Princess Lin Yao
Princess Lin Yao returned to the quiet side terrace, her boots crunching over frost. The moment she was alone, she swept her sleeve sharply, activating a privacy seal—one of the imperial-grade ones only she possessed.
The world fell silent.
Only then did she reach inside her robe and pull out the thin, pale-gold booklet.
The diary.
The one that had appeared in her imperial chambers two nights ago—
silent, harmless, inexplicable.
With her name on the first page.
And a single line written at the top:
The following account concerns Her Highness Princess Lin Yao, whose fate was lost.
Lin Yao opened it with care, as if her touch might scorch it.
She had already read the first six pages…
and she had not slept since.
Because every page described things that had never happened.
Catastrophes.
War.
A Saint who wandered alone.
A princess who fought at the border and—
Lin Yao's breath sharpened.
Her death.
Written in detail so vivid her pulse still skipped when she remembered it.
She hadn't believed it.
She still didn't.
But now, after meeting Yun Shi—
Her hand tightened around the diary.
The ache in her chest had returned, deeper and sharper.
She flipped to the page she had reread four times that night.
The one she had sworn she would never look at again.
The one that made her hands tremble even now.
Third Winter of the Fractured Sky Era.
Her Highness fell.
The description spilled across the page like a wound reopening:
She was trying to defend the refugees when the Riftspawn tore through the eastern flank. She had already lost too much blood from the earlier fight.
I reached her too late.
She tried to speak—she always tried to calm me, even then—but the snow was already turning red around us.
She smiled, even as she died.
A wave of cold shot through Lin Yao's spine.
She slammed the diary shut.
Her heartbeat thundered in her ears.
She did not cry—Imperial heirs did not cry—but her breath shook once, betraying her composure.
"Impossible," she whispered.
She pressed a palm against her chest.
The ghost-pain flared beneath her ribs again—the exact place the diary described the Riftspawn's strike.
No.
It wasn't real.
It couldn't be real.
Yet—
When Yun Shi had bowed earlier…
When Yun Shi looked at her…
When Yun Shi's hands trembled at the sight of her—
Lin Yao had felt it.
Not recognition.
But something deeper.
A grief shaped exactly like the grief written in these pages.
Slowly, reluctantly, Lin Yao reopened the diary to her death page.
Her eyes harsh, unblinking.
Her voice cold and controlled:
"Why do you mourn me?"
She turned the page.
The next entry described Yun Shi gathering her body from the frozen battlefield and shielding it alone for an entire night.
Lin Yao's throat tightened.
"No." She gripped the booklet harder. "This is fiction. A fabrication."
A lie.
A delusion.
Yet her hands refused to stop shaking.
For years, Lin Yao had believed she was unbreakable.
The diary was proving her wrong.
She walked toward the railing, staring down at the distant sword terraces where Yun Shi had stood moments earlier. Her thoughts tangled, frantic and sharp beneath her regal mask.
Yun Shi.
Saint.
Calm.
Early Saint-grade aura compressed to a thread.
She looked at me like she had stood beside my dying breath.
Lin Yao's fingers curled around the diary.
Is it because of this?
Is that why she looked like that?
She hesitated, then flipped to the newest page.
A sentence had appeared sometime after dawn.
Fresh ink.
Still faintly warm.
She lives again.
Lin Yao's grip faltered.
Her breath caught.
"She… lives again?"
The words weren't directed at the princess.
They were directed at whoever wrote it.
Lin Yao read them again and again, each repetition sending a strange, burning heat through her chest.
Lives again.
As if the world had turned back.
As if this Yun Shi—
She shut the diary firmly, holding it against her heart longer than she intended.
Her voice was low. Rougher.
"If this is a prophecy… if this is a warning… or if this nonsense came from her hand…"
She inhaled sharply.
"I will find the truth."
She tucked the diary away and stepped out of the privacy seal, returning her imperial mask to perfection.
But the crack beneath it—
the one Yun Shi had carved just by existing—
remained.
And as she turned toward the training terrace where Yun Shi would soon pass again, the diary throbbed faintly with a new line of script forming in the dark.
Lin Yao didn't see it.
But the world did.
Her Highness has begun to believe.
---
Mu Qingge had never feared paper.
