The Weeping Wastes stretched before them like the barren skin of a wounded beast, cracked earth groaning beneath wind that howled with the cries of the forgotten. No map could trace this desolate region—the land itself changed with each passing hour, reshaped by time and grief. Bones of ancient beasts jutted from dunes like the fingers of long-dead giants, and every gust carried the stench of dried blood and something older—regret.
Jinhyuk stood at the edge, his cloak snapping in the wind. Behind him, Yeonhwa wrapped her scarf tighter, eyes narrowed against the sand. Baek Sohyun adjusted the runes etched on her gloves, glancing at her compass. The needle spun wildly, useless.
"This place resists direction," she muttered. "Even time flows weird here."
"It's a cursed land," Yeonhwa replied. "One born from grief."
Jinhyuk didn't speak. His gaze was fixed on the shimmering mirage in the distance—a ruin half-buried beneath the sands, twisted into the shape of a crying woman. The Cradle of the War-Touched lay somewhere within that expanse. And now, he knew he wasn't the only one headed for it.
Seiryun.
The name still rang like a broken bell in his mind. A rival he had yet to meet, but whose presence pressed against his fate like a blade already drawn. The Keeper's words refused to leave him.
> "He carries a blade of promises… that were never made."
He didn't know what that meant.
Not yet.
A sudden gust brought with it a sound—low, rhythmic, like footsteps in sand. Jinhyuk turned his head.
Shapes moved at the far edge of the dunes.
Dozens of them.
No… hundreds.
Clad in armor wrapped in funeral cloths, their eyes gleamed with red light. Not revenants. Not phantoms.
Pilgrims.
Yeonhwa stepped beside him. "We're not alone."
"I see them," he said.
Baek Sohyun unslung her staff. "Pilgrims of the Hollow Crown."
"They move like a procession," Yeonhwa whispered. "This isn't a scouting party. This is a ritual."
Jinhyuk narrowed his eyes. "They're trying to awaken something."
And then the ground shook.
A pulse rippled beneath their feet, as if the very land had exhaled. The sky above the Wastes darkened, clouds gathering unnaturally fast. The wind twisted into laughter—low, feminine, and full of sorrow.
A voice echoed.
> "You walk where only the lost may tread."
Yeonhwa spun around. "Who said that?"
The air shimmered before them, and from the sand rose a figure wrapped in sheer black veils. A woman—no, a spirit—hovering above the ground. Her hair flowed like ink in water, and tears of molten gold ran down her cheeks.
"The Mourning Maiden," Baek Sohyun breathed. "She's real…"
"I guard the Cradle," the spirit said. "And I know your names, for your fates echo with the weight of war."
She raised a pale hand, and the sand around them hardened into a circle of stone. Her gaze met Jinhyuk's.
"You carry the Blade of Forgotten Oaths. And with it, the burden of choices not yet made."
"I seek the Cradle," he said. "Not for war—but to prevent one."
The Mourning Maiden tilted her head. "And yet war follows you like a lover."
Suddenly, pillars rose from the ground. Twelve in total. On each stood a ghostly figure clad in different martial garb—swordmasters, monks, assassins, even healers—all radiating immense killing intent.
"These are the Twelve Watchers," she said. "To reach the Cradle, you must pass their judgment."
Yeonhwa readied her blade. "We fight?"
"No," the spirit replied. "You prove your worth… through memory."
Before they could react, the world shattered like glass.
Each of them fell—spinning into fragments of their own past.
Jinhyuk landed on cold stone.
But it wasn't the Weeping Wastes anymore.
It was the Temple of Silent Blossoms.
A place long buried in his memory.
A place where he had once… died.
His breath caught.
A voice called from the shadows.
> "You failed us, Jinhyuk."
And out stepped a familiar face.
Young.
Scarred.
And furious.
It was him.
The boy he once was.
"Let's see if the present is stronger than the past," the younger Jinhyuk spat, drawing a blade.
And so, the trial began.
Steel clashed with steel.
