The mist whispered like old parchment burning.
Zhu Yan stood at the edge of a new corridor—one not made of bone, stone, or flesh. It was airless, quiet, untouched. The kind of silence only a tomb long forgotten could hold.
And yet, something watched.
Not with eyes.
But with awareness.
He moved slowly. Each footstep echoed as if stepped upon strings of tension. The torchlight from his Wrathfire aura barely lit more than a few feet ahead before being devoured by the ink-thick dark.
Then—words. Spoken not into his ears… but into his bones.
> "Your hunger has been fed. Your rage forged. But who commands the flame you carry?"
Zhu Yan didn't answer. The question wasn't one he could answer truthfully yet.
So the voice changed.
It became his own.
> "You are a weapon without a wielder. A fury without direction."
The walls shuddered with the weight of those words. Illusions flickered across the void—Zhu Yan's face, but twisted. Laughing. Mocking. A version of him who had submitted. A puppet of the sect, filled with fake serenity and hollow obedience.
Zhu Yan clenched his fists. "I know who I am."
> "Do you?" the echo taunted. "Or have you just burned everything else until only ashes remain?"
The darkness churned.
And then… it formed.
A figure stepped out—a faceless body in burnt crimson robes. No mouth, no eyes. Just smooth flesh where identity should be. But it radiated power. Familiar. Intimate.
> It's me, Zhu Yan realized. The part of me I refuse to name.
> "You left your sister behind," the voice said.
> "You consumed your past."
> "You let go of love."
One by one, the words struck like lashes across the mind. And each one made the creature stronger.
Zhu Yan lit his Wrathfire… but the flame flickered.
> "You cannot destroy what you refuse to acknowledge," it said.
The faceless thing lunged.
Zhu Yan met it head-on.
---
Their clash shook the corridor. Wrathfire against shadow. Will against memory. Every blow he landed hurt himself just as much. The more he fought, the more fragments of the self he'd buried rose to the surface—grief, love, guilt, the ache of wanting to be understood.
And still he refused to fall.
He grabbed the faceless entity by the throat—if it had one—and whispered:
> "You are not my master. I am not bound to the pain you carry."
Then—
He breathed.
Wrathfire burst not from his hands but from within—consuming not just the foe, but every tether to weakness.
The creature screamed—Zhu Yan's own voice, warped in agony—then collapsed into nothing.
---
The corridor collapsed into blinding light.
And before him stood the Fourth Gate.
Carved in obsidian, layered in gold, and pulsing with solemn judgment.
> 「Fourth Gate: The Mirror of Command」
No voice spoke this time.
Only silence.
And within that silence, Zhu Yan knew—
The next trial would not test his power.
It would test his rule.