She had faced demonic cultivators, calamity beasts, sect betrayals, collapsing realms—none of them had ever made her falter.
But this diary?
The small ash-gray book lying in her hand, quiet and unassuming?
It shook her in ways she could not articulate.
Three nights ago, it appeared on her private altar—an impossible intrusion into a place even the Sect Master required permission to enter.
She had drawn her sword on it.
She had activated every detection formation.
None reacted.
Instead, the first page opened on its own and revealed a single line:
Mu Qingge,
who died with a steady blade.
Her breath had stopped.
Because she had never told Yun Shi—never told anyone—about that fear:
The fear of failing her disciple when the worst finally came.
She turned the page now, slowly, as though afraid of reading her own corpse.
The ink described a battle she had never fought.
But Yun Shi had.
Fractured Sky Era – Final Month
The Saint stood with her master for the last time.
Heaven's laws broke. Ten Thousand Rifts opened.
Master Mu Qingge held the northern breach alone.
Mu Qingge's hands tightened imperceptibly.
Northern breach?
She had never been there.
But the diary continued:
She was magnificent.
A sword that held back a world falling apart.
When the fifth breach collapsed, she forced me to flee.
I heard her final sword cry as the rift consumed her.
Mu Qingge's chest constricted.
Consumed? Her? "Absurd," she whispered, but the denial felt hollow.
Her eyes caught on a line, written with such raw emotion it almost bled off the page:
Master… I lived.
You died buying me ten breaths.
Ten breaths that let me drag three hundred disciples out of the collapsing realm.
Ten breaths that I never repaid.
Ten breaths I would have traded my soul to return to you.
Something hot and sharp lodged behind her sternum.
She shut the book, breath unsteady.
"This is fabrication. Fiction. A delusion."
Her voice betrayed her.
Because the details were wrong—impossible, unreal—
yet the feelings behind them…
That grief. That reverence. That love.
No imposter could have written them so precisely.
She forced herself to reopen the diary and flip to the newest page.
Fresh ink glowed faintly:
This time, she walks beside me.
This time, she breathes.
This time, she lives.
Mu Qingge froze.
"This time…"
Her heartbeat tightened painfully.
Someone out there—someone who knew her better than anyone alive—believed there existed a reality where she died saving Yun Shi.
Where Yun Shi mourned her for the rest of her life.
Where she failed to return to her disciple's side.
Her next breath shook.
Not because she feared death.
But because she saw the consequences of it—reflected in the diary like a mirror she had never asked to look into.
A world where Yun Shi lived without her.
A world where Yun Shi cried for her.
A world where Yun Shi carried her for decades in unending sorrow.
Her fingers curled around the diary's spine, gentle this time—almost protective.
"So," she whispered, a faint tremor in her voice,
"in this… imagined world… Yun Shi lived because of me."
Not because she doubted such an act.
She would die for her disciple without hesitation.
A thousand times.
But to see Yun Shi's grief spelled out in ink—
To see the weight Yun Shi would carry—
To see the consequences of her absence…
That was a blade she had never prepared to meet.
Mu Qingge sealed the diary inside her sleeve with slow deliberation.
She straightened her spine.
Expression controlled. Qi steady. Soul anchored.
But something fundamental had shifted.
A crack had formed—not of weakness, but of dangerous, consuming protectiveness.
Outside, she felt the faint ripple of Yun Shi's qi approaching the training grounds.
She had felt it for years—she could find Yun Shi in a storm, in a crowd, in a battlefield.
But now?
Now every instinct screamed the same thing:
Do not die.
Do not leave her.
Not in this life.
Not in any life.
She stepped out into the morning light.
And the wind whispered a single, chilling truth she could not unhear:
This time, she must not fall first.
—
The Pearl Reflection Chamber was carved of pale moonstone, its walls humming with cold spiritual resonance. Saintess Su Wan—Ice Lotus of the Nine-Tiered Palace—sat in the center, back straight, hair pinned with froststeel combs, her breathing a perfect four-beat rhythm.
Her cultivation had never shaken.
Her mind had never wandered.
Her emotions had never mastered her.
Until today.
Because today, something impossible lay beside her knees.
A book.
A small book with a silver-thread spine.
