The night the heavens turned red, silence devoured the mountain.
A blood eclipse hung over the peak of Kaiyuan, staining the clouds like a wound that refused to close. The wind had fled, the crickets had hidden, and even the stars dimmed as if they feared to look down.
Within the Hall of the Heavenly Altar, the Yun clan gathered in prayer, robes fluttering from the breath of an unseen storm. Candles shivered though no air stirred. The marble floor, carved with ancient runes, pulsed faintly under the crimson light seeping through the ceiling's open circle — the Sky Eye, where generations of Yun priests had offered their devotion to the firmament.
But tonight, the Sky Eye gazed back.
Lightning flickered across the red moon, veins of light spreading without sound. The clan's eldest, Yun Zhen, stood before the altar, one hand clutching the ceremonial staff of heaven's ward. His expression was stone carved from fear itself. Behind him, his wife screamed — a raw, primal sound swallowed by the oppressive air.
A child was being born beneath a sky that wept fire.
"Bring more spirit water!" someone shouted. The disciples rushed, their faces pale. The incense smoke twisted in unnatural shapes, forming something like wings, like eyes. A low hum trembled in the bones of everyone present, as if the heavens themselves were murmuring judgment.
When the final cry died from the woman's throat, an uncanny stillness fell. No breath of life. No cry of an infant. Only the faint drip of candle wax, the echo of the stormless lightning.
Yun Zhen turned. In the hands of the midwife lay a small, silent form — his son, yet lifelessly still. Skin pale as frost, hair dark as the void between stars.
But his eyes…
When they opened, they reflected the blood moon perfectly — as if two mirrors had caught the dying light of heaven. The infant's gaze was not that of a newborn. It was too still. Too knowing.
A ripple ran through the runes beneath the altar. The red light deepened. The sky itself groaned.
Then came the sound — not from the child, but from above.
A cry of thunder, but no thunder followed. A sound that was not sound. The heavens screamed.
Every disciple fell to their knees. The flame of every candle extinguished. Only the blood moon remained, glaring through the Sky Eye like a watcher denied of rest.
Yun Zhen's hands trembled. He felt the staff in his grasp grow colder, the sacred relic of their lineage rejecting even him.
"This omen…" one of the elders whispered. "A life born under the eclipse of blood. The Sky has turned its face away."
The midwife hesitated. "Shall I… cleanse the child?"
"No!" Yun Zhen's voice cracked the silence. All turned to him. "He bears my blood. Whatever curse lies upon him — it is mine to bear."
The elders exchanged dark looks. The clan's priest, Yun Dao, stepped forward. His beard glowed faintly in the red light. "Then you will bear the weight of Heaven's rejection, Zhen. The child must never set foot upon the altar. He is not to face the Sky."
Yun Zhen bowed his head. "So be it."
The child did not cry. He simply watched.
Outside, the crimson clouds began to fade. The moon dulled, and the wind dared to breathe again. But that night, every beast on the mountain wailed until dawn — as though mourning the birth of something the world had no name for.
They named him Yun Wuxian — "Without Immortality."
An omen in his name. A mercy, perhaps, or a cruel joke of fate.
For the Yun clan had long served as Keepers of the Sky, guardians of the ancient altar that balanced the line between mortals and the heavens. Their prayers guided rainfall, their rituals steadied storms. But after the night of his birth, the heavens fell silent to them.
No rain answered. No light descended. The Sky refused to look.
Years passed. The boy grew beneath the weight of whispers. Servants averted their eyes when passing him in corridors. Children of the clan crossed their fingers to ward off misfortune when he came near.
He learned early that silence was his only refuge.
The first time he tried to cultivate, the qi around him dissipated like mist before dawn. The spiritual threads that obeyed others turned to smoke in his hands. When he reached for Heaven's energy, the world recoiled.
"Don't force it," Yun Zhen had said quietly, watching his son's futile attempts. "The Sky sees you not. Perhaps you are meant for something else."
"What else is there," the boy had asked, "when Heaven itself refuses to see me?"
There had been no answer.
At thirteen, Wuxian climbed the forbidden altar.
He did it not out of defiance, but out of longing. He wanted to know what the Sky looked like up close — the place his clan said would never acknowledge him.
Moonlight drenched the stones. The ancient runes pulsed faintly, like hearts buried in marble. As he reached the center, the Sky Eye above him yawned open — that perfect circle to the heavens.
For a moment, he felt nothing. Only the vast emptiness between stars.
Then came a whisper.
Not from the wind, not from the earth — but from within him. A voice cold as deep water.
"The Sky looks away because it fears."
He froze. His pulse echoed in his ears. The runes beneath his feet began to stir, faint red lines crawling outward.
"Who speaks?"
The voice did not answer. But the altar did.
Lightning — black this time — streaked down through the Sky Eye and struck the stone at his feet. The impact threw him backward, but the pain was not physical; it felt like his soul was being peeled open.
Visions surged: a thousand skies collapsing, stars bleeding into the void, a throne above clouds with no one to sit upon it.
Then he saw himself — standing where heaven once ruled, eyes reflecting not light, but absence.
When he awoke, the altar was dark. The lightning had left no mark. But his hand glowed faintly with a sigil — a circle within a circle, like an eye that would not close.
Yun Zhen found him there. For a moment, father and son faced each other under the indifferent moon.
"What have you done, Wuxian?"
"I only looked," the boy said softly. "But the Sky looked back this time."
The father's face was pale. "No… that cannot be."
