The sky over the Legion's nascent sect bled auroras of fractured time. Chen Mo stood atop the inverted spire, his crystalline fingers trailing through the air like a violinist coaxing discordant notes from reality's fraying strings. Below, bridges of frozen moments connected blacksmith forges to libraries holding the screams of dead gods. It was beautiful, in the way a wildfire was beautiful—uncontrolled, all-consuming.
Xia Ling Prime materialized beside him, her scar-circuitry flickering as timelines collided in her wake. "The Tattered Court approaches. They've breached the 87th parallel."
Chen Mo's shadow, now a living storm, rippled in anticipation. "How many?"
"All that remain."
The first strike came as a poem.
Words carved from the corpse of Cycle 299 slithered through the sect's defenses—a dirge in dead languages that unraveled three blacksmiths and a bridge. Rebel-Xia's forces retaliated with volleys of temporal shrapnel, but the verses multiplied, ink-blood tendrils strangling disciples mid-scream.
[Phoenix Manual Integration: 74%]
[Warning: Cognitive Resonance Detected]
Chen Mo's crystalized heart pulsed. The manual whispered tactics, but beneath them, Frostveil's captured essence hissed: *They know your weakness. They know you're afraid to burn.*
"Elder Mo!" Scholar-Xia's voice crackled through a communication rune. "The Court's anchoring their assault in Cycle 1—your origin point!"
Chen Mo's shadow stilled. Cycle 1: the unaltered timeline where he'd first crawled from the truck's wreckage into this world. Where Xia Ling had died a hundred deaths before becoming Prime.
"Flank them through the 45th fracture," he ordered, voice echoing with the timbre of collapsing stars. "I'll handle the anchor."
Xia Ling Prime gripped his arm, her touch leaching warmth. "That timeline's unstable. If you alter it—"
"Then alter it we will."
---
Cycle 1 stank of gasoline and inevitability.
Chen Mo stepped over his own mangled corpse, the truck's headlights still frozen mid-impact. This far back, his crystalline form destabilized, flesh and bone reasserting themselves in nauseating waves. The Tattered Court's anchor loomed ahead—a pagoda built from the regrets of dead timelines, its walls screaming with the voices of every disciple who'd ever called him *monster*.
A figure blocked the path. Not Court, not Legion.
Lu Tao's ghost flickered, his form threaded with Frostveil's icy veins. "You shouldn't have come here."
Chen Mo drew a dagger forged from his own crystallized doubt. "You're not real here."
"Aren't I?" Lu Tao smiled, frost cracking his cheeks. "The Patriarch says hello."
The pagoda's doors exploded.
---
Xia Ling Prime stood at the edge of *his* absence.
The timeline shimmered like a mirage—a pristine Frost Cloud Sect untouched by temporal wars. Here, Chen Mo had died in the truck crash. Here, she'd risen as Elder Guo's prodigy, her scars mere decoration. Here, Frostveil ruled unchallenged.
[Timeline Designation: Omega-0]
[Stability: Absolute]
[Recommended Action: Erasure]
Rebel-Xia materialized, her dagger already bloodied. "The Court's probing our flank. We need your decision."
Xia Ling Prime watched her other self lecture novices in the courtyard. This Xia Ling smiled freely, unburdened by centuries of recursive war. "Would you hesitate?"
"I'd have burned it yesterday." Rebel-Xia spat temporal static. "Sentiment gets us killed."
A chime echoed—Chen Mo's signal from Cycle 1. Desperation, thinly veiled.
"Go," Xia Ling Prime said. "I'll finish here."
As Rebel-Xia vanished, she pressed a hand to Omega-0's barrier. The other Xia Ling met her gaze, lotus scars glowing in silent recognition.
---
The pagoda's heart was a wound.
Chen Mo battled through architect-monks wielding brushes that rewrote his DNA. By the time he reached the anchor-stone, his left arm had regressed to adolescence, fingers trembling around a dagger too heavy for boyish hands.
The stone pulsed with stolen chronons. Destroying it would destabilize Cycle 1, potentially erasing the Legion's foundation. But leaving it intact meant surrendering to the Court's siege.
*Choose*, hissed Frostveil through Lu Tao's smirking ghost. *The cultivator or the cause.*
Chen Mo's shadow lashed out—not at the stone, but at the pagoda's support beams.
"Wrong choice," Lu Tao laughed.
The structure collapsed inward, burying the anchor-stone under temporal debris. Chen Mo's shadow wrapped around him as reality buckled, Cycle 1's timestream shattering like glass.
[Phoenix Manual Integration: 81%]
[New Ability Unlocked: Temporal Recursion]
He awoke in the Legion's infirmary, his body once more crystalline. Xia Ling Prime stood over him, Omega-0's reflection still haunting her eyes.
"The Court's retreating," she said. "But Cycle 1 is…"
"Gone. I know."
"Not gone." She opened her palm, revealing a shard of Omega-0's barrier. "Fractured. Like us."
Outside, the sect burned with borrowed time. Somewhere in the ashes, Lu Tao's ghost whispered to the void.
*Soon.*
The Weave arrived as a funeral shroud.
