For a heartbeat, the world forgot how to move.
The Grand Executioner's shadow blade—sharp enough to pierce a Heaven's Chosen's soul—was frozen in an ordinary-looking hand.
No clash of thunder.No explosion of qi.Just that hand.
Calm.Steady.Effortless.
Qi Shan Wei stared, lungs refusing to draw air.
White robes.Silver hair.Golden eyes that held constellations and storms.A faint, knowing smile that hurt to look at.
The same face from his dream beneath the Crimson Comet.
The same outline he'd seen hovering over his crib in half-faded childhood memories.
"You…" Shan Wei whispered, voice raw. "You're…"
The white-robed man looked down at him—and in that gaze was something Shan Wei had felt only a handful of times in his life.
Warmth.
"Qi Shan Wei," the Immortal said softly. "You've grown."
The words struck deeper than any sword.
Not "Heaven-Breaker."Not "threat."Not "calamity."
Just his name.
Spoken like it mattered.
The Grand Executioner tore his blade free of the Immortal's grip and retreated several paces, cloak whipping violently.
"You—!" his voice lost its previous composure, becoming jagged, brittle. "You were erased. You were struck from Heaven's registries. You are not allowed to exist in this realm!"
The white-robed man tilted his head.
"And yet," he said mildly, "here I am."
His presence spread—not with crushing pressure, but with an impossible, serene depth, like standing at the edge of a cosmic ocean.
Ling Xueyao struggled up on one knee, chest heaving.
"Who… is he…?" she whispered.
Feng Qingyue's hands trembled around her staff.
"In the Phoenix Clan records… there is a forbidden painting." Her voice shook. "A silver-haired man walking away from a burning heaven." She swallowed. "They called him—"
She looked shocked even to say it.
"—the Prismatic Heretic Immortal."
The white-robed man chuckled under his breath.
"I see your clan still exaggerates my introductions."
Shan Wei's lips parted.
"Prismatic…?"
The Immortal's gaze flicked to his wrist, where the prismatic mark burned faintly.
"Yes," he said. "You inherited it."
The Grand Executioner straightened, forcing his aura under control, but the shadow around him writhed like penned beasts.
"This is a violation," he snarled. "You were banished beyond the boundary. Heaven stripped your name, title, authority. You have no right to stand between decree and target."
The Immortal's smile faded.
"Decree?" he asked quietly. "Is that what you call this… butchery of a child?"
The Grand Executioner's killing intent surged.
"He is not a child. He is a seed of catastrophe. He bears the potential to—"
"To surpass the script you cling to," the Immortal cut in, eyes sharpening. "That is what Heaven truly fears. Not calamity. Choice."
The wind stopped.
Even the Nine Executioners seemed unsure whether to breathe.
A Father Who Wasn't There
Shan Wei rose, legs unsteady.
"Are you…" His throat closed up. It hurt to force the words out. "Are you really my father?"
Silence.
Every gaze locked onto the Immortal.
The white-robed man looked at Shan Wei—not as a deity peering at an ant, not as some aloof divine observer.
He looked at him like a man who had waited a very, very long time for this question.
"Yes," he said simply.
The ground might as well have fallen away.
Memories crashed through Shan Wei's mind in chaotic fragments—
A calloused hand placing a warm palm on his infant forehead.A blur of white robes fleeing into the night.His mother's hoarse whisper: "He wanted to stay… but the sky wouldn't let him."
Shan Wei's fists shook.
"If you're my father," he choked, "then where were you?"
The words ripped out of him, raw and sharp.
"Where were you when they hunted me for my flame? When sects wanted me gone? When Heaven decided I'm a calamity that needs to die before I turn twenty-one?"
His voice broke.
"When Drakonix was thrown like trash. When Jin Wei broke his own body to shield me. When I—" he stopped, chest heaving. "When I thought I was just… some mistake."
The Immortal's eyes dimmed.
He took a slow breath.
"I was," he said quietly, "dead."
The courtyard went eerily silent.
Even the Grand Executioner paused.
"You… lie," the assassin hissed. "Heaven does not allow those it executes to return."
The Immortal's gaze turned distant, as if looking through countless years.
"Executed? No." A faint smile. "We had… a disagreement."
Lightning murmured above them.
He looked back down at Shan Wei.
