The world did not end when Heaven cracked.
That, Anna thought later, was the most unsettling part.
The sky above the ruined Pavilion had settled into something almost ordinary—clouds drifting like torn silk, light pooling in the valleys where broken laws still hummed softly. Cultivation energies bled away into the soil, no longer held in rigid circulation. Mountains exhaled. Rivers forgot their assigned courses and wandered.
It was not destruction.
It was relief.
Anna stood at the edge of the terrace where the Hollow Sky Pavilion had once floated, her boots dusted with pale stone and old sigils ground into meaningless powder. Below her, the world was relearning how to exist without being watched.
Behind her, Lexus was silent.
That alone told her he was hurt.
Not mortally—she could