The older Jinhyuk stepped back, breath steady, as the younger version of himself pressed forward with unrelenting fury. Every movement was familiar—too familiar. He remembered the way he used to fight: with speed over strategy, rage over reason. His past self had no restraint, only raw emotion and an obsession with justice that bordered on self-destruction.
"You hesitated!" the younger Jinhyuk shouted. "That's why she died! You chose survival over righteousness!"
Their blades locked, sparks flying between them. The younger one's eyes were burning embers of pain.
"I chose life," the older Jinhyuk replied quietly, parrying and sidestepping. "Because vengeance doesn't protect the people who are already gone."
"You're a coward," the boy growled.
"No. I'm just not a fool anymore."
He shifted his stance. No longer mirroring his old habits, he moved with the flow of time—not against it. Where the past was fury, the present was precision. He began to dismantle his former self's attacks with quiet ease.
"You trained so hard for revenge," the older Jinhyuk said, parrying a furious downward strike. "And what did it bring you? Nothing but ghosts."
The younger Jinhyuk let out a roar and lunged forward, desperate and wild.
It was over in a breath.
The older Jinhyuk sidestepped, disarmed the blade, and placed his hand gently on the boy's chest—where the pain lived.
"I'm not running from what happened," he said. "I'm carrying it. That's the difference."
The illusion broke like a brittle dream. The temple vanished.
Jinhyuk stood again in the Wastes, the pillars of the trial spinning with light. His segment was complete.
Elsewhere, Yeonhwa stood trembling in a pool of shallow water. Before her, the vision of a dying man lay bleeding.
Her father.
She knelt beside him, hands trembling, tears falling from her eyes as she tried to stop the bleeding. But no matter how hard she tried, no matter how desperately she focused her ki—he kept dying.
Again.
And again.
And again.
"You didn't come in time," the illusion whispered. "Because you were too weak."
"I was just a child," she sobbed.
"A child who let her clan burn."
She clutched her head.
Then… something snapped.
"I'm done apologizing," she said suddenly, her voice calm. "I'll never forget that night. But I won't live inside it anymore."
The waters trembled around her as she stood, her aura blooming like wild flame.
She raised her sword and sliced the illusion in two.
The trial accepted her defiance.
She returned to the circle, her hair flowing behind her like black fire, her eyes alight with something stronger than rage—resolve.
Baek Sohyun stood before a familiar door.
The locked library. The one she had never been allowed to enter.
Inside it lay the secrets of her family. Her mother's betrayal. Her brother's shame. Her own terrifying bloodline.
And beyond that… knowledge no mortal was meant to hold.
Her hand hovered over the door.
Then she smiled faintly.
"I don't need it anymore."
And turned away.
The moment she did, the door opened on its own.
Behind it was a mirror.
And her own reflection.
"I'm not your puppet," she whispered.
The mirror nodded—and shattered into starlight.
All three returned to the trial circle, where the Mourning Maiden hovered above them, her golden tears now still.
"You have passed," she said. "You carry your grief not as chains, but as weapons."
Then she raised a hand.
The dunes parted like a curtain.
And beyond them rose the Cradle of the War-Touched—a massive, inverted pyramid carved into the earth, its spires glowing with cursed runes. It pulsed like a heart torn from the gods.
But something else rose behind it.
A black banner.
A figure clad in fractured golden armor.
And a voice that felt like thunder chained in silk.
"You're late," the figure said. "But I've waited long enough."
Jinhyuk's eyes narrowed.
"Seiryun."
The rival stepped forward, flanked by warriors cloaked in starlight and shadow.
"We walk the same path," Seiryun said, "but we are not the same."
Baek Sohyun raised her staff. "He's ahead of us."
Jinhyuk shook his head. "Not anymore."
And he stepped into the Cradle.
Behind him, the sands of the Weeping Wastes wept no more.
They roared.
The air inside the Cradle of the War-Touched was unlike anything Jinhyuk had ever felt.
