The world was shaking.
Cracks veined the sky like shattered glass. Screams of space-time bled through the fractures, echoing like the cry of a wounded god. The central realm itself rumbled beneath the weight of an uncontrollable storm.
Lillian Han—no, Aurevian, the Heir of the Monarch—was losing herself.
Her scream had become a frequency that the world could barely bear. Mountains collapsed. Oceans trembled. Celestial light flickered like dying embers. And at the center of it all… stood a girl whose sorrow had become apocalyptic wrath.
Her blue eyes were vacant, glowing. Her lips trembled—not with fear, but with fury. Her hair, once soft and bright, now floated wildly like divine flame, touched by entropy. Chains of godlight curled around her, breaking apart with every breath she took. She had become a rift in reality, and reality wept.
The death of Chris Walker had unsealed what should've never awakened.
Then—
A step.
And another.
Calm. Gentle. Purposeful.
Out from the smoke, shadow, and fractured light… he appeared.
His white hair flowed with eerie stillness, untouched by wind. Red irises and black sclera burned like twin eclipses, and shadows curled beneath his feet, whispering names lost to time. No longer just Jin Shang—this was something ancient, something deeper.
This was the First Whisper.
Lillian turned toward him. She growled low, like a creature ready to kill again.
The moment their eyes met—hers of chaos, his of serenity—the world paused.
Then he spoke, voice soft, low, calm as a midnight prayer.
"Aurevian… long time no see. You always broke the world when you cried."
Lillian's golden pupils constricted. A crack of familiarity broke through her fury.
"W-What…?" she stammered, her tone laced with confusion.
"You remember, don't you?" Jin whispered as he stepped closer, undeterred by the storm twisting around her. "Before the Monarchs called you their heir… before you even remembered your name… we met. Not as gods. Not as vessels. But as two fractured souls in a dream of stars."
Her body trembled. "No… you're lying. Jin is dead. You're not—"
"I am Jin. And I am more," he said, taking one final step forward until he stood just before her, inches away. "The First Whisper… the one that was never meant to awaken."
Aurevian's aura flared, but his gaze never wavered.
He reached out—not with force, not with magic, but with his hand. Soft. Open.
"I didn't come here to fight you. I came to remind you."
A beat passed.
Then another.
Lillian gasped—her mind, The fractured skies still wept with celestial light as Lillian stood frozen. Around her, the broken fabric of reality shimmered, yet within her eyes—another world had opened.
A memory.
Not hers.
Not Jin's.
Aurevian's.
Her knees gave way as golden threads wrapped around her consciousness, pulling her through time.
Inside the Memory
It was a world without names.
Before kingdoms.
Before the war
She stood beside a boy cloaked in shadows—but the shadows didn't hide him. They protected him. His eyes—silver and fire—watched her with an unreadable softness.
"You always go where you're not supposed to, Aurevian," he said, sitting beneath a tree of stars, brushing leaves made of echo and song.
"And you always follow me anyway, Whisper," she smiled, not knowing why that name trembled her soul now.
They laughed. The kind of laughter that only two souls who'd spent lifetimes together could share. In that place, she wasn't Han Lillian. She wasn't the heir of a Monarch.
She was just Aurevian, and he was the First Whisper—the one who walked between silence and war, chaos and memory.
"Why do you call yourself Whisper?"
"Because I never speak first," he replied, "but I'm always the last sound in a dying world."
"You…"
The vision shattered.
Lillian gasped, breath ragged. Her fingertips trembled. Tears spilled down her face, golden and silent.
"You were always the only one who looked at me like I wasn't a weapon," she said in a choked voice. "Why didn't I remember sooner?"
"Because even stars forget their light," Jin murmured. "But the Whisper remembers. I always did."
Her power trembled.
And finally… dimmed.
The crackling of energy stopped. The ground stilled. Even the sky, fractured and bleeding, began to stitch itself together.
He smiled, gently brushing her cheek.
"It's over, Aurevian."
"No," she said, holding his hand. "It's only beginning."
Jin looked up then—toward the sky. The broken firmament. The stars that had witnessed countless cycles of pain, of war, of betrayal.
And he spoke—his voice filled with solemn fire.
"To all Monarchs who see through time, who echo through rot, who whisper chaos into dreams… listen well. The day will come when you answer for every soul you've broken. Even if I fall—know this: I will return. As silence, as fury, as shadow… as the whisper you cannot kill."
Blood trailed from his lips. His breath caught.
"Jin?!" Lillian caught him as he swayed.
"I'm… just tired now," he whispered, falling into her arms.
And in that moment—after all the chaos, all the power, all the revelations—Jin Shang, the First Whisper, closed his eyes and fell unconscious beneath the fractured sky he vowed to protect.
The storm had passed.
But the war had only just begun.