Hex-Edge: Requiem of a Fractured Swordsman

The moment the sixth personality awakened, the world fractured.

Lin Wufeng's bones cracked as his body contorted, tendons snapping like overtightened guqin strings. The air itself seemed to recoil as his veins darkened beneath his skin, branching across his flesh like ink spilled on parchment. His sword - the faithful "Soulsever" that had tasted the blood of a hundred foes - began vibrating in his grip, emitting a keening wail that set the fortress stones trembling.

"You do not command me."

The voice that tore from his throat was layered - six tones speaking as one, the bass rumble of earthquakes underpinning a child's terrified whimper. Across the chamber, Ying Sha's daggers clattered to the floor, the assassin's face draining of color. Even the Patriarch took an involuntary step backward, his bone mask tilting askew to reveal the rotten hollow where his left eye should have been.

"Impossible." The Patriarch's voice was a cracked whisper. "The Hollow King was erased! We burned the records, we slaughtered the witnesses-"

Lin Wufeng's vision shattered into six overlapping realities:

Li Feng's Memory: A moonlit courtyard where a man with Lin Wufeng's face knelt before twelve executioners, his smirk never fading even as the blades descended.

Jing Xin's Truth: A library aflame, monks screaming as they clutched at eyes filled with molten lead.

Xiao Qi's Nightmare: A doll with its stitching ripped out, stuffed with yellowed parchment scrawled with forbidden techniques.

Yan Jiu's Loss: A young girl's hand slipping from his grasp, her final word not "brother" but "traitor."

Xuan Gu's Origin: A ritual chamber where seven masters carved their essence into a screaming child's meridians.

The Sixth's Awakening: A mirror cracking, and cracking, and cracking - but the reflection kept smiling.

The fortress groaned as ancient wards ruptured. Cracks spiderwebbed across the ceiling, dislodging centuries of dust that swirled in the torchlight like phantom warriors. Somewhere in the darkness, water began dripping - except when Lin Wufeng looked down, the liquid pooling at his feet was unmistakably blood.

"Stop this!" Ying Sha's voice cut through the chaos. The assassin had retrieved his daggers, but held them reversed in a non-threatening grip. "Wufeng, if that's really you in there - remember the pear trees! Remember how we-"

"You do not speak to him." The Hollow King's interruption wasn't loud, yet it silenced the room like a executioner's blade. Lin Wufeng's sword arm rose without his consent, the blade humming as it traced a complex pattern in the air - the opening stance of the long-lost "Shattered Mirror" technique.

The Patriarch screamed - a sound that began human but ended as something far worse. His bone mask split down the middle, revealing features that shifted horrifically between Lin Wufeng's own face and that of a withered crone. "You were supposed to be broken!" he shrieked, clawed hands weaving desperate seals. "We made sure! The memory toxins, the soul-scattering-"

Ying Sha moved in a blur of black silk, daggers flashing toward Lin Wufeng's blind spot. But the Hollow King was faster. Soulsever reversed its trajectory mid-swing, the flat of the blade connecting with Ying Sha's temple in a crack that echoed like a splitting glacier. As the assassin crumpled, Lin Wufeng felt a distant pang - some part of him recognized this man, remembered climbing pear trees together, stealing sweets from the monastery kitchens...

"Sentiment is weakness." The Hollow King's thought was a scalpel scraping bone. "They made us weak on purpose."

With terrifying deliberation, Lin Wufeng's body strode forward. Each footfall left bloody prints that steamed on the cold stone. The Patriarch was chanting now, his remaining eye rolling back to show the corrupted sclera beneath - but his spells fizzled as they neared Lin Wufeng's skin, repelled by an invisible field of distortion.

"You're not real!" the Patriarch gibbered. "The true Lin Wufeng died in the-"

"You are a shadow." The Hollow King spoke through lips that had gone corpse-blue. "A ghost wearing my skin."

Soulsever flashed once.

The bone mask split cleanly in two, followed a heartbeat later by the flesh beneath. As the Patriarch's body folded like a discarded puppet, the fortress itself seemed to howl. The walls wept blood where the cracks spread, and from those crimson seams emerged - things. Twitching fingers at first, then entire limbs, all straining toward Lin Wufeng with dreadful hunger.

"We need to leave." Jing Xin's voice was barely audible over the sixth persona's psychic roar. "Now. Before it finishes the ritual."

But the Hollow King wasn't done. Lin Wufeng's hand rose again, this time tracing a sigil that burned itself into the air - the same character once branded onto his childhood bedroom door: 囚 (prisoner).

"All these years," the sixth whispered, "you thought you were the jailer."

Then the world went white.