"Qi Shan Wei. The day the Crimson Comet fell, I broke through the last barrier beneath Prismatic Heaven. Heaven sent everything it had to erase me from existence." His eyes softened. "I barely had time to send you and your mother down to a lower realm."
Shan Wei's heart twisted.
"So I was… thrown to the lower world as an escape route."
"You call it thrown." The Immortal shook his head gently. "I call it… hidden."
Shan Wei stared at him, shaking.
Part of him wanted to scream that it wasn't enough. That knowing this didn't erase the childhood nights staring at a sky that never answered. The loneliness. The constant question of why me?
Another part… understood.
If Heaven wanted this man dead badly enough to erase his name…
Then just breathing the same air as him now was already a miracle.
"Why come back now?" Shan Wei whispered. "Why interfere this time?"
The Immortal looked at the Nirvana Cocoon lying shattered-crater-deep in the courtyard.
At Jin Wei's broken titan frame.
At Xueyao and Qingyue coughing blood, still trying to stand between him and death.
"Because," he said quietly, "this is the first time Heaven tried to kill you directly."
His gaze turned to the Grand Executioner.
"And that, I cannot tolerate."
Heaven vs the Heretic
The Grand Executioner's patience snapped.
"Enough sentiment," he hissed. Shadow surged around him like a rising tide. "You defied Heaven once. You will not do it again."
He raised both hands.
The sky answered.
Dark clouds twisted, forming a colossal eye of shadow above them—a mockery of the previous Heaven Eye, corrupted, weaponized.
"By decree of the Silent Tribunal," the Grand Executioner intoned, "I sentence you—Prismatic Heretic—to absolute erasure."
He thrust his hand downward.
"Shadow Heaven Execution—FALL."
The clouds collapsed.
A pillar of darkness descended, wider than the entire pavilion, a beam of annihilation that promised not just death—
—but deletion.
Every disciple collapsed, screaming without sound.Elder Lu clutched his chest, face ashen.Ling Xueyao and Qingyue instinctively threw themselves toward Shan Wei—
And the Immortal stepped forward.
He raised one hand.
No grand gesture.No powerful stance.
Just a single extended finger.
"Qi Shan Wei," he said, voice threaded with something like apology, "watch closely."
He tapped the air.
Prismatic light exploded.
Not crimson.Not gold.Not void.
All of them.
And more.
Colors Shan Wei didn't have names for. Tracks of Dao that felt like songs rather than concepts. Space hummed. Time held its breath.
The beam of annihilation struck the prismatic veil.
It should have consumed it.
It didn't.
It stopped.
The Grand Executioner staggered.
"What—?!"
The Immortal's voice was soft.
"Heaven's execution methods have advanced," he said. "I see my departure left… quite the vacuum."
His eyes hardened.
"But you are still playing in a script I refuse to read."
He turned his wrist.
The prismatic veil collapsed inward, compressing the pillar of shadow—
—and then snapped it like a rotted branch.
The annihilation beam shattered into motes of fading darkness, dissolving harmlessly into the air.
The Grand Executioner screamed.
"You DARE break Heaven's method?!"
The Immortal lowered his hand.
"I did not break Heaven," he said calmly. "I refused to accept its verdict."
His gaze sharpened like a blade.
"And I will not watch my son be executed for the crime of existing."
He flicked his sleeve.
Chains of prismatic light erupted from the ground, coiling around the Nine Executioners.
They struggled.
They failed.
Their blades and shadow arts sliced through nothing. The prismatic chains didn't resist—they simply refused to acknowledge being cut.
The lead Executioner snarled.
"We answer only to Heaven's will—!"
"Then carry a message back to it," the Immortal said.
He raised his eyes to the crimson crack above them.
"I will not interfere again to save him.Once was the limit I chose."
Shan Wei's stomach lurched.
"What—?!"
The Immortal looked at him, apologetic.
"Even I cannot hold back Heaven forever, Shan Wei. Every time I act like this, their attention sharpens, their methods escalate. If I stand between you and every blade, you will never walk your own path."
He smiled sadly.
"And a Heaven-Breaker who never walked on his own feet… is just another puppet."
Jin Wei's cracked core pulsed faintly at the word.
"…puppet…"
The Grand Executioner trembled, veins bulging.
"This changes nothing," he spat. "You bought him time. That is all. The decree remains. He will die."
"Perhaps," the Immortal said. "Perhaps not."
He tightened his fingers.
