The Hall of Still Echoes hummed that morning.
Not with voices… but with attention.
A soft, waiting awareness pressed against Sol's skin as she moved through the shallow pools that lined the inner chamber.
She had woken before dawn, unable to sleep. Ji Ming's breathing had been steady beside her, calm but edged with the tension of a man who never truly rests. Ya Zhen was somewhere on the far side of the monastery, humming softly while brewing early tea.
Sol slipped away without waking them.
The hall greeted her like a living thing.
She paused beside the first ripple of water, watching her reflection settle. The world beyond the monastery was still gray with predawn haze, but inside the hall… the light felt warmer, as if coming from beneath the floor.
Sol sank to her knees, fingertips touching the stone. Something stirred beneath it, a memory older than any sect, older than any empire.
"Are you awake?" she whispered.
The hall did not answer.
Not with a voice.
But the ripples stilled.
And the air warmed.
She took that as a yes.
Sol moved deeper inside, tracing the old carvings on the wall. They depicted lotus petals, wolves in motion, and tears falling into water… each image half-erased by time. When she pressed her palm to one faint engraving of a lotus, the stone pulsed faintly against her skin.
Not qi.
A much older pulse.
Like the memory of qi.
"Show me," she said softly. "Whatever you've been holding."
The stone beneath her hand warmed rapidly.
The next moment, the ground gave way.
Not physically, the monastery didn't collapse.
But the world beneath her feet shifted.
Vision slid sideways.
Her breath caught.
And then she was no longer in the echo hall.
She stood at the center of a lake.
A silent, mirror-smooth expanse that reflected nothing at all; no sky, no sun… only the emptiness of a world without memory.
Sol exhaled slowly. "So this is… before."
A figure appeared on the far shore.
The same woman she'd seen in the first remembrance, white hair falling like threads of silver water, robes drifting in a wind Sol couldn't feel.
The Lotus Ancestress.
She walked across the lake without disturbing its surface.
"You called me," Sol whispered.
The woman stopped several steps away. Her expression was gentle, but her eyes were filled with sorrow so deep it could have drowned mountains.
You are not ready to hear all of it,
the woman's voice rippled through the water,
but you must hear enough.
Images broke across the lake like shards:
Two cultivators kneeling back to back, their qi spiraling out of harmony.
A jagged mirror rising from a river of tears.
Hands clasping… then tearing apart.
The world splitting like a cracked bowl.
Sol flinched at the force of the emotion.
"What happened to you?" she whispered. "To all of you?"
The woman lifted her chin slightly.
We loved too deeply.
We held too tightly.
We believed resonance could save us…
and we tried to bind it in our image.
She opened her hand.
Light flickered, showing a scene of two cultivators reaching toward the sky, their qi twisting together like a double helix made of moonlight and flame.
Sol knew without being told: The First Twin Hearts.
The woman spoke again.
Shuangxin is not meant to be chained.
And the Mirror was not meant to obey.
It remembers grief because we gave it grief.
It reflects fear because we taught it fear.
The lake darkened.
The sky, if there ever had been a sky, fractured above them.
But you…
You do not try to bind it.
You listen.
Sol's throat tightened. "It isn't easy."
Nothing sacred ever is.
The woman stepped closer.
For the first time, she reached toward Sol… but stopped before touching her.
When the Mirror breathes,
it will seek the one who hears it.
Teach it what we did not.
Teach it to choose.
Sol felt her heart twist… fear and awe and purpose tangled into something fierce and fragile.
"I don't know how."
The woman smiled, sad, knowing, tender.
You are already doing it.
The lake shimmered, the surface trembling.
When the Mirror calls you by name, do not run.
Sol's eyes wide. "It… it will speak?"
In its way.
A pause.
The water around them began to rise, pulling the vision toward its end.
The woman's face softened, light brushing her features until they blurred into glowing edges.
You were never meant to be just healer, Sol.
You were meant to be memory's mercy.
Sol reached for her.
"Wait—"
But the world folded like a breath drawn inward.
She gasped, blinking… and she was back in the Hall of Still Echoes, kneeling on the cold stone, her palm braced against the wall.
The basin beside her shimmered once… and went still.
Ji Ming's voice echoed faintly from the corridor.
"Sol? Are you here?"
She swallowed, forcing her breath to steady.
"…Yes."
Footsteps.
He appeared at the doorway, eyes searching for signs she'd been hurt.
"You shouldn't be alone."
Sol rose slowly.
"I wasn't."
He stilled… not understanding yet, but feeling the gravity in her voice.
She brushed her fingers over the lotus carving one more time.
The stone was quiet now…
but not empty.
It had spoken.
And it had chosen her.
She stepped toward Ji Ming.
"We need to leave the monastery soon," she said softly. "It remembers too much."
Ji Ming nodded, watching her closely.
Sol took one last look back at the hall.
The water in the nearest basin trembled, barely, like a held breath.
Memory's mercy.
She didn't understand it fully.
Not yet.
But she would.
The world was waiting for her to.