The scene before her eyes gradually dimmed. When Kiana snapped back to reality, she realized she was still standing in that ash-gray corridor. It seemed nothing had changed.
Those memories dissolved into the quiet surface of her mind like a single drop of water into a still lake, leaving only faint, soundless ripples twirling in the air.
The corridor looked exactly the same. The ashen light, the gauze-like mist, and that tireless breeze wandering through the halls.
But she remembered what she had said aloud. She also distinctly remembered that within the dreamscape, the little girl had seemingly turned her head to look right at her.
Kiana didn't know if it was a trick of the mind, but this world wasn't going to pause for her hesitation.
She opened her mouth.
"Xu Xi."
She called out the name to the empty void.
Her voice wasn't loud, but it rang out with crystal clarity in the dead quiet of the hallway. Perhaps she just wanted to confirm if the little girl had truly existed, or maybe she simply wanted to leave a trace of that name behind in this desolate corridor.
No one answered her call. The only movement was the light seeping through the cracks of the doors, flickering in and out like a person sobbing for breath.
A draft blew in from the end of the hall, carrying her voice away.
No echo.
—
When Kiana opened her eyes again, she was no longer in the corridor.
She didn't feel any transition. There was no sensation of reality shattering or piecing itself back together. She simply blinked, and the world shifted.
She was floating in midair—a sensation entirely unique to the realm of dreams. She had no weight, no physical body. She was nothing more than a pair of eyes looking down upon everything from an impossible, omniscient angle.
Beneath her was a vast expanse of... she didn't even know how to describe it.
It was unlike anything she had ever seen.
From Kiana's current vantage point, it looked like a colossal, boundless web woven entirely from thousands upon thousands of glowing, gossamer threads. The strands were silver-white, resembling spider silk or fiber optics, converging from every direction before endlessly branching outward.
It took Kiana a few seconds to recognize the shapes clinging to them.
Worms.
Countless, innumerable worms.
They lay motionless atop the glowing threads, like dead specimens pinned to a display board.
Every single worm was fully unrolled, displaying itself completely from one end to the other.
One end was tiny and nearly transparent, like a newborn infant. The other end was nothing but ash. It resembled paper that had been burned in a fire—still miraculously holding its shape, yet ready to disintegrate into dust at the slightest touch.
Kiana's breath hitched.
She was looking at time.
She was literally looking at time.
Those glowing threads were causality. They were the karmic links, the invisible bonds that tethered person to person and event to event.
And those worms... were people.
From cradle to grave, from beginning to absolute end. Every "was" and "will be" was rendered simultaneously on a single flat plane, unfurled like a grand scroll.
This was the world Xu Xi saw.
Every second of every day, the moment she opened her eyes, reality presented itself to her in this exact form.
Then, before Kiana's eyes, the world reverted to "normal."
Like a hand gently smoothing out the ripples in a pond, the bizarre visuals vanished, revealing the dead, stagnant stillness lingering beneath the surface.
She saw the ash-gray light pouring down from above like a faded curtain, draping heavily over everything.
The light fell on the walls, so the walls were gray. It fell on the floor, so the floor was gray. It fell on the ceiling, and the ceiling remained gray. The very concept of "color" was dead here, leaving only a bleached skeleton waiting to be filled in by something else.
Just like the room before her: entirely empty and blanketed in dust.
In the corner sat a piano with its lid closed, buried under a thin layer of grime. The bookshelves by the window were crammed with all sorts of trophies, but the text on the certificates was blurred, as if viewed through a sheet of running water.
The curtains were drawn halfway, allowing a shaft of light to slice the floor into two distinct halves.
In the illuminated half, countless dust motes drifted, spinning lazily in the sunbeams like a swarm of wandering fireflies.
In the unlit half, Xu Xi sat quietly in the corner. She was as poised and dignified as a marble statue, as flawlessly perfect as an unrealized imagination.
Aloof from the world.
Xu Xi's eyes were wide open, staring blankly ahead.
There was no light in those eyes. They were like two drained wells, leaving behind nothing but cracked, barren darkness. Looking into them evoked the image of withered winter branches, of old photographs abandoned by the roadside, of things that had already reached their definitive end and would never, ever change.
She turned the page of her book. The rustle of the paper sounded like a weary sigh.
The room was quiet.
So quiet that you could hear the dust settling onto the piano lid.
Muffled voices bled through the walls from the adults in the next room—a continuous drone with zero fluctuation, like a flatlining heart monitor.
You could even hear your own heartbeat... No, you don't have a body. You are just a pair of eyes suspended in midair.
Yet you still hear a heartbeat. It isn't yours; it's hers.
She stared at that single page for a long time.
Then, she delivered her verdict.
"Boring..."
She uttered the word as if pronouncing a death sentence on the book itself. She snapped it shut, raised her head, and looked toward the half-open window.
Outside was a garden. It had gray grass, gray trees, all set against a flat gray sky. Without leaves, the trees looked like fleshless skeletal hands reaching desperately toward the heavens.
Someone sat on a bench beneath one of the trees. Their facial features were a blurred, indistinct mess, completely twisted into a single line of translucent, floating text.
[Neighbor — Grandpa Zhang]
Four simple words summarized the absolute entirety of this person's existence within Xu Xi's world.
And it wasn't just people.
Flowers, grass, trees, birds, beasts, bugs... Everything animate and inanimate, living or dead, looked as if a sticky note had been slapped onto it, boiling down its entire grand totality into a few short lines.
Xu Xi stared out the window. She set the book aside, stood up, and stepped barefoot into the sunlight.
The light fell into her well-like eyes, finally casting a faint reflection within the void.
If you leaned in close—close enough to clearly see the reflection in her pupils—you would realize that she wasn't looking at the garden outside at all.
Then what was it?
You lean closer.
And you see it.
There was a figure. Tiny and distant, standing amid a sea of ash-gray fog. You couldn't see his face or his clothes. He was nothing but a vague silhouette.
But he was glowing.
Utterly distinct from the rest of the world.
"That's..." Kiana stared at the glowing figure, slightly entranced.
She suddenly realized she had her body back. She was no longer just a floating pair of eyes.
"That is my brother," Xu Xi answered Kiana's unfinished thought. Her voice was soft, as casual and calm as a light hum.
"I know it's Shu... Wait, WHA—?!"
Kiana whipped her head around in shock, staring wide-eyed at the little girl standing right beside her, who only reached up to her chest.
The girl turned serenely, tilting her head up to meet Kiana's gaze, and offered a smile entirely devoid of warmth.
"It is a pleasure to meet you. I am Xu Xi."