I push the chair aside too see the letter more clearly—the chair scrapes softly against the floor with the sound feeling louder than it should.
I reach out for the letter—hesitant, almost afraid.
My fingertips hover over the dried blood. The rough texture of the paper, the faint metallic scent lingering in the air... It's real. Too real.
I stare at the paper, my fingers trembling as they grip the edges. My name written in Mandarin, so clear, so deliberate keeps pulling my eyes back to it, like it holds a truth I'm not ready to face.
Xu Yichen.
How? Why?
I can't seem to tear my gaze away from those familiar characters, the strokes of ink burning into my mind.
I can't stop myself. With a shaky breath, I start reading, unable to ignore the pull any longer.
It is unclear whether these words will reach you in time.
His eyes skim the first few lines, and something cold coils in his gut,
Already, his breath catches. A lump begins to form in his throat, and he doesn't know why yet but he keeps reading.
I know you have countless questions, and doubt must be gnawing at you but there is no time for hesitation.
I do. A thousand of them. And none of them matter, not when the next line hits.
I write this with trembling hands, with a fear I cannot afford to acknowledge.
You are running out of time.
His hands tighten around the page. His pulse stutters. The letters begin to blur at the edges, not from magic, not from some shifting ink but from tears he refuses to acknowledge.
Fortune's Call is not just a ritual—it is your last hope.
Fortune's Call? What was this? My thoughts swirled, an unsettling sense creeping into my bones. i couldn't understand it, couldn't understand any of it. What does this mean for me?
Heed the desperate plea of one who has already failed.
Failed? He couldn't stop his fingers from trembling as he read on.
Do not wait. Do not falter.
But why can't i wait why can't i falter.?
From this moment on, you must take on a name, an identity.
Your new name in this world is Victor Sterling.
His breath hitches sharply. The name doesn't belong to him—it feels like a stranger's skin forced over his own.
He can't accept it. He won't. His hands squeeze the paper tighter, trying to force some sense back into the world. This is absurd. This is wrong. His life—his real life—had just been torn away from him, and now he's supposed to become someone else?
Please… take care of my family.
They don't know anything. They still laugh. They still believe I'll come home.
There's no pang of guilt. Just hollowness.
My family is gone.
Not a single one i know is here.
Not anymore.
There were no warm hugs, no desperate voices calling his name. Just cold silence. Just the echo of memories that faded long before this letter arrived.
Why should I help you? Why should I carry this for you, a stranger?
Use the Bloodlit Compass.
to find them. And when you do, give them the Echoing Tear.
It is sealed within the Lamented Casket—a box that only they can open. Once they lay eyes upon what is inside, their memories of me will vanish.
The letter keeps unraveling secrets like it's trying to outrun its own guilt. The Bloodlit Compass. The Echoing Tear. The Lamented Casket.
Please… look at the letter across from you, written in ink. It is titled Fortune's Call.
It will tell you what you need to do.
Fortune's Call will, at the very least, ensure your survival for a certain amount of time. After that, it is all up to you—and your fortune.
The paper in his hands crinkles, caught between his trembling fingers. And still he reads on, even as his throat tightens. Even as the weight of it all begins to weigh on him.
Before anything else… read the books.
The ones piled up on the desk you are reading this from. The ones scattered across the floor where you awoke.
There are answers within them—more than I can give you here.
Among them, you will find a strange tome. Its pages hold knowledge of the supernatural, of the unseen forces that shape this world. But for now, only a single page will reveal itself to you. Another book, written in shifting ink, will grant you the language of this land. The words will carve themselves into your mind, allowing you to speak as the people of the North do.
This place you have awoken in is Wintermere, a noble city on the edge of the Frozen Sea in the North. It is cold in more ways than one. Do not trust the silence.
Wintermere. A name that means nothing to me. And then the books—books scattered around me. I'm supposed to read them, find answers, but none of it makes sense. Not the language, not the strange shifting ink, not the Bloodlit Compass The Fortune's Call or Echoing Tear. I'm drowning in an ocean of unfamiliar words, a world that doesn't belong to me.
I'm sorry. I can't tell you more than this.
This is my final request, my last act of selfishness.
I am sorry for placing this burden upon you.
But you must carry it Xu Yichen (许逸辰).
Because I no longer can.
His fingers begin to shake. A hollow pressure builds in his chest. His lips part, but no sound comes out. There's too much.
Too much to understand. Too much to feel.
Tears sting his eyes. He's still staring at the page like it betrayed him. Like the weight of those final words "Because I no longer can" has cracked open something he can't put back together.
Then as if the words were carving their own place in his soul. His throat tightened, constricting with a slow, painful ache. He swallowed, but the knot in his chest only grew tighter.
