The air didn't move. The visitor didn't sit. Didn't ask for tea. He stood three paces away, as still as the Seal beneath Shen Jin's skin.
"I was sent to follow up
an old case,"
He said plainly.
"One involving a
Divine Cognition Defector."
Shen Jin said nothing.
"I'm not here to interrogate.
I have no right
to view the Seal."
"I'm only here
for this."
He pulled out a single sheet of paper. No writing. Just a gray imprint, faintly glowing in the center. Its image looked half-scrubbed—like someone had erased something too dangerous to read.
"This is from a
post-observation trace.
After the last Seal Mirror reading."
"An unidentified script appeared in the center."
"We cross-checked the pattern."
"And it matches a waveform
from a sealed divine-case
in the inner archives."
Shen Jin's brow twitched.
The visitor added—
"That defector's name
was removed from the record."
"But their imprint—
may still exist."
He held the paper out.
"Have you seen anything like this
in your dreams?"
Shen Jin didn't answer. Not yet. Because he remembered in the dream—the one with the ashfire—there was a voice at the end. A fragment of speech was cut off. Alien. And nothing like the language he knew.
He didn't take the page. He just looked at it. The mark on the paper was faint. But when his gaze touched it, the Seal in his palm shivered—a ripple, a recognition. In his mind, the dream rose again. The shadow. The ashfire. The voice—
"If the dream begins again…
will you dare to—"
Cut off. Like the dream had swallowed its own tongue. And the sound—its rhythm, its break—matched the curve on the paper exactly.
Shen Jin said softly:
"I remember it."
The visitor didn't react. He just asked:
"Do you know
whose voice it was?"
Shen Jin shook his head.
"It came from the dream.
From the Seal."
A pause.
Then—
"Maybe," the man said, voice even softer.
"Or maybe someone
used the dream to leave behind
something that could
never be spoken awake."
He pulled the page back. Turned. Took three steps. Then paused. Didn't look back. Just said:
"The case I follow…
also began in Yuan City."
"The fire started in the southern street."
Shen Jin blinked. That was where his memory of the ashfire had started, too.
—
The visitor didn't leave just yet. At the threshold, he reached into his sleeve and pulled out a single, thin page. Gray. Weightless. Worn. But not ordinary. A sealing page crafted through spirit-folding. Light as dust. Alive when touched by will. He didn't hand it to Shen Jin. He placed it on the stone at the threshold. Pressed one finger to the surface. The page opened. A shimmer rose. Faint glyph-light formed in the air above it—narrow, flickering, and incomplete. But even before it finished taking shape, the Seal rose in Shen Jin's palm. No heat. No spell. No sound. Just one line of light. It reached out and touched the floating glyph. No fire. No reaction. But the glyph shivered. It had been recognized.
Shen Jin's pulse jumped. The visitor didn't look back. Didn't ask. Just said:
"That's the only trace from the case
we couldn't destroy."
"If the Seal reacts,
it means the dream
carries that person's echo."
"But I won't put that in the report."
He picked up the page. Folded it. Then added—
"Dreams can lie."
"The Seal doesn't."
The visitor said nothing more. He gave Shen Jin a slight nod—not formal, not cold. Just enough. Then turned and walked away. No rustle of fabric. No sound of steps. Like he had never been there.
The door closed softly. Silence returned to the Yuan City lodge. But the Seal remained. Still floating. Still awake. A faint line of light circled its edge—slow, deliberate. It wasn't glowing. It was reading, processing what it had just touched. Not with reason.Not with rules. But with resonance. The Seal was remembering a language that had been broken.
Shen Jin stood still. Watching. And realized—He was no longer just the dream's witness. He was approaching the door of the one who writes. A flicker. At the edge of the Seal. A spark. Small. Faint. He whispered:
"…You remember it, don't you?"
The Seal said nothing. But slowly sank back into his hand. Still warm. Still listening.
—
That morning, paper messengers fell across Yuan City like quiet snow. One of them landed just outside the lodge gate. No crest. Just a faint ripple, painted in water-ink—the hidden mark of the Jing Sect.
Shen Jin didn't open it. The outer disciple did. And handed it to Luo Qinghan. She paused the moment she saw it. Didn't speak. Just read.
"The mirror soul has not returned.
The rift in the Jing Sect
will widen."
No name. No title. Only:
"Jing Sect—Inner Reflection Branch."
She didn't react. She folded the message. Slid it into her sleeve. Shen Jin, watching from beneath the eaves, finally said:
"From your sect?"
She nodded.
"Are they calling you back?"
She didn't turn. Only said:
"The Jing Sect prefers to inform—
not to ask."
—
Night settled. Luo Qinghan sat alone at her desk. She hadn't lit a lamp. Only the last blue light of dusk reached her hands as she unfolded an old paper mirror.
The surface was cracked, worn with time. It wasn't new. It was one she had carried since childhood. Her finger moved. A thread of spirit energy slipped into the page. The mirror shimmered. Not with the reflection of the room. It showed only her until it didn't.
The edges blurred at first. Her eyes shifted. Her bone lines began to fade, as if something else was waking up beneath her face. She didn't flinch. Didn't stop it. The second image came forward. Not her—not exactly. Thin. Dark-eyed. Not hostile—but not human. And in the center of the figure's brow—a faint gleam. Brief. A mark. The kind left by the ruins of Yaoyuan. The glow vanished.
She opened her eyes. The mirror was calm again. Only a ripple of lingering energy remained. She whispered:
"You're still there."