NOVEL NEXT Thread of Time
Living too long often came with a price, one that many would consider far too heavy to bear. Especially if you never intended to become immortal by opening the Gate of Immortality.
Yi Shen had paid that price for the sake of his sect. Most of the details were a blur, scattered fragments that refused to piece themselves together. But one day burned in his mind with cruel clarity: the day two almighty divine beings descended into the Dream World and waged war on the Eden Sect.
The memory always began the same way—soundless at first, as if the world held its breath, followed by the roar of a storm tearing across the sky, and a crack of divine light splitting the heavens. He remembered the smell of ozone and the thick bloody air--the feeling after seeing the ground tremble beneath the weight of powers beyond mortal comprehension.
And then… her face. The one who killed him. He remembered her beauty, the merciless look she wore as she lifted her weapon. The star sword came down like the judgment of the heavens. It pierced through his chest, the impact stealing his breath before the pain even registered.
The blade did not stop there. It drove deeper, cutting through the threads of his soul, anchoring both body and spirit in place. He could feel himself unraveling, each heartbeat weaker than the last. He tasted iron. His vision dimmed, colors fading to black and white. The distant shouts of his sect brothers sounded muffled, as though he were sinking underwater. He tried to speak, to reach for them, but his voice came out as nothing more than a rasp.
The last thing he saw was the flare of the sword's divine light before everything was swallowed in silence.
What followed was the cold darkness. There was no warm "Light," no guiding hand. Only an endless shadow that folded around him like a cold tide.
The next moment in his memory was waking—not alive, but dead—in the ruins of the once-magnificent Eden.
The great towers lay in heaps of broken stone. The lush gardens were nothing but ash, and the grand throne of the Storm Rider was a charred relic. The very air was wrong, heavy with a stillness that spoke of a broken natural order. The sun's warm light no longer touched these lands. Poisonous clouds hung low and unmoving, casting the landscape into perpetual twilight. No life thrived here, only death and the ghosts of the Disciples of Fire.
"Await a new light. For these lands will breathe again. Don't lose hope, Yi Shen,"
Those were the words the woman in white had left him. She had been waiting for him to wake up and explained that the Heavenly Order had taken the Storm Rider, and the rest of his brethren had been punished by death for daring to rival the heavens.
It had crushed him to learn of their passing. But death… death was a guest every mortal should expect.
"The Eden Sect?" Lena's voice snapped him from his thoughts. Her gaze locked on him, sharp and unyielding. "We've never heard of the Eden Sect, Lord Yi Shen. I have also never met you
Yi Shen waited a moment, the silence stretching just enough to make the air feel heavier. Then, with a faint, almost weary smile, he said, "The memories of our encounter exist in dreams you no longer remember. But I remember… some of them, at least. A dead brain can only hold so much, hehe."
His gaze drifted over the rest of the team, eyes glinting faintly under the pallid light. "The Star-Touched Siblings… and Regan Atlas. The Nightmares said you would be coming with her."
Without another word, he turned and stooped to lift the body of the dead woman from the ground. Her limbs hung limply as he slung her over his back. His movements were deliberate, almost ceremonial, as though the act itself carried weight beyond practicality.
"Come with me before the scavengers arrive," he said, his tone carrying a shadow of urgency. "I am not strong enough to fight them."
Sophie's eyes darted to the jagged gorge around them. Her grip tightened on the spear still in her hand. She poured a thread of zenshi into the weapon, and it began to hum and tremble, faint light spilling along its shaft like veins of molten gold.
"Scavengers? I thought everything here was dead," she said cautiously, her voice edged with suspicion. She kept her distance, her stance angled not in fear, but in calculation—already wondering how one might kill an undead as old and powerful as Yi Shen.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
"Everything here is dead," Yi Shen replied, his voice steady but carrying an undercurrent of something darker. "But death does not mean the dead cannot make a good meal. The gorge is a feeding ground for something else. So, if you wish to stay, hand over your star weapon. It is the only thing about you that interests me."
Sophie's jaw clenched, a flash of defiance crossing her features, but before she could speak, her brother's hand settled on her shoulder.
"Don't waste our time, sister," Leo said, his voice calm but firm. "This man has no ill intentions. And besides…" His eyes flicked briefly to Yi Shen, studying him. "I don't think the spear will kill him."
