The air tasted cleaner outside the Cold Hearth Hall, but only slightly. It was still thick with the mountain's chill and the faint, ever-present scent of woodsmoke and damp earth.
Yang Kai walked with his head down, his borrowed memories guiding him through the clan compound's winding, uneven stone paths. He focused on the ground, on placing one unfamiliar foot in front of the other, trying to ignore the few servants who stopped and stared, their expressions a mixture of pity and morbid curiosity. The ghost who walked.
Cracked pillars stood like broken teeth in what was once a grand training ground. Weeds grew in the fissures of the flagstones. The entire estate felt like it was holding its breath, waiting for a final, merciful collapse.
His new home was a small, isolated courtyard in the Second House's wing. It was the kind of place reserved for a reclusive, unimportant elder or, in his case, a long-term invalid.
The room was small, cold, and smelled of dust and stale herbs. A simple wooden bed, a rickety table, one chair. This was his cage. This was his sanctuary. He slid the wooden door shut, the sound echoing in the silence, and leaned against it, his legs trembling. The brief, terrifying encounter with his mother had drained the last of his strength.
He ran a hand over his face. It felt wrong. The bone structure, the texture of the skin. It wasn't his.
On the table sat a small, polished bronze plate that served as a mirror. For three days, he had avoided it. He had been too afraid to see the truth. Now, he needed to. He had to know the face of the man whose life he had stolen.
He picked it up, his hand shaking. The reflection was distorted, a warped, brownish image, but it was clear enough.
Pale skin.
Unfamiliar eyes, dark and wide with a fear that was entirely his own.
The face was young, barely twenty-one, with features that were handsome in a soft, unrefined way. But it was a face untouched by hardship, unlined by life. The face of a boy who had slept while the world moved on.
A stranger stared back.
This is me now.
The thought was a physical blow. He dropped the bronze plate with a clatter, staggering back until he hit the wall and slid to the floor. He wrapped his arms around his knees, pulling himself into a tight ball, his breath coming in ragged, panicked gasps.
The dam of his fragile composure broke.
The world dissolved into a cacophony of memory and sensation, a nightmare bursting into the waking world.
The wail of a siren, a rising, falling scream that promised annihilation. The blue glow of a monitor screen, a window into a world of fantasies. The image on the screen, frozen in his mind's eye: a mature, married news anchor, her knowing smile and the tight fit of her blouse a secret thrill. The pathetic, lonely desperation of his own hand moving in the dark.
A sudden, silent flash that turned the night outside his window into day. Brighter than Lumina. Whiter than anything he had ever seen.
The sound came a second later, not a sound he heard with his ears, but one he felt in his bones. A deep, world-shattering CRACK that was the sky itself tearing apart. The floor heaved. The walls turned to dust. A wave of impossible heat, a god's own breath, washed over him, and for a single, eternal microsecond, he felt himself being unwritten from existence.
Pain.
And then, nothing.
And then… this cold, dusty floor.
He came back to himself with a choked sob, drenched in a cold sweat that had nothing to do with the room's chill. The memories weren't fractured anymore. They were whole. They were real.
He was dead. His world, his pathetic, lonely life, his secret, shameful obsessions—all of it was gone, turned to ash and radioactive dust. He wasn't a ghost haunting a body.
He was a ghost haunting a world.
Yang Zhan stood in the main house's kitchen, staring at the pot of thin, watery congee left over from the midday meal. It was barely more than rice-water, a food for invalids and the destitute. This was what his clan had been reduced to. This was the legacy of his ancestors.
He ladled a bowl of the pathetic gruel and took a hard, stale bread roll from a basket. He placed them on a simple wooden tray. His hands, the calloused hands of a warrior, felt clumsy holding such a meager offering.
He thought of the meeting. The endless, pointless arguments. The quiet, cutting superiority of the First House. The fiery, impatient ambition of his own wife. And at the center of it all, the boy.
His son.
He had looked at him, truly looked at him, for the first time in a decade. And he had seen nothing. A pale, trembling ghost. A stranger wearing his son's face. He had felt a surge of a father's hope when the news of his awakening had come, a foolish, desperate hope that a miracle had occurred. But the boy he saw at the table was just as broken as the boy who had slept.
