Years passed.
Seasons folded one into the next like fading pages of an unwritten book. Rain came and went, the sun rose and fell, and no one remembered why they were here...only that here was all that remained.
The island was called The Island. Only villages were named in it.
No one had named it, because no one remembered enough to give it meaning. They simply called it the land, or this place, and built their lives from the dirt up. Some believed they were always meant to be here. Others dared to wonder if they had come from somewhere else..but those thoughts were like fog,impossible to grasp, and dangerous to follow.
High walls of stone and mist surrounded the horizon, always there, always still. No one crossed them. No one even tried. Not anymore.
Yet amidst the silent hills and river-soaked plains, life began again.
Children were born. Crops were planted. Small villages formed around hearths and shared work. Memory was replaced by routine. Dreams by survival. And so the people endured.
But not all accepted it.
One boy, born into this world of forgetting, seemed to carry a piece of something older. Something... waiting.
Le Wei.
Seventeen years in age. A quiet presence with sharp eyes,storm-gray and too deep for his age. His skin bore a faint scar below the collarbone, a mark that pulsed some nights like it remembered pain even when he could not.
He was not like the others.
Where most villagers toiled and laughed and slept, content in the simple rhythms of island life, Le Wei wandered. He would stare at the horizon for hours, where sea met mist, as if hoping it would break open and reveal the truth. When he slept, his dreams were filled with images he couldn't explain...burning skies, towers that pierced clouds, and voices that called him by names he did not know.
Why do we feel hollow at night? Why do our dreams feel like borrowed memories? Why does the sea refuse us?
These were the questions that rallies through Le Wei's mind. Unanswered.
The elders whispered that he was strange. A restless spirit. Some called it a blessing. Others, a curse.
But Le Wei cared little for their words. He did not feel cursed.
He felt... forgotten.
Only one word echoed to him most times..Yanzhou.
What does it mean?....
That morning, the sky was pale with lingering clouds. Mist hung in the valleys like unspoken questions.
He stood atop a grassy cliff where the land dropped toward the shore. Waves crashed against black stone far below. From here, the wall that circled the island looked even more immense...like a wound in the sky.
The village of Yanhe stirred behind him, smoke rising from cooking fires. The people were already moving...fixing roofs, feeding livestock, teaching children how to fish or plow.
They had found peace.
Le Wei had only found questions.
A breeze tousled his hair as he sat on a boulder and pulled out a worn cloth journal...his own creation. Filled with charcoal sketches, observations, and pieces of stories he heard in the wind.
There were no true names in that book.
Only fragments.
"Yanzhou." The word came to him again, unbidden. He had no idea what it meant.
But it felt like something once lost. Like a memory hiding just out of reach.
He scribbled the name down anyway.
----
A voice rose from below the hill, cutting through the hush of morning.
"Le Wei!"
It was warm, firm, and familiar.
He didn't answer immediately. His gaze lingered on the horizon, still chasing the echo of that strange word...Yanzhou..as if it might form itself into meaning if he stared long enough.
"Le Wei! Come down before the porridge turns to stone!"
He sighed, shut the cloth-bound journal, and tucked it into the folds of his rough linen robe. Then he stood, brushing stray blades of grass from his knees, and began the slow walk back toward the village.
The path curved between trees with low-hanging branches and moss-covered stones. Birds chirped overhead, always the same few songs, as if the island had forgotten how to invent new melodies.
Le Wei ducked beneath a twisted fig tree and stepped into the small clearing where his home stood, a modest hut of wood and clay, with smoke curling gently from the cooking vent.
At the doorway stood his guardian, Old Ren, a man whose beard was more white than black, and whose back had begun to bend from years of fishing and lecturing.
"Took you long enough," Old Ren grunted, holding out a wooden bowl.
Le Wei accepted it wordlessly and sat on the step.
The porridge was warm, thick with root vegetables and seasoned with wild herbs. Not a feast—but comforting in its own way.
"You always climb that hill," Ren said, sitting beside him with a groan. "Looking for something?"
"Maybe," Le Wei replied between spoonfuls. "Or maybe I just like the view."
Old Ren smirked. "You have your mother's eyes. She used to say the same thing."
Le Wei paused. "…I don't remember her."
"No one does, boy. Not truly. Not how we should."The old man tapped his temple. "Whatever took our memories took them clean. Like wind wiping away footprints."
"But you remember her saying that?"
"Sometimes the wind leaves traces. You learn to catch them."
Le Wei nodded.
He had always seen Old Ren as the wisest man he had ever met. He wasn't just his guardian...he was his anchor. His shield. His world. In a life surrounded by questions and silence, Ren was the only truth Le Wei had ever known.
He was more than family.
He was his favorite person in the world.
"I had another dream," Le Wei said quietly.
"This time I was standing in a field of white trees. The sky was black. And something was calling my name."
Old Ren didn't respond at first. He took another bite. Chewed slowly. Then finally said, "You dream like someone with too much time."
"You think it means nothing?"
"I think dreams are like riddles. And you're too young to solve them." He rose, bones cracking. "Now finish your food. We've got nets to mend."
Le Wei watched him disappear into the hut.
He glanced at the bowl in his hands, then at the woods, then at the sky.
The wall loomed in the distance like an eternal judgment.
He wondered if it watched them, too.