Liang's POV
The wind behind the temple whispered like forgotten prayers. Each gust carried the scent of damp earth and rotting blossoms, the kind of smell only found where death had once lingered. I stood at the rear hill slope, where wild cypress trees loomed like crooked monks, their shadows long and hollow.
In my hand, the spiritual compass trembled violently. Its needle spun like it was panicking—pointing, always pointing—to a place the living had no right to touch.
I took a step forward. The ground beneath my boots felt... not wrong, but silent. No insects buzzed. No birds sang. Even the leaves refused to fall here.
Something had swallowed this patch of land whole.
I knelt, brushing aside weeds and crumbling stones. That's when I saw it—hidden beneath decades of decay.
A stone well.
Or what was left of it.
Cracked, half-covered by roots, almost as if the earth had tried to bury it alive. The rim was engraved with broken talismans. The seal was shattered long ago.
Someone—or something—had already opened it.
"I knew you would come here," said a quiet voice behind me.
I turned sharply.
There she was.
Ru Lan.
Dressed in pale robes stained with time, her hair loose around her shoulders like silk soaked in moonlight. Her eyes held that same haunting sadness since the day she appeared at the temple gates—wounded, confused, as if she had clawed her way out of a forgotten life.
"You followed me?" I asked, trying to keep my voice calm, distant.
"I didn't follow," she replied softly. "I… felt drawn. Like something inside me lives down there."
My hand froze on the rim of the well.
That same chill I'd felt when I first met her returned—deep in my spine, in my blood. Like we were connected by more than just fate.
"I'm going down," I muttered.
Ru Lan stepped closer. "You shouldn't."
"I must. You know why I came here."
Her lips pressed together, as if biting back a warning. Then, to my surprise, she knelt beside me and placed her fingers lightly on mine.
"Then I'm going with you."
"You shouldn't be involved—"
"I already am."
We locked eyes. Too close. Her scent was like the forest after rain—sharp, green, a little like sorrow.
My pulse quickened, not because she was beautiful, but because something deep in me screamed: If you go down there with her, nothing will ever be the same.
Still, I nodded.
We descended using the old temple rope, its fibers brittle with age. The further we went, the dimmer the lantern flame became. My spiritual light flickered, as though the well itself tried to snuff it out.
The walls were slick, breathing almost. I felt each breath of the stone, warm and cold in turns. Then—
Thunk.
My boots hit the bottom.
I crouched, brushing the dust. The ground here wasn't dirt.
It was fabric. Old, rotted... priest's robes.
And beneath the robes—
A skull.
Jaw frozen in an open scream. Its teeth clutching something—tightly, desperately—as if it had died protecting it.
A book. No… a scroll.
Thick. Black. Bound in something that felt like skin.
I reached for it.
Even before my fingers touched it, I knew this wasn't normal. The air trembled. The shadows pulled back like retreating waves.
Then I grabbed it.
The moment my skin touched its surface, the scroll pulsed.
Not once.
But with a slow, rhythmic beat.
Like a heart.
"Liang Shen—" Ru Lan's voice cracked. She had felt it too.
I tried to let go.
But the scroll moved.
It twitched. It slithered. Then, without warning—
It bit me.
Pain shot through my hand like fire. I cried out, falling back, trying to pull away. But it wouldn't release me. It clung like a parasite, its fangs sinking into my palm.
"Let go!" Ru Lan screamed, grabbing my shoulder.
"I—I can't! It's… taking something…"
Blood? Soul? Memory?
I didn't know.
All I knew was that I couldn't move. The scroll's pulse synced with my heart. My skin began to burn, veins glowing faintly red.
And then I heard it.
Not aloud, but inside my skull.
A voice.
"You opened me… Now finish what was left undone."
My vision blurred. I collapsed, chest heaving. The scroll refused to fall from my hand.
Ru Lan gripped me. "Stay with me. Stay!"
She looked terrified—not just for me, but for herself. Because the symbols forming on my palm—crimson and ancient—were the same ones etched in her dreams.
We both knew this wasn't just a scroll.
This was a seal.
And I had broken it.
---
The stone walls began to bleed.
Thin rivulets of crimson ran down the smooth surface, curving into runes neither of us could read.
Then a sentence formed in blood.
"Return what was stolen."