I went back at dawn.
Not with the team. Not with cameras or drones or soil testers.
Just me. My boots. My headlamp. And the notebook — tucked deep in my jacket, like a talisman.
The cave mouth looked smaller in daylight. A dark slit in the rock, half-hidden by twisted pines. No warning signs. No legends carved above it. Just silence, and the faint smell of wet stone.
I paused at the threshold.
Last night, I'd whispered into the dark and heard a gong.
Today, I wasn't asking.
I was demanding.
"I'm not leaving," I said. My voice didn't echo. It was absorbed.
Like the mountain had swallowed it whole.
I stepped inside.
The air was colder than it should have been. Still. No drip of water, no scuttle of insects. Just that same pressure behind the eyes — the sense of being watched by something that had never blinked.
I didn't hesitate.
I walked straight to the mural.
To the symbol.
Up close, the carving was deeper than I remembered. The dragon's scales weren't decorative — they followed a pattern. Nine rows. Nine columns. A grid of balance, broken at the center. The phoenix's eye was a single drilled hole, dark and deep.
I pulled off my glove.
My hand didn't shake.
That surprised me.
I remembered Dr. Wen's words: "To touch the past is not to study it. It is to answer its call."
I hadn't believed her then.
Now, I wondered if she'd known this would happen to someone like me.
I pressed my palm flat against the stone.
Not a tap. Not a trace.
A claim.
For a heartbeat — nothing.
Then, the hum.
Deeper this time. Not in the ears. In the teeth.
The walls shimmered, not like heat haze, but like water struck by a stone.
And I fell.
This time, I didn't stand on a ridge.
I stood in a garden.
Moonlight silvered the lotus ponds. A pavilion of dark wood rose beside a cliff, its eaves carved with coiling dragons that seemed to shift in the low light. Incense curled from bronze burners — sandalwood, pine resin, something older.
The air was warm.
Peaceful.
Alive.
A man walked the path ahead.
Robes of indigo silk, embroidered with silver constellations. Hair tied in a scholar's knot, face calm, eyes sharp with quiet fire. He held a brush in one hand, a scroll in the other.
He wasn't old.
But he carried time like a cloak.
Ziyan.
I knew him instantly — not from the vision of ash and ruin, but from the presence. This was him before the fall. Before the grief. Before he tried to steal time from Heaven.
He stopped. Turned.
Looked directly at me.
Not through me.
Not past me.
At me.
And smiled.
"You're early," he said. His voice was warm, like tea in winter. "But not unwelcome."
I tried to speak. My body wasn't mine. I was a shadow in his world, a breath in the wind.
He stepped closer. Studied me like a puzzle.
"Modern clothes. No cultivation. Yet you stand in the Garden of Remembering."
His eyes narrowed. "You're not one of them."
Then, softer: "You're her line."
I didn't know what he meant.
But my chest ached.
He reached out — not to touch me, but to the air between us. Traced a symbol in the moonlight.
The same one on the cave wall.
"This seal was never meant to last," he said. "It was a bandage on a wound. A lie."
He looked toward the pavilion. Through the open door, I saw a woman lying on a low bed, breathing shallow. Her hand clutched a jade pendant shaped like a phoenix.
His wife.
"The Wheel turns," he said. "But must we turn with it?"
He turned back to me.
"If you're here to stop me… you're too late.
I've already begun."
The garden trembled.
The moon cracked.
The ponds turned black.
And then—
I was back.
On my knees.
Gasping.
My palm still on the stone.
But something was different.
On the floor, at my feet, lay a fragment of jade — no bigger than a coin, carved with half the dragon's face.
It hadn't been there before.
And on my palm, where I'd touched the symbol, a faint mark:
Nine small dots, arranged in a circle.
Like a seal.
Like a scar.
Like a beginning.
I picked up the jade.
Cold.
Alive.
And for the first time, I didn't question it.
I whispered into the dark:
"Tell me what you need."
The cave didn't answer.
But in my pocket, the fragment warmed.