It had appeared while she meditated—sudden, silent, placed with the gentleness of a hand that didn't belong to this world.
A system's hand.
Her fingers hovered above it, then finally touched the cover.
Freezing qi shivered up her arm.
Her pulse—steady for decades—misfired.
She opened the book.
Her name was on the first line.
Not her title.
Not her honorific.
Her name, written with aching softness.
Su Wan,
my fiancée.
My lotus who died because I was too slow.
Su Wan's breath snapped.
Fiancée?
Impossible.
Absurd.
No one could arrange a marriage between sects of equal rank without her knowledge.
And yet her hand shook as she turned the page.
---
**THE DIARY OF YUN SHI —
THE ENTRIES WRITTEN FOR SU WAN**
The handwriting was elegant, but the emotion beneath it trembled like a barely-held blade.
Entry 1
We were engaged by decree of the Heavenly Court.
A political bond to unite two great sects.
We did not know each other, not truly.
But I… admired you.
I admired the way you stood alone in the Frosted Plains during the Ten Thousand Rifts.
I admired how your qi did not waver even when the sky split open.
I admired you so much that I never approached you.
I regret that.
Su Wan's fingers froze.
Admired?
Regretted?
She swallowed hard, skin tightening with an emotion she didn't want to name.
She turned the page.
Entry 2 – The First Time I Saw You
You stood on the ridge of the fractured glacier.
Your cloak was torn.
Your hands were bleeding from channeling formation lines without rest.
You were beautiful.
Not like a jewel.
Not like a snow-lotus.
But like a person who refused to fall.
I wanted to go to you.
I wanted to speak.
I wanted—
The sentence broke off.
Ink blurred where a drop of water had fallen.
A tear?
Su Wan felt her throat constrict.
Her heartbeat rolled unevenly.
"No," she whispered. "This makes no sense."
But her hands didn't stop.
She turned the page.
Entry 3 – The Day You Died
The handwriting here was jagged—scratched, almost.
As if written by someone with hands shaking uncontrollably.
The Eternal Frost Campaign lasted three years.
You held the northern line alone for the last seven days.
I told the generals you needed help.
They told me the Saintess of the Nine-Tiered Palace would never fall.
They lied.
When I reached you, you were already on your knees.
There was so much blood on the snow.
So much.
I thought you were kneeling in meditation at first.
But your back… your back had been pierced straight through.
Su Wan's breath halted.
Her vision trembled.
But Yun Shi's words continued.
When you saw me, you smiled.
Even dying, you smiled as if relieved that I had come.
I carried you away from the battlefield.
I forced spiritual energy into your failing meridians until mine cracked.
You held my wrist and whispered:
"I wanted to meet you properly."
And then you died in my arms.
Su Wan's lips trembled.
Her chest tightened painfully.
Her eyes burned.
She was the Ice Lotus.
Unshakeable.
Unbreakable.
She had never cried in her life—
But now tears slid silently down her face.
She turned another page with trembling fingers.
Entry 4 – After Your Death
The world kept ending.
The sky kept burning.
But nothing hurt more than losing you.
I never got to know the sound of your laugh.
I never got to hear what you thought of our engagement.
I never got to know whether you wanted me.
I don't know why I'm writing this.
You're alive in this world.
You don't know me.
You won't love me.
You shouldn't.
But I will protect you this time.
Even if you never look my way.
Even if we remain strangers.
Even if you choose another.
Just live.
Please live.
That will be enough.
By the end of the entry, the ink dissolved into trails and watermarks—
Yun Shi had clearly cried while writing it.
Su Wan's breathing broke.
Her lips parted but no sound emerged.
---
SU WAN'S REACTION
She closed the book—then immediately opened it again.
Then closed it.
Then opened it.
Her hands trembled so violently she had to brace herself against the floor.
"She… lost me."
The words were barely audible.
"In a world that never existed."
She touched the page where Yun Shi had written
my fiancée
as if the ink might vanish if she didn't hold onto it.
Her heart pounded, cold and hot at once.
Engaged.
Loved.
Tragically lost.
And she—Su Wan—felt the grief of a life she had never lived crushing her chest.
"This isn't possible," she whispered.
But she pressed the book to her heart anyway.
And for the first time in her life, the Ice Lotus Saintess felt herself begin to crack.