Still. He was his son. His blood. And he was a father. A father had duties.
He carried the tray through the winding, uneven stone paths of the Second House's wing. He reached the small, isolated courtyard at the end. The place they had put the boy, out of sight, out of mind. A place for the dying. He sighed, a heavy, weary sound. He raised his hand and knocked on the door.
The panic subsided, leaving behind the cold, heavy certainty of his situation. There was no going back. No waking up. This was it. This decaying clan, this hostile family, this world governed by rules he didn't understand—this was his reality now.
A heavy knock on the door made him jump, a raw yelp escaping his lips.
The door slid open before he could answer. His father, Yang Zhan, stood silhouetted in the doorway, his broad frame blocking out the fading light. He held a simple wooden tray.
"Eat," Yang Zhan grunted, his voice rough. He stepped inside, his presence making the tiny room feel even more cramped. He set the tray on the small table. A bowl of thin, watery congee and a small, hard bread roll. "You look like a starved ghost."
Yang Kai just nodded, pushing himself up on shaky legs. His throat was too tight to speak.
His father watched him for a moment, his expression unreadable. It wasn't the open contempt of Madam Liu, but it wasn't warmth, either. It was the weary look of a man staring at a debt he could never hope to repay.
"The Patriarch is… under a lot of pressure," Yang Zhan said gruffly, as if that explained everything. He took a half-step forward and clapped a heavy hand on Yang Kai's shoulder. The touch was meant to be reassuring, but it felt more like an anchor, holding him in place. "Rest. Get your strength back."
Yang Kai flinched at the touch but managed another small, jerky nod.
With a final, heavy sigh, his father turned and left, sliding the door shut behind him. The room was silent again, save for the frantic pounding of Yang Kai's own heart.
He stared at the meager meal. A prisoner's ration. He was utterly dependent on them. On the grudging charity of a father who saw him as a burden and the open scorn of a mother who saw him as a shame.
I am weak.
The thought was a blade. In his old world, weakness meant being a social outcast, a failure. Here, he was beginning to understand, weakness was a death sentence.
He forced himself to eat, his stomach churning. The congee was tasteless, the bread stale, but it was fuel. As he ate, a new clarity began to pierce through the fog of his fear. He was a ghost, yes. He was weak, yes. But he wasn't the boy who had laid in that bed for eleven years. He was from another world. A world where information was the ultimate weapon.
He didn't know how to fight. He didn't know how to cultivate. He didn't know anything.
And that was the key.
I need to learn the rules.
The thought was a lifeline in a storm. He couldn't fight them on their terms. Not yet. But he could learn. If he understood the rules of this world—its politics, its power, its people—he could find the cracks. He could find leverage. He could survive.
His mind flashed back to the clan meeting. Madam Lan had mentioned a son, Wei'er, and his training. His father had spoken of an empty armory. The clan had history, manuals, records.
They had a library.
The Pavilion of Fading Sunlight, his new memories supplied.
It was a small goal. A pathetic goal for a man in a world of demigods. But it was his. It was the first step away from being a passive, terrified victim.
He finished the last of the bread, the stale crumbs scratching his throat. The fear was still there, a cold, heavy stone in his gut. But now, for the first time, it had a companion.
A desperate, burning need for knowledge.
Madam Liu, she returned to her own opulent chambers, the scent of her husband's impotent rage still clinging to her robes. She poured herself a cup of strong, spiced wine, her movements sharp and angry. Fools. All of them.
But as the wine warmed her blood, her thoughts kept returning not to the meeting, but to the incident from three days ago. To the moment he had awoken.
She had been there, in his squalid little room, performing the matriarch's duty of observing the family's shame. She had been staring at the pale, still face of her son, the boy who had been a quiet, timid, and utterly unremarkable child before his fall.
And then, his eyes had opened.
They had not been the dazed, confused eyes of a boy waking from a long sleep. They had been sharp, clear, and filled with a strange, predatory light. He had looked at her, at her face, at her body, and a slow, audacious smile had spread across his lips.
