The car horn was a jagged blade of sound that sliced through the heavy, incense-scented fog of Su Yilin's mind. She bolted upright, her lungs burning as if she had just inhaled a lungful of smoke and sulfur.
She was tangled in her duvet, her heart hammering against her ribs with a rhythmic terror that hurt. The grey, sickly light of a rainy Tuesday filtered through her blinds, casting long, cold shadows across her small apartment like the bars of a cage.
She touched her cheek; it was wet, a trail of salt and grief. She touched her chest; it was whole, no blade of meteor iron protruding from her ribs.
"That dream again," she choked out, her voice a fractured rasp.
She could still feel the phantom warmth of a hand against her jaw—the calloused, trembling touch of someone who felt more real than the cold floorboards beneath her feet. But as she squinted into the dimness, trying to reconstruct his face, it blurred. Features ran together like ink in a storm, leaving behind only a crushing, unbearable sense of loss.
It felt like an old wound reopening every morning at 4:00 AM, a phantom limb she kept reaching for in the dark.
"Why does it feel like I'm mourning someone who never existed?" she whispered to the empty room.
"Double shot of espresso, Yilin? You look like you've been fighting a world war in your sleep," Mei called out, not even looking up from her tablet as the cafe door chimed.
Yilin winced at the sound—the high-pitched ping felt like a needle to her brain. She adjusted the lapels of her charcoal-grey blazer, the stiff, expensive fabric acting like a suit of armor against the drizzly morning.
"Is it that obvious?" Yilin muttered, sliding into the booth. She dropped her designer work bag onto the leather seat and immediately started rubbing her temples. "I'm pretty sure I've forgotten what a full REM cycle feels like."
Mei finally looked up, pushing her glasses onto her head. She moved aside a stack of carbon-dating spreadsheets and a half-eaten croissant to make room for Yilin's coffee. "It's not just 'tired,' Yilin. You look haunted. You're giving 'Victorian ghost' vibes."
"It's just the Yan project, Mei. Give me a break," Yilin said, her voice dropping into a defensive, weary rasp. "I've been stuck in the basement of the museum for six months, neck-deep in 4th-century restoration. My brain is just… glitching. I'm having these hyper-vivid nightmares about the Great Yan Palace falling. It's a textbook case of scholar's burnout. Purely psychological."
Mei leaned across the table, her expression shifting from teasing to dead serious.
"Okay, but 'burnout' doesn't explain why you're crying in your sleep. I saw your post on that private history forum at 3:00 AM. You were asking about the specific choreography of the San Bai—the Three Bows ritual. Most people just dream about forgetting their pants at a presentation, Yilin. They don't dream about ancient imperial wedding protocols in 4K resolution."
"It's the artifacts, I'm telling you!" Yilin snapped, her fingers trembling slightly as she gripped her espresso cup.
"I'm a Senior Restorer. I spend ten hours a day under a high-powered magnifying glass, literally nose-to-nose with the 'Iron God's' chest plate. Of course my subconscious is going to build a story around that data. I study the silk fibers, so my brain renders the gown. I analyze the blade notches, so I dream about the slaughter. It's logical. It's just my brain processing my workload."
"And the guy?" Mei asked softly. "The one you mentioned? The one whose face you can never quite see but whose name you keep whispering?"
Yilin looked out the window at the rain-slicked city streets, her knuckles turning white against the ceramic. "He's just a composite character, Mei. A historical ghost made of ink and imagination. He doesn't exist."
Mei sighed, leaning back. "Well, your 'composite character' is ruining your life. You have the biggest interview of your career at the Lu Group Museum in twenty minutes. If you walk in there looking like you've just crawled out of a burial mound, you're not getting that commission."
"I'll be fine," Yilin said, standing up and checking her reflection in the cafe's window. She smoothed her ponytail until not a single hair was out of place. "I just need to get through this interview. They have the Gao collection now. If I can get my hands on the actual Dragon's Eye relic, maybe I can finally finish this project and stop seeing fire every time I close my eyes."
She tapped a file on the screen, opening a grainy, black-and-white photograph of a jagged, crystalline orb.
"The board thinks if I can stabilize the Eye and the daggers, we can prove the 'Triple Bow' ceremony actually happened before the massacre. It would redefine the entire political history of the North-South conflict. But the artifacts are... difficult. Every time I put the Crown under the microscope, I feel like I'm looking at a crime scene, not a relic. The gold is warped by extreme heat, and there are traces of carbonized silk fused into the jade beads."
"Fascinating," Mei murmured, her eyes fixed on the daggers. "But also a little morbid. No wonder you're having nightmares. You're literally spending your life looking at the last things two people touched before they were incinerated."