—
Su Wan's tears did not fall loudly.
They slid down her face without sound, cooling instantly on her skin—thin lines of frost tracing where her composure had cracked.
She hated the feeling.
Not grief.
She never feared grief.
What terrified her was the sense that she was missing something—
something enormous
something intimate
something that should have belonged to her
but had been stolen before she even knew to protect it.
She wiped her face with the back of her sleeve, but the tremor remained.
"Fiancée…"
She whispered it once, testing the shape of the word.
It tasted foreign and familiar.
A vow spoken in a world she didn't remember.
And then—
with a breath that shook—
Su Wan turned the page again.
More ink was appearing.
A new entry.
And the handwriting…
was shaking.
Entry 5 – When I Felt You Near
Something in the world changed today.
My heart jolted awake. My meridians shook. My breath broke without warning.
And then—
I felt
you.
Alive. Close. Powerful as ever. Cold as ever. Beautiful as ever.
My fiancée lives again.
Su Wan froze.
A line of heat—sharp and humiliating—ran across her cheeks.
She had known Yun Shi only through ink.
Yun Shi had known her through loss.
And the disparity made her breath shatter.
Her hand moved again without thought—
turning the page.
Another entry had been added.
Entry 6 – If We Meet Again
If fate is foolish enough to let me stand before you in this life…
I will not let you die again.
Even if you hate me. Even if you leave me. Even if we never speak beyond courtesy.
Just breathe.
Just stay in this world.
That is enough.
By the time she reached the last character, Su Wan pressed a fist to her lips.
"So this is how I died… in your arms…"
Her throat tightened.
"And you carried that grief alone."
Her composure buckled for a final, humiliating heartbeat.
She closed the diary gently— too gently for the emotions clawing through her chest.
Just as she did—
the diary trembled.
A faint hum. A shift of qi. A ripple of frost.
Su Wan's breath caught.
Silver light surged across the cover, forming characters she had not seen yet:
[Synchronization Event: Emotional Convergence Detected]
[Heroines' Diaries Updating…]
Her pulse jumped.
Not again.
A second message appeared:
[New Chapter Unlocked: PRINCESS LIN YAO — THE DEATH WRITTEN TWICE]
Su Wan's eyes widened sharply.
Lin Yao?
A princess?
She flipped the diary open—
and her breath stopped entirely as she read the first lines of Lin Yao's tragedy.
She saw Yun Shi holding the dying princess in snow.
She saw Yun Shi mourning her for years.
She saw tenderness Yun Shi had never shown in Su Wan's own entries.
Cold spread through her chest—
not anger
not jealousy
but a terrible, suffocating ache.
"Yun Shi…"
Her voice cracked.
"You grieved for more than me."
Her hand trembled violently.
She turned the page—
And the diary flickered again.
[New Chapter Unlocked: MU QINGGE — THE MASTER WHO FELL FIRST]
Su Wan stared.
Mu Qingge— Yun Shi's master— had also died for her.
Also held a chapter filled with tears and devotion.
Su Wan pressed the diary against her chest, pulse accelerating into something sharp.
"Just how many losses did she endure…?"
Her voice trembled.
"How many lives… ended around her…?"
She shut her eyes, the pressure in her chest reaching a breaking point.
Yun Shi had not been a cold saint.
Not a distant ascetic.
She had loved them.
Protected them.
Grieved them.
Every heroine. Every death. Every heartbreak.
Carried alone.
"Enough."
Su Wan rose abruptly.
Her frost qi pushed outward, cracking the moonstone floor.
Outside, her attendants startled as she slid open the chamber doors with a burst of icy wind.
"Prepare my flight carriage," she commanded.
"Saintess?" one stammered.
Su Wan's eyes were cold enough to burn.
"I am traveling to the Starfall Saint Sect."
The attendants froze in horror.
A diplomatic visit. Without notice. From the Ice Lotus Saintess.
That alone was enough to start wars.
But Su Wan didn't hesitate.
Because her heart was pounding with a single, unbearable truth:
If Yun Shi had borne all that grief alone in the previous world—
If she had carried their deaths in silence—
If she still wrote with such aching tenderness—
Then Su Wan…
She could not stay away.
Not for a moment longer.
Yun Shi was alive.
