They walked in silence for hours after leaving the town, the broken pieces of Gao Yang's staff tied to Lin Chen's pack. The sun was bright now, but it felt cold—like light from a star that had already faded. Yu Qing hadn't opened her notebook once; she just walked beside him, her eyes fixed on the ground.
It was only when they stopped to rest by a river that Lin Chen pulled out his blank book and flipped through the pages. Now, with the ending written, all the foreshadowing he'd missed—or chosen not to see—jumped out at him, clear and unmissable.
He stopped at Chapter 9. There, on the page with the faint line, he could now see it clearly: the word "last" wasn't just next to the line—it was the line, written in tiny, compressed letters. And in the margin, hidden in the crease of the page, was a sketch of a staff breaking in two.
"Look," he said quietly, handing the book to Yu Qing.
She flipped through the pages, her hands shaking. Chapter 10: Master Lian's words—"someone you know"—were now circled in a faint, glowing light that matched Gao Yang's final burst. Chapter 11: the reversed town's old man saying "some stories are meant to end before you're ready"—the words now bold and sharp, as if they'd been shouted.
Chapter 12: the broken branch, the stone with its curved line, the old innkeeper's story of her son who'd fallen—all of it was now connected by a single, dark thread that led straight to Chapter 15. Even the tune Gao Yang had hummed in the reversed town—Yu Qing realized now—it was a funeral song, played in the right key only in his final moments.
"He knew," she whispered, closing the book. "Did you see? In Chapter 13, when his staff first cracked—he smiled like he expected it. And in Chapter 14, when he asked you to write that line about the noodles… he was saying goodbye."
Lin Chen thought back to that moment—Gao Yang's pause before picking up his chopsticks, the way he'd looked at them both like he was memorizing their faces. He'd known all along. The black lines, the flickering star, the refrains in every story they'd touched—he'd seen them too.
"He was a Storyteller," Lin Chen said, looking at the broken staff. "Of course he saw it. He just chose not to tell us. He wanted us to have that last moment—happy, real, unshadowed."
They walked down to the river, and Lin Chen pulled out the stone Yu Qing had given him. The black line on it was now so clear it looked like a scar. He skipped it across the water—once, twice, three times—just like Gao Yang had skipped that stone by the glowing river in Chapter 9. It sank, but for a moment, it left a trail of light on the surface.
"The lines were always there," Yu Qing said, finally opening her notebook. She started writing, her pen moving fast. "In every chapter, every moment. We just didn't want to see them. Because seeing them would mean admitting it was real."
She stopped writing and looked at Lin Chen. "But that's what your story's about, right? Not ignoring the hard parts, but letting them be part of the whole. Gao Yang's ending is part of our story now. It makes the good parts brighter, the potential deeper."
Lin Chen pulled out his blank book and flipped to a new page. He wrote a line, and this time, he didn't hide it—he made it bold, clear, impossible to miss:
Gao Yang's story ended here, but his light weaves through every page that comes after.
The words glowed, and suddenly, all the foreshadowing lines in the book—from the broken branch to the split staff—started to glow too, merging with this new line into a single, bright thread that ran through the entire book.
Just then, they heard a familiar tune floating on the wind—Gao Yang's tune, played in the right key. They looked up and saw a group of travelers walking down the road, one of them playing a flute. When they passed, the traveler smiled at them. "Heard that tune from a boy a few days back," he said. "Said it was for his friends. Said it meant 'the story goes on.'"
Lin Chen felt a small, real smile touch his lips. Gao Yang had left more than just broken staffs and faded lines—he'd left his tune, his light, his story woven into the world itself.
They picked up their packs and continued on, the broken staff clinking softly against Lin Chen's bag. The lines that had been hidden were now out in the open, but they didn't feel like chains anymore. They felt like a reminder—of who they'd lost, of who they were, of the pages still waiting to be written.
The story was still being told. And Gao Yang was still part of it.