Xu Tianyin woke before dawn. The air outside the shrine ruins was cold and heavy, blanketed in a mist that curled low across the earth like smoke from ancient incense. He sat beneath a tree, his back straight, hands resting loosely on his knees. He had not cultivated, not meditated. He had simply existed.
And yet, something inside him had changed.
Not an increase in strength. Not a breakthrough in realms. But a scar—a real one, carved not into flesh, but into the fabric of his existence.
It pulsed softly now, like the throb of an old wound—one that never fully healed, and never fully closed.
The first scar.
Bai Yeming joined him not long after. She didn't speak. She didn't need to. They were bound by something deeper now—silent and formless, but present in every breath they shared.
He turned to her. "Did you feel it too?"
She nodded. "The first scar always leaves a mark. From this point forward, the heavens will know we exist."
Tianyin didn't answer. He gazed upward through the trees.
A faint shift in the sky caught his attention. Clouds moved unnaturally fast, curling and scattering like they were retreating. The silence grew sharper. Even the birds had stopped singing.
Then, he felt it.
Not qi. Not killing intent.
Something watching.
Yeming stood. "They noticed."
Tianyin rose beside her. "What are they?"
"Not people." Her eyes narrowed. "Not anymore."
The pressure that followed was unlike anything he had felt. It wasn't overwhelming like Jiulan's oppressive aura, nor was it hostile in the conventional sense. It was wrong.
Like reality itself had turned its gaze.
A ripple passed through the air ahead of them. Trees bent. The mist parted.
And then, they appeared.
Three figures—faceless, robed in tattered white and gray, with hands too long and bodies that flickered at the edges. Their feet didn't touch the ground. They didn't breathe.
They were remnants. Enforcers of balance.
Bai Yeming's jaw tensed. "Sentinels of the Upper Void."
Tianyin frowned. "You've fought them before?"
"Once."
"Did you win?"
She didn't answer.
The figures didn't speak. Instead, they moved—together, smoothly, as if puppeted by a single mind. Their presence felt like cold static crawling across the bones.
Tianyin didn't wait. He stepped forward.
One of the figures surged toward him—faster than light, quieter than wind. Its arm extended into a blade of pale mist.
He sidestepped the attack. The blade tore through the air behind him, grazing the edge of his consciousness.
Not his body. His existence.
He turned, ducked another swing, and slammed his foot into the figure's chest.
Nothing happened.
It was like kicking a shadow.
Yeming moved. Her hand cut through the air, and for a moment, her fingers glowed with a soft shimmer—not light, but absence. Her strike passed through the nearest figure's shoulder.
And it screamed.
Not a sound—but a tearing of space.
The figure convulsed, its form unraveling at the edges.
"They can be hurt," she said. "But not by force."
Tianyin understood.
These weren't enemies of the flesh. They could not be destroyed with strength.
They could only be harmed by things the world had forgotten.
So he reached into himself—not for power, but for the scar.
He remembered the moment he was cast out, the echo of the shame in his father's voice, the weight of footsteps walking away.
He pulled it forward.
The void answered.
When the next figure lunged at him, he didn't dodge. He moved through—not avoiding, but accepting. Their forms collided.
And the scar responded.
A pulse of emptiness tore outward, erasing part of the figure's body like ink spilled on paper.
It hissed—not in sound, but in resistance—and pulled away, flickering violently.
Tianyin's breath was ragged.
But he was still standing.
Another scar had formed. Smaller, but deeper.
The Sentinels didn't attack again. They hovered for a long moment, then retreated, dissolving into the air as silently as they had come.
Yeming placed a hand on his back. "That was the first real test."
He nodded, not trusting his voice.
"You'll keep scarring yourself every time we resist fate," she said softly. "Every time we carve a new truth."
Tianyin looked down at his hands. They shook. Not from fear, but from the strain of being changed.
"How many scars will it take?" he asked.
Yeming looked at the fading mist where the Sentinels had vanished.
"All of them," she said. "Until the heavens bleed."