"It's just chemistry, Mei," Yilin whispered, though her heart gave a traitorous thud. "The daggers have microscopic notches that suggest they were used in a high-intensity close-quarters struggle. I'm just trying to map the metal fatigue. I'm not... I'm not looking for ghosts."
"Right," Mei said, handing the tablet back. "Just keep telling yourself that while you're reconstructing the wedding from hell."
The Lu Group Museum of Antiquities was less of a building and more of a terrestrial cathedral, a soaring monument of glass, steel, and white Macedonian marble that seemed to suck the noise out of the surrounding city.
As Yilin stepped through the revolving glass doors, the humid, chaotic roar of the rainy Tuesday was instantly replaced by a silence so profound it felt heavy, like the air inside a mountain.
The Grand Hall was a vast, open-vaulted space. Above, a geometric skylight fractured the grey morning light into cold, sharp diamonds across the floor.
The architecture was designed to make a human feel small—a deliberate reminder that the history housed within these walls had outlived thousands of lives and would outlive hers, too.
To her left, a large group of tourists was clustered around a guide in a crisp navy blazer. The guide's voice carried through the hall, clinical and practiced.
"To your left, you'll see the reconstructed gate of the Southern Yan Province," the guide announced, gesturing toward a massive arch of weathered stone. "While the Yan Dynasty was short-lived—lasting barely fifteen years before the Great Fire—it remains the most enigmatic era in our history. Some say it wasn't destroyed by war, but by a curse."
A few tourists whispered, their cameras clicking in a rhythmic, mechanical pulse that made Yilin's skin prickle. She didn't need a guide. As she walked past them, she felt a strange, magnetic pull in her marrow. She ignored the gilded Egyptian sarcophagi and the vibrant Renaissance oils, her feet moving with a terrifying, subconscious certainty. She knew exactly where the shadows were deepest.
She stopped abruptly in front of a solitary, high-security plinth in the center of the rotunda.
Inside a vacuum-sealed case of reinforced, anti-reflective glass sat the Dragon's Eye. The legendary Hetian Jade, was the size of a man's fist, a relic that had survived the total annihilation of the Yan Palace. But today, the stone looked... exhausted. Its famous translucent glow, which historians described as "captured starlight," had dimmed to a dull, sickly, milky grey.
The moment Yilin's eyes locked onto the jade, a sharp, stabbing pain flared in her chest—the exact phantom ache that ended her nightmare every night at 4:00 AM. She gasped, her breath hitching, and instinctively clutched the lapel of her charcoal blazer. It felt like a string tied to her heart had just been jerked tight.
Forcing herself to breathe, Yilin turned away from the stone, her heart still hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She smoothed her hair and walked toward the primary reception desk—a monolithic slab of polished black obsidian that looked like a fallen star.
The receptionist, a woman with a sleek bun and a gaze as sharp as a scalpel, didn't look up from her monitor until Yilin was standing directly in front of her.
"Name and appointment?" the woman asked, her voice as sterile as the marble.
"Su Yilin," she replied, her voice steadying into her professional "Senior Restorer" tone. "I'm here for the 10:30 interview with the selection committee regarding the Echoes of the Red Thread project."
The receptionist's fingers paused over the keyboard. She looked up, her eyes scanning Yilin with a new, guarded curiosity. "The Yan Dynasty restoration. You're early, Ms. Su."
"I prefer to be prepared," Yilin said, though her hand still trembled slightly where it rested on her leather portfolio.
"Wait in the rotunda by the North Wing entrance," the woman instructed, sliding a silver security badge across the black stone. "The lead representative will come to collect you shortly. And Ms. Su?"
Yilin paused. "Yes?"
"Try not to touch the displays," the woman said, her eyes flicking toward the Dragon's Eye. "The sensors are... sensitive today."
Yilin stood near the North Wing entrance, her fingers tracing the edge of her silver security badge. The Grand Hall felt like a living thing, the hushed whispers of the tourists and the distant hum of the climate control creating a low-frequency vibration in her bones. She kept her back to the Dragon's Eye, afraid that if she looked at the fading jade again, the phantom pain in her chest would return and shatter her professional composure.
The sharp clack of polished oxfords against the marble floor signaled an approach.
A man in a perfectly pressed navy suit, carrying a tablet with the practiced grace of a high-level operative, stopped exactly three feet away from her. He didn't just walk; he moved with a calculated efficiency that screamed "inner circle."
"Ms. Su Yilin?" he asked, his voice crisp and devoid of any unnecessary emotion.
"Yes," Yilin replied, straightening her shoulders and adjusting the strap of her leather portfolio.
"I am Lin Jue, Executive Secretary to the CEO," he said, offering a curt, professional nod. "I'll be escorting you to Conference Room Sigma for your initial interview. If you'll follow me, please."