The Shemi Continent is vast.
Its skies shift from thunder-lit clouds above the God Domain to endless dawnlight over the Fairy Domain. The Spirit Domain folds space like breath. And the Phoenix and Dragon Domains remain steeped in lineage and law — watching everything but seeing little.
Somewhere far from all that is the Mistveil Domain.
Few name it aloud. Fewer remember it's there.
But that's where I was born.
Where a phoenix-blooded woman left me near an empty cave.
And where I began carrying what no one else had before.
---
I sit now in a room reserved for Core Disciples. One of the best in the eastern hall — high-raftered, cool, untouched.
The robe still rests beside me. Folded. Unworn.
I haven't looked at it in hours.
It holds no meaning.
What matters sits deeper — at the edge of my soul, where the fusion mark pulses like a stone dropped into still water.
Ninety percent.
That's how far I've come.
---
The boy in the sealed cave believed the fusion of dragon and phoenix wasn't possible. That it tore the soul apart.
He wasn't wrong.
It does tear.
But mine held together.
Barely.
Now only one thread remains — thin, stubborn, refusing to bend. I can't shape it, can't reach it. And I don't know what waits beyond it.
But I know this much:
She gave me the flame.
And he gave me the will.
Neither of them stayed.
---
My mother carried phoenix blood.
She survived the ruins that trapped her. Took what she needed from my father a dragon.
She never told me what..
After three years of my birth she left.
I don't remember her voice.
Only her steps moving away.
---
I never expected anything from her.
Still don't.
But she knew how to carry phoenix flame — if she even had the shape of a method to keep it from consuming the body from within — then she may hold a key.
Not to finish this path for me.
But to stop me from breaking before it ends.
---
"Do I really have to find her?"
The question tastes dry.
Not bitter. Just old.
I don't want to search for her.
I don't want to offer that kind of effort to someone who made her choice and never looked back.
But I don't know anyone else who could have touched this path and lived.
Even if she didn't walk it herself… she might have seen its shadow.
At least she know about phoenix flame after all she is a phoneix.
---
And I can't afford to guess anymore.
---
But the Phoenix Domain is closed to me.
Their bloodlines watch for their own. I would be seen long before I arrived. Worse — recognized.
So I'll go west.
Where memory lasts longer than blood.
---
The Ancient Archaic Domain sits just beyond the edge of known routes. Its forests are too deep, its mountains too scarred to house modern sects. What lives there is old — or broken — or both.
That's where I'll begin.
If there are answers buried in the continent, they're buried there.
I'll leave before sunrise.
No farewells. No trail left behind.
Let the sect focus on their ranks.
They've already seen enough to forget me quickly.
But what I seek…
I won't forget.
---
End of Chapter Nineteen