a six-sided seal and slipped it under the desk.

"Come in," he said.

The door creaked open.

Yan Jiuyan entered with wine and a casual grin.

"Thought you'd be awake. Thought I'd help."

He poured them both a cup.

Shen Jin didn't drink.

"You're here to spy on me?"

Yan chewed his fruit pit.

"Only if you make it interesting.

Touching the stone? Not much.

But if it responded to you…"

He didn't finish.

Shen Jin watched him.

"You knew it would."

Yan smiled. Didn't deny it.

"Council says it might be a shard. Some spillover from the Abyssal Seals. Shouldn't be disturbed."

"But you know," he said with a shrug, "it's always the 'do-not-touch' that gets touched first."

"By who?"

"People with a keymark," he raised the wine.

"You're not the first.

Won't be the last."

Yan clapped him on the shoulder.

"Don't worry. If it comes for you, I'm not the type to swing the first blade."

He left.

Shen Jin sat.

Then stood.

He sealed the drawing, tied it to his belt, and stared out the window.

Mist curled through the courtyard like smoke.

And his fingertips —

still held the warmth of a name.