The prismatic chains flared.
The Nine Executioners vanished—teleported forcibly out of the realm, hurled back through unseen channels.
The Grand Executioner remained.
His aura twisted, panicked and furious.
"You cannot banish me."
"No," the Immortal agreed. "But I can… remind you of something Heaven seems to have forgotten."
He stepped directly in front of the masked butcher.
They were the same height.
But the difference in presence was a gulf.
"I broke the sky once," the Immortal said quietly. "Don't tempt me to do it again."
For the first time, the Grand Executioner stepped back voluntarily.
His shadow cloak quivered.
"You will regret this, Heretic. When he drowns worlds in prismatic fire, when gods burn and realms fall, his blood will be on your hands. On all of you."
His gaze swept over Xueyao. Over Qingyue. Over the Nirvana Cocoon. Over Jin Wei's broken form.
"On theirs."
Then he dissolved into black smoke, spiraling upward into the shrinking crack in the sky.
The clouds sealed.
The night quieted.
And the battlefield was suddenly so still it hurt.
Aftershocks
No one moved for several breaths.
Then, slowly, the Pavilion exhaled.
Disciples collapsed where they stood. Some wept quietly. Some stared, eyes empty, at the patch of sky where a moment ago, their death had been descending.
Elder Lu wiped blood from his lip.
"We… survived," he whispered, as if afraid saying it aloud would undo it.
Ling Xueyao pushed herself to her feet, stumbling slightly.
Her gaze went to Shan Wei first.
"Are you hurt?" she asked, voice softer than he'd ever heard it.
He blinked, dazed.
"Just… exhausted."
Qingyue limped over, leaning on her cracked staff.
"We all are," she muttered. "But exhaustion means we're still alive. I'll take it."
Jin Wei's core flickered, a weak glow pulsing through cracked runes.
"Master…threat… passed?"
"For now," the Immortal answered quietly.
He turned toward Jin Wei, studying him with sudden, intense curiosity.
"You found him," he murmured. "The Golden Guardian."
Jin Wei's eye-slits glowed faintly.
"…recognition query…primary… creator…?"
The Immortal smiled faintly.
"No. Not your creator. But I knew the one who forged you."
He placed a hand on Jin Wei's armor.
Light seeped from his fingertips, not with violence, but with a deep, soothing warmth. Cracks stopped widening. Faint structural runes reconnected.
"This is all I can do," the Immortal said. "The rest… your master must handle."
Shan Wei startled.
"Wait, you—"
The Immortal turned to the Nirvana Cocoon.
Even in its dormant state, it radiated terrifying heat, time, and rebirth.
He hovered his palm over it, brows furrowing.
"They forced his evolution early." A sigh. "Heaven really has no shame."
Shan Wei stepped closer, throat tightening.
"Can you help him?"
"I already have," the Immortal replied. "When I stopped that strike, I diverted enough force that he could cocoon rather than die."
He looked at Shan Wei.
"The rest is up to him—and you. Guard this cocoon. If anyone interferes, he'll either explode or hatch incomplete."
Shan Wei's fingers tightened.
"I'll protect him," he said, the promise heavy and instinctive.
The Immortal held his gaze for a long, quiet moment.
Then he smiled.
"Yes," he said softly. "You will."
A Conversation Between Worlds
Finally, the chaos faded enough for Shan Wei to truly feel the man in front of him.
Not as an Immortal.Not as a heretic.As… his father.
"You said you died," Shan Wei said quietly. "You said Heaven erased you. If they find you here—"
"Oh, they already know," the Immortal said wryly. "They're probably screaming in some divine courtroom as we speak."
"Then why stay?" Shan Wei demanded, chest burning. "Why risk it? Why not disappear again, if you can only interfere once?"
The Immortal's expression turned complicated.
"This appearance," he said, "is not free. I am not truly here in flesh. Only a fragment." His gaze turned up, toward some far-away realm Shan Wei couldn't see. "The rest of me remains beyond the veil they tried to lock me behind."
He tapped his chest.
"But I couldn't sit and watch the Grand Executioner stab you through the heart. Some prices are worth paying."
Shan Wei's eyes burned.
Words tumbled out before he could stop them.
"I don't… know how to feel about you."
The honesty surprised even him.
The Immortal smiled sadly.
"That's fair."