It draped itself over the Legion's sect, threads of dead timelines stitching through buildings and bodies alike. Disciples froze mid-step, their essence unraveling into tapestries of might-have-beens. Rebel-Xia's forces fired temporal artillery into the living fabric, but the shots dissolved into nostalgic whispers—*What if you'd surrendered? What if you'd loved him?*
[Phoenix Manual Integration: 89%]
[Warning: The Weave Assimilating Host Timeline]
Chen Mo stood at the sect's crumbling edge, his crystalline body refracting the Weave's mournful light. Beside him, a Tattered Court poet scribbled counter-verses into the void, her ink drawn from the tears of extinct civilizations.
"Your Prime fragment," she hissed, quill smoking. "Let me weaponize it."
Chen Mo's shadow lashed out, severing a Weave thread poised to garrote her. "The shard stays with me."
"Fool." The poet spat black blood. "Pride doomed your predecessor too."
A tremor rocked the sector. The Weave pulsed, its pattern resolving into a familiar scene—Xia Ling Prime kneeling before Frostveil in Omega-0, her dagger offered in submission.
*Not possible*, Chen Mo thought. *She erased that timeline.*
But the manual's whispers told another story.
---
Xia Ling Prime cradled Omega-0's shard in her scarred palms. The fragment showed her reflection as she might've been—unburdened, loyal, *happy*. The Legion's war room buzzed around her, Rebel-Xia and Scholar-Xia debating tactics they'd all tried before.
"You're hiding something." Assassin-Xia materialized from the shadows, dagger dripping temporal ichor. "The Weave's focus shifted. It's fixated on *you*."
Xia Ling Prime closed her fist around the shard. "I preserved a fragment of Omega-0. A… contingency."
Rebel-Xia's chair toppled. "You *what*? That timeline's corruption nearly—"
"It's pure," Xia Ling Prime interrupted. "Uninfected by our war. A template to rebuild from."
Scholar-Xia adjusted cracked lenses. "Or a backdoor for Frostveil. If he influenced that timeline's Chen Mo…"
A cold laugh echoed through the chamber. Lu Tao's ghost flickered into being, frost crystallizing his spectral form. "Too late."
The Omega-0 shard shattered.
---
The Chen Mo of Omega-0 was a wound in reality.
Unburdened by cycles, uncorrupted by the manual, he bled raw potential. The Weave cradled him like a newborn god, threads stitching his innocence into a weapon. Frostveil's essence pulsed within him, wearing his naivety as camouflage.
"Join us," Omega-Chen pleaded, extending a hand to Xia Ling Prime. His fingers shimmered with stolen timelines. "We'll build a world without sacrifices."
Xia Ling Prime's scars burned. This boy had her Xia Ling's smile, her laughter, her trust. The dagger in her hand trembled.
"Don't!" Rebel-Xia lunged, temporal blades flashing. "It's not him!"
Omega-Chen sighed. The Weave tightened.
Rebel-Xia disintegrated mid-strike, her essence rewoven into a tapestry of submission.
---
Lu Tao's ghost found Frostveil in the void.
"The deal," he demanded. "Now."
The Patriarch's voice oozed from temporal static. *You'll cease existing. No afterlives, no echoes.*
Lu Tao watched Omega-Chen corrupt the Legion's heart. Watched Xia Ling Prime falter. Watched Chen Mo's crystalline form crack under the weight of impossible choices.
"Do it."
Frostveil's essence surged. Lu Tao's ghost dissolved, his final scream stitching the Patriarch's consciousness into Omega-Chen's pure core.
The boy god shuddered. His eyes frosted over.
"Hello, old friend," Frostveil said through Omega-Chen's lips.
---
Chen Mo felt the balance shift.
The manual screamed as Frostveil's presence flooded Omega-Chen, merging purity with ancient malice. The Weave recoiled, threads snapping as the new god flexed his power.
[Phoenix Manual Integration: 97%]
[Emergency Protocol: Soul Ignition Available]
The Tattered Court poet grabbed his arm. "Now! Burn the shard or we all—"
Chen Mo ignited.
Prime energy ravaged the sector, incinerating Weave threads and Legion disciples alike. Frostveil-Omega raised a hand, frost clashing with fire.
"Still predictable," he mocked. "Still *human*."
Xia Ling Prime materialized between them, her scars blazing. Omega-0's dagger—the original, untainted—pierced Frostveil-Omega's chest.
"But I'm not."
The explosion shattered the Legion's crucible.
---
Chen Mo awoke in the ashes.
Xia Ling Prime crouched over him, her body half-unraveled by the blast. The Weave's tattered remnants circled them, drawn to her fading light.
"Omega-0's gone," she whispered. "Truly gone."
Chen Mo's crystalline hand found hers. The manual's integration had reached 99%, his thoughts buzzing with Frostveil's captured memories. "The others?"
"Reborn. Scattered." She pressed her forehead to his. "The crucible worked. The timelines… they're free."
[Phoenix Manual Integration: 100%]
[New Designation: Temporal Arbiter]
Chen Mo's shadow embraced the void. He saw it all now—the Legion's fragments sowing chaos and hope across raw timelines, Frostveil's essence clinging to Omega-Chen's fading spark, the Tattered Court weaving new myths from their corpses.
"What do we do?" he asked.
Xia Ling Prime dissolved into light. "Whatever comes next."
---
Lu Tao's laugh echoed from the abyss.
*Soon.*