I didn't dream that night.
I was occupied.
I stood in a library of stone — shelves carved into the mountain itself, holding scrolls bound in silk and bone. A fire burned without wood, its light shifting between blue and gold.
Ziyan sat at a long table, writing furiously.
He didn't look up.
But I knew he saw me.
"Don't trust the quiet ones," he said, still writing. "They remember longest."
Then: "You have her eyes. And his stubbornness. No wonder it chose you."
"Chose me for what?" I asked.
He finally looked up.
"To finish what I broke."
Before I could answer, the shelves began to collapse — not from force, but from forgetting. Scrolls turned to dust in midair.
And I woke with a gasp, my heart pounding like a drum.
But not from the dream.
From the streak of black in my hair.
I found it in the mirror of my compact — a single lock above my left ear, as dark as ink, as if dipped in shadow. Not gray. Not dirt.
Wrong.
And when I touched it, the roots were cold.
I covered it with a braid.
Said nothing.
At breakfast, Liang handed me a slip of paper.
"Old woman at the village temple said to give this to you. Wouldn't say why."
It was wrinkled, smudged, written in shaky calligraphy:
"The mountain speaks to those who listen. Go to the Hall of Dust. Ask for the Pilgrim's Map."
No name. No explanation.
Just a trail.
I went alone.
The Hall of Dust wasn't a temple. It was a forgotten shrine at the edge of a dying village — roof half-collapsed, incense burners choked with leaves. Inside, a blind caretaker knelt before a stone tablet etched with a spiral pattern. He didn't turn when I entered.
"You're late," he said.
Like the mountain had said.
Like Ziyan had said.
"I didn't know I was expected," I replied.
He reached behind the altar and pulled out a scroll — not paper, not silk, but treated bamboo strips, tied with faded red cord.
"The Pilgrim's Map," he said. "Drawn by the last rememberer.
It shows the Nine Seals.
And the price of each."
My hands didn't shake as I took it.
They were numb.
I untied the cord.
The map was not of China.
Not exactly.
It was of the dragon veins — the hidden qi lines that flow beneath the land. And along them, nine sites marked with a symbol:
A circle.
A dot.
And a coiled line.
The Seal Mark.
Wudang was the first — labeled "The Breath of the First Guardian."
The others:
Kunlun – "Where the Sky Was Mended"Emei – "The Bell That Weeps at Dawn"Dunhuang – "The Caves That Dream Backward"Changbai – "The Ice That Remembers Fire"Leshan – "The Giant's Closed Eye"Taiyi – "The Well of Unspoken Names"Qingcheng – "The Garden of the Fallen Moon"Luofu – "The Gate That Opens to No One"
Nine sites.
Nine wounds.
Nine chances to fail.
I looked up. "Who drew this?"
The old man smiled, sightless.
"The one who tried to forget.
Like you."
Then, softer:
"But the mountain doesn't let go.
And neither will you."
I left the hall in silence.
The map in my pack.
The black streak in my hair now two.
And that night, as I lay in the tent, the jade fragment pulsed once — not in warning, not in sorrow, but in recognition.
I closed my eyes.
And Ziyan's voice, clear as a bell, whispered in my mind:
"You've seen the path.
Now you must choose:
Will you walk it —
or let the world forget?"
I didn't answer.
But when I woke,
my hand was already
tracing the route to Kunlun
on the edge of my notebook.