"The heavens…" Wuxian murmured, gaze distant. "They are hollow, Father. Something watches from the other side."
Yun Zhen took him home in silence.
From that night onward, Wuxian's dreams were filled with stars that screamed.
He began to notice things others could not.
When elders chanted before the altar, he could see their prayers fade midair, dissolving before they reached the Sky Eye. When disciples cultivated in the courtyard, he saw thin fractures in the flow of qi — like cracks in glass, invisible to everyone else.
It was as if the world itself was wearing a mask, and only he could glimpse what hid behind it.
At first, he said nothing. But the fractures began to whisper. The same voice from the altar, low and calm, threading through his thoughts.
"They worship the blind."
"They kneel to what does not see."
"You alone are seen."
He would wake drenched in sweat, his room dimly glowing with that faint red hue — the same from his birth.
Once, he asked his father, "If Heaven rejects me, why do I still hear it?"
Yun Zhen's face aged years in a breath. "You do not hear Heaven. Whatever speaks to you, it is not what we serve."
Wuxian looked into his father's eyes and saw pity… and fear.
The fear hurt more.
When he turned fifteen, the elders gathered to perform the Ceremony of Heaven's Bond — a rite that every descendant of the Yun clan underwent, to link their soul to the divine current of the sky.
It was supposed to be sacred. But everyone knew it would not accept him.
Still, Yun Zhen insisted he be given a chance. "He bears the blood of Yun," he said. "If he is to be denied, let Heaven deny him itself."
So they prepared the altar once again. Thousands of candles. Incense of dragon pine. A bowl of celestial water reflecting the moon.
Wuxian stood barefoot at the altar's center, clothed in white. The sky above was clear — too clear, almost painfully so. No clouds. No wind.
Elder Yun Dao raised the staff and intoned the opening verse. The others joined, their voices rising into the void.
When Wuxian stepped forward and pressed his palms to the stone, the chant faltered.
Nothing happened.
The runes did not glow. The air did not stir. It was as if the heavens did not exist.
Then, without warning, every candle extinguished at once.
A single drop of red fell from the Sky Eye — not rain, but light, thick and trembling. It splashed on the stone between Wuxian's hands and spread like ink through paper.
The altar trembled. The runes flared — not gold, but crimson.
The disciples staggered back.
"Stop the ritual!" Yun Dao shouted. "He's drawing it in!"
But the chant had already shattered.
The light surged upward from the altar, wrapping around Wuxian's body. The crimson hue crawled across his skin like living veins of lightning.
Pain lanced through him, but deeper than flesh — it struck the soul, burning into something that was not meant to feel pain.
He saw the heavens again — but this time, they were not red. They were black.
Endless black, filled with eyes that blinked like dying stars. Each one turned away when it met his gaze. Each one trembled.
And through it all, the voice spoke again, not from outside, but from within.
"The Sky rejects what it cannot command."
"You are the silence between its words."
He fell to his knees. The crimson light burst upward, shooting through the Sky Eye like a reversed lightning bolt — a wound torn open into the heavens themselves.
Then, silence.
When the smoke cleared, the altar was cracked. The sacred runes were dead lines of ash.
Wuxian lay unconscious, a faint black mark now across his left eye — an inverted sigil of the Sky Eye itself.
The elders called him cursed. The temple bells rang three times that night, not in celebration, but in mourning.
Yun Zhen stood alone by his son's bedside, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest.
"Perhaps," he whispered, "the Sky was never ours to serve."
When Wuxian awoke, the world felt heavier.
He could hear the heartbeat of the mountain, the breath of the wind, the slow pulse of qi that lived in stone and tree. But all of it moved around him, not through him — as though nature itself circled a void it dared not touch.
He went to the courtyard at dawn, where mist rolled between the statues of forgotten ancestors. His reflection on the water showed eyes half-red, half-clear — divided between mortal and something else.
He remembered the voice.
He remembered the stars turning away.
And he understood, with a strange calm, that the Sky's rejection was not punishment. It was fear.
That realization was the beginning.
From then on, he trained alone, not with the arts of the Yun clan, but with silence. He learned to breathe without seeking qi, to stand without drawing strength from Heaven.
He discovered that when he emptied himself completely — when he erased every thought, every thread of desire — the world around him began to unravel slightly, revealing threads of darkness that moved beneath creation.
And he could touch them.
Not control them. Not yet. But sense them — like the faint edge of something immense pressing against the skin of existence.
He realized the others cultivated by reaching upward. He would cultivate by sinking inward.
One night, months later, Yun Zhen found him again at the altar — standing before the Sky Eye, head tilted upward.
"What are you doing here, Wuxian?"
His son turned, expression calm. "Waiting."
"For what?"
"For the moment Heaven looks away for good."
Yun Zhen hesitated. "If you keep walking this path, you may never return."
Wuxian smiled faintly. "If the Sky refuses me, Father… then I will build a heaven that cannot look away."
The words chilled the air itself.
The next morning, he was gone.
The clan searched the mountain, but found only his footprints leading to the altar and then ending at the Sky Eye. No blood, no body — just the faint red glow at dawn.
In the centuries that followed, the Yun clan's name faded. Their altar crumbled. But sometimes, when the moon turned red, the villagers in the valleys below swore they saw a figure standing at the peak — robed in shadow, eyes like the reflection of a dead sky.
They called him The Nameless Heaven.
Others whispered another name, older and forgotten — the one that was never meant to be spoken aloud.
Yun Wuxian.
A child born without cry, but beneath a sky that screamed.