Liuxue woke to the sensation of cold stone pressing against her cheek.
For a long moment, she was weightless feeling caught between worlds, between breaths,before her body returned to her, heavy and aching. Her lungs stung as she dragged in a breath, and darkness slowly gave way to the outline of torch-lit walls.
A room.
Not the void.
Not the mist.
Something solid. Real.
She pushed herself up with trembling hands.
Her ears rang. Her vision swayed. And her chest burned exactly where the seal rested, as if something had clawed at it from the inside.
"Liuxue?"
The soft voice made her heart stutter.
Yining.
Liuxue turned to see her assistant sitting beside her, her face pale and streaked with dried tears, but alive....alive!!.
Relief crashed through her.
"Yining," Liuxue whispered. "You're… you're safe."
Yining exhaled shakily. "Barely. That space nearly crushed us. If not for the barrier that burst around you at the last second, we would've been—" Her voice broke. "Don't ever scare me like that again."
Liuxue tried to smile, but her lips trembled instead.
She looked around, letting her eyes adjust.
The room was unfamiliar.
Circular stone chamber.
Faint inscriptions glowing across the floor.
A soft, pulsing light hovering above an altar near the wall.
"Where are we?" Liuxue asked.
Yining opened her mouth, then hesitated. "Someone… brought us here."
Liuxue stiffened.
"Someone?"
Before Yining could answer, footsteps echoed from the far side of the chamber.
Slow.
Measured.
So painfully familiar her heart twisted.
Liuxue's breath caught as the figure stepped out of the shadows.
The Starborn man.
But he looked… strained.
A crack ran along his sleeve, faint and glowing like fractured starlight. His usually calm eyes were dimmer, shadows pooling beneath them.
Yet when his gaze found her, something like relief flickered across his face in which he quickly concealed.
"You're awake," he said quietly.
Liuxue swallowed. "You saved us."
He held her gaze. "Of course."
His voice was soft, but something heavy moved beneath the simple words he said,it was layered with an emotion stretched tight and fragile.
Liuxue felt her heart give an uncomfortable jolt.
Yining muttered under her breath, "I suddenly feel like a third wheel," but neither of them reacted.
Liuxue steadied herself.
"What happened in the void?" she asked.
His expression darkened.
"You were pulled into a resonance. Something reacted to your seal and called the twilight entity to you."
Liuxue flinched. "It said… I belonged to it."
He shook his head sharply. "You don't. And you never will."
She held his gaze. "Then who is it?"
Silence.
A long, heavy silence.
Finally, he answered.
"He is a remnant."
"A remnant of what?"
"Of a past you should never have had."
Liuxue's stomach turned cold. "What does that mean?"
His jaw tightened. The fissure of starlight along his sleeve pulsed brighter.
Yining leaned closer to Liuxue, whispering, "I don't think he's avoiding the question. I think he can't answer it."
Liuxue saw it now,she saw the strain in his posture, the flicker of pain in his eyes. As if every truth he tried to speak pressed against some invisible wall.
Liuxue swallowed hard.
"You said earlier… that I fell. And that you followed."
She hesitated, then forced the question out.
"Who… was I? Before I fell?"
He closed his eyes.
For the first time since she met him, he looked genuinely pained.
"You were not supposed to ask that yet," he said quietly.
"But I need to know," Liuxue whispered.
He opened his eyes again and in them, she saw a depth that made her breath catch. Not admiration. Not longing.but Grief.
"Liuxue," he said softly, "if you remember too soon, you will unravel your current self."
Her heartbeat stuttered.
"My… current self?"
He stepped closer, slowly, as if approaching a wounded animal.
"Everything you are now,your body, your memories, your mortality....,they are a fragile shell built to protect what you used to be."
Liuxue's skin prickled with cold.
"What I used to be?" her voice came out a whisper. "What was I?"
He stared at her with a mixture of dread and longing.
"You were not human."
Her breath vanished.
Yining gasped softly. "She… wasn't human?"
Liuxue's fingers trembled against her lap. "Then what am I?"
He shook his head. "Not yet. You mustn't know yet."
"Why?" she pressed.
His voice almost broke.
"Because once you know, the thing that is searching for you is the remnant you met in the void which will no longer be a fragment."
Liuxue's blood ran cold.
"It will become whole again," he said. "And it will come for you with all its power."
She stared at him in horror.
"And you would die before I let that happen."
Liuxue's throat tightened painfully.
He stepped closer—too close—his voice barely louder than breath.
"You asked who you were."
A pause.
A tremor.
"Just know this: your true name is not Liuxue."
Her heart froze.
"You once held a name that even the heavens feared."
The light hovering above the altar pulsed violently, as if reacting to his words. The chamber trembled. The seal on Liuxue's chest burned like fire.
Her vision blurred.
The Starborn man moved instantly, catching her before she could fall.
"Careful," he murmured, steadying her with strong hands. "Your seal is destabilizing again."
She swallowed, breath shaking.
"What… was my real name?"
His hands tightened around her arms.
"If I say it," he whispered, "you will remember. And if you remember—"
His expression twisted.
"—I will lose you again."
Her heartbeat stumbled.
"Why… would you lose me?"
He didn't answer.
He only looked at her as if the truth itself might destroy her.
Before she could speak again,
A crack split the ceiling.
The altar light flared.
A low, ancient roar shook the chamber.
Yining screamed, grabbing Liuxue's arm. "Not again! Something's coming through!"
Liuxue turned toward the fracture as a light pours from it, cold and golden.
Something was breaking in.
Her seal blazed in agony.
The Starborn man's expression changed instantly into rage, fear, urgency all at once.
"Liuxue," he said, grabbing her hand, "stay behind me."
Her pulse thundered.
"What is coming?"
He looked at the golden crack in the air.
His voice dropped to a whisper.
"Something that remembers you."