The Fire Petal Oath
1779 Words
For three hundred years within the Crescent World, time flowed differently.
Beyond its borders, seasons changed, empires rose and crumbled, but within the veiled dome of that realm—frozen between moonlight and memory—Yue Ling remained hidden. Not because she was fragile. Not because she was weak. But because she was a secret. One too precious, too dangerous, to be cast into the winds of fate.
She was sculpted in silence.
Trained like a blade yet to taste its first blood. Refined like medicine whose cure might one day demand a price.
Her days bled into nights, and nights bled into dawn, each one a meditation of suffering and strength. Under Grandfather Yue’s relentless instruction, Yue Ling’s body, mind, and spirit were honed until nothing of her childish self remained. She had once wept at the mere sting of a splinter. Now, she faced beasts with fangs forged from fire.
“Again,” Grandfather Yue snapped, hurling another creature into the blazing arena—a snarling beast draped in shadow, cloaked in scales that glistened with fire-resistant dew. It pounced with a shriek.
“Kill it, refine the core, and extract the essence. We do not fear. We learn.”
Sweat carved trails down Yue Ling’s blood-smeared cheek as she steadied her breath. Her bare feet cracked against the scorched stone. Her arms burned with fatigue. But her eyes—those frostflares—held only focus, as if even warmth dared not approach.
She summoned the fire.
It coiled from her palm like a living serpent, answering her will. Not just any flame. The fourth top-quality fire, a legendary essence passed down through the Yue line. Yet, in her, it didn’t remain what it was. It evolved.
The moment she had merged it with her inherited spiritual void root and flows with the spiritual fire part of the void element, something ancient stirred, something even the fire feared. The flame warped into a strange golden hue, exuding heat and purity that devoured corruption. Even Grandfather Yue had faltered the first time he saw it ignite.
“Impossible,” he’d murmured, his voice low with reverence. “That’s the Second Supreme Flame.” “It should not exist…”
Yet it did. In her.
And she wielded it with growing precision.
Advancing from the Essence Vein Opening Phase to Marrow Cleansing—the deepest substage of Body Refinement—in less than a decade: even seasoned cultivators would call it madness.
But her body bore the cost.
Cracked meridians. Stretched tendons. Nights soaked in bitter herbs and screams muffled into pillows.
Still, she never stopped.
Because with every breath, she felt something long locked inside her shifting. .
Then came the day everything changed.
Grandfather Yue stood on the edge of the central chamber, surrounded by thousands of suspended refining tools—each hovering midair like frozen memories. The stone floor beneath them was engraved with rings of language too old for books. The air shimmered with restrained energy.
“It’s time I passed down the true art of our Yue bloodline,” he said quietly.
His tone lacked the bark of a drillmaster. It was heavy. Reverent.
Yue Ling paused mid-form, her hands still glowing faintly with fire runes. “What do you mean?”
He didn’t look at her. His gaze remained locked on the floating tools.
“This world you see,” he said, “I created it.”
Yue Ling’s brows furrowed.
Grandfather Yue lifted his hand. The surrounding tools responded, shifting to form spirals in the air.
Our bloodline holds the ancient power to refine small worlds. To twist time. Forge deathless traps. Create living tools. Artifacts that can save empires or destroy them. “This,” he turned, “is our legacy.”
Yue Ling’s breath caught. It sounded like a tale pulled from fantasy.
“But this power,” Grandfather Yue continued, “must never be abused.”
Yue Ling took a trembling step forward. “If she (her mother) had such strength… such power… why couldn’t she save herself?” “Then why did she die?”
His silence cut deeper than any sword.
He turned away, eyes distant. “You’ll understand soon.”
Later that evening, Grandfather Yue summoned her again.
Before them floated a single petal—golden, translucent, weightless in the air, a silky white scarf with a flowery pattern, a sword, and some other weapon.
“Before we leave for the outside world,” he said, “you must choose your refining disguise.”
“My what?” “Oh! Grandfather, we are leaving this cage...” but he was cut short with grandfather Yue reply
“It is the form your refining tool will take—its outer shell, its spirit armor. The vessel that binds your soul and veils your strength.”
Yue Ling stared at the weapons. “So… it’s like a vessel?” “Which one am I to choose, Grandfather?”
“More than that. It will become your second skin, and will make people see you as someone that doesn't have a significant weapon. What you pour your life into. Your mother chose a scarf. Beautiful. Elegant. It became her pride. He paused. But it also became her curse.”
A chill crept over Yue Ling’s skin.
“What will yours be?”
She didn’t know. Her lips parted—but before sound could form, a sudden voice stabbed through her thoughts.
