The Return Undeserved

Three shards remained.

And with them, the weight of convergence. They were more than relics. They were memories crystallized in divine tension—fragments left behind by regressors who had failed, beings who'd danced too close to the source and been consumed by it. Now, they were trials.

Not for the world.

For Jin Mu.

The first shard pulsed beneath the twilight horizon of the Dawnlight Abyss, a shattered realm suspended in a bleeding dusk. Shattered moons hung low above serrated glass mountains, and the air twisted with memories too sharp to breathe.

"Stay close," Camellya warned, stepping through the sigil gate. "Gravity won't behave. And neither will time."

Su shivered as she stepped through after her. "It's cold… but not cold. Like walking into regret."

Jin didn't reply. His eyes locked onto the towering crystal monolith in the distance, atop which floated the first shard—throbbing like a heartbeat. Around it danced fragmented silhouettes, echoing figures locked in silent screams. Memories. Possibilities. Failures.

"Phantom remnants of the regressors who came before," Camellya said, hushed. "If you let them in, they'll show you who you could've become."

"I already know who I could've become," Jin said. "And I killed him."

Without another word, he stepped forward.

The phantoms surged.

"Go!" Shen Yan shouted, sword flashing as he sprinted beside him. "I'll handle the flank!"

Su invoked her Bloodflare Sigils, summoning walls of red to delay the wailing remnants.

Camellya warped the ground beneath them, bending space itself to fold the distance between Jin and the monolith. "Make it fast. This place collapses every seven minutes."

Jin leapt, air hissing as he collided with the shade of himself.

The specter grinned, bleeding smoke. "Still think saving them matters?"

Jin's hand shimmered.

Distortion – Echo Collapse.

The ghost screamed as its form unraveled, folding into itself as paradox devoured possibility.

He reached the top. The shard slid into his palm. His veins lit with black-gold fire.

One down.

The second shard waited buried beneath the cursed sands of the Ebon Dunes, where time looped if one dared move straight. A spiral was the only way forward.

It took hours.

Or seconds.

Or days.

"Temporal distortions are the worst," Camellya muttered, gripping the tuning orb that kept them anchored in the present.

As they reached the heart of the dunes, the world cracked.

Each of them fell into a memory.

Shen Yan found himself back in the marsh, a younger version of himself leaving a child behind to survive. He clenched his fists, trembling.

Su relived her brother's death—except this time, it was her hand that failed to reach him.

Xue Yiran stood frozen before a gate, hearing screams she once ignored.

And Jin…

He walked alone through a dead empire. The halls were silent. The throne stood empty. And there he sat—his former self, aged and crowned, eyes hollow.

"You sacrificed everything for power," the specter said. "And you lost everything that mattered."

"I know," Jin whispered.

"Then why seek again?"

He stepped forward.

"Because this time, I don't stand alone."

The throne shattered.

The illusion broke.

The shard landed in his hand. Time reset.

Two down.

The third and final shard lay in the deepest pit of the Vault of Hollow Births, an obsidian tomb sealed by scripts that bled madness. Here, the Concord discarded failures—experiments too broken to kill, too alive to forget.

They descended in silence.

They found it.

A massive creature—stitched children, malformed experiments, a single body of wailing faces and fused limbs—guarded the final shard. It sobbed. It begged. It screamed without words.

Su collapsed to her knees. "We can't… We can't fight that…"

Jin stepped forward.

"I won't let it suffer anymore."

Black Emperor's Mercy – Quiet Ending.

No noise. No light. Just a ripple.

And then silence.

The shard descended like a falling star. Jin caught it.

And wept.

When they returned to their realm, Jin drew a triangle in the dirt and placed the shards gently within. The earth pulsed. The sigils on his body—etched from his Sequences and cultivated essence—flared in unison.

Crimson. Gold. Obsidian.

The three marks on his body merged in a blaze of contradiction.

Dual Pathways sang within him—each refusing to submit, yet flowing in harmony for a single breath. The moment felt infinite.

He didn't scream.

He rose.

Camellya, Su, Xue, Shen—all stared.

"Are you alright?" Su asked softly.

Jin smiled. "I'm more than alright."

He looked to the skies.

"Now let's finish what they started."

The stars above shimmered, unnaturally aligned, like witnesses waiting to see judgment handed down—not from the Concord, but from those it thought had been broken.

Camellya drew a line in the air with her finger. A projection of their realm unfolded like a glowing manuscript, carved from law and memory.

"There's no more time to wait," she said, voice calm but burning. "The Tribunal will convene tomorrow. The Grand Judges—the Nine Eyes—will be present. And so will their chains."

"The ones behind the slave vaults?" Shen Yan asked, arm still bandaged, sword across his knees.

Camellya nodded. "Each Eye oversees one of the Concord's deepest shadows. All the secrets, all the experiments, all the condemned names—they're sealed behind Sequences of Order, impossible to access by legal means."

"But not by breaking Order," Jin said, voice low.

He looked at his hand.

Three sigils glowed faintly on his body—one pulsing behind his sternum, one coiled around his right wrist, and one burned into the nape of his neck.

• The Order Sigil, born from his cultivated essence, drawn through years of internal refinement.

• The Sequence Sigil, reflecting his progression through both Pathways—the Black Emperor's crown and the new one still unnamed.

• The Sacrifice Sigil, carved from the prices he paid and would continue to pay, including his humanity, his pain, and now the death he bore on his hands.

Together, they hummed—discordant, terrifying, and perfect.

"They can override one another," Jin murmured. "But together... they can pierce."

Camellya nodded. "With all three burning in one frame, you could Distort the Tribunal's own Writs of Truth. That means we can force them to confess—live, in front of all observers, and every inscribed vault will unlock itself in response to the resonance of contradiction."

"And the Black Emperor Pathway's final gift," Jin added, eyes distant. "Is resurrection—of memories. Of voices silenced."

Xue Yiran narrowed her eyes. "Then the plan is simple: we bait them. Make them show their hand. And when they lie—"

"—we burn the lie into truth," Camellya finished.

Su glanced at Jin, then touched her own chest. "And if they retaliate?"

"They will," Shen muttered.

"Then we don't let them finish the sentence."

Night fell, but no one slept.

They sat together outside the makeshift shelter. Jin carved old symbols into his scabbard, while Xue leaned against a tree, her gaze unreadable. Su watched the stars. Shen polished his blade with one hand.

Camellya stood beside the fire, staring into the embers.

"We'll need witnesses," she said. "And protection. There's one more thing I didn't tell you all."

Everyone looked up.

"There's a Sealed Sigil beneath the Tribunal's court. Older than the Concord. Some say it belonged to the first Emperor who defied the sequences. If we activate it with the three Marks, we may not just expose them... we might end the Tribunal system itself."

Jin looked into the fire, its glow reflected in his darkened irises.

"We're not ready."

"We never will be," Camellya replied.

He chuckled softly. "You sound like me now."

"I learned from the best."

And then, silence.

Jin stood, walked to the edge of the clearing, and looked up at the stars—those unnatural ones that only shone when fate twisted too tightly.

He whispered something no one else heard.

A promise.

A threat.

A goodbye.