---
The world returned in fragments.
Sound first — the crunch of gravel beneath wheels, the soft creak of wooden axles, and a distant chant carried on the wind.
Then scent — old incense, musty scrolls, and the faint tang of iron.
Finally, light. Dim and golden, filtered through rice paper walls and swaying lanterns.
Rei opened his eyes to a slow-moving sky, framed by the open flap of a carriage. His body ached, but not in the way of wounds — it was the ache of resonance, the aftershock of a Word too vast to contain. His skin still bore the faint shimmer of glyphs, though they now lay dormant beneath the surface.
Across from him sat the red-robed man — Shān-Luò.
The man watched him with the calm of someone who had waited many lifetimes for this moment. A scroll was unrolled on his lap, the ink still wet. Not words — but strokes. A message not written, but measured.
> "You slept three days," Shān-Luò said, without looking up. "Your Word... resisted."
Rei sat up slowly, keeping one hand on the wooden side of the carriage.
> "It spoke to me," he murmured. "But I didn't understand."
Shān-Luò finally looked at him.
> "Good. That means it was real."
The path beneath the carriage twisted upward into mist-draped mountains. At the summit, barely visible through the fog, loomed the ancient Temple of Last Words — Zhōngcí Sì. Not built by hands, but carved by the echo of Words long lost. Each step, each stone, bore silent scripts etched by meaning itself.
> "This place," Shān-Luò said, as if reading Rei's thoughts, "is where silence ends, and the true language begins."
Rei watched as the mountain seemed to shimmer with unseen force — an invisible pulse that resonated in his chest. The very air vibrated with memory.
---
Inside the Temple
The Temple gates did not open with force, but with invitation. As the carriage stopped, the wooden doors parted soundlessly, revealing a vast courtyard surrounded by whispering trees and calligraphy that shimmered faintly on every surface.
Three figures stood waiting.
Each wore a variation of the red robes, but none bore Shān-Luò's elder's seal. They watched Rei with wary eyes — not hostile, but not welcoming either.
> "New Echo," one of them said. A girl, no older than Rei. She had coal-dark hair bound in a crown of thread and ink-stained fingers. "You don't belong here yet."
> "He has spoken," Shān-Luò said. "And been heard."
The other two students stepped back slightly at that, eyes narrowing.
> "The Word... responded to him?" the second, a tall boy with jade earrings, asked.
> "It named him."
The third, silent until now, gave a slight bow. His eyes were closed — and yet he saw more than the others. Rei could feel it in the way the air bent around him.
> "Then he will begin at the first circle."
---
The First Circle
Rei was led to a chamber deep within the mountain — not underground, but beneath language. The walls bore no decorations. The silence here was absolute.
A stone pedestal stood in the center, and on it, a scroll sealed in iron rings.
> "The Scroll of Breath," Shān-Luò said. "Your training begins not with power, but with listening. Each circle reveals one truth."
Rei stepped forward. The moment his fingers brushed the scroll's edge, a sound rippled through the room — not heard by ears, but by memory.
A voice. His own.
But from a time he could not remember.
⟪ I am... ⟫
And then — silence.
Rei recoiled slightly. His breath caught in his throat.
> "You heard it," Shān-Luò said, approving. "Now you must learn not to."
---
Nightfall
That night, Rei sat in the outer courtyard, staring at the ink pond that reflected the moon in shifting verses. The other students kept their distance. One watched from a balcony, another meditated by a tree, the third etched characters into the dirt with a blade.
He touched the glyph on his forearm — one that had pulsed earlier that day. Still warm. Still alive.
> "Xuān," he whispered.
The word made the water ripple.
From behind, the girl from earlier — the one with ink-stained hands — approached.
> "You'll drown in it if you speak too freely," she said. "Some Words take. Some give. Yours... steals."
Rei met her eyes. "And yours?"
She hesitated. Then whispered:
> "Wèi. To wait."
Then she walked away, her shadow stretching long behind her.
Rei looked back at the water.
He didn't know what his Word wanted from him.
But he could feel it — not in his mind, not in his heart, but in the hollow between.
A space shaped like silence.
And it was listening.
---
End of Chapter 2