I sit in the cold, the weight of the letter pressing on my chest, my hands trembling as I hold it tightly, trying to keep myself together. I've read these words a dozen times, and each time they cut deeper, like they're carving something inside me I'm not sure I can fix.
Victor Sterling.
This wasn't supposed to be my story.
This wasn't supposed to be me.
I'm Xu Yichen. Not Victor Sterling.
I had a life. A family. A name.
He tries to recall something anything
but there's nothing. No memories. No flashes of a life.
The name isn't mine, but it's the one I have to live with.
Because what else do I have left?
What else can I do?
There's no road back to the life I knew. No sign pointing home. Just this twisted, frozen world, a stranger's name, and the weight of another man's regrets resting in my hands.
And that's the least of it.
I look around at the room, the strange place I've woken up in. The unfamiliarity of it, the coldness of it it all feels like it's closing in on me.
The walls feel too small, too tight, like the air itself is conspiring to remind me that I don't belong here. That I shouldn't be here.
I should be at home, back in the place where I knew I was safe. With my family. But that's a dream now. A distant memory. Gone.
I clench my teeth, fighting back the tears. I can't break down. I've never let myself fall apart. I promised myself after everything that I wouldn't.
My brother didn't get that chance. He stayed silent until silence swallowed him whole.
He... he didn't talk to anyone nor did he let himself be weak.
I think about him his silent struggle, the way he kept everything inside until it was too late.
His death is still a raw wound inside me. He didn't know how to ask for help, didn't know how to say the words he needed to say before he couldn't anymore.
And now... now I'm here. Alone. In a world I don't understand, surrounded by things that make no sense. And I'm so scared.
I close my eyes tightly, wishing I could somehow wake up from this nightmare.
I want to hear the familiar hum of the city at night again, the soft thrum of life just beyond my window.
The way the streets would buzz even in the quietest hours, cars passing by, distant voices echoing, the steady rhythm of the world continuing on.
I miss it so much.
I miss the scent of rain on the pavement, the way it used to fill the air, fresh and cool, right after a summer storm. I miss standing outside in it, feeling the droplets hit my face, washing away the grime of the day. It always felt like a reminder that things could be new again, even when everything felt stale.
I ache for the little things—things I took for granted. The cheap takeout place I always went to after school, the one with the awful, greasy food that never failed to make me feel a little better. They'd always get my order wrong, but I didn't mind. It was a comfort, something constant. Something normal.
Why am I here? Why did this happen to me?
I want to scream. I want to rage against the unfairness of it all. But I don't. Because I know that won't change anything. It won't bring me back home. It won't bring my family back.
I bury my face in my hands, letting out a shaky breath.
I bite my lip, trying to hold it back. The tears. The hopelessness.
My knees draw up to my chest. I curl forward, burying my head between them. I rock slightly, the kind of movement you don't even think about. The kind you do when your mind can't take anymore and your body tries to remember what comfort felt like.
I want someone to tell me what to do.
I want someone to save me.
But no one's coming.
It's just me now.
I want to go home.
I miss my mom.
I miss my dad.
I miss my sister.
I'd give anything—anything—just to hear their voices again. To feel my mom's arms around me, pulling me into one of those hugs where she held on like she was afraid to let go. To hear my dad's stupid jokes that always made me groan but secretly made me smile. Even my sister's teasing, The way she'd always tease me for being too serious, too "grandpa-like," as she put it.
I don't care if they're angry with me. I don't care if they don't understand. I just want to see them one more time. To say I'm sorry. I'm sorry for all the times I couldn't be what you needed me to be but I tried. To say I love them. To say goodbye—if I have to.
But I never got the chance. I was just... gone. Ripped away. No warning, no goodbye.
And now I have this.
A letter from a dead man. A stranger's burden. A world I don't understand.
It's still in my hand. Still pressed to my chest like it means something. Like it matters. And I hate that it does.
I read it again.
Take this name. Finish what I couldn't. Deliver the Echoing Tear. Let my family forget me.
How dare he?
How dare he ask that of me?
I feel the anger rise, hot and bitter, tangling with the grief in my throat. My hand tightens around the letter until the paper creases, but I don't care. I want to tear it. But I don't. I just stare at it, chest heaving, lips trembling.
I want to scream, to throw the letter across the room, but I can't.
What kind of person asks a stranger to carry their death like this? What kind of person calls it a "plea" and then tells you to erase them?
He knew it was selfish. He even said so.
But he asked anyway.
"Please… take care of my family."
But what if I'm too late? What if this damned, cold world has already taken them too? What if they're already dust in some forgotten ruin, waiting for a ghost with my face to bring them oblivion?
