The feather in Shen Ziyan's hand shimmered with a faint, ethereal glow—light, yet impossibly heavy. Holding it felt like cradling the breath of a dying world. It pulsed once, twice, as if responding to the rhythm of his heart.
"What... is that?" Bai Yanyue's voice was low, almost reverent. Her gaze was fixed on the feather as though it were something sacred—or cursed.
Ziyan didn't answer. He couldn't. His mind was blank, overrun by fragments of memory that weren't his, yet felt as if they'd been etched into the core of his being. That feather—it was the same one that had drifted into his dream before he woke in this world. The same one that floated in the abyss between his death and rebirth.
It was not from this world.
And neither, perhaps, was he.
"It's nothing," he finally said, tucking the feather into his robe.
Bai Yanyue didn't push, but the flicker of suspicion in her eyes lingered. "Let's get out of this valley. The aura here is... wrong."
Ziyan nodded. As they made their way out of the Valley of Fallen Names, the ground beneath them pulsed faintly, as though the land itself was sighing in relief. The lingering mists, now thinner, retreated like shadows at dawn. No more beasts attacked. The silence was even more unnerving than the earlier chaos.
It took half a day's journey to leave the valley's heart.
At the edge of the valley, a decrepit pagoda stood slanted against a crooked cliff. Tiles missing, wood rotted, but still faintly giving off the smell of incense. Ziyan paused. Bai Yanyue looked at him quizzically. "You sense it too?"
"Mm," he replied.
There was something buried beneath the ruins. Not a person. Not a beast. But... a presence. A will that watched.
They approached with caution.
Inside the pagoda, the air was stale with age, but strangely clean. The floor was covered in strange patterns, not carved, but burned into the stone itself. Ancient runes shimmered in the dark, whispering in forgotten tongues. Ziyan could not understand the language, but the meanings seeped into his mind like oil into cloth.
Oath of Silence. Oath of Exile. Oath of Flame.
Then, he saw it.
A corpse sitting cross-legged at the center, draped in robes far older than the empire itself. Around its neck hung a rusted pendant with a symbol—a closed eye surrounded by lotus petals.
Bai Yanyue inhaled sharply. "The Silent Sect."
Ziyan looked at her.
"You know of them?"
"Barely. They were erased from history before even the Nine Immortal Dynasties rose. Not defeated—erased. Every scroll, every memory, every disciple… vanished. It's said they tried to ascend through forbidden means."
Ziyan walked closer. The air thickened.
As he reached for the pendant, the corpse's head jerked upward. Its hollow eye sockets locked onto Ziyan, and from its mouth came a breathless voice.
"You... carry the feather."
Ziyan froze. Bai Yanyue raised her fan, but the corpse didn't move further. It simply stared.
"You... are one of the Returned."
The word echoed in his mind.
Returned?
"What does that mean?" Ziyan asked.
The corpse said nothing.
But the moment his fingers touched the pendant, the runes on the floor ignited, flaring with crimson light.
A sudden pull—like a tide dragging him under.
Then darkness.
And then—
---
He stood beneath a black sky where no stars shone.
Mountains floated like shattered teeth in the void. Rivers of molten gold ran uphill, and in the distance, titanic chains bound a colossal, withered hand the size of a continent.
It was the hand from his dream.
The one that fell through the void.
The one that once created worlds.
A voice, neither male nor female, filled the sky.
> "The Sword that Cuts Destiny... The Flame that Devours Heaven... The Feather that Returns the God... Choose."
Ziyan's body trembled. The feather in his robes burned with silent fire.
Then, behind him, three paths appeared—each made of countless corpses, ascending into different parts of the void.
He turned—
And found that Bai Yanyue was gone.
He was alone.
Before he could choose a path, a silhouette stepped out from the void ahead. Familiar.
It was himself.
But older. Harder. Eyes cold like dying stars.
The older Ziyan unsheathed a sword forged of silence.
"You should not exist," the echo said.
Ziyan's body moved instinctively. His reborn flesh, strengthened by marrow and flame, reacted before his mind did.
They clashed.
The impact shattered the sky, and the world collapsed—
---
He gasped awake.
Back in the pagoda.
Bai Yanyue was shaking him, her eyes wide with worry.
"What happened? You vanished for a moment—then you screamed."
Ziyan sat up slowly, the pendant still in his hand. The corpse was gone.
Dissolved into ash.
His heartbeat was uneven. Not from fear. From something else.
The visions. The questions. The word Returned.
Had he lived in this world before? Had he been someone else before Li Yuan? Was he... really Shen Ziyan?
Too many questions.
Too many echoes.
"Let's go," he said. "There's nothing more here."
As they left the pagoda, he glanced at the sky.
The clouds had formed a peculiar shape.
A lotus with an eye at its center.
And as they descended the mountain trail, Ziyan sensed something else.
They were being watched.
Not by beasts.
Not by humans.
But by the same presence he'd felt in the void.
Something ancient.
Something waiting.
—
In a faraway place, atop a forgotten peak,
A man sat before a black cauldron that floated in the air. His face was obscured by a hood of woven flame, and his hands moved in slow, precise gestures.
Inside the cauldron boiled not water, but memories.
He spoke:
> "The Returned one walks again. His soul burns with marrow fire. The Hand... will awaken soon."
Behind him, nine shadowy figures knelt in silence. Each bore the mark of a different ancient sect long thought extinct.
The man raised his hand.
"Prepare the Ninefold Execution."
"The target?" one shadow whispered.
"Shen Ziyan," the flame-hooded man said. "He must not reach the City of Stars."
"And if he does?"
The cauldron hissed. The memories inside twisted into a storm.
"Then even the gods will have to kneel."
---
Cliffhanger:
As Shen Ziyan and Bai Yanyue arrived at the edge of the Forgotten Valley, preparing to descend into the region beyond, a gust of icy wind swept through the trees.
Ziyan paused.
From the mist ahead, nine cloaked figures stepped onto the path.
Their leader raised a blade shaped like a serpent's spine.
In perfect unison, they spoke.
"In the name of the Silent Sect... Shen Ziyan must die."