A bitter wind stirred the lanterns hanging from the crumbling arch of Emberveil Dominion's outer gate. Their light flickered like dying stars—faint, unsure, as if afraid of what lay beyond.
Beneath them stood alone figure.
Hooded. Silent. Unwelcome.
Verdant green flames danced faintly around his fingertips—not blazing, not roaring, but whispering. They curled like smoke from a long-forgotten incense, leaving behind no heat… only memory.
They called him the Verdant Phantom. And he had returned to where it all began.
The disciples who once chanted his name had turned to ash. The masters who once praised his insight had vanished into the Veil. Only the silent walls remembered him—and even they trembled.
The gate groaned open.
Not by touch. Not by command.
But by truth.
He took a step inside. The ground did not crack. The heavens did not roar. But reality—ever so subtly—twitched.
The Whisper realm had felt him.
The cobbled path ahead was overgrown, choked by roots that shouldn't have been there. Emberveil was a place where memory and matter bled into each other. Time decayed differently here—slower, maybe. Or sideways.
He walked.
Each step left no footprint, but the verdant ash trailed behind him, curling into symbols that vanished before fully forming. They weren't meant to be read. Only remembered.
A crow watched him from atop the broken statue of a masked cultivator. Its single eye shimmered green.
Not natural. Not alive.
Not alone.
"Three thousand days since I last walked these halls," he murmured, his voice rough, as if it hadn't been used in centuries.
"And the truth still clings to the stone."
The crow tilted its head. It did not caw.
Somewhere deeper in the dominion, a bell rang—just once.
Faint. Wrong. Backwards.
He turned a corner where the walls still stood tall, vines crawling like veins across the cracked stone. The air was still, but the moment he passed beneath the old engraved archway—something clicked.
Not with sound.
With sensation.
It wasn't pain. It wasn't fear.
It was… recognition.
The ash around his body pulsed once, recoiling like a breath drawn too deep. The world shifted—not forward, not back, but inward.
Suddenly, the corridor was gone.
So was the present.
He stood now in a memory not his own—no, not entirely. It wore his face, but the eyes… they were too young.
"Senior Brother, wait!" a voice cried behind him—familiar, broken with desperation.
"You promised you wouldn't take the trial without us!"
The younger him turned, robes untouched by ash, eyes still full of ignorance. Three figures stood at the gate behind him—fellow disciples. Smiling. Afraid. Trusting.
He remembered none of their names.
The memory trembled, and the world began to peel. Their faces distorted, twisted into symbols he could almost read.
"This is a trap," he whispered in the now. "A memory seal… no—a guilt anchor."
The air cracked.
The crow was suddenly at his shoulder.
"Will you rewrite it," it croaked, "or relive it?"
The world around him bled into verdant mist. The disciples—ghosts of his past—stared through him now. Not with fear.
But judgment.
"You left us," one whispered, voice layered with static. "You ascended alone."
"You knew what would happen," another murmured, her form unraveling at the edges like scorched paper.
The ash around him stirred, flickering violently.
"I shed my name," he growled, steadying himself. "Not my guilt."
The corridor twisted. A stone gate rose from the mist, carved with a single phrase:
🜂 Only those who burn truth may pass.
Suddenly, pain flared through his chest—not physical, but deeper. A brand, long sealed, ignited.
A whisper echoed inside his skull:
"Reveal your first betrayal."
The test had begun.
The phrase on the gate pulsed.
Only those who burn truth may pass.
He closed his eyes.
And the world obeyed.
He stood in the Sect's inner courtyard again—before the fall, before the silence. Sunlight streamed through the veil trees, their silver leaves humming with unseen wind. The place smelled of rain and old incense.
She was waiting.
Her robes were white with green trim, the symbol of the Verdant Flame pinned to her collar. Eyes like carved jade. Voice soft, like wind against stone.
"You've found it, haven't you?" she asked.
He didn't answer. The real him—the one watching this unfold—knew what came next. His body in the memory moved on its own, following old rhythms like a puppet carved from regret.
"The First Ember… the Verdant Ash. You found it," she whispered again, stepping closer.
"But it asked you to ascend alone. Didn't it?"
She already knew.
She had always known.
The younger him nodded. A slow, guilty nod.
"And you chose it," she said. Not with anger. Not with sorrow. Just… clarity.
"You chose the power."
He didn't argue. Because it was true.
"So… I won't stop you. But I'll wait. Until the veil takes me."
She turned.
He never saw her again.
Now.
The mist coiled tighter. The memory collapsed.
He stood before her again—present time. Her form, older now, bound in threads of ash. She knelt, eyes closed, breathing shallow.
