During the WW1, the Guangdong region was engulfed in the chaos of war. Serapha, serving as the General's personal guard, stayed loyally by his side, enduring the constant fear and tension of those troubled times.
In a fierce battle, Japanese artillery mercilessly destroyed half of her home, leaving her life in ruins. Yet despite this devastation, Serapha did not retreat. She stood firm, continuing to guard the man she loved.
But the relentless mental strain eventually wore her down.
One day, she sat alone in her room, staring at a map of China spread across worn parchment, a burning desire rising from within:
She longed to retreat north of Xianyang, to a quiet city far from the smoke and bloodshed of war.
But when she finally confessed this wish to the General, his reaction was fury.
He roared at her, as if her sacrifice and danger were things she naturally owed him.
Tears welled in Serapha's eyes. She screamed back in defiance:
"I stayed here only because I love you! I never needed to suffer through any of this! I've had enough!"
—For the first time, she admitted it aloud:
Her gentleness had always been used as a weapon against herself.
Before boarding the train with her small bag, a sudden pang seized her heart. It was an ache she couldn't name — a lingering worry for the General's fate.
Though she kept telling herself to be strong, her heart felt like it was clenched by an invisible fist, throbbing with dull pain.
For a brief moment, the General's once-towering figure seemed to shrink before her eyes, stooped under the crushing weight of war and duty.
The sight pierced her like a blade.
She hated herself for it — hated that even after everything, she still softened for him.
But this time, she refused to let her feelings control her.
She bit her lip, swallowing her pain, forcing herself to lift her chin high.
The ache in her chest pressed down like lead.
Finally, she stepped onto the train. As the doors slid shut behind her, she closed her eyes.
In the silence of her heart, she whispered a prayer:
"Let there be no next life. I've truly had enough of this pain and suffering."
But fate, it seemed, was never done playing cruel jokes on her.
When she opened her eyes again, she found herself in 21st-century China.
Everything around her was strange and distant, like waking from one nightmare only to fall into another.
She tilted her head back, glaring at the heavens, her voice trembling with fury:
"Why? Why must I keep suffering? Haven't I endured enough?"
But the sky gave her no answers — only endless silence and solitude.
Taking her own life was not an option.
Death would never free her.
As a phoenix, she could not truly die; her fate was eternal rebirth, cycling endlessly through pain and loss.
To mortals, immortality might seem like a gift — a power to envy, a dream beyond reach.
But no one could ever understand the agony of an eternal soul betrayed time and time again.
This was a pain that had nothing to do with the body,
and everything to do with a loneliness so vast, so endless, that it hollowed her from the inside out.
Every day, she lived alongside that boundless solitude.
No one truly understood her.
She watched the people around her being born, growing up, aging, and dying —
while she remained frozen in time, untouched, forgotten by the world.
And every person she ever dared to trust
left her in the moment she needed them most.