The priestess knelt beneath the towering arch of the Moon Shrine, where lanterns swayed like silent witnesses to her guilt.
Outside, the chants of novices echoed faintly through the stone corridors, but in the center of the high chamber, only the flickering brazier offered warmth. It cast orange light over the smooth lines of her face, the pale blue fabric of her robes pooled like water around her feet.
Yue Xi did not move, nor blink. Not even as the wind stirred the curtain separating the inner sanctum from the mortal world.
She could still see him.
The war general from her visions—no longer just a dream, but flesh and blood. His face had changed, hardened by battle and time, but his soul… she had known it even before he knelt in reverence. Even before he spoke her name with the weight of lifetimes.
> "I have found you again."
Those words hadn't left her mind since the ceremony ended.
She had seen countless pilgrims enter the temple in search of blessings. None ever looked at her like he had—with agony, with certainty. With love.
And worst of all, she had looked back.
---
From the garden wall above, the Temple Overseer watched her. Silent, unmoving, like a statue carved into the granite itself. His robes of deep crimson and gold whispered with ancient thread. He knew something had shifted.
"She's wavering," he murmured to the wind. "Just like the stars warned."
---
Later that night, under the vast open sky, the general stood outside the temple gate—his armor removed, his blade sheathed, but his heart still braced for war.
The name he had carried across battlefields and memories echoed now like thunder: Lián Kai.
He had dreamt of her for years, through lifetimes. Every time he died, her face waited on the other side of darkness. Sometimes she was a flame in a storm. Sometimes she was drowning in rivers of light. But always—always—she was reaching for him.
Until now, she had only been a myth burned into his blood.
Now she was real.
And she was forbidden to him.
Kai pressed a hand to the carved gate, the temple's barrier between the divine and the damned.
"She doesn't remember all of it," he whispered. "But I do."
---
Back inside, Yue Xi's voice trembled in prayer. The sacred flame sputtered.
> "Great Mother of the Skies," she whispered. "Why does my soul tremble when he speaks? Why do I know his sorrow before his name?"
A single paper crane fluttered down from the rafters and landed before her knees.
It was untouched by hand.
She stared at it. The message written on its wings was familiar. Ancient. A vow sealed in ink and blood.
> "When the stars fall and the rivers reverse, I will find you again. Even if the heavens deny me."
—Lián Kai, 473 years ago.
---
In that moment, Yue Xi remembered.
Not all, but enough.
A battlefield beneath twin moons. A kiss stolen in the shadow of death. A blade between ribs. Her voice calling his name as light took her.
She gasped.
Outside, the wind howled.
Inside, the forbidden priestess wept—silent and trembling, as fate rewrote itself beneath the temple sky.
The bells of midnight tolled across Elarion, their sound slow and solemn, like the heartbeat of a grieving god.
Inside the sanctum, the priestess lay still.
Yue Xi had been placed in a chamber of silence, a sacred space where oracles went when the mind became burdened by celestial interference. Her attendants thought she had overexerted her divine senses during the victory rite. But she knew the truth.
The memories were returning.
She could feel them pushing beneath her skin like roots beneath stone—seeking cracks in her calm, in her vows, in her soul.
The paper crane still lay beside her pillow.
She hadn't dared unfold it.
She didn't need to.
Its words burned behind her eyes.
---
That night, sleep claimed her like a tide pulling back into the deep.
But what greeted her was no dream.
It was her first death.
---
The battlefield stretched endlessly beneath a blackened sky. The land was ash and bone. Soldiers fell like trees in a storm. Fires burned in rivers. She stood amid it all, younger, in armor the color of ice.
Not robes.
Not a veil.
A sword in her hand. A name on her lips.
> "General Kai!"
She turned. He ran toward her, bleeding, defiant, alive. Behind him, a dozen enemy archers raised their bows.
She shouted. Too late.
The arrows flew.
One struck his leg. Two more grazed his chest. A fourth would've pierced his heart—if she hadn't taken the fifth.
She staggered.
Looked down.
The blood on her armor wasn't his.
He caught her before she hit the ground.
> "No—no, no. Not like this."
She smiled, even as the light began to fade.
> "If I die protecting you… then I'll be born again. To find you."
---
The memory shattered.
Yue Xi woke with a cry, her hand pressed against her stomach.
No wound.
But the pain still lingered.
Breath ragged, she sat up. The silk sheets twisted around her limbs like restraints.
Outside her window, the moon had turned red.
---
Later, she returned to the Mirror Hall — a sacred chamber forbidden to most.
Here, high priestesses recorded dreams and divine omens. Here, fate was interpreted and measured.
She stood before the Mirror of the Past, its surface like still water suspended in glass.
Yue Xi stared into it.
And the mirror stared back.
First, her own reflection.
Then another.
And another.
Dozens of women with her face — dressed in armor, in rags, in royal gowns, in blood. All versions of her across time.
Each of them had died.
Each of them had loved him.
And each had been torn from him by divine law.
She whispered her own name like a question.
> "Yue Xi… or… Elira. Shin. Saelin. Amal…"
"Who am I now?"
The mirror flickered.
A vision burst through.
A temple aflame. A war. Her hand bound in his. A god screaming from the sky. A curse.
> "The priestess shall never be one with the blade. If she dares love him again, the heavens shall break her soul into a thousand lives."
She staggered back, nearly collapsing.
> "It wasn't just fate," she gasped. "It was punishment."
---
The paper crane had not come to her by chance.
It was a message from her first life.
From the woman who had cast the curse by defying heaven itself.
> Herself.