Sharp. Commanding. Female.
“i***t! Don’t pick the scarf! It may kill you like it killed her. Use a flower petal. A flower petal—simple, pure, underestimated.”
Her heart stopped.
“Who said that?” she gasped, eyes wide.
She turned to her grandfather. “Can people hear voices when cultivating?”
Grandfather Yue chuckled, but the sound was uneasy. “No. Only madmen and qi deviators.”
But his eyes—those wise, heavy eyes—lingered too long. Too knowingly.
That night, sleep evaded her.
She stared at the ceiling of her chamber, shadows cast by moonlight dancing like spirits across the carved wood. Her fingers curled tightly over her blanket.
“Use the petal,” the voice whispered again, this time softer. Almost pleading. “The petal is the only way to live.”
She sat upright, gasping. The ancient ring—still disguised as an earring—glowed faintly against her lobe. A pulsing light, subtle but rhythmic. Like a heartbeat.
It hadn’t spoken since the awakening months ago. Since it had entered her consciousness during the sealing ritual. It had saved her once.
Her chest tightened with questions.
Why had she been warned against something Grandfather Yue had offered with such sincerity?
And more frightening than all—why did she feel like her very destiny was being shaped by forces she didn’t yet understand?
The next day, she stood again in the refining chamber.
“I’ve made my choice,” Yue Ling said, her voice clear.
“I’ll take the petal.”
Grandfather Yue nodded slowly, not at all surprised.
She stepped forward. The flower petal floated into her palm. The moment it touched her skin, warmth spread through her like ripples in a quiet lake.
It fused to her essence without resistance.
The binding was smooth. Clean.
But then—
Pain.
Searing, blinding pain.
Yue Ling collapsed to her knees as golden light exploded from the petal, embedding itself into her veins like molten thread. Her spiritual core twisted violently.
Her scream echoed off the stone walls.
“Grandfather!” she cried out, but he remained frozen, eyes locked on her with a strange look—not fear, not confusion—but something else. Awe? Guilt?
The petal pulsed again. And suddenly—
The seal inside her broke.
Half of it.
Power, once locked so deep she couldn’t even sense it, roared forth in a wave so wild the room trembled.
Her spiritual fire burst free, wrapped in threads of light from the Second Supreme Flame. Her body shimmered with radiant heat as the dormant power flooded her limbs.
The earring—the ring—flared into action. Without warning, it launched itself into her spiritual sea and began spinning rapidly, stabilizing her meridians and causing other dormant elements to awaken; the wind element, water element, wood element and the earth element coming together to form the void element root.
Outside the chamber, Butler San burst in, startled. “Master! The seal—!”
“I know,” Grandfather Yue whispered. “It’s happening.”
“What have you done?” Butler San’s voice trembled.
“I didn’t intend to open half of the seal,” Grandfather Yue admitted, and also remembered saying “I gave her… the prototype.”
“You’re insane! She’s not ready!”
“She’ll either survive and ascend… or die and release it. There’s no middle ground.”
Yue Ling’s scream turned silent.
Her body convulsed once, then stilled.
The ring wrapped her in a cocoon of light. Petal-shaped layers spun around her like a lotus of pure fire mixed with all elements that brings out a beautiful colorless hue around the light. From the outside, she appeared asleep. But within, her transformation had begun.
Grandfather Yue fell to one knee.
“She’s cocooned,” Butler San whispered.
“No…” Grandfather Yue’s voice broke. “She’s transcending.”
Far away, deep in the West, the Star Cycle shooked vigorously.
In the South, East and West and the Central, spiritual beasts howled.
And in the Heavenly Palace—where ancient stars floated in divine orbit—Xueyin stirred from his meditation.
Eyes closed, breath steady, he had been cultivating the Void Element—one of the rarest paths, the one only chosen by those prepared to abandon everything.
But now his pulse shifted.
A surge of energy—foreign, raw, and familiar—brushed his senses.
His eyes snapped open.
“What is this…” he murmured.
A ripple flowed through him. His ancestral blood answered it. Scales flickered across his arms, vanishing just as quickly.
His master appeared beside him, face pale.
“She’s awakened,” the old man said.
“Who?”
But the master did not answer. He only stared beyond the mountains, toward the direction of the Crescent World.
Back in the cocoon, Yue Ling floated between pain and clarity.
The ring pulsed in rhythm with her heart. The petal glowed brighter. Her bloodline unfurled like ancient script, each syllable etched into her bones.
The truth had only begun.
And far, far away—something old had begun to move.
Something that had waited a lifetime… for her.
- Writer