He wrote this thinking he was saving me. But he didn't know what he was pulling me from. He didn't know that when i was brought here, i was ripped away from the only things that were keeping me sane. From the people I still had a chance to say "I love you" to. He called it mercy. But it feels like theft.
And now here I am Eighteen, barely holding it together, being told to become someone else. To become a ghost in someone else's skin.
I take a deep, broken breath. I want to believe there's a way out. That this is some dream I'll wake up from. But I know it's not. I can still feel the floor under me. Still smell the old paper and blood. Still feel the sting in my cuts.
I feel it, down to the marrow of my bones—this is real. This cold, unfamiliar world is real. The letter is real. The pain clawing through my chest is real.
And I don't know how to live with that.
Not yet.
But maybe… maybe I don't have to figure it out all at once.
Slowly, I start to calm myself.
I can't do this. I take another deep breath, forcing myself to stop, wiping my face with the sleeve of my shirt.
I can't let this world break me. I can't let the fear take control of me.
I am not my brother. I won't end up like that. I have to survive. I have to find my way back.
If I can't go back home... then I'll make my own place here. I'll mourn. I'll live. But I will not die. I will not let this be the end of me.
I swallow the lump in my throat, trying to steady my hands. I have to keep going. No matter how broken I feel. No matter how much I want to give up.
I remember my brother's silence. The pain he went through. And I won't let that happen to me.
My brother's death was a sharp reminder of that truth. The pain of losing him... it almost broke our family. But the thing that kept me from following him down that same dark path was the lesson he never learned.
Silence.
Not the peaceful kind. Not the quiet that follows comfort or sleep.
This silence presses in. Heavy. Wrong. Like a held breath stretched too long.
My Eyes shifts. scanning the room. Still. Dead still.
And for a moment—just a moment—i'm somewhere else.
A memory.
"It's okay to cry, even if you're alone."
My mother's voice. Gentle, brittle. Like porcelain kept too long in a cold house.
"Don't hold it in like your brother did."
My father, quieter. Bitter in a way he'd never been before.
"We didn't know how much he was hurting until it was too late."
I had been too young then. Too small to understand death, but old enough to remember silence stretching over dinner, of hands gripping too tightly and smiles that never reached the eyes. It was only later that they told me how my brother had smiled right up until the end. How he never cried where they could see. How he bore the weight alone without letting it out until it crushed him.
"Let it out"
My mother had said. "Even if it's just you. Especially if it's just you."
It's okay to let your emotions out to be vulnerable. To feel. To break.
And so, despite the overwhelming fear, despite the weight of everything, I sit there and let it out. I don't fight the tears. I don't hold back. I let the sobs come, raw and unfiltered. The loneliness. The confusion. The rage. The loss.
Every tear, every crack in my heart. I cry for the life I lost. I cry because I don't want to die here, i cry because i haven't found my purpose i cry because i miss my relationships. I cry because im alone no one to comfort me.
It hurts. It hurts so much that I feel like I might not survive it. But I keep breathing. I let the emotions crash over me, and for once, I let myself feel everything. I don't try to push it away.
I need this. I need to let it out.
I have to Keep fighting. Keep going.
And I won't let it win.
I won't die here.
Not like him.
I won't die in this place.
I won't let it be my end.
I will go back home.
But if I can't go back home.
then I'll make my own place here.
I'll mourn. I'll live. But I will not die.
I won't let it be my end.
I take another deep breath, steadying myself.
I can still make it.
I can still survive.
Even if I have to do it as someone else.
Even if the name I wear isn't mine.
My name is Xu Yichen.
But the letter wants me to be Victor Sterling.
So fine. I'll be Victor.
Even if no one ever calls me Xu Yichen again.
But I'll do it my way.
And when I find whoever wrote this…
When I find the ones who let this happen…
They'll have answers waiting for me.
For now… surviving is enough.
Now that the storm inside me has quieted just a little.
The pain doesn't wait.
I glance down at myself and grimace.
My limbs tremble, weak and unreliable beneath me. Each step feels borrowed, each breath pulled through lungs that ache with effort. My skin stings with shallow cuts, raw and angry, while deeper gashes throb with a slow, pulsing pain. Blood—old and new—sticks to me in patches, seeping through the torn fabric clinging to my frame.
I need to do something. I need to hold myself together—literally.
My eyes drift back to the desk..
I decide to first pull open the top-right drawer Inside of it.
Inside it Bandages. A tin of pills. A few small bottles of what looks like medicine. I don't recognize most of it, but I don't need to.
Pain demands action.
I grab the bandages with shaking hands and start wrapping the worst of the wounds. It's rough, clumsy work, but it's enough to stop the bleeding.
(This is Unfinished)