The scent of pine and bloodied stone filled her nose.
Shen LiuYan (23) startled awake — eyes snapping open — to find herself alone amidst a vast, silent forest. The jade-leaved canopy above swayed gently in a windless sky, yet her skin prickled as if the trees were breathing.
This was the forest behind the Han estate, where she had once trained under the cold bite of winter steel with her sworn brothers and the watchful gaze of General Han.
She stood slowly, the ground beneath her littered with shattered arrows and deep training grooves still scorched into the earth. Her childhood scars had never left this place.
Then—
A voice stirred from the shadows.
Low, familiar, like a blade drawn through velvet.
"You hesitate… even now."
She turned sharply, eyes narrowing. There, leaning against the roots of an old stone pine, stood a figure cloaked in black, half-swathed in smoke. His features obscured, yet a faint dragon emblem shimmered on his cloak's shoulder — the same emblem engraved on her blade.
Her hand twitched toward her sword.
"What are you?" she asked coldly.
The figure tilted its head, and then stepped forward. "I am what remains — the shadow left behind when the Empress died… when the sword took blood of its master for the first time. I am your grief, your rage. I am what you buried beneath duty."
A flicker of silver-blue caught her eye — her DMoon Cutting Sword rested beside her, now humming faintly as if remembering the same blood-soaked years.
"Your trial is not just to conquer others," the shadow murmured, "but to survive yourself."
LiuYan's breath caught. The forest grew unnaturally still.
Then—
A scream of wind erupted from the heavens.
The trees bent backward, groaning under the weight of a tempest that had no origin. Thunder cracked above, yet there was no lightning, only a swirling spiral of purple and gold light above her, descending like a vortex.
The ground crumbled beneath her feet. The shadow figure vanished into mist, and LiuYan's body was lifted into the air, her limbs frozen in a cocoon of energy.
"You are not done remembering," a voice whispered — not cruel, not kind, but inevitable.
And then —
The forest disappeared.
The winds howled around her, twisting through the echoes of time, and the world bent backward — until she saw it:
A sunlit courtyard where tiny feet chased after butterflies, Liuhua's laughter echoing like silver bells; long nights when LiuYan held her sister close through fevers and fears. The stern walls of the Han residence had softened with time, carved gently by memories — a mother's steady hand braiding her hair, two brothers sneaking sweets into her palm after training, and a father who trained her like a warrior, yet shielded her like a daughter.
Then — a battlefield cloaked in ash and betrayal.
Shen Liuhua's blood on the snow, her last smile, trembling yet brave.
And LiuYan screaming into the void.
Unbreakable bonds, shattered in one stroke of fate.
She was being pulled into it.
The past.