The wind howled like a wounded beast.
Ash swirled around Tian Zhen's bare feet as he stepped away from the shattered ritual circle. Symbols still burned faintly on the stone, flickering like dying stars. Whatever had happened here—whatever they had tried to summon—was already dead.
Except him.
He looked at his hands again. Pale. Veined. Touched by frost and fire.
Not his hands. Or were they?
He did not remember who he was.
But the world remembered him.
A crow landed on a broken statue, its eyes hollow and glinting silver. It tilted its head as if watching a legend take its first breath again.
Tian Zhen moved without thought. He was not cold. Not tired. Not afraid.
Yet he should have been. He felt… incomplete.
The trees near the Vedi stood silent—blighted by something unnatural. Bark peeled like shedding skin. Roots twisted in the shape of hands reaching up from underground.
Something terrible had happened here.
And somehow, he was its result.
---
A voice stirred in his mind.
"You are the echo of what they buried."
Tian Zhen turned sharply. No one was there.
He closed his eyes. Breathed in deeply.
Smoke. Ash. Faint iron.
And below it all… the faintest trace of starsong—a resonance he could not place. Like the sound of a forgotten name trying to push its way into his throat.
---
Far to the east, thunder rumbled.
He saw lights in the distance. A village? A city?
Instinct screamed not to go.
But something deeper whispered:
Go. You are being watched.
He turned.
Nothing.
Then again… the wind shifted. And a shadow, for just a moment, moved where no man stood.
---
He began to walk.
Each step cracked the brittle land beneath him.
The birds did not follow. The sky grew darker.
And the path ahead curved where no path had ever been.
He had no memories.
But his body moved like a weapon trained through eons.
Every sense sharpened. Every motion deliberate.
As if…
this world was familiar.
As if…
he had walked it once as a god.
---
Up in the sky, something ancient stirred.
A being cloaked in golden mist watched him through a rift between clouds.
It did not smile.
It did not speak.
Only watched.
Then it whispered through the wind:
"You should not have returned."
But Tian Zhen kept walking.
His eyes were hollow—but his steps were heavy with fate.
And somewhere deep in his soul,
a name burned through the silence.
A name that no longer feared gods...