The wind carried the scent of wet pine and old stone. Mt. Jianlong stood tall in the distance, silent and unmoving, wrapped in a silver mist that made it seem less like a mountain and more like a ghost. It hadn't changed since he was a child. Maybe that was why Zhen Ruhan came back.
The forest trail before him was half overgrown, like even nature had forgotten it existed. But he hadn't.
He used to come here every year on this day—the day they vanished.
Not to grieve. Not anymore.
He came because it was the only place where the memories still felt real.
Ruhan stepped off the narrow paved path and pushed into the woods, boots crunching over old pine needles. The sky above was washed in pale silver, not from the sun or stars, but from the *Ghost Moon*—a rare lunar event that happened only once every thirty-six years. The old villagers whispered about strange things happening when it appeared. Cursed births. Sudden deaths. Long-lost places revealing themselves.
But Ruhan didn't believe in superstition.
He believed in loss.
The deeper he walked, the quieter the world became. Even the birds had stopped singing. All he could hear was the steady rhythm of his breath and the occasional rustle of the wind.
Eventually, he reached it.
A grove at the base of the mountain. Circular. Hidden. Untouched.
They used to come here. His father would always carry that old leather notebook, sketching strange stones. His mother would lay out food and laugh as Ruhan chased butterflies through the trees. He remembered one time they found an old stone disk buried in the dirt, but his mother gently covered it back up.
> "Some things," she had whispered, "should sleep."
That was the last year they came.
He was six.
Now seventeen, Zhen Ruhan stood beneath the same tree where they once sat—tall, rooted, silent.
He pulled out a small, sealed envelope from his jacket and placed it at the base of the trunk. It was tradition. Not for them—he knew they couldn't read it—but for himself.
> *"Another year, no answers. You left, and no one bothered to tell me why."*
He closed his eyes. Let the wind brush his face. Let the memory wrap around him.
Then something flickered in the corner of his vision.
A faint glint—metallic—half-buried in the earth near the tree roots.
The wind roared suddenly, crashing through the trees. Branches bent. Leaves scattered. The sky seemed to dim under the Ghost Moon's glow.
And then, from the mountain's cliffside, a sound like stone cracking open filled the air.
A fissure split in the rock, just twenty paces away, widening before his eyes.
Behind it—darkness. Cold. Deep.
A *cave* that hadn't been there before.
He should have run.
But something deeper than logic pulled him forward.
He approached, each step weighed down by both dread and something else—familiarity.
The air near the entrance was wrong. It felt… older than the wind. It didn't move. It didn't breathe. It *watched*.
His heart pounded. The cut on his finger had stopped bleeding, but the stone in his hand pulsed again.
He looked down.
The red glow had faded. Now it was blue. Faint. Calm.
> "Enter," the voice whispered once more.
But this time... it sounded like his mother.
Ruhan staggered back, eyes wide. *No. It can't be. That's not possible.*
And yet, when he looked up again, the cave seemed deeper. The mountain around it darker.
The world he knew — the noise of the city, the concrete grief, the numbness — felt miles away.
He stood on the edge of something ancient.
And when he stepped forward, the air welcomed him like an open mouth.
End of 1