Darkness folded across Ren Xiang like a heavy cloak, but it was not empty; it was full of silver threads — threads that hummed with the Void Sutra's geometry. He fell into a space that was simultaneously hollow and dense, a place where every sound arrived as the echo of a bell struck in a canyon.
At first he thought he was still in the forest, wind and damp and snapped branches at the edges of perception. Then a figure unfurled out of the silver threads: tall, cloaked in ragged mirrors that caught no light yet reflected everything. The figure's face was a map of fissures and soft scars, and when it spoke its voice was the wash of starlight against cold steel.
"You moved fast," the figure said. The voice was familiar, shaped by memory—older than Ilvara, older than the sect. Ren Xiang felt something in his chest respond with a memory that was not his own: the taste of iron in a lab, the hum of machines, the tired hand of a mentor patting his shoulder. The Mirror-Sage's eyes — one pale and the other dark, both ringed with fractal scars — softened.
"Who are you?" Ren Xiang managed. His throat felt like sand.
The Mirror-Sage inclined his head. "You know me by name in the sect's stories. I am the one who walked the Mirror Path and lost too much. I am the one who carved a sutra of reflection into stone and titled it with a warning. I am the one who thought understanding the Abyss was worth the price."
Ren Xiang's mind slid between the present and the pieces he had salvaged from the Void Sutra. "Why do you exist here? Why am I here?"
The sage crouched as if to match Ren's smaller physicality. "Because the forest binds the ancient mirrors of history. Because the Void Sutra's echo clings to every life that uses it. Because you called on what I left, and the sutra reached back."
A soft laugh escaped him — brittle, like old glass. "You were reckless," the Sage said. "So am I. So are you."
Ren Xiang swallowed. "You spoke to me in the Void. You told me to choose. What are you? A guide? A ghost? A test?"
The Mirror-Sage's mirrored cloak rippled. "I am a reminder. A tutor. A warning you must hear, because you will do what I could not: survive the Mirror-Void."
Ren Xiang strained to stand; pain flared, but the sage's presence steadied him. "How?" he asked. "How did you fail?"
The Mirror-Sage's voice weighed heavy with centuries. "Because I thought replication was safe. I thought copying possibilities would let me iterate away the Abyss. I copied too well. The mirror grew jealous of the original. The duplicate's hunger ate the source. It was elegant and stupid. My mirrored meridians outbred my own. I became an echo that could not stop consuming possibility. I burned through friends, discipline, the very things that kept me human. In the end there was only mirror and hunger and silence."
Ren Xiang's fingers tightened. "So the Mirror-Sage warned the world… and yet the sutra remains."
The Sage's mirrored face tilted. "Warnings become relics. Relics become tools. Tools become weapons. You found one—because you needed it; because the world needed a chance. But the warning sits with it like a nail driven into the scaffold. You must decide how to use the nail."
Ren Xiang's chest throbbed. "You said the Fourth Form is dangerous."
The Sage's mirrored eyes darkened. "I built three basic forms for survival, then two advanced ones for control and offense. The Fourth Form is not a technique; it is a transformation. It asks everything of your body and soul. If mastered cleanly, it will let you render the Abyss inert. If botched, it will digest your self into a pattern you cannot own."
Ren Xiang inhaled — the memory of the Hunter's edge, the shard's hungry flare, Ilvara felled against a tree. "I used the Third Form. I pushed too far."
"You used it because you had to," the Sage said gently. "Necessity forces evolution. But evolution without fence is mutation. The Fourth Form is a fence. It requires sacrifice — not of life, necessarily, but of singular identity. You must let the mirror be your partner, not your usurper."
Ren Xiang thought of Mira's face, her silent prayers, Ilvara's blade covered in black ichor. "How?"
"By anchoring yourself to what you will not trade." The Mirror-Sage's voice narrowed. "Love, oath, soil, an iron ring, children's laughter — anything that binds the emergent mirror to the original. You must bind the mirrored meridians to a constant, to a human rock. Otherwise the mirror will slip and find its own axis."
Ren Xiang's breath trembled. "I pledged to return. To Mira. To Ilvara. To the sect."
The Sage's mirrored gaze brightened faintly. "That is a start. But the Fourth Form wants more than vows. It wants a ritual only practiced in the earliest lineages — I left the keys hidden because I did not trust others to keep such power from becoming a god." He traced a line in the air with a cracked finger; the movement left a ghost of intricate numerics that swam across the Void Sutra. "You must find my last journal. It is hidden behind the Mirror-Cairn at the forest's heart. There, you will find the lock and the key."
Ren Xiang felt the sutra diagram inside him pulse. "And the shard?"
