Part 1
The industrial district at the city's edge drowned beneath a relentless storm. Thunder rolled across the sky, and Lin Xi's black umbrella nearly snapped in the wind. Rainwater overflowed the sidewalks, pooling into murky reflections of abandoned factories—rusting silhouettes that loomed like a procession of mute, watchful faces.
She stopped in front of Building 7, her fingers tightening around a metal case of painting tools. The corners of the box had been worn silver by time and use. She looked up—17-A, barely legible, its faded stencil dissolving under the downpour.
Lin Xi took a slow breath. Her left hand moved instinctively to her side, fingertips grazing the electroshock device beneath her trench coat. Only then did the unease in her chest begin to settle. She punched in the door code swiftly. A low, guttural beep answered her. The door creaked open.
Darkness greeted her. The only sound was the drumming of rain against the corrugated iron roof. She didn't turn on the main lights. Instead, she closed her umbrella, methodically drying the water pooled near the entrance. This private studio was one of her few "clean zones." Any trace of moisture, any fleck of dust, was an offense to its sanctity.
She clicked on a wall-mounted lamp. In its soft glow, the center of the room revealed a single canvas, towering like an island against a sea of shadows. The unfinished mural—Trajectory of the Shattered Stars—tore across the wall like a wound in the night.
Removing her coat, she slipped on a black apron and laid out her tools with practiced ease. Her fingers danced over the palette, selecting a half-used tube of deep-sea blue. The color was dense—too dense—like a soundless voice frozen in paint. She squeezed out the pigment, but her gaze drifted upward, to a blank spot in the canvas's top-left corner. The final star in her star map still refused to appear.
"Still missing…" she murmured.
As she dipped her brush, her pupils narrowed slightly. Where the blue mixed with standard titanium white on her palette, a faint, unnatural glow surfaced—like ghost-light flickering at the bottom of a lake. She stared at the shimmer, a tug pulling deep in her chest.
Then—a sharp knock broke through the storm.
She froze. Her hand shifted back to the electroshock trigger. The knock came again.
Three times. Pause. Then two. The rhythm was unnervingly precise, almost…mechanical. Her frown deepened. No one should know about this place—let alone in the dead of night.
She didn't open the door. Her voice cut through the silence.
"No appointments."
A pause.
Then, a low voice filtered through the door:
"I brought the piece you're missing."
Lin Xi's pulse stilled.
She loosened the door chain cautiously. Outside stood a man beneath a black umbrella, tall and wrapped in a storm-black coat. Rain slid down his umbrella, never touching his shoulders—almost as if the storm avoided him by design. His face, half-concealed in shadow, revealed only calm certainty.
She stared at him without a word.
As if expecting her hesitation, the man reached into his coat and retrieved a small, metallic box. He opened it with a quiet click.
A thread of blue light shimmered out—eerily familiar. Like the very starlight from her painting.
"A meteorite fragment," he said. "Code L-42. It corresponds to that last star in your chart."
Lin Xi's fingers trembled as she took the box. The fragment inside was no larger than a thumb, yet pulsed with faint radiation, vibrating softly in the air.
"Who are you?" she asked, voice cold. "How do you know the structure of my work?"
The man stepped inside. His every move was measured, restrained—like an equation played out in motion, careful not to disturb the fragile stillness of her studio.
"You've been painting it for years," he said softly. "But you never realized—it's not imaginary. It's real. A star map."
Lin Xi's heart gave a jolt, but she kept her face unreadable.
"What are you implying?"
The man smiled slightly, though his eyes remained unreadable.
"My name is Lu Yan."
She stepped between him and the canvas, a line drawn with her body.
"This pigment…" she said abruptly. She dipped her brush again, now tipping the bristles to the edge of the fragment before blending it back into the palette.
Then the impossible happened: the fragment's glow seeped into the paint, flowing toward the canvas. Without touching the surface, a new star ignited in her map—in a place she had never painted.
Her breath caught.
"This isn't just any mineral."
"Of course not," he said quietly. "It's the core residue from the fall of asteroid Mira-9. The material is known as 'Resonant Ore.' Your deep-sea blue pigment? A prototype derived from its atomic structure."
Lin Xi's pupils widened.
"Who are you, really?"
Lu Yan didn't answer. Instead, his gaze fell to her left shoulder, just beneath her collar.
"That birthmark... Did you have it as a child?"
She froze, instinctively tugging her collar higher. That mark—a rose-shaped scar—had been with her as long as she could remember, pressed into her skin like a hidden seal. She never showed it. Never spoke of it.
"Why ask that?"
No reply. He stepped forward, gaze unreadable.
"Don't move," Lin Xi raised her electroshock device. "One more step, and I—"
But he stopped, just inside the lamplight, and for the first time his voice wavered, barely audible.
"So it survived... in you."
Lin Xi blinked.
Then—a searing pain tore through her back.
Like needles threading beneath her skin. Something moved—inside her.
She clutched her shoulder in alarm, fingertips brushing the birthmark. A surge of blue light pierced through her clothes—bright, spectral, alive.
The mark burned hot. A beam of cold fire erupted outward, flooding the room with unearthly radiance.
She stumbled, barely catching herself against the easel. In her mind, a rush of fractured visions: sprawling star charts, sterile labs under white light, a child crying out in terror…
Memories—or something worse. All too vivid to be dreams.
"Who are you!" she cried, her voice ragged, torn.
Lu Yan's eyes locked onto the glowing mark. His pupils contracted—as if seeing something forbidden. When he finally spoke, his voice trembled with something like regret.
"I'm here to return what was taken from you."
From inside his coat, he pulled a microchip. Its crystalline core glinted cold beneath the lamp.
"Your canvas reflects a true map of the cosmos," he said. "And your body…"
He paused.
"...is the only key that can open it."
The chip dropped into her palm—cold as ice.
But Lin Xi felt a blaze rise through her spine.
As if what she held wasn't a fragment of technology, but the lost architecture of her life.