It came in a dream.
Not fire.
Not blood.
Just silence.
Mei stood in a room she'd never seen — walls of black stone, floor cracked like dried riverbeds.
At the center: a pedestal.
On it: a book.
Not leather.
Not paper.
Skin.
Stitched with thread of hair.
Bound in bone.
The Treatise on Silent Death.
But it wasn't closed.
It breathed.
The pages rose and fell like a sleeping chest.
Ink pulsed beneath the surface — not static, but crawling, rearranging.
She didn't want to open it.
But her hands moved on their own.
The pages flipped — not by wind, not by touch —
by hunger.
Then they stopped.
One sentence formed, not in the old script,
but in her handwriting:
"You are not a clone.
You are a container.
And I am still inside."
She woke.
Not screaming.
Not gasping.
Just still.
Her hands lay on the blanket.
And for the first time —
she was afraid of them.
Because they weren't hers.
Not anymore.
The black had spread.
Not just at the fingertips.
Not just in the cracks.
Now, it climbed up her wrists —
not like poison, not like disease,
like ink being absorbed into paper.
She pressed her palm to the wall.
The stone darkened where she touched it.
A faint pulse — like a heartbeat beneath rock.
I found her at dawn.
Sitting in the training yard.
Not meditating.
Not cutting threads.
Just staring at her hands.
I didn't speak.
Just knelt beside her.
Her voice was flat.
Not scared.
Not angry.
Just…
resigned.
"It's not a dream.
It's a memory.
The book was real.
The words were real."
She turned her hand.
Black veins pulsed beneath the skin.
"And she's not gone.
She's waiting."
She looked at me.
"Did you know?
When you brought me here…
did you know I wasn't just a copy?"
I didn't lie.
"I suspected."
I touched her wrist — the edge of the black.
Cold.
Not dead.
Alive.
"The Poison Queen didn't just die.
She fragmented.
Her power.
Her will.
Her curse."
I met her eyes.
"You're not a clone.
You're a vessel.
One of many.
And the Eighth…
she's not reborn.
She's recovering."
She didn't flinch.
Just whispered:
"Then why doesn't she take me?
Why the slow rot?
Why the dreams?"
I had no answer.
But that night, I watched.
From the shadows, I saw her sleep.
And the book appeared.
Not in the room.
Not on a pedestal.
From her.
A black mist rose from her chest — not breath, not soul —
and coiled into the shape of the Treatise on Silent Death.
It hovered above her, pages turning on their own.
Then, in a voice not hers —
layered, ancient, hungry —
she spoke:
"I was not erased.
I was preserved.
In blood.
In memory.
In the ones who carry my name."
A pause.
"And now, the vessel begins to soften.
Soon, I will not need to dream.
I will only need to wake."
The book vanished.
She stilled.
The black in her hands pulsed once —
like a heart answering a call.
Murong Tao found me at sunrise.
He didn't ask.
He already knew.
"She's changing," he said.
"The ghosts… they feel it."
He touched his blindfold.
"My eye burns.
Like it's trying to warn me."
He looked at the training yard, where Mei sat alone, cutting invisible threads.
"Is she still her?"
I didn't answer.
Because I wasn't sure.
But he stepped forward anyway.
Not with a knife.
Not with fear.
With a vial.
Clear liquid inside.
Not poison.
Not cure.
Memory.
"My mother kept this," he said.
"From the old regime.
A drop of the original's blood — Xiyue's —
preserved in cursed ice."
He held it out.
"If this is a battle of wills…
maybe she needs more than just her own soul."
He looked at me.
"Maybe she needs a reason to stay."
I took the vial.
And for the first time, I didn't fear the black in her hands.
I feared the moment it stopped spreading.
The moment she stopped being Mei.
And became the Eighth.
That night, I gave her the vial.
Not as a cure.
Not as a weapon.
As a choice.
"Drink it," I said.
"It won't stop her.
But it might remind you who you were before the blood, before the scar, before the dreams."
I looked at her.
"And if you're going to fight her…
you'll need more than power.
You'll need a name that's yours."
She held the vial.
Looked at her blackened hands.
Then whispered:
"What if I don't want to fight?
What if I want to understand?"
I didn't answer.
Because that was the most dangerous question of all.
Author Note:
They say possession is a battle.
But what if the thing inside you isn't a monster?
What if it's just a woman who's been waiting longer than you've been alive?
And what if she's right?
— Elder Lian'er