The mist had not yet left.
It lingered between the fallen stones like a memory refusing to die. Jian Wu stood where Bai Lian had vanished, staring at the space she had dissolved into. The air around him felt too still, too heavy, as if the world itself was holding its breath.
His hand rested on the cracked spiral stone. The surface was cold, then warm, then alive. A faint pulse moved beneath his skin, and from deep inside the stone came a whisper, softer than wind, older than time.
"If one day I forget, remind me who I am."
It was his own voice.
But older. Weary. Echoing from somewhere beyond this lifetime.
He looked down. A faint mark glimmered on his palm, shaped like the broken spiral. It burned gently, glowing and fading with every heartbeat.
"Bai Lian…" he murmured. "What did you leave behind in me?"
The wind shifted, carrying the scent of wet earth and something ancient. Then, footsteps.
"Jian Wu!"
Mei Xue appeared from the trees, her hair tangled by the mountain wind. "I've been searching for you since dawn!"
He turned slowly. His eyes looked deeper now, like they had learned how to remember what they shouldn't.
"I found something," he said quietly.
She scanned the ruins, uneasy. "This place… it feels alive."
Jian Wu nodded. "The temple never truly died."
He brushed moss from a wall carved with forgotten symbols. "It remembers more than stones should."
The ground trembled. The spiral stone began to glow again, cracks spreading across its surface. From the gap beneath, cold air burst upward, swirling like a breath from the underworld.
Mei Xue stepped back. "What's happening?"
"Not what," Jian Wu whispered. "Who."
The light turned pale, neither gold nor silver and a voice rose from the depths, slow and resonant, vibrating through their bones.
"My heir… you have returned."
Jian Wu froze. He knew that tone, though he couldn't name it.
"Who are you?"
"The first. The one you left behind when the world fell apart."
The voice vanished as suddenly as it came, leaving a silence so complete it rang in his ears. Jian Wu knelt beside the fissure. Inside, faint light rippled like water, and within that shimmer he saw her, Bai Lian, standing across the divide, her eyes gentle, almost real.
"No…" he breathed. "This can't be."
Mei Xue grabbed his shoulder. "Jian Wu, don't..!"
But the light pulled him closer. It wasn't force, it was recognition. The world calling back a part of itself that had once been lost.
Darkness swept over him.
He saw a sky torn open, gods clashing, mountains burning, and in the center of it all, himself, holding a woman's hand beneath the collapsing heavens.
Then, nothing.
When Jian Wu opened his eyes again, he was kneeling on the cold ground. The glow had vanished.
Mei Xue knelt beside him, her hand trembling on his arm. "What did you see?"
He took a breath that felt too heavy. "I'm not sure. A dream, maybe… or something that used to be."
Her gaze fell to his hand. The spiral mark was fading, leaving only a faint scar. "Whatever it was," she whispered, "it means the world is beginning to remember you."
He looked toward the darkening sky.
"If the world remembers me," he said softly, "then it will also remember everything we tried to forget."
The mist began to roll back in, slow and patient.
And deep beneath the ruined temple, something stirred a heartbeat that did not belong to the living.