It wasn't just the cold, or the oppressive weight of ancient sorrow hanging in the air — it was the sensation of walking into a place that remembered everything. Every war, every betrayal, every moment where power changed hands and hearts were broken in silence. The stones beneath his feet pulsed faintly, as if the pyramid itself was alive and watching.
Even the wind here whispered in broken tongues.
"These aren't just ruins," Baek Sohyun said, her voice barely above a murmur. "They're graves."
Hundreds of coffins were embedded into the pyramid walls, sealed with talismans and bone-inked carvings. The entire inverted structure was a labyrinth of death and memory.
Jinhyuk's gaze moved steadily through the endless corridors. His instincts were taut — and not just because of the cursed aura that soaked the space.
It was because of Seiryun.
The golden-armored rival moved ahead of them, his elite warriors spreading through the upper levels of the pyramid like a vanguard. Yet Jinhyuk noticed the subtle way Seiryun moved: not with arrogance, but with anticipation.
"He's looking for something," Yeonhwa said.
"He's not just here to compete," Jinhyuk agreed. "He's chasing a ghost."
Baek Sohyun turned her head. "Then what are we chasing?"
Jinhyuk's hand rested gently on the hilt of his blade.
"Answers," he said. "And something worse—the truth."
As they moved deeper into the pyramid, they passed chambers that looked untouched by time. Walls painted with murals of ancient martial clans — now extinct. Giant stone guardians crumbled and dormant. Every turn was like walking into a history long buried, and every step made them feel smaller.
Until they found it.
A chamber at the heart of the pyramid.
There, in the center of a circle of broken statues, floated a dragon skull — obsidian and gold, its sockets hollow yet burning with a faint red light. It pulsed with divine energy, the same as the fragments they'd seen in the Dragon Bone Ruins. But this… this was complete.
It was a Celestial Dragon Remnant.
And it spoke.
"You… carry my kin," it rasped in Jinhyuk's mind. "You are marked."
The others flinched as the room seemed to shudder from the voice.
Jinhyuk stepped forward, breathing steady. "Who are you?"
"I am memory," the voice replied. "The last breath of a godling bound to your fate."
"Why are you still here?"
"To test… the inheritor."
In an instant, the chamber changed.
The ground fell away beneath their feet.
And Jinhyuk found himself standing alone in an endless white void. In front of him stood a creature of divine energy — not quite a dragon, not quite a man. Its form shifted, ever-changing.
"You are not the strongest," the remnant said. "Not the wisest. Not the chosen."
Jinhyuk tightened his grip on his sword.
"I don't need to be any of those," he replied. "I just need to keep going."
"Why?"
He stared directly into the creature's glowing eyes.
"Because I made a promise," he said. "To never be helpless again. To protect those I love, even if the world stands against me."
A pause.
Then the remnant lunged.
A blast of divine fire engulfed Jinhyuk, but he didn't falter. He cut through the illusion, his blade glowing with the mark of the Dragon Soul Fragment he already carried.
The remnant howled.
The void shattered.
Jinhyuk fell back into the real world, landing on his feet in the chamber. The dragon skull was still floating — but now, it glowed with soft blue light.
And something moved inside his chest.
A second fragment had fused with him.
His aura pulsed outward like a silent explosion, causing the dust in the air to ripple. Even Seiryun, watching from a nearby corridor, narrowed his eyes.
"So… he is the heir," Seiryun muttered. "Then the heavens really are laughing."
But there was no time for reflection.
A rumble tore through the chamber.
"Trap!" Baek Sohyun shouted, raising a shield around them.
The talismans on the walls began to ignite, one by one.
And from the shadows… emerged the War-Touched.
Not corpses.
Not spirits.
But warriors who had been buried alive, cursed to slumber in eternal hatred. Their armor fused with their flesh, their eyes glowing with endless rage, they emerged as one, chanting in a tongue that shook the bones.
Jinhyuk raised his blade.
"I hope you all remember how to fight tired," he said.
Yeonhwa cracked her knuckles. "Good. I was getting bored."
The War-Touched surged forward.
And the real battle for the Cradle began.