The first thing to pierce the void was the scratch of straw against his cheek. It was a dry, brittle sensation, the smell of dust and sun-baked earth rising with it. A dull, rhythmic pounding throbbed somewhere outside, a sound that vibrated through the packed-earth floor and up into his bones.
He opened his eyes.
The world swam into focus slowly. Rough-hewn wooden beams, dark with smoke and age, crisscrossed a ceiling of thatch just an arm's length above him. The air was thick, heavy with the scent of woodsmoke, damp earth, and the faint, sour smell of unwashed bodies. The rhythmic pounding continued, steady and relentless as a heartbeat. Thump… thump… thump. Someone was grinding grain.
He tried to sit up, but a wave of dizziness washed over him, and a deep, aching weakness settled in his limbs. His body felt foreign, a vessel of leaden exhaustion. He was lying on a thin straw mat, his only covering a coarse, threadbare blanket. The hut was small, barely large enough for the mat and a small, blackened fire pit in the center, its embers cold.
The door, a simple plank of wood on leather hinges, creaked open. A sliver of grey morning light cut through the gloom, outlining a figure. It was a young woman, perhaps sixteen or seventeen winters old, with a face that was already hard. Her eyes, dark and watchful, took in his state with a swift, appraising glance that held no warmth, only calculation. This was Feng Yin.
She carried a cracked earthenware bowl, steam rising from its contents. She moved with a practiced economy of motion, placing the bowl on the floor beside him without a word. It was a thin gruel, a watery concoction of coarsely ground grain with a few wilted greens floating on the surface. It was the smell of survival, nothing more.
"The Elder said you are to eat," she stated, her voice as flat and gray as the morning light. It was not a request. It was an instruction.
He pushed himself up, his muscles protesting. His hands trembled as he reached for the bowl. The rough ceramic was warm against his cold fingers. He brought it to his lips and drank, the bland, gritty liquid a welcome warmth in his hollow stomach.
Feng Yin watched him, her expression unchanging. Her gaze was that of a farmer checking her livestock—a detached assessment of worth. In this world, a mouth that could not work was a mouth that should not eat. He understood this with a clarity that felt older than his own bones.
He finished the gruel and held out the empty bowl. She took it, her fingers brushing his for a fleeting moment. Her skin was calloused and cold.
As she turned to leave, he found his voice. It was raspy and unused. "Where… is this place?"
She paused at the door, her back to him. "Gu Moon Village."
The name meant nothing, yet it stirred something deep within him, a faint resonance like a plucked string.
He pressed, the effort making his head throb. "And… me?"
This time, she turned her head slightly, her profile sharp against the light. "We found you by the river. You are a burden. The Elder will decide for you tomorrow." With that, she was gone, the heavy door thudding shut, plunging the hut back into near darkness.
He lay back down, the straw rustling beneath him. He closed his eyes, and a name surfaced from the murky depths of his mind.
Meng Ru.
That was his name. But everything else was a void, a fractured memory. Yet, as he drifted in the darkness, another whisper came, not a memory, but an echo on the wind, a story told in hushed tones around fires when the nights were long and the beasts howled outside. A story of a Great Demon, of