“Some thrones are carved from jade and gold.

  Others are forged from pain, memory… and the will to walk paths no one dares.”

  — Yanxu, Whisper of the Fallen Sky

  There was no map to the Sixty-Seventh Throne.

  Even immortals feared its direction — a place known as The Verge Beyond Echoes, a realm that predates the celestial bureaucracy itself. To walk there was to walk into memory made manifest, a domain shaped by forgotten truths, devoured destinies, and unacknowledged gods.

  But Li Fan had already trodden the Path Beyond Heaven.

  He walked barefoot, every step sparking silver across the void. By his side were Yue Xian and Yanxu — the Dream of Embers, and the Voice of the Fallen.

  Behind them, the air shimmered with starlight.

  Before them, only silence.

  Until they reached the gate of the Ten Thousand Voices, a monument of speaking stone.

  It greeted them with a whisper:

  “Name the truth that no god dares say.”

  Li Fan stepped forward.

  “That they fear to fall.

  But I have already fallen… and rose without a crown.”

  The stone sighed. It opened.

  The Verge Beyond Echoes was no place — it was a memory too old for time.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

  Li Fan walked through scenes of old heavens: ruined temples of deposed gods, fragments of belief once powerful now eroded to myth. Faces rose from clouds — nameless priests, forgotten cultivators, spirits betrayed by the system they once served.

  Then a shadow followed them — tall, shifting, silent.

  Yue Xian drew her blade.

  Yanxu raised his hand.

  But Li Fan simply turned and said:

  “You’ve followed me since the Foundation Stage. Speak.”

  The shadow condensed into a figure cloaked in wind.

  It was himself.

  Not a clone. Not a double.

  But the version of Li Fan that never broke free.

  “If you ascend,” the echo said, “I vanish. I am your fear, your hesitance, your doubt.”

  Li Fan looked at him.

  Then he bowed.

  “Thank you for walking with me until now.”

  And the shadow dissolved.

  At the heart of the Verge stood the Sixty-Seventh Throne.

  It was not made of gold or spirit crystal.

  It was carved into a tree — an ash-black tree rooted in the corpse of a dead universe.

  There, beneath its boughs, sat a man cloaked in moss and silence.

  Thal’Zir, the Forgotten.

  Once a god of Wanderers, cast out for teaching mortals too much.

  He looked up with eyes that shimmered like nebulae.

  “So. You came.”

  Li Fan nodded.

  “Why did you call me?”

  “Because,” Thal’Zir said, rising slowly, “I was the first to break the divine chain.

  And you might be the last.”

  The god held out his hand.

  “You seek no throne. But the world needs one not bound to heaven.

  Walk with me. Learn what gods fear.

  Learn how to unmake the sky.”

  Li Fan took his hand.

  And everything shattered.