Prologue to the Fragmented Chronicles of Hessenburg
Time: 3:47 AM, Sunday, July 20, 2075
Location: Glass Corridor of the ICU, First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University, Lakeside of West Lake, Hangzhou, China
Characters:
1. Li Xiang (29, postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Archaeology, nephew of Li Haoran)
2. "The Four Sisters" – Elena, Veronica, Lilith, Selena (appearing around 20 years old; true ages/identities unknown)
3. Li Haoran (78, comatose)
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Scene 1: Corridor Lights at 3:47 AM
The ICU corridor was bathed in 4000K cool white light, pinning human shadows to the floor like formalin-preserved specimens.
Li Xiang sat on a folding chair, dozing off while hugging a stack of CT scans. His dreams were filled with the Black Forest tales his uncle had told him – stone sarcophagi, swirling vortexes, the countess with purple eyes.
A sudden gust of wind roused him. He jolted awake, lifting his head to find four European girls standing before him. All wore long black trench coats with snow-white collars, all carried the scent of sandalwood perfume – yet they'd deliberately set themselves apart with differing eye colors and hair curls:
The leftmost had short, shaggy dark purple hair, the tips thinned as if sliced by night, glinting with the matte finish of cold steel;
The one at the back revealed the ruffled hem of a deep red wine dress beneath her coat, like a stain of moonlight-sealed wine;
The two in the middle – one with platinum blonde hair and violet eyes, the other silver-white hair and ice-lake green eyes – stepped straight out of that old 2025 photograph, their lash curves unchanged by time.
The electronic clock at the end of the corridor clicked to 3:50. Simultaneously, the surveillance cameras flickered into snow for three minutes – a bizarre detail Li Xiang later confirmed by checking the footage.
"Who are you?" Li Xiang asked in English.
The girl at the front handed him a business card, bearing only one line:
Hessenburg Stiftung – Hessenburg Foundation.
No address, no phone number, no website.
"We've come to see Li ~ Hao ~ ran." Her Mandarin carried a retro 1930s Shanghai lilt. "You may call us… the Four Sisters."
Li Xiang froze. His uncle had never married, a well-known "old bachelor" in archaeological circles. Where had he met foreign friends like these? And the four girls – their features might have been carved from the same block of marble, differing only by a hair's breadth of the sculptor's chisel.
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Scene 2: Ten Seconds
Doctors permitted "family members" to enter the ICU one by one, three minutes each. The Four Sisters formed a line, blocking Li Xiang at the door.
Through the glass, Li Xiang saw:
Faint blue mist condensing on his uncle's oxygen mask – not condensation, but ultra-fine streaks of light;
On the ECG monitor, the heart rate hovered at 45 beats per minute, yet spiked to 180 at irregular intervals;
Most eerily, his uncle's skin: the left half was creased with wrinkles, age spots like dried tangerine peel; the right half was taut and glowing, pores invisible, like that of a 20-year-old man.
The Four Sisters gathered around the bed, bending in unison, reaching out in unison, touching the center of Li Haoran's brow with their fingertips in unison. Their movements were synchronized as if pulled by a single string.
In the next second, the blood oxygen curve on the monitor flattened into a perfect straight line at 100% – a "flawless line" medically impossible – and held for exactly ten seconds.
Li Xiang rubbed his eyes. When he opened them again, the girls had retreated to the corridor, not a single wrinkle in the hems of their trench coats.
"He wants you to go back for a notebook," the girl with the Shanghai lilt spoke again.
"What notebook?"
"Third drawer from the left on your desk – the baseboard is removable."
Goosebumps raced up Li Xiang's spine. He'd secretly measured that drawer just the day before, noticing it was three centimeters shallower than it appeared.
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Scene 3: A Rainy Night Return
At 4:30 AM, a downpour lashed Hangzhou. Li Xiang took a taxi back to Yuquan Campus, and at every intersection, the traffic lights went dark – not due to traffic police control, but a collective power trip.
