Snow still whispered across the empty ridge.
Each flake fell with the gentleness of ash, landing on the charred ruins of what once might have been a temple. The fire that had burned here was long dead, but its memory still clung to the stones, faint and stubborn, like regret that refused to fade.
Jian Wu sat on a fragment of a collapsed pillar, eyes half-open, his breath visible in the cold air. Mei Xue stood a few steps away, staring into the mist that hid the horizon. She hadn't spoken for hours. Neither had he.
Sometimes silence said more than words ever could.
Finally, Mei Xue broke it. "You're not the same as before."
Her tone was quiet, not accusatory, more like someone stating a truth she didn't want to believe.
Jian Wu didn't look at her. "Would you rather I pretend to be?"
She hesitated, hugging her cloak tighter. "I'd rather you stayed human."
That made him smile, just barely. "Humanity is fragile, Mei Xue. It breaks too easily when you start remembering things you shouldn't."
He raised his hand slightly. A small orb of light, gold mixed with gray, appeared above his palm. It wasn't like his old energy. It pulsed faintly, breathing in rhythm with his heartbeat.
"The one I found beneath the ice," he murmured. "It wasn't a corpse. It was me, or a part of me that existed before this life."
Mei Xue's eyes widened. "Reincarnation?"
"Something older than that."
He looked up. "It called itself The Law That Watches."
The wind rose, hissing softly through the broken stones.
He continued, almost as if speaking to himself. "It showed me fragments. A war before this world took shape. A promise made by someone who carried my face, someone who died sealing something away."
"And now it's inside you," Mei Xue whispered.
Jian Wu nodded. "It remembers me. But I don't remember it."
For a long moment, neither of them moved. The snow began to fall harder, blurring the world in silver.
Then, faintly a sound.
A whisper, carried on the wind, low and smooth like silk sliding across steel.
"You are not meant to feel, Heir of the Law. You are meant to awaken."
Jian Wu flinched, pressing a hand to his temple. The voice wasn't just sound, it was weight, pressing into his bones. Mei Xue rushed forward, grabbing his wrist.
"Jian Wu, stop! Don't listen to it!"
"I can't," he rasped. "It's not a voice… it's memory."
The snow around them trembled. Light began to seep from the cracks in the earth, faint golden lines tracing symbols that pulsed in time with Jian Wu's heartbeat. Mei Xue stepped back, shielding her eyes.
The mist rippled, and from within it emerged a shadowy figure. Not solid, more like smoke shaped by the idea of a man.
"The seal weakens," it said, voice layered with echoes. "And yet you still cling to fear."
Jian Wu lifted his gaze. His aura flickered between white, black, and faint gold. "If fear keeps me human, I'll cling to it until the end."
The figure tilted its head. "Then you will die as a man, not ascend as the Heir."
Lightning cracked far in the distance, not thunder from the sky, but from beneath the ground. The mountains themselves seemed to shift, as though something ancient stirred beneath their frozen roots.
Mei Xue shouted over the rising storm, "Jian Wu, we have to move! This whole place is collapsing!"
He didn't move. His eyes were fixed on the glowing veins of light crawling up his arms. "It's choosing," he whispered. "Either I master it… or it masters me."
"Then choose!" she screamed.
He exhaled slowly, a human breath in the midst of inhuman power. "I already did."
The golden light dimmed, then folded inward, vanishing into his skin. The rumbling stopped. The silence that followed was so deep it hurt.
When Jian Wu looked up again, the shadow was gone. Only snow remained, drifting quietly across the ruins.
Mei Xue's hands were trembling as she reached for him. "Are you still.."
He caught her wrist gently. His fingers were cold, but his eyes were calm. "Still me? I think so."
But deep inside, he wasn't sure.
For the first time, Jian Wu felt not power, but weight, the weight of everything that had been forgotten and yet refused to stay buried.
That night, they camped beneath the broken archway. The wind moaned through the stones like distant voices trying to remember a song. Mei Xue eventually fell asleep, exhausted. Jian Wu didn't.
He sat awake, watching the snow fall through the ruins.
And when he finally spoke, it wasn't to anyone living.
"Tell me," he whispered to the cold, "how many times have I died to keep this world breathing?"
The wind didn't answer, but somewhere far below the ice, something did.
One more time, Heir. Only one more.
Jian Wu closed his eyes. The snow covered his shoulders, white as mourning cloth.
The night carried on, silent and endless.