Eventually, she released the spear and began to follow Yi Shen. His steps were heavy, each one sending a faint tremor through the cracked floor.
Lena trailed quietly behind him, lost in thought. That strange, lingering feeling had been gnawing at her ever since Yi Shen had struck her with that line…
"Dreams that I don't remember? Could this be connected to the Witch of Chaos?" she murmured under her breath, idly twisting a strand of hair around her finger. Her mind surged with restless energy, thoughts rushing like a swollen river after a storm. The hints were there, scattered before her like shards of glass, yet every attempt to piece them together left her with nothing but bleeding fingers.
"Regan…" She quickened her pace toward the one person who might know something. The Atlas House was a house of research. Their sole purpose had always been to understand the mortal world and the secrets that lay beyond it. If anyone here held answers, it would be him. Also, from his explanations earlier, she knew he had some significant knowledge about this place.
The red-eyed gentleman glanced up from the small book in his hand. "Yes?"
"What do you know about the place he mentioned? Anything on Eden?"
Regan's expression dimmed. He shook his head slowly, and after a moment's pause, said, "Eden often means 'beginning for humanity.' I've never heard of a sect with such a name. It's not in the research database. All of this is new to me, unfortunately."
"Anything on Dreams?" she whispered, her voice nearly swallowed by the still air.
He hesitated again, then spoke as though pulling old, half-forgotten knowledge from deep within himself. "I don't know much. The Dream World is too large and complicated to explore. It's nearly impossible to navigate without an Aura that connects you to it. What I do know is that it's tied to Hearts. The Dreaming was created by the Heart Goddess, a gentle celestial who understood humanity. She shaped it as a place for humans to grow, to gain inspiration, and to receive visions of both the future and the past while they slept."
Lena's head tilted. "Visions of the future and past?"
He nodded once.
"This realm is broken," he continued. "In the old world, humans could glimpse the future because the Dream's rules were never intact. Think of the Dream realm as a place where the thread of time is broken apart. Since that thread is broken, the past, future, and present collide to create this mess. Ascenders with abilities connected to vision are connected to the dream world that way."
Something in Lena's chest stirred, a sharp pull of curiosity. "So, basically… the Dream World is like a point of singularity where time breaks down."
Regan knotted his eyebrows, then shook his head. "That is all I know about Dreams. I don't know much, since the Dream Realm has always remained mysterious—both to us and our technology. I am the first member of my House to ever step into this place."
His words lingered in Lena's mind long after he finished speaking. She wanted to believe she now understood a little more about this strange realm, though a gnawing uncertainty still twisted in her chest. House Feng had never been one for curiosity. Their eyes were fixed solely on the Divine Realm, and for good reason—it was the only realm that bled into the Mortal World. Most clans shared that obsession. Knowledge of other realms was, at best, an afterthought.
The group pressed on, following Yi Shen through the shadow-choked gorge. Their footsteps echoed faintly against the canyon walls, swallowed quickly by the vast, oppressive silence that surrounded them. It wasn't long before the scavengers he had warned them about began to arrive.
At first, Lena braced herself for something familiar—wolf-like predators or vulture-shaped horrors feasting on the dead. But the reality was far worse.
The clouds above tore apart with a sound like rending metal. From the jagged openings, immense black limbs unfurled, stretching down from the heavens. Each one was a colossal tentacle, its slick, shadow-flesh pulsing faintly as it moved—each easily spanning eight thousand feet from base to tip.
Lena's breath caught in her throat. Her face drained of all color as one of the monstrous limbs curled lazily through the air, its movements disturbingly deliberate. It plucked up several of the largest corpses from the ground—bodies as big as fortresses—then retracted into the clouds, vanishing without a trace.
"Those are Titans," Yi Shen said over his shoulder, his tone flat, almost bored. "Corrupted, evil beings. They came from the Divine Realm after the god of death fell." His gaze swept briefly over them before returning forward. "We need to move faster before more come down."
But even as the words left his mouth, the clouds split again. This time, something different descended; an enormous skeletal hand, each bone the size of a city tower. It plunged into the heaps of corpses, closing its bony fingers around dozens at once before rising back into the storm above, trailing strands of black mist.
Lena could only watch, frozen in place, the sight burning itself into her mind like a nightmare she would never be able to wake from.