The Return Undeserved

The Tribunal Hall was no longer a place of judgment.

It was a war zone.

Dead enforcers littered the shattered marble. Runes sparked uselessly against bleeding walls. A broken pillar leaned precariously, casting fractured shadows over the once-sacred seal of the Concord.

Jin Mu stood with blood on his hands—not all of it his.

Su was kneeling beside Shen, whispering words of comfort he couldn't hear. His eyes fluttered weakly, and blood soaked the cloth Jin had torn to stop the bleeding from his severed arm.

And Camellya…

Camellya was walking straight toward the High Adjudicator, cracking her knuckles.

"You've lied long enough."

The adjudicator's mask splintered. She raised her hand to call on a Binding Edict—

But Camellya's Entropy Fist was faster.

A single punch shattered her defensive glyphs and sent her sailing through two stone benches. She hit the far wall and crumpled with a wheeze.

The Eye of Adjudication flickered, damaged and screaming in psychic pulses. Jin flinched and twisted it into silence with a snap of his fingers.

"Why now?" he asked, hoarse. "Why the sudden righteousness?"

Camellya didn't answer at first. Her breath was ragged, but steady.

She looked down at the ruined courtroom and then at Su, still sobbing over Shen.

"Because I didn't know," she whispered. "Not all of it. Not like this."

"And I won't be a chain anymore."

She lifted a blood-soaked scroll from her robes—its wax seal cracked open during the battle.

"This is from the Warden's archives. Your name was marked for burial the moment you entered the academy. Bellwake wasn't just a vault. It was a cleansing program. Anyone who learned too much…"

She tossed the scroll on the floor. A noble tried to crawl toward it.

Jin crushed the man's ribs with a Disorder Step and picked up the scroll.

His face paled as he read.

"They knew I'd regress."

"They wanted me to."

Camellya blinked.

"What?"

The doors exploded inward.

And a storm of snow-white mist rolled in like divine fog.

From the heart of the mist emerged a single figure—her silver boots splashing in the blood pooling at the entrance.

Xue Yiran.

Hair like winter's silence.

Eyes like razors dipped in frost.

She moved like a descending judgment.

"Enough," she said.

Everyone stopped.

Even Camellya took a step back.

The enforcers, what few were still breathing, dropped their weapons.

The Concord Priests froze in reverent terror.

"You…" Jin whispered.

"Took your sweet time," Camellya muttered.

"I had to clean up your mess in the outer corridors," Xue replied. "Half the judges fled like roaches. One tried to bribe me with his daughter."

She tilted her head slightly at Jin.

"You refused to die again. Irritating habit."

Jin offered a bitter smirk. "Sorry. I tend to be stubborn when murdered."

Her eyes narrowed.

"So. Regression. It's true."

Silence.

Su looked up in shock.

Camellya's shoulders tensed.

Jin froze.

"I saw it," Xue said quietly. "In the memory the Eye played. But I still wanted to hear it from your lips."

"Tell me."

Jin looked at her.

A girl who once mocked him in the corridors.

Who threw casual insults like petals.

Who watched him from the shadows, thinking he didn't notice.

Who unlocked the archive doors that night when no one else would.

"Yes," he said.

"I died. I came back. And I'm trying to fix what I couldn't save the first time."

No one breathed.

Camellya watched Xue with mild interest.

Su was wide-eyed.

Shen groaned again—barely conscious.

Xue stepped forward slowly.

Then lifted her hand.

Everyone tensed.

"Good," she whispered.

And handed him a sealed decree with the High Council's red wax emblem.

"You'll need this if you're serious."

Jin blinked.

"What is it?"

"The Concord's final records on Bellwake. The original copies. I… swapped them weeks ago."

"Before you left," she added more softly.

Camellya raised an eyebrow.

"You always this helpful to people you insult daily?"

"Shut up, Warden."

"I'm retired."

"Good. Stay retired."

Jin looked between the two, then at the scroll in his hands.

"Why… did you keep it?"

"Because I wanted to understand why you suddenly vanished," she said, ice melting slightly from her tone. "And because I wanted a reason to hate you."

She turned away.

"Now I don't have one."

Suddenly, the Eye above the hall cracked again.

A ripple of divine interference pulsed through the air.

Something bigger was coming.