Not a ghost. Not a dream.
A prisoner.
Bound by the Dominion's final curse—Guilt Chains. Her body held in place, her spirit fraying slowly into Verdant Mist. Only one way remained to free her.
"Burn the tie," the gate whispered, "or bear her pain forever."
He stepped forward.
The ash ignited.
She opened her eyes. And she smiled.
"You came back… Ashborne."
He knelt beside her. No words.
Only a blade.
Verdant ash crawled up its edge. She leaned into it. He trembled.
Then—
He struck.
Light. Silence. And—
Two expressions split his face as the mist consumed them:
On one side—a smile.
On the other—tears that would never stop.
Interlude I: Before the Ash
Back then, he had a name.
It wasn't "Verdant Phantom" or "Ashborne."
It was simple. Mortal. Human.
And he was just another disciple of Emberveil Dominion—a rising talent with bright eyes and burnt fingers, always sneaking into the forbidden records to chase answers beyond his realm.
"The Verdant Flame," his Master once told him, "is not just power—it is truth made manifest. Control the truth, and you control what becomes real."
He thought he understood.
He didn't.
He had three friends. They were bound not by blood or oath, but by something purer—shared ambition.
Liyan — the spirited girl with healing flames, the one he would one day have to kill.
Ren'er — the quiet one, always with ink-stained sleeves and questions no teacher would answer.
Daohai — the bold, reckless brother-in-arms who said things like "If we're going to steal heaven, might as well smile doing it."
They studied together. Failed together. Dreamed together.
Until one day… he found it.
The First Ember.
A shard of living flame buried beneath the Dominion—hidden in a pocket of reality that didn't obey natural law. It whispered to him, not with words, but truths carved in fire.
"Burn your name.
Burn your ties.
Burn your fear.
And I shall show you the path beyond Heaven."
He didn't tell them.
He couldn't.
The path would close if he was followed.
So he left them behind, whispering apologies to the wind.
The Moment He Touched the First Ember
The chamber was impossibly still.
He had slipped past five seals, bypassed layers of spiritual wards, and survived a trial of silence where even a whisper would have summoned the Ash Serpents. Now, he stood before a throne of withered stone, in a room that did not belong to the mortal world.
It pulsed.
A tiny flame.
Suspended mid-air.
Green. Livid. Alive.
Not hot.
Cold—like truth stripped of mercy.
He reached out.
And the moment his finger grazed it, reality collapsed.
[Inside the Ember]
He stood in an endless void, surrounded by mirrors made of fire.
Each one showed a different version of him.
In one, he ruled Emberveil as sect master.
In another, he died protecting Liyan from a demonic beast.
In another still, he was broken, enslaved, crawling through the mud as a discarded relic.
And one…
One showed nothing. Just a shadow wearing no face. No name. No past.
"This is you," a voice echoed—not from the mirrors, but from the flame itself.
"If you burn everything."
"Name, bonds, choices, guilt—"
"All must be turned to ash. Only then shall you walk the Path of the Whisperbound."
He didn't hesitate.
Because he was afraid of all the other versions.
And so, he whispered his true name—
And set it ablaze.
The fire screamed as it devoured it, as if names were alive and didn't die quietly.
His memories fractured.
Some faces blurred.
Voices he loved grew muffled.
He dropped to one knee, clutching his head as the flame seared itself into his soul. But instead of pain, he felt… clarity. And cold.
His heart slowed.
His breath turned to mist.
And the voice returned, softer now:
"You are now Verdant Phantom.
He who burns what others bury.
He who remembers what others forget.
And forgets what no man should."
When he opened his eyes again, he was no longer in the same world.
The chamber was empty. The First Ember was gone—inside him now.
And above the throne, newly etched in green fire, was a message:
The truth was always yours to destroy.
He stood alone before the sealed gate.
The ritual was complete. The price had been paid.
Liyan was gone—freed by his hand, slain by the ashes she once taught him to control. His body trembled, not from weakness, but from remembrance.
The gate to the Verdant Vault cracked open with a low groan, like a dead god exhaling.
Inside was nothing.
Just a circular chamber of green stone. Silent. Empty.
Except…
On the far wall, someone had already carved a message.
Old. Faded. Burnt into the very marrow of the stone.
"Ashborne. You are late."
He froze.
His breath caught.
That handwriting—his own.
But older. Worn. As if written years ago.
Suddenly, the flame inside his core surged violently. Images flashed behind his eyes—
A ruined city swallowed in silence.
A masked figure sitting on a throne of ash.
And a voice—not the Ember's—but his own—whispering:
"We all come back here eventually. The only difference is… what we've become."