The next village they came upon was dying. Not dead—dying.
The fields lay fallow, choked by weeds. Houses sagged beneath the weight of unspoken despair. No children ran in the streets. No elders told stories. Even the dogs refused to bark.
It was the kind of silence Tianyin had grown used to. But this one felt different. Not the void—suppression.
Someone had done this.
At the edge of the village stood a shrine. Cracked and hollow, its offerings turned to ash. Yet behind it, they found her.
A girl.
Thin. Barefoot. No older than thirteen.
She was seated in front of a stone tablet, tracing its broken characters with her fingertip. Her hair was unevenly cut, as if someone had hacked at it in haste or rage. Her arms were bare, and carved across them—hundreds of tiny scars.
But not random.
Words.
Names.
Phrases.
Tianyin stopped walking.
She turned her head slowly.
Her eyes were black—not from any demonic cultivation, but from something older, deeper. The kind of black that happens when too many names are burned into your soul and the ink never washes out.
"You came," she said.
Her voice was quiet. Deliberate.
"You knew we were coming?" Bai Yeming asked.
The girl nodded. "The scars told me."
She rose, each movement painfully careful. "You're the one who walks in silence."
Her gaze moved to Tianyin.
"And you're the one who teaches silence to speak."
He blinked. "I… don't understand."
"You don't have to. I'm only a mirror." She turned her arms outward, showing the scars in full. "I was born with a name no one was allowed to say. They tried to erase it. So I carved it into myself. Over and over. Until the world stopped being able to forget me."
Tianyin stepped forward slowly. "You walk a path like ours."
She shook her head. "No. I only follow the echoes."
Then, gently, she pointed to the largest scar across her chest. It was shaped like a circle with a jagged line.
Tianyin's breath caught. Yeming went still.
"You've seen this before," the girl said. "Haven't you?"
"At the standing stones," Tianyin whispered. "The communion."
She nodded once. "Then you know what I am."
"No," he said. "But I think I'm supposed to listen."
The girl smiled for the first time. Not sweetly. Not sadly.
Just honestly.
"I don't need saving. I don't need vengeance. I only need one thing."
She turned and pressed her hand against the shrine wall.
A door revealed itself—not with movement, but with absence. The stone peeled away like paper. Behind it lay a tunnel, old and narrow.
"What's down there?" Yeming asked, already reading the pulses of void energy leaking through.
"The rest of the story," the girl said. "The part no one was brave enough to carry."
Tianyin hesitated.
Then stepped forward.
He turned back to the girl. "What's your name?"
She tilted her head. "It doesn't matter anymore. I gave it away."
"To who?"
Her voice dropped to a whisper. "To the Void. So it would remember all of us."
And then she walked back toward the stone tablet and began carving another name into her arm—his.
Xu Tianyin.
---
They entered the tunnel.
And the world behind them forgot the village existed.
Even the sky looked away.
But underground, the memory remained.
---