Jin looked at the ceiling.

"This isn't over."

"No," Camellya said grimly. "It's just starting."

Certainly. Here's Chapter 32 – The Fire Beneath the Throne, Part II, continuing from the tense aftermath of the Tribunal battle. Now exposed and scarred, our characters must choose how to face what's coming next.

The dust hadn't even settled.

The Eye of Adjudication flickered above them, its once-immaculate silver shell now cracked like a dying star. Every few seconds it sputtered light, releasing pulses of residual divine order—weak, dying, but still hungry.

Camellya stood near its base, her coat torn, face bloodied, fist clenched around a broken sigil core.

"We don't have long," she said. "The Eye was a fragment conduit. Now that it's broken, they'll send something worse."

Jin Mu didn't respond immediately.

He knelt beside Shen again, pressing a cold cloth to his friend's shoulder where the arm had been severed. The bleeding had slowed, but not stopped. He didn't speak—just worked.

Su, kneeling nearby, was still pale from the trauma. Her eyes were glassy, face streaked with dried tears, and in her hand was her brother's broken pendant—cracked, but still warm from battle.

Xue Yiran stood a few steps away, arms folded, watching them all like a lone falcon on a bloodied cliff. She hadn't spoken again since handing Jin the sealed records.

The silence felt thick. Heavy.

And fragile.

"They'll send a Decree," she said finally. "Something above all tribunals. A celestial edict. You've broken too many of their chains. They won't tolerate it."

"Let them come," Camellya muttered. "We'll break those too."

Xue's eyes flicked to her.

"And how long until we're all dead?"

Jin finally looked up.

"Then we give them no opening."

He stood slowly, back straight, eyes blazing faintly with order marks swirling in his iris.

"They think we're fractured. But we are more than rebels now."

"We're proof."

He turned to Shen, still groaning but awake.

"You with me?"

Shen coughed.

"If I said no, would you stop?"

"No."

"Then yeah. I'm in."

Jin helped him up.

Then turned to Su.

"You?"

She nodded quickly. "Always."

Then he looked at Xue.

A pause.

"...You don't owe me anything."

"No," she replied.

"But I owe myself answers."

She tossed him a blood-stained token. The Concord's crest, half-burned.

"If I have to break this entire tower down to get them, so be it."

Camellya chuckled.

"I like her."

"I don't," Su muttered.

"Good," Xue smirked.

Jin stepped forward, into the center of the shattered Tribunal.

He raised the scroll Camellya had given him—the Concord's true records of Bellwake and the cleansing program. The wax melted under his flame rune.

It opened.

And with it, a surge of memory exploded from its center.

Screams. Pleas. Names crossed out.

His name, at the top, in red ink.

"To be disposed of if potential exceeds containment protocols."

Jin crushed the scroll in his hand.

"So be it."

He looked back at the group.

"Prepare for war."

Suddenly, the sky above the Tribunal split.

Everyone looked up as light streamed through a massive fissure in the ceiling—not sunlight, but divine radiance.

"No…" Xue muttered. "They're already here."

From the crack, a spiral throne of glass and judgment descended.

Floating.

Silent.

Upon it sat a man—or what resembled one. His skin glowed with silver inscriptions, eyes blinded by light. No face. No shadow.

Only voice.

"Children of mud. You have broken sacred boundaries."

Jin's voice rose above the throne's.

"Sacred? Your chains are sacred?"

"You were given a place. You chose rebellion."

"I chose to live."

"Then you shall face annihilation."

The throne raised its arm. The air warped. Sigils the size of city gates ignited around the Tribunal.

Everyone began to glow under the mark of Judgment Sequence: Divine Erasure.

Even Camellya paled.

"He's using divine law."

Jin clenched his fists.

"Then I'll use mine."

The marks on his arms ignited. His order sigil—twisted, black, flawed but beautiful—blazed to life.

"Sequence: Black Emperor."

"Manifest: Mirror of the Unruled."

A giant obsidian mirror crashed into existence behind him, reflecting the throne's sigils back with warped distortion.

The divine law wavered.

"What... is that?" Xue whispered.

"My answer to their rules," Jin said.

"Let's end this."

The throne shrieked without sound.

And descended like a falling moon.

The battle for the new order had begun.