The world ended not with fire, but with a honk, a flash of headlights, and the dull thud of bone against steel.
Xiao Mo felt none of it. Only the wind in his ears, the darkness closing in, and the strange sense of weightlessness—as if all the pain, all the years of being unwanted and unseen, were finally drifting away.
Maybe this is better, he thought, as his consciousness slipped away. No more fear. No more hiding.
But death, it seemed, was not the end.
It was a beginning.
—
The first thing he felt was warmth. The soft scratch of silk against skin. The distant lull of a woman humming a melody in a language that wasn't quite Mandarin—older, smoother, laced with gentle tones he somehow understood.
Then came the ache. Not pain. Just… smallness. Fragility. His body wasn't his. His arms were too short. His voice, when he tried to speak, came out as a weak cry.
Panic surged. No—this can't be…
Before he could spiral, gentle hands lifted him. A face appeared above him—beautiful, cold, unfamiliar. A woman in crimson robes, her lips painted like blood, her eyes sharp and unreadable.
"So this is the child." Her voice was emotionless. "The Mo family's heir."
He was passed into other hands. A man this time, older. Wrinkled but stern, with a scholar's eyes.
"There's something odd about this one," the man murmured. "He doesn't cry like the others."
"I don't like odd," the woman replied. "Keep him quiet. Teach him to bow before he can walk."
They walked away, and Xiao Mo—now Mo Xianyu—lay still, a newborn in a world he didn't belong to.
He didn't scream. He didn't flail.
He simply stared, wide-eyed, into the rich wooden beams of the palace ceiling and whispered, in his mind:
So I was born again… in the past.
—
He was a child of silk and shadows.
Servants bowed as he passed, but no one smiled. Tutors praised his handwriting but never his heart. The Mo family estate was vast, filled with poetry and porcelain, but its halls were cold—like winter held in wood and stone.
Xiao Mo didn't complain.
He studied. He watched. He listened.
And he waited.
If his last life had taught him anything, it was this: silence was survival.
Yet sometimes, when no one watched, he would press his palm to his chest, trying to feel the beat of his old self. The boy who once dreamed of city lights and ramen shops, who flinched at raised voices and smiled through bruises.
Was he still in there?
Or had Mo Xianyu buried Xiao Mo completely?
—
On his tenth birthday, he was summoned to the Spring Garden, where nobles gathered to celebrate the children of influential families.
He stood quietly at the edge of the silk-draped pavilion, watching others play. Their laughter was sharp, rehearsed—boys flaunting martial moves, girls reciting poetry like weapons.
He didn't belong.
But then a shadow crossed the sun.
"Why aren't you joining them?" a boy's voice asked.
Xiao Mo turned—and froze.
The boy was tall for his age, already graceful, dressed in dark jade robes with a family crest embroidered in silver thread: a phoenix curled around a sword.
His eyes were clear, his smile easy, and his voice held a warmth Xiao Mo hadn't heard in years.
"I don't know the games," Xiao Mo replied truthfully.
The boy grinned. "Then we'll make one up."
He extended a hand.
"I'm Yuan Sijun. What's your name?"
Xiao Mo stared at the offered hand. For a moment, something ancient and painful ached inside him. The last time someone had reached for him like that… they never meant it.
But this boy's eyes were steady. Honest.
"…Mo Xianyu," he said at last, placing his small hand in Yuan's.
It was the beginning of something he couldn't yet name.