And Su Wan had no intention of losing her again.
Even if she didn't understand why her heart hurt like this.
Even if Yun Shi didn't choose her in this life.
Even if all she could do was stand at a distance.
She could no longer breathe until she saw Yun Shi with her own eyes.
LIN YAO READS SU WAN'S CHAPTER
Lin Yao had composed herself enough to walk, but not enough to breathe.
She had left her private terrace in a straight-backed stride, imperial boots striking frost-etched stone with measured force. Her expression was its usual winter steel.
Inside, she was unraveling.
She had read her death twice now. Three times. More, if she counted the sleepless hours before dawn where she kept turning the page as if expecting the words to change.
They never did.
Even now, her chest ached where the Riftspawn's strike had been described.
She reached the end of the walkway and paused beneath a lantern.
Her diary—her diary—trembled in her sleeve.
Lin Yao stiffened instantly.
Another update?
She withdrew it—
—and froze when she saw the silver lettering across the cover:
[Synchronization Event Complete]
[New Chapter Available: SAINTESS SU WAN — FIANCÉE OF THE FALLEN]
Su Wan?
The Saintess of the Nine-Tiered Palace?
Lin Yao's breath sharpened, a blade scraping her lungs.
She flipped the diary open with imperial precision—
only to feel her vision lurch as she took in the first lines.
Su Wan, my fiancée.
My lotus who died because I was too slow.
Fiancée.
Lin Yao's fingers dug into the fragile spine.
Her heartbeat slammed painfully against her ribs.
Su Wan—beautiful, untouchable, a living blade of ice—was engaged to Yun Shi in that… ruined life?
Her thoughts snapped into a cold clarity she almost feared.
No.
No.
No.
She turned the page.
Yun Shi's words spilled out, trembling and reverent and unbearably intimate.
I admired you.
I feared approaching you.
I saw your death and broke beside you.
Lin Yao's pulse throbbed sharply.
Her vision blurred for a moment—she wasn't sure if from anger, shock, or some deeper emotion she refused to name.
She read faster, breath growing shallower with each line.
Su Wan's frozen battlefield.
Su Wan dying in Yun Shi's arms.
Yun Shi carrying her body.
Yun Shi grieving her.
Yun Shi writing—
Even if you never look my way…
Even if you choose another…
Just live.
Lin Yao's hand spasmed.
The diary nearly fell.
A cold, violent pressure surged out of her core—imperial qi cracking the frost beneath her boots.
"That cannot be."
Her voice trembled.
She didn't tremble.
Ever.
But now—
"Yun Shi mourned another woman… just as deeply as she mourned me?"
Her chest tightened painfully.
It wasn't jealousy.
It wasn't anger.
It was the bone-deep realization that Yun Shi had lived through a world where everyone she cared for had died—
princess
master
fiancée
—and Lin Yao didn't know where she fit anymore.
A line of new ink flashed suddenly across the page, forming as she watched:
[Princess Lin Yao is experiencing destabilization of the destiny thread.]
Lin Yao's breath stopped.
Destabilization?
The only reason destiny destabilized was—
"Someone else's fate is interfering with mine."
Her grip tightened.
Su Wan.
And if Su Wan had a chapter…
Then Mu Qingge—
Another alert bloomed:
[New Chapter Available: MU QINGGE — THE MASTER WHO FELL FIRST]
Lin Yao's eyes widened sharply.
Master Mu Qingge too?
Another woman Yun Shi had loved enough to grieve for decades?
Slow, icy dread pooled in Lin Yao's stomach.
"How many deaths did she live through alone…?"
Her voice cracked—
and the lantern light trembled with it.
She shut the diary and pressed it to her chest, harder than necessary.
Yun Shi was suffering. Had suffered. More than she had ever revealed.
And the thought—
that Yun Shi might break again—
sent a violent pulse of fear through her.
Lin Yao straightened, decisive.
She no longer cared about protocol. She no longer cared about imperial decorum.
The synchronization event had made one truth agonizingly clear:
She had to reach Yun Shi.
Before the world—or fate—tore her away again.
She turned sharply toward the exit path—
only to feel a surge of steel-hard qi rising from the direction of the halls.
Mu Qingge.
Approaching.
