The void did not respond to hesitation.
Shen Liang realized this quickly.
There was no heartbeat to calm, no breath to steady, no clenched fist to release. Thought itself felt exposed—laid bare, stripped of the comforting illusion that silence meant safety.
The voice had asked a question.
Do you wish to understand?
Understanding was dangerous. He knew that instinctively. Knowledge was never free; it demanded payment in blood, sanity, or time. Sometimes all three.
But ignorance was worse.
"I do," Shen Liang said.
He did not know how the words left him. There was no sensation of speaking. The intent alone seemed enough.
The void stirred—not visually, but conceptually, as though the emptiness acknowledged him.
"Answer given. Point of no return crossed."
Something pressed against his awareness.
Not forcefully. Not violently.
Like a fingertip testing the surface of still water.
Images surfaced.
Not visions—impressions.
A sense of being watched from behind walls. Names erased from records. Graves without occupants. Faces deliberately removed, not to hide identity, but to deny continuity.
"Your family was not destroyed," the voice said."It was edited."
Shen Liang's mind sharpened.
"Edited… by whom?"
The pause this time was longer.
"By those who record the world."
That answer was unsatisfactory. Vague to the point of insult. But Shen Liang stored it away regardless. Vague truths had a habit of becoming precise later—usually when it was too late.
"What were the images?" he asked. "The objects in the tomb."
The void felt… amused.
"Anchors."
A pressure built behind the word, as if it carried weight beyond language.
"Proof that something once existed in full. Proof that removal is never perfect."
"Why show them to me?"
Silence.
Then—
"Because you noticed them."
That answer pleased him even less.
Shen Liang had always known he was different from his peers—not stronger, not more talented, but sharper. Where others accepted traditions, he dissected them. Where others feared taboos, he questioned their purpose.
It seemed the world had noticed in return.
"Am I dead?" he asked calmly.
"Not yet."
The void shifted.
Pain exploded across his throat.
Shen Liang gasped—
And woke.
He lay on the cold stone floor of his home, the scent of blood still thick in the air.
His body convulsed once as breath returned violently to his lungs. His vision swam, blurred by tears he did not remember shedding.
His mother's corpse lay exactly where it had before.
Nothing had changed.
Which meant everything had.
Shen Liang pushed himself up slowly. His limbs trembled—not from fear, but from exhaustion so deep it felt marrow-level. Whatever that space had been, whatever had touched him, it had not been harmless.
He staggered to his feet.
His gaze fell to his robes.
The polaroids slid out and landed on the floor.
He froze.
Slowly, he knelt and picked them up.
They were warm.
That alone was wrong.
He examined the first image again.
The faceless child.
His own chest tightened—not emotionally, but recognitionally. The height. The posture. The way the boy's hands were clenched slightly at his sides.
Too familiar.
"No," Shen Liang whispered.
The second image.
The child's shirt differed from the first.
Shen Liang looked down at himself.
The fabric matched.
His grip tightened until the edges bent slightly.
The third image.
Both adults erased.
Only the child remained.
Still faceless.
Still standing.
Still waiting.
A realization settled into him with chilling clarity.
These were not records of the past.
They were records of a process.
Deletion, one generation at a time.
His mother was dead.
Which meant—
Shen Liang rose abruptly and moved through the house, ignoring the blood beneath his feet, his mind racing faster than his weak body could keep up.
If the pattern continued, then the next erasure—
Would be his father.
He however had no father. His father had already died a long time ago. Sheng Liang was left behind only with his mother. A mother who scolded him for everything. A mother who would beat him on a whim leaving bruises that were to remain for months.
He didn't know how to interpret any of this. Sheng Liang has always seen himself as someone who tended to overanalyze, or at least that is what everybody told him in his life so far. This meant that in that moment he did not even trust his own thoughts anymore.
His rationality served as his sole pillar for decision-making. How severe would an event have to be to even make him disbelieve in his own mind?
He stopped in front of the bronze mirror near the inner chamber.
For several long seconds, he did not move.
Then he leaned forward.
And checked his reflection.
His face stared back at him, intact. Pale. Eyes too steady for a boy who had just found his mother murdered.
Relief flickered briefly—
Then vanished.
Because the voice's words echoed in his mind.
Where do I go from here? What to do?
Shen Liang straightened when he suddenly heard a scream inside of the house. It came from the room his mother was lying in.
At a moment of realization Sheng Liangs body completely tightened up and a shiver overcame him.
Could it be!?