Hai Cheng was a village that survived by learning what to ignore.
It ignored the creaking of old roofs in winter, the way hunger hollowed faces after a poor harvest, and the quiet disappearance of those who walked too far into the hills and never returned. It ignored injustice because naming it required strength, and Hai Cheng had little strength left.
Most of all, it ignored Lietu Wang.
Not openly, not completely—but in the careful, practiced way people ignore a wound they fear will never heal. He existed at the edges of vision, acknowledged only when necessary, spoken of only when something went wrong. If suffering could be inherited, Lietu seemed born carrying generations of it in his blood.
The village elders liked to say fate had been unkind to him. The truth was less forgiving.
They found him fifteen years earlier at the orphan house, just before dawn. Fog clung to the ground, thick and cold, muting sound and color alike. He lay on the stone steps wrapped in cloth meant for burial rather than warmth. The matron who discovered him noticed first the blood—dark, dried, careful—as though someone had taken time to clean the child before leaving him to die.
He did not cry when lifted.
He only stared.
From that moment, the village sensed something was wrong, though no one dared say it aloud. Children cried. Abandoned children especially cried. They wailed and clawed at the world until hands answered them. Lietu had not done that. He had arrived already silent, already watching, as if waiting for confirmation of something he already knew.
The orphan house raised many unwanted children, but it never learned how to love them. Food was rationed. Discipline was rigid. Comfort was rare and brief. Even so, most children found some fragile bond among themselves—shared misery forming shared survival.
Lietu stood alone.
He learned early not to ask for things. Asking invited refusal, and refusal carved deeper wounds than silence ever could. When struck by other children, he did not cry out. When caretakers punished him harshly for small mistakes, he did not plead. His stillness unsettled people more than open defiance would have.
By the time he could walk freely through the village, the distance had already been drawn.
Mothers tugged children closer when he passed. Merchants watched him with suspicious eyes, fingers tightening around their wares. Conversations softened and shortened at his approach, as though words themselves might provoke something.
At first, these reactions confused him. Later, they angered him. Eventually, he learned to expect nothing else.
Anger became his closest companion—not wild, not explosive, but dense and constant. He carried it like a weight inside his chest, pressing downward, shaping him. It kept him warm when kindness failed. It kept him upright when shame tried to bend him.
At night, it whispered.
Sleep did not bring rest. It brought memories that were not memories, dreams that felt older than time. Lietu dreamed of places he had never been—vast stone cities collapsing in fire, rivers overflowing with shadows, skies torn open by unseen forces. He heard bells ringing not in warning, but mourning. He heard his name spoken by voices that sounded broken by grief.
Sometimes, he dreamed of a woman.
Her face was blurred, as if seen through tears or smoke, but her sorrow was unmistakable. He felt it in his bones, deep and aching, a sorrow heavy enough to reshape the world. She reached for him in his dreams, always too late.
He never saw her eyes.
He woke each morning exhausted, palms warm, heart racing, with the lingering sense that something inside him had been awakened slightly—and resented the return to sleep.
The older he grew, the worse it became.
Misfortune followed him too closely to ignore. Crops failed near where he worked. Animals grew skittish at his presence. Once, a boy struck him in anger, and moments later fell, convulsing, breath stolen by invisible hands. The boy survived. The fear did not.
From then on, coincidence lost its power as explanation.
On the eve of Lietu's fifteenth year, the air itself felt wrong.
Even before the bell rang, Lietu sensed it. The pressure in his chest, usually dormant, twisted sharply, pulling his awareness outward. When the bell finally sounded—one slow, hollow toll—he already knew where it would lead.
Death.
The villagers gathered by the riverbank in uneasy silence. An old farmer lay sprawled near the water, limbs twisted awkwardly, eyes wide in an expression that stopped just short of madness. The river rippled despite the still air, its surface breaking and reforming as if something beneath it moved restlessly.
No one touched the body.
Eyes drifted, almost unwillingly, toward Lietu.
He felt their fear settle on him like a verdict already passed.
He turned away before they could speak his name.
By afternoon, the village no longer pretended.
The elders met in low voices, fear stripped bare now that reason had failed them. They spoke of protection, of survival, of sacrifice. No one spoke of compassion. Compassion, after all, had not saved the farmer.
Lietu listened from a distance, his expression unreadable. He had imagined this moment many times—imagined rage, imagined violence, imagined finally forcing the village to acknowledge him.
What he felt instead was a heavy, terminal sadness.
Because a part of him agreed with them.
As the sun sank low, Lietu left without ceremony. He passed the orphan house one final time, past rooms filled with whispered prayers and fearful glances. No one stopped him. No one wished him farewell.
The forest path led him to the abandoned shrine.
The stones were cracked, choked with vines, the altar split as cleanly as a broken bone. The moment Lietu stepped onto its foundation, the world shattered.
Pain speared through his mind. Images flooded him—hands trembling as they placed him on stone, fire consuming the horizon, a whispered apology spoken through tears and terror. The truth bled into him like poison and medicine all at once.
He screamed.
The earth answered.
Stone ruptured. Wind screamed with him. The presence that had lingered his entire life rose fully now, vast and intimate, ancient beyond measure. It did not ask permission. It claimed him.
In that moment, Lietu understood.
He had not been abandoned because he was unloved.
He had been abandoned because the world could not bear what he was becoming.
When dawn came, the shrine was gone.
So was the boy called Lietu Wang.
Something else walked forward in his place—carrying grief, carrying power, carrying a fate shaped by fear long before he drew his first breath.
And far away, beyond Hai Cheng and forgotten promises, destiny watched in silence—already counting the cost.