The dreams started that night.
Not chaotic.
Not violent.
But precise.
Shi Mu stood in a corridor she didn't recognize—narrow, dimly lit, its walls covered in symbols she couldn't read. A single door pulsed with golden light at the end.
Behind it, something called her.
Not in words.
In memory.
She reached out to open it.
The handle was warm.
And the moment her fingers touched it, a voice echoed—sharp and low.
"You promised."
She jerked awake.
It was 3:42 a.m.
Her room was silent.
But the mark on her wrist was glowing again.
Brighter.
More urgent.
Like it had been activated.
She immediately activated her system panel.
[Dream Log Captured][Spiritual Signal Detected – Thread Trace Enabled][Origin: Suppressed Archive – Year Unknown – Location: Unmapped]
Fu Yunshen responded to her message in less than sixty seconds.
"I'm coming."
Minutes later, he stood in her room, hair still messy from sleep but eyes alert.
"You dreamed of it?"
She nodded. "It wasn't just a dream. It was a memory trying to surface."
Fu Yunshen's jaw tightened. "You were being called."
Zhou Zhi—who had shown up seconds behind him with slippers and a flashlight—offered, "So... a ghost with reception access to dreams? Love that for us."
No one laughed.
They examined the trace in Shi Mu's system.
The signature was old. Older than anything in the current campus records.
Fu Yunshen frowned. "This… this predates the Academy."
Shi Mu blinked. "Then where does it come from?"
Zhou Zhi, now wide awake, squinted at the glyph data.
"…That's not just spiritual code," he muttered. "That's pre-integration script. From the original bonding era."
Fu Yunshen stared at him.
"You can read that?"
"No. But I've seen it. Once. In the ghost hunter's restricted archive."
He looked at Shi Mu.
"Ris… whatever marked you… didn't start here."
[System Notification]
Long-Term Contract Memory Fragment Detected – Bound Entity Outside Local Plane
Spiritual Priority Elevated: Tier II Containment Advised
Brotherhood Value +160 (Dream Link Activated + Risk Accepted by Allies)
Current Total: 4,410 / 1,000,000
Shi Mu sat on the edge of her bed, eyes locked on the mark.
If this spirit had existed before the school—
Then it wasn't haunting her out of vengeance.
It was reaching for her…
To collect.