The mist that hung over the gorge hadn't lifted in days.
Kaifeng sat cross-legged before the ancient dais.
The stone in his hand — the glyph of the Xún — pulsed faintly, but not with Qi.
With memory.
Not his.
Not yet.
The child had not spoken since giving him the name.
Now, he did — eyes closed, voice steady:
"Your mother brought you here once."
Kaifeng looked up.
Zhui and Yun Shou remained near the entrance, silent but alert.
"She stood where you're sitting. Laid you on the stone. And said only one thing."
The boy opened his eyes.
"She said: 'Let him sleep until he must remember.'"
Kaifeng's breath hitched — not from pain. From the echo of a voice half-buried under a thousand days of silence.
"What else did she say?"
"Nothing."
"And her name?"
The child shook his head.
"Even I wasn't allowed to know."
Yun Shou stepped forward.
"I remember her."
Kaifeng turned.
"You never said—"
"She came to Qingwu once. Not as a disciple. As a shadow.
And she carried no blade, but moved like someone who didn't need one."
She knelt beside him.
"I thought she was dangerous."
"She was," the child said. "To the wrong people."
Kaifeng closed his eyes.
Held the stone tighter.
And in that moment, the shrine fell away.
He was a boy again.
Five years old.
A courtyard in flames.
Hands pulling him through smoke.
A voice humming a lullaby that didn't belong to any sect.
And then—
"If you wake too early," she whispered,
"you'll forget me."
Kaifeng opened his eyes.
His body was trembling.
But he remembered.
"Her name was Shu Lian," he said.
"She was Pavilion-born. But never swore loyalty."
Zhui frowned.
"A deserter?"
Yun Shou shook her head.
"A guardian. Of a blade that could not be passed to any sect."
The child stood now.
"And now it belongs to you."
The ground split beneath the dais.
A pedestal rose — not ornate, not sealed — just old. Wood and ash. A single cloth wrap.
Kaifeng approached it slowly.
Unwrapped it.
Inside lay a blade.
Not curved. Not gleaming.
Straight. Dark. Silent.
A forge of silence and forgotten bloodlines.
Kaifeng reached for it.
The moment his fingers touched the hilt, every scar on his body breathed.
Zhui stepped forward.
"What is it called?"
Kaifeng didn't speak.
He didn't need to.
Because the blade whispered into him, not aloud — but directly into the rhythm of his bones.
And it said:
"I am the blade that knew your name before you could speak it."
"I do not cut flesh."
"I end continuation."
Yun Shou bowed her head.
"It's real."
"What is?" Zhui asked.
"The Final Form of the Listening Path."
She looked at Kaifeng.
"That blade... is Silence Given Shape."
Far away, in the ruins of the First Pavilion, the Severed One stood atop blackened stone.
He watched the stars shift.
And whispered:
"Draw it soon, boy."
"Because when I come for you—
I won't bring steel."
End of Chapter 10