"Well now," a voice she had never heard before had purred from her son's mouth. "It seems I've woken up in heaven. And you must be the welcoming goddess."
The words had been a shocking, scandalous impertinence. Then, just as quickly, the light had vanished from his eyes, replaced by a look of pure, screaming terror as the boy's own memories had clearly flooded his mind. He had recoiled, stammering apologies, his face a mask of pale, pathetic fear.
She had dismissed it at the time as a side effect of the coma, a momentary madness. But now, after seeing him at the meeting, after feeling the real, physical heat of his touch... she was not so sure.
What did that long sleep do to his mind? she thought, her amber eyes narrowing. He woke up a completely different man. The quiet, timid boy was gone. In his place was… something else. Something audacious. Something with a silver tongue and a lecher's gaze.
The thought was a strange, unsettling itch in her mind. He was no longer just a piece of broken furniture. He was an unpredictable variable. A new, unknown piece on the board of her own failing house. And she was a woman who could not abide unknown variables in her own territory.
She stood up, her decision made. She would go to him. She would probe this new, strange personality.
She would see if this new tool, forged in the fires of a decade-long sleep, could be of some use to her.
He was about to stand, to test the strength in his trembling legs, when another knock sounded at the door. Softer this time. Controlled. Intentional.
He froze. His father wouldn't return so soon. And no servant knocked like that. Sliding the door open just a crack, he felt the blood drain from his face.
She stood in the twilight — framed by dying light like a goddess of fire and scorn.
Madam Liu. His mother.
She was clad in deep crimson silk that clung to her curves like molten lacquer. Her long chestnut hair spilled over one shoulder in loose waves, and her golden eyes, half-lidded and glinting with disdain, swept across the tiny room.
She didn't speak at first.
Instead, she stepped forward — uninvited, unquestioned — and entered his sanctuary as if it were hers by divine right. Her scent arrived before her words: spiced plum, dark wine, and something sharper beneath — ambition, maybe.
She dragged a perfectly manicured finger across the dusty table, lifted it, inspected the grime, then clicked her tongue.
"A fitting hovel," she said, her voice smooth as aged wine, "for the clan's longest shame." Yang Kai swallowed hard. "Mother…"
"So formal," she murmured, circling the room. "Did you think I wouldn't come?" She turned to face him fully. "You surprised me today, little Kai." Her voice held no warmth. Only calculation.
"For eleven years you were a stillborn echo," she continued, tilting her head slightly. "A silent stone. And then, suddenly… you speak. You move. You look."
She took a step closer. He could see the faint embroidery along the hem of her robe — phoenixes in black thread, circling a blood-red sun.
"But what truly startled me," she said, her voice dropping an octave, "was three nights ago. When you woke." He stiffened. She smiled — slow, cold, knowing.
"You looked at me," she said, "not as a son looks at a mother… but as a man looks at a woman." His breath caught. "And then," she whispered, stepping into his space, "you called me a goddess. In that voice — that voice that was not your own."
Her eyes searched his. Not for emotion. For weakness. For cracks. "Well?" she asked.
He struggled to keep his voice steady. "I… I was dreaming, Mother. For a long time. When I woke, I—I couldn't tell what was real. The dream was vivid. And when I saw you… I mistook you for… something else."
She didn't speak. Then she laughed — once, low and sharp. Not amused. Intriged. "A vivid dream," she echoed. "How convenient."
She lifted her hand. Her finger, cool and smooth, traced the edge of his jaw — not tenderly, but like a scholar studying an unfamiliar script.
"So… my son wakes with strange eyes, strange words, and a stranger's hunger," she said, her voice a purr wrapped in silk. "How… fascinating." He couldn't speak. His pulse thundered.
She turned and swept toward the door. At the threshold, she paused — looking over her shoulder, eyes gleaming in the gloom.
"Rest well," she said. "You'll need strength… for whatever it is you've become."
Then she left, leaving behind only the fading trace of spiced plum… and a silence that rang like a bell.