Morning mist lingered low over the eastern valley, soft and silver, blurring the world into silence. The earth was damp beneath Jian Wu's feet, and the smell of rain clung to the air. He walked slowly, his hand brushing against the cool surface of ancient stones that lined the forgotten road.
Each step echoed faintly, swallowed by fog.
He stopped when he saw her.
A woman stood at the far end of the path, wrapped in white. Her hair fell like a shadow behind her, swaying with the wind. She looked too still for this living world, like someone carved from memory rather than flesh.
"Stopping here will only make the mist come closer," she said softly.
Jian Wu turned, his eyes narrowing. "Who are you?"
The woman smiled faintly, though her gaze carried a thousand unspoken things.
"Someone who once knew you," she replied. "Perhaps too well."
He frowned. The tone in her voice, gentle, steady, made something stir inside him. He had heard it before. Somewhere far, far away.
But the memory refused to surface.
The mist between them drifted apart, and sunlight broke through, touching her face. For a heartbeat, he couldn't breathe. There was no power in her expression, no divine aura. Just something painfully human, tired eyes that had watched too many dawns.
"Your name," he said at last, his voice low. "Tell me."
"Bai Lian."
She said it like a prayer.
The name struck him like a chord plucked in his chest. His breath faltered, and flashes rippled through his mind light, sound, laughter then silence. It vanished before he could grasp it, leaving behind only a hollow ache.
"Why do I feel…" He hesitated. "As if I've made a promise to you?"
Bai Lian's lips curved, but the smile trembled. "Because you did."
The wind carried dry leaves between them, swirling lazily. For a moment, everything else, the world, the noise, even the pain stilled. The quiet between them said more than words ever could.
He repeated her name under his breath. "Bai Lian…"
"Why can't I remember you?"
She lifted her eyes, meeting his gaze.
"Because the world doesn't want you to."
Her voice was calm, but there was grief behind it, a grief that didn't scream, only lingered.
They walked together toward the ruins nearby. What once had been a grand temple was now nothing but fragments of stone and ivy, standing stubbornly against time. Carvings on the wall showed two figures standing back-to-back, divided by a spiral symbol broken in the middle.
Bai Lian stopped in front of it.
"That," she said quietly, "used to be us."
Jian Wu said nothing. He stared at the cracked spiral, then pressed his palm against the stone. It pulsed faintly beneath his hand, warm, alive.
And then… a whisper, soft but unmistakable, echoed inside his mind.
"If one day I forget, remind me who I was."
He staggered back.
Bai Lian didn't move. She knew this moment had to hurt.
"That voice," he murmured. "It was mine…"
She looked down. Her reply came like a sigh.
"And those words… were for me."
Sunlight slipped through the broken ceiling, falling between them like threads of gold. Dust drifted through the light, slow and weightless.
Bai Lian turned her face upward. "Fate likes to circle back to the same place," she said softly. "But this time, I want to see if we can walk the other way."
She turned to leave, but Jian Wu called out, "If I can't remember… will you still wait for me?"
She paused. The wind brushed past, lifting her white sleeves as if trying to pull her away.
"I don't know," she said at last. "Maybe I'm not waiting anymore. Maybe I just never learned how to stop."
Her footsteps were soundless as she walked toward the mist, fading little by little.
He watched until her silhouette vanished, until the only thing left was the echo of her presence, and the weight of what he couldn't recall.
He closed his eyes.
Behind the darkness of his eyelids, fragments stirred again, silver eyes, a falling sky, two hands that refused to let go.
He whispered, almost without meaning to..
"If I forget… I'll still remember you."
The words felt old, familiar, like something borrowed from a dream.
For a long time, Jian Wu stood there, caught between silence and awakening.
He didn't understand it yet, but deep inside, something ancient was turning, breaking through the walls of amnesia the world had built for him.
A memory that refused to fade.
A promise that time itself could not erase.