Ling Wanzhou pressed his fingers to the seal-case. It opened without light. No rush of air. No spiritual discharge. Whatever it held had been asleep for a long time.
Shen Jin and Luo Qinghan stepped closer.
Inside—a single fragment of scroll. Yellowed. Edges webbed with hairline cracks. Ink is brittle with age.
Threaded at the corners with insect-script—
binding fibers from a lost origin text.
Luo Qinghan leaned in, frowning.
Then—
"This isn't from a standard Hollow page."
"These glyphs…
they're a throat-script.
Dream-imprint side markings.
Used only in pre-verbal memory traces."
Shen Jin stared.
Near the edge of the scroll—just faint enough to miss—was a single glyph:
Shen.
His own surname.
Etched like a watermark into someone else's dream.
Ling Wanzhou spoke:
"This scroll was never archived."
"No origin page.
No verdict."
"But its markings link it
to one who once passed
through the Hollow into imprint."
Shen Jin's eyes narrowed.
"You already knew who it linked to."
Ling didn't flinch.
"I knew you would see it."
Luo Qinghan glanced up:
"You didn't write this."
Shen Jin:
"But it wrote me."
He reached out. Before his finger touched the page, the Seal stirred. Not warning. Not alarm. Recognition.
Ling Wanzhou watched him.
"Maybe you existed on a page
before anyone gave it
your name."
"And maybe—
that page was never
signed."
—
Shen Jin touched the scroll. No flare. No burst of energy. Only a whisper of recognition—
dust-light drifting between skin and script.
The Seal glowed. Faint. Consistent. Not a warning—a memory.
Ling Wanzhou stepped back. Let it unfold. The glyphs on the scroll stirred.
Lines broke from the paper—rose into air—and twisted into a vision.
A room.
Small.
Stone-walled.
Dimly lit.
A child crouched in the corner, arms wrapped around an unfinished book. His face was turned away. But Shen Jin knew it was him.
On the walls—
not drawings.
Scratches.
Tiny fingernail carvings forming rows of primitive sigils.
Luo Qinghan whispered:
"This is… a memory recall.
But not his own."
Ling Wanzhou replied:
"Not exactly."
"It's not a dream he remembers."
"It's a dream
written into the page
for him."
The boy in the vision murmured something. Too soft to hear. But Shen Jin remembered the rhythm. It was the lullaby-chant—the sigil-tone his mother used to hum beside him in the dark.
The Seal trembled. And then, it released something.
A brief pattern.
A partial strand of dream-script.
Fractured.
But still readable.
The final line:
"Above the dream,
the Seal speaks first."
"To those who do not answer—
the Seal stays."
"To those who do not write—
the dream picks up the pen."
—
The dream-image stuttered. Pages in the child's arms fluttered—each touch of his hand lit a faint sigil trace.
But then—
disruption.
The scene wrenched sideways, like a scroll being torn mid-sentence. Ink twisted. Light cracked. The dream split.
Luo Qinghan stiffened:
"Something's wrong.
That interference—
it's not from us."
But Ling Wanzhou remained calm. From his sleeve, he drew a disc-shaped charm. It flared silver and snapped a chain of light across the wound in the dream.
The rupture held.
He spoke softly:
"Not interference.
A Seal fracture."
"This page…
was never meant to be opened."
Shen Jin looked at him.
The Seal in his palm trembled again.
Yes—
This page had once been locked.
Luo Qinghan turned to Ling:
"You know too much
about how these pages behave."
Ling Wanzhou answered, without heat:
"I've reviewed internal archives.
Unstable dream-records.
Trace logs from Hollow residues."
"This kind of tear usually belongs to…"
He paused.
"…an unregistered Dream Draft."
Shen Jin repeated:
"Unregistered?"
Ling:
"Pages written before the Hollow collapse."
"Unauthorized.
Unclassified.
Buried under newer law."
"Only fragments remain."
Shen Jin's fingers clenched around the seal.
"Then I wasn't
asked."
"I was
written."
—
The vision deepened.
The child turned to the last page. And there—not written, but bled through the fibers of the scroll—was a line of script, too faint to see, unless one had already heard its echo.
Luo Qinghan leaned closer,
murmured:
"Those who are not questioned
leave behind
their own voice in dream."
A pause.
Then even softer:
"And those who do not answer—
their forgotten names return."
Shen Jin stared at the fading mark.
"You've seen this type of incantation before?"
Ling Wanzhou was quiet. Then:
"Once.
In a locked archive."
"It was the last trace
left by a keybearer
who vanished
after dream overload."
"His vision
burned through three imprint logs."
Shen Jin's fingers curled.
The Seal in his hand responded—
a quiet glyph glow.
Not loud.
But listening.
The dream began to recede. The vision collapsed into ash-light and folded back into the scroll.
A new mark appeared. Burn-scar thin. Written from beneath. Just a few characters: To burn a book is to name a soul.
The scroll ignited. Turned to ash. Ling Wanzhou caught the dust without ceremony. Tucked it away.
Shen Jin said nothing. But the Seal in his palm had grown warm. Still rising.
—
The words had barely faded.
Ash still hung in the air.
The Seal in Shen Jin's hand moved. Not a lurch. Not a surge. A heat. Like memory warming into breath. Something deep in his mind unlatched. Not violently. But deliberately.
Luo Qinghan reached out, trying to steady his aura.
The moment her palm touched his shoulder—
a pulse struck her back.
Gentle.
But impenetrable.
"It's not letting me in."
Sweat shimmered at Shen Jin's brow.
His lips pale.
But his voice was clear:
"It's not out of control."
"It's… opening."
Ling Wanzhou said nothing. Only watched.
The glyphs on the Seal shifted.
The Fourth Seal—unwritten until now—began to stir.
Not resisting.
Unfolding.
Willing.
Luo Qinghan stepped back.
"It's answering that incantation."
Shen Jin nodded. Eyes sharp.
"It wants to write."
The Seal trembled. And from its center, a thread of light unwound. Not sigil-fire. Not spell-ink. But dream-thread. Soft. Weightless. Floating in the air as a lattice of unspeaking script.