And her aura—normally calm, disciplined, measured—was fraying.
Lin Yao froze.
Then her pulse spiked violently.
They were all converging.
All at once.
---
MU QINGGE READS BOTH THEIR CHAPTERS
Moments earlier….
Mu Qingge had never once lost her composure in the last twenty years.
Not when battling demonic sects. Not when her sword shattered mid-combat. Not when faced with death itself.
Even now, she stood perfectly straight, cloak unmoving, breath steady.
Only her eyes betrayed her.
They were enormous.
Raw.
Fixed on the new line of silver script across her diary:
[New Chapter Unlocked: PRINCESS LIN YAO — THE DEATH WRITTEN TWICE]
[New Chapter Unlocked: SAINTESS SU WAN — FIANCÉE OF THE FALLEN]
She stared at the words long enough for her tea to go cold beside her.
Lin Yao.
The imperial heir.
Su Wan.
The Ice Lotus Saintess.
Both had died in Yun Shi's arms.
Both had been mourned with a depth that hollowed the pages.
Both—
She forced herself to open Lin Yao's chapter.
The princess's death unfolded with brutal clarity.
Her Highness fell.
Yun Shi arrived too late.
Snow turned red.
Mu Qingge inhaled sharply.
Yun Shi had held the dying princess in her arms—desperate, shattered, whispering reassurances that came too late.
That alone was nearly enough to break her.
But when she read the final lines—
I lived decades after she died.
And not a single winter passed without remembering her smile.
Mu Qingge's vision blurred.
She closed the diary quickly—but her hands were shaking.
That was the one thing Mu Qingge did not forgive herself for:
Letting Yun Shi suffer.
And this ruined world—
this unacceptable, intolerable world—
had forced Yun Shi to lose princess, master, saintess—
all in one lifetime.
Her jaw tightened.
She opened Su Wan's chapter next.
She expected cold formality.
She expected distance.
She did not expect aching reverence.
Fiancée.
Admiration.
Regret.
Love unspoken because war never granted the chance.
Mu Qingge had to sit down.
She did not collapse. She simply lowered herself to the floor, spine rigid, palms white with tension.
She had known Yun Shi loved deeply.
But she had never known Yun Shi carried so much pain.
So much loss.
"Yun Shi…"
Her voice was a whisper.
"My disciple carried all of this alone."
Her chest constricted.
A question rose—one she had never dared ask, even of herself:
Where was I when she needed me most?
The diary flickered again.
A new message formed:
[Mu Qingge's protective instinct has exceeded safe threshold.]
[Destiny interference escalating.]
Mu Qingge's blood ran cold.
Destiny interference.
Because she had read their deaths. Because they had all read one another's stories.
Because all their grief and longing—for Yun Shi, for their own lost futures—was colliding.
Mu Qingge closed the diary with a slow, deliberate breath.
Then she stood.
Steel-spined.
Deadly calm.
Unyielding.
If fate intended to repeat those tragedies—
She would not tolerate it.
Her disciple would not walk toward another lifetime of loss.
Not while she was alive.
She stepped into the hall, sword aura radiating in silent waves.
Her foot had barely crossed the threshold—
when she sensed two approaching stormfronts:
Imperial fire.
Frostbitten sorrow.
Lin Yao.
Su Wan.
Both moving toward the same point.
Toward—
Yun Shi.
Mu Qingge's heartbeat stilled.
"This is going to break her."
She moved.
Not running.
But fast enough that the floor cracked beneath each step.
---
SYNCHRONIZED ENDPOINT
Three women in three corners of the world froze at the same moment.
Lin Yao, breathing hard.
Mu Qingge, eyes sharp as steel.
Su Wan, already traveling with unstoppable momentum.
All three diaries flashed.
At once.
A final system message carved itself across each book:
[SYNCHRONIZATION LEVEL 2 REACHED]
[Heroines Converging]
[Saint Yun Shi Approaching Emotional Overload]
All three women felt their hearts lurch with the same instinct:
Find her.
Now.
Before the past crushed her.
Before fate twisted again.
Before the world repeated itself.
Before Yun Shi broke.
Three destinies, once lost, now collided—racing toward the same courtyard.
Where Yun Shi stood alone.
Unaware.
Waiting for the storm.