The voices rose with the mist.
They drifted through empty streets, passing through open doors and broken windows, as though the town were breathing again after a long sleep. The laughter was soft, distant, but it carried warmth—too much warmth for something that should not exist.
Lantern light flickered along the main street.
One by one, lights ignited in windows that had been dark moments ago.
Lin Chen's heart tightened.
No one had lit them.
The town was lighting itself.
Yun Qiao took a step back. "This… this didn't happen before."
The well rippled violently.
The reflection of the town within it sharpened, as if two versions of the same place were overlapping—one empty, one alive. The laughter grew clearer. The sounds of footsteps echoed across the stone road.
Figures emerged from the mist.
Men and women walked the streets, their forms faint and translucent. They spoke to one another, greeted unseen neighbors, and carried baskets filled with things that no longer existed.
They were not ghosts.
They were echoes.
Lin Chen felt the mark on his chest grow warm.
The sensation was not pain. It was pressure, as though something within him were being acknowledged by the town itself.
He took a slow breath.
Don't panic. Panicking has never helped anyone survive anything.
One of the figures turned.
Its gaze brushed across Lin Chen.
For an instant, Lin Chen saw clarity in its eyes.
Then the figure froze.
The echo tilted its head, studying him with confusion.
It raised a trembling hand and pointed at Lin Chen's chest.
"Out… of record…"
The voice sounded wrong, like a sound forced through cracked glass.
The air grew heavy.
All at once, the echoes stopped moving.
Every figure turned toward Lin Chen.
The laughter cut off.
The town fell silent.
Yun Qiao's breath caught in her throat. "What did it say?"
Lin Chen did not answer immediately.
Out of record.
The words echoed in his mind.
The Heaven-made book he had glimpsed in his dream had turned its pages to record him. The mark on his chest was not merely a symbol—it was a contradiction.
Something about his existence did not belong in this world's records.
"I think…" Lin Chen said slowly, "…this place doesn't know how to remember me."
The echoes began to walk toward them.
Not aggressively.
Curiously.
Each step made the air tremble, as though the boundary between memory and reality were thinning.
Yun Qiao drew her blade. "Lin Chen, this doesn't feel like curiosity."
The ground shuddered.
From beneath the well, a low, ancient groan reverberated through the town, as though something vast had shifted in its sleep.
The echoes halted.
Their bodies flickered violently, as if their existence were being rejected by the world itself.
Then one of them collapsed.
Not to the ground.
It folded inward, compressing into a thread of pale light that was drawn into the well.
Another followed.
And another.
The town began to consume its own memories.
Lin Chen's chest burned.
The mark pulsed once, releasing a wave of faint warmth that washed across the street.
The collapsing echoes slowed, their forms stabilizing just enough to keep from vanishing entirely.
Yun Qiao stared at him. "What did you just do?"
Lin Chen shook his head. "I don't know. I think… my existence is interfering with whatever this place is supposed to be."
The well grew quiet.
The remaining echoes froze in place, as if afraid to move.
From deep within the darkness below, something watched.
Not with malice.
With recognition.
The town did not know Lin Chen.
But something beneath it did.
The mist thickened.
Somewhere beyond the valley, something ancient turned its attention toward the place that should not exist… and the person who did not belong in the records of heaven.