Azure Sky Inner Sect – Cloud-Water Courtyard, private meditation cave
Day 102 – 03:11, the hour when even the stars feel tired
Liàn Xing hasn't moved in six hours.
He sits cross-legged on the bare stone floor in the small cave behind the spirit spring, coat off, shirt off, silver circuits dim.
The jade pendant rests in his open palm like it weighs a thousand tons.
Lan Shuyin and Zhao gave him space after his meeting with the Sect Leader.
They know when to leave him alone.
Zhenxing is curled into a loli-ball on a rock, pretending to sleep but watching with one eye cracked open.
The pendant is cracked down the middle, old fracture lines glowing faintly silver now that it's near the Celestial Seed.
Liàn Xing has been pouring starlight into it, drop by drop, for six hours.
At hour six and eleven minutes, it finally answers.
The crack widens.
Light explodes outward (soft, warm, jade-green).
A memory blooms in the air like a flower made of someone else's life.
He is six years old again, but not in the gutters.
He is in a clean, quiet room high in Azure Sky's outer sect dormitories.
A woman kneels in front of him.
She is tall with long jade-green hair tied in a simple warrior's braid.
Eyes the exact colour of deep celestial jade the same colour of his own eyes.
She is wearing plain azure robes with one sleeve torn off, blood on her knuckles, face bruised but smiling.
She places the pendant in tiny hands.
"Listen carefully, little star," she says, voice soft but fierce. "Mommy has to go away for a while. Bad people want something inside you. Something very special. They'll try to take it. They'll hurt you to get it."
Six-year-old Liàn Xing is crying.
She wipes his tears with a thumb that smells like spear oil and rain.
"Don't let them, you are not trash. You are my heart walking outside my body. When you're big enough, you take this pendant and you find the man with the cloud beard. Tell him Mommy said he was wrong.
Then you grow strong enough that no one ever hurts you again."
She kisses his forehead.
The memory shifts.
She is standing in the Sect Leader's office, it's night, there's rain against the windows.
Twenty-four years old, and pregnant.
The Sect Leader (younger then, beard still black) is shouting.
"You cannot keep it! The scanners flagged a forbidden signature! If the Heavenly Dao itself will—"
She cuts him off with a look that could kill Nascent Souls.
"Then let it come."
She holds the pendant in front of his face. "Retrieve this after my death, If my child ever comes looking, give it to him, and tell him his mother loved him enough to set the heavens on fire for him."
She walks out and never looks back.
The memory shifts again.
She is in Ring 9, lower levels, hiding in a maintenance tunnel.
Holding a newborn wrapped in her torn sect robe.
Whispering to him while enforcers search overhead.
"You'll be safe here. They'll think you died with me. You must live my little star, live angry, but live kind. Live my son and grow strong so one day you can burn the heavens and all those in it who have desired your death"
She kisses his tiny forehead one last time.
Then she stands.
Walks out into the enforcers' formation.
Alone.
The memory ends in a flash of spear light and blood.
She never came back.
The pendant goes dark.
The cave is silent except for dripping water.
Liàn Xing is crying softly, not loud. Just quiet, steady tears that fall onto the stone and refuse to evaporate.
Zhenxing uncurls, wings dim, and crawls into his lap without a word.
Wraps tiny arms around his neck.
Lan Shuyin is in the doorway she came when the light started, and stood silently observing Lian Xing.
Zhao is behind her, arms crossed, golden eyes wet.
None of them speak, they don't need to.
Liàn Xing closes his fist around the pendant.
The crack seals.
The jade-green light sinks into his skin, branding a tiny spear-and-star mark over his heart, right beside the brightest Orion circuit.
His voice is raw.
"She burned herself to keep me hidden."
He looks at the spear shaft leaning against the wall.
It hums, soft, almost gentle.
"She knew."
Lan Shuyin steps forward and kneels. She places her forehead gently against his.
Her voice is barely a breath.
"Then we burn the ones who made her do it."
Zhao's voice is rough.
"Slowly. We burn them very slowly."
Zhenxing's wings wrap around all three of them.
"Together."
Liàn Xing closes his eyes.
The tears stop.
When he opens them again, the silver is colder than ever.
"Good."
He stands.
The pendant is now part of him.
The spear shaft floats to his hand on its own.
He looks at the cave wall where the memory played.
Then at his family.
"Training starts again at dawn. No mercy, no rest. We have a promise to keep."
Lan Shuyin smiles (small, sharp, and full of frost-blue fire).
Zhao cracks his knuckles, golden rings igniting.
Zhenxing grows to full size, wings spreading until they fill the cave.
Liàn Xing walks out into the night.
The rain has started again.
This time it feels like a baptism.
Behind him, three monsters follow.
Ahead, eighty days until the inner sect tournament, and a mother's promise carved into living starlight. They will keep it. Or die making sure the heavens remember her name.