Lin Qinglan's life had always been ordinary, if not slightly burdensome. She worked long hours at a publishing house, earning just enough to cover rent and groceries in a city that constantly demanded more. But one evening, everything collapsed.
Her father, a man who had been absent for years, suddenly reappeared—not in person, but through his mistakes. Debt collectors arrived at her small apartment, pounding on the door, shouting her name, waving papers she could barely understand. They claimed her father owed them an astronomical sum, and since he had vanished, the responsibility had fallen on her shoulders.
Qinglan tried to reason, but their words cut sharper than knives. She felt her world spinning. Then, one of them pulled out a strange document. Unlike the others, this paper looked almost… old, its parchment surface faintly glowing in the silver light that streamed through the window. "Sign this, and your father's debt will vanish," the collector said with a smirk.
Something in her chest screamed that this was wrong. Yet desperation drowned reason. When she looked closer, she realized the ink wasn't black but silvery, shimmering under the moonlight. The terms were vague, written in archaic phrases, but all it asked was her name. Trembling, she held the pen.
At the last second, a cold, steady voice broke the tension. "If you sign that, you'll lose far more than money."
A tall man stood in the hallway—his presence calm yet commanding. His dark eyes locked onto hers, and for a moment, time seemed to freeze. Lin Qinglan had no idea who he was, but somehow, under the moonlight, he seemed to know her fate better than she did herself.
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