The Mirror-Sage's voice softened, threaded with sorrow. "It is a splinter of a larger will. Nocturn does not forget. It tastes your echo and sends its hunters. The shard amplifies potential, but like all power without limit, it contains the seed of the taker. Use it, but do not let it become your granting."
Ren Xiang's eyes went dim. "So I must risk everything to fix the Sea."
"You must risk what you are willing to lose," the Sage said. "If you choose wrongly, I cannot help. I made mistakes. I watch new ones walk into them like moths to a flame, and I grieve."
Then, with a whisper like wind across glass, the Mirror-Sage faded. His last words burned in Ren Xiang's thoughts: Find the Mirror-Cairn. Lock the shard with what is most human inside you.
—
Ren Xiang woke to ointment heat and the scent of herbs. Ilvara knelt beside him, forehead creased, as Karyon fussed with bandages. Mira slept in a chair, exhausted; she stirred as his lids opened and smiled like someone who'd checked a box labeled: Beloved did not die today.
"You're awake," Ilvara said. Her voice lacked its usual edge; it had become soft with relief.
Karyon exhaled. "He's breathing stable patterns. The sutra held long enough for his consciousness to return. That was the Mirror-Sage."
"You spoke with him," Ilvara said. "Here? In the Void?"
Ren Xiang nodded weakly. "He knows the Mirror-Cairn. He warned me about the Fourth Form. He told me where his last journal is."
Ilvara's hand paused on his shoulder. "The Mirror-Cairn lies at the forest's heart. Few who enter emerge unchanged. I have a confession."
Ren Xiang blinked. "Yes?"
Ilvara drew in a breath. "I knew the Mirror-Sage personally. I—" She swallowed. "I was his student."
The admission dropped like stone. Ren Xiang had always felt there were layers to Ilvara that she hid under reserve and duty, but never that she had walked so close to the fire himself.
"You were his student?" Ren Xiang repeated.
Ilvara's gaze slid away. "Long ago, before the sect hardened into what it is. I was young and foolish and followed the sage to the trial of mirrors. He taught me the first three forms, and he gave me a boon: a mirror-tongue charm that let me read mirrored resonance without becoming obsessed. But when he began experimenting with the Fourth Form, I left. I couldn't accept the price. He told me to seal the Cairn and to trust that the next who came upon his work would understand why he warned them. I never left his presence for long. The Mirror-Sage was… a man who loved knowledge beyond reason."
Karyon's hands slowed their movement as Ilvara spoke. "You left him?" he said softly.
Ilvara's voice hardened. "I had to. He was burning everything to learn the right question. I couldn't watch him burn his last ties. I walked away. I have regretted it every day since."
Ren Xiang's chest tightened. "Why tell me now?"
Ilvara's eyes were wet and steady. "Because the forest tests us with our last choices. If we failed then, perhaps we can correct now. Also—" She looked to Karyon. "Also because the hunter will soon return. There will be no time for secrets."
Karyon's fingers closed around Ren Xiang's wrist. "He won't come alone. The Hunter we fought is a scout — not a foot soldier. Expect others. Packs. Alpha-level beasts that will test not only the sutra but your ability to tether."
Ren Xiang nodded, muscles burning with the memory of his shattered Sea.
Ilvara rose. "Rest. When you are able we will reach the Cairn. We will find the journal. I will show you the charm the sage entrusted to me. And if it comes to it, I will stand between you and the Abyss."
Ren Xiang's lips curved faintly. "You've done more than stand between me and a lot already."
She gave the smallest of smiles. "If you come back alive enough to bicker, it will mean I've failed at being a stoic elder."
They fell into a silence that was heavy but not unpleasant. Outside, through the trees, the forest hummed with the echo of hunting things; distant howls that were neither animal nor human threaded a slow refrain. The day would not be quiet, and they would have no true peace until they reached the Cairn.
When Ren Xiang's eyes finally closed again, it was not from the exhaustion of physical pain alone. This time he slept with the Mirror-Sage's words burning soft in his head and Ilvara's steady presence at his side. The sutra inside him found purchase in that quiet and hummed like a newly tuned instrument.
Above them, unseen and patient, the forest rearranged a path toward the heart; elsewhere, in splintered vales, the Hunter gathered its broken kin and sent their black tendrils hunting for a fresh scent.
Ren Xiang's next breath tasted like iron and rain and a promise.
He had a journal to find, a ritual to learn, a shard to lock, and a forest that would not release its truths without a fight.
He slept with those things in his mind — and when he finally woke again, the three of them rose together into a day that already smelled of battle.