At the dormitory gate, the security guard nodded off, while his walkie-talkie crackled with a woman's voice speaking Latin: "Sanguis locum non mutat." (Blood does not change its place. / Blood remains bound to its homeland.)
Li Xiang pulled out his keys, only to find the door unlocked. Pushing it open, he saw a 1943 German military map spread on the desk, with "Black Forest · Novaria" circled in red ink – the ink still damp, curling the edges of the paper.
Trembling, he opened the third drawer, removed the baseboard, and found a 32-page notebook with a sheepskin spine. The silver-embossed coat of arms on the cover had faded to black – a double-headed eagle clutching a bunch of grapes, the grape seeds hollowed out like tiny fangs.
Flipping to the first page, he recognized his uncle's handwriting:
"To my future self, or my past self –
If you're reading these words, it means 'she' has finally come for me.
Don't be afraid. Time was never a straight line, but a well.
Only by jumping in can you see the true sky."
On the second page, four long hairs were tucked: platinum blonde, graphite black, silver-white, rose brown – matching the hair colors of the Four Sisters.
Li Xiang suddenly realized: his uncle's six-month "disappearance" in 2025 hadn't been a trip to Xinjiang's Lop Nur, that land of urban legends and ghost stories. He'd been trying to cover something up…
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Scene 4: Five Minutes of Blank in the ICU
When he rushed back to the hospital in the rain, it was 5:57 AM. The ICU entrance was crowded with medical staff, all wearing blank expressions –
"The patient is gone."
"How is that possible?!"
In the surveillance footage, from 5:49:10 to 5:54:10, there was five minutes of complete snow. When the snow cleared, only a sunken pillow remained on the hospital bed, and a black feather stuck in the IV port – its shaft hollow, lined with faint dark red traces, like dried blood.
Li Xiang was surrounded by doctors' questioning, unable to defend himself. Until the head nurse murmured softly: "At 4 AM, didn't your foreign relatives sign the papers? Authorizing the withdrawal of treatment, and donating the body to… the Hessenburg Foundation."
Li Xiang's head spun. He'd never signed any such document, yet the copy bore his English name "Lee Xiang" – the handwriting identical to his signature on his doctoral dissertation.
But the head nurse looked astonished: "I could've sworn the initial was C, with a 'van' in the middle. How did it become LEE Xiang? And in Pinyin, not Chinese characters?"
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Scene 5: The Notebook's "Loose Leaf"
Back in his dormitory, Li Xiang flipped through the notebook again, discovering a "loose leaf" tucked in the middle. The paper was newer than the rest, yet glowed with the linen fiber sheen of 19th-century paper.
It bore a single line of German in cursive:
"Wenn du das liest, bin ich schon zurück zur Nacht.
(When you read these words, I have already returned to the night.)"
The ink glistened as if freshly written three seconds earlier.
Li Xiang's finger was cut by the edge of the paper. A drop of blood fell at the end of the German sentence, then snaked along the strokes, automatically filling in an emblem he'd never seen before:
Bat wings + gears + DNA double helix.
In the next instant, the entire notebook "closed" – literally: small fangs sprouted from the sheepskin spine, and with a click, it nipped off a sliver of Li Xiang's fingernail, sealing the bloodstain into the spine like a stamp.
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Scene 6: The Invitation
At 6 PM, Li Xiang received an email – no subject, no sender, only a set of GPS coordinates:
47.5275° N, 8.0212° E
And a screenshot of a plane ticket:
Hangzhou to Zurich, 12:05 AM, July 21, first class. Passenger name already checked in: Lee Xiang.
He looked up, catching his reflection in the dormitory mirror. Around the edges of his pupils, a faint purple halo had appeared, unbidden.
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Scene 7: The Past
His uncle had once told him:
"The true end of archaeology is not excavating the past, but being excavated by it."
At this moment, Li Xiang finally understood. He wasn't going to "find" his uncle – he was going to "succeed" him.
On the last page of the notebook, a new line of text slowly emerged in the light –
"The Purple Eyes of Hessenburg"
The ink still wet, as if someone were sitting beside him, across time.
(Prologue · Part One)