Dreams in the Celestial Realm were sacred.
They were not idle fancies or flickers of the mind.They were resonances — truths trapped beneath memory, speaking in symbols too old for language.
And now, someone… something… had begun to dream again.
Not Lian Qiao.Not Mo Yujin.But the seal itself.
🌕 Mirror Moon Lake — Depths
No ripple marked the moment.No quake warned of it.
Only the faintest vibration — a heartbeat in reverse.
Something coiled at the bottom of the lake stirred.
Not a beast.Not a soul.But a memory given hunger.
It dreamed of her voice.Of firelight.Of the moment she whispered no one else will ever have me.
And it believed her.
Because she had bound herself to it in death.
Now reborn… she had not unbound.
🌸 Peach Blossom Sect — Lian Qiao's Dream
She stood in a familiar place.
Not real.Not safe.
The courtyard from her first life, only… wrong.
Peach trees bloomed with bleeding blossoms.The pond shimmered not with koi, but with floating flame petals — each one humming with her name.
And in the center of it all stood a mirror.
Not the Twin Flame Mirror.Something older.
Its surface rippled like liquid glass.
And within it, her reflection did not smile.
It spoke.
"You said you would never love anyone else."
Qiao stepped back.
"I was dying."
The voice didn't flinch.
"But you meant it. And I accepted it. Your fire was mine."
She shook her head. "I gave you my fire to seal you."
"And I loved you for it."
Her breath caught.
"You're not real."
"Neither is your fear… but it still rules you."
The mirror cracked.
And from it, a hand reached out.
Familiar.
His hand.
But wrong.
Twisted.
Coated in flame that didn't warm.
She stared.
And behind her, she heard her own voice whispering:
"Maybe the thing I sealed away… was never the Void."
"Maybe it was what I became to protect him."
She jolted awake in her bed, heart pounding, skin slick with sweat.
The Flamebinder was glowing red at her side.
A red it had never shown before.
Not hers.Not Yujin's.
Something else.
🌌 Elsewhere — Mo Yujin's Chamber
He stood from meditation instantly, eyes narrowing.
He felt it.
A flicker of power that wasn't Qiao's.
And wasn't not.
"Something's reaching for her," he murmured.
Frostbane trembled at his side.
And he whispered the one name he had hoped never to speak again:
"The Hollow Flame."