"You saved me. But you also weren't there," Shan Wei whispered. "You might have had no choice, but I still grew up alone. With people fearing me. With sects plotting. With… Heaven wanting me dead." His fists shook. "Part of me wants to hate you."
He swallowed.
"And another part…"
He couldn't finish.
The Immortal's eyes softened to something almost painfully gentle.
"Another part," he said quietly, "wants to believe you were loved before you were born."
Shan Wei's throat tightened.
"Yes."
"You were," his father said simply.
No grand speech. No excuse.
Just that truth.
"My path was broken, Shan Wei. Yours… doesn't have to be."
He stepped back.
"My time is nearly up."
Panic stabbed through Shan Wei's heart.
"Already?! You just got here!"
The Immortal chuckled.
"You sound like your mother."
Xueyao and Qingyue both blinked, startled.
"Will I ever meet her?" Shan Wei asked, voice small.
"Not yet," the Immortal said. "The day you reach the Astral Dominion Realm… look to the western sky. You will see a city that should not exist. Find it. She will be waiting."
Shan Wei memorized the words as if they were an oath.
"Astral Dominion… western sky… hidden city. I'll find her."
"I know," his father said.
He stepped even further back, edges of his form already blurring.
"Listen carefully, Qi Shan Wei."
The world seemed to dim around his voice.
"The Heaven Decree has not vanished. The Shadow Abyss Sect will regrow heads for every one you cut. Higher realms have now truly seen you. Some will want to use you. Some will want to chain you. And some… will want to kneel."
Prismatic motes drifted from his dissolving form.
"Jin Wei will become the shield that lets you face storms the mortals cannot imagine. Drakonix will become the spear that pierces beyond what realms can endure. The six women woven into your fate will carry Dao you cannot walk alone."
Xueyao stiffened. Qingyue looked away, cheeks faintly red.
"But in the end," the Immortal said, eyes glowing fiercely,"you must decide what you break—and what you protect."
He raised a fading hand.
"I gave you my blood. I cannot give you my path. That would make you a shadow, not a Heaven-Breaker."
His gaze steadied on Shan Wei, warm and unyielding.
"So walk. Fall. Rise. Rage. Protect. Lose. Love. Become more than Heaven ever planned for you."
His smile softened.
"And when you stand at the edge of Prismatic Heaven… if I still exist… I'd like you to hit me once."
Shan Wei blinked, stunned.
"What?"
"For abandoning you," his father said gently.
Shan Wei's eyes filled.
"And if I miss?" he whispered.
"Then," the Immortal said, voice already an echo, "hug me instead."
His form dissolved—
Prismatic motes scattered—and vanished into the sky.
The courtyard was suddenly, achingly empty.
The Last Echo & The Next Beginning
For a long time, no one spoke.
Then Ling Xueyao stepped to Shan Wei's side.
Her eyes, usually stern and cold, were soft.
"You okay?" she asked.
He laughed once—broken, quiet.
"I don't know."
Qingyue approached from the other side, expression unreadable.
"Most people meet their parents in a house," she said. "Not in front of a Grand Executioner."
Despite everything, Shan Wei huffed weakly.
"You're both terrible at comforting people."
Drakonix's Nirvana Cocoon pulsed softly nearby, as if agreeing.
Jin Wei's cracked core glowed a little brighter, as if taking heart.
The Pavilion Master finally spoke, voice low, reverent.
"Qi Shan Wei," he said. "We thought your fate might touch the skies one day. We were wrong."
He looked at the sky where the Immortal vanished.
"Your fate began there."
Shan Wei looked at his own hands.
Burned.Scarred.Shaking.
He closed them into fists.
"I won't run," he said softly.
Not from Heaven.Not from prophecy.Not from the weight of being a Heaven-Breaker's son.
"I'll protect them all," he whispered—glancing at Xueyao, Qingyue, Jin Wei, Drakonix's cocoon, Elder Lu, the disciples. "And when Heaven comes again…"
Prismatic light flickered faintly across his skin.
"I'll be ready."
A soft crk sounded.
Everyone turned.
A hairline crack appeared along the surface of the Nirvana Cocoon.
Light seeped through.
Shan Wei's heart leapt.
"Drakonix…?"
The cocoon pulsed—once—twice—
Then fractured.
Blazing prismatic light burst outward—
And a new, sharper, wilder roar split the air.
To be continued..
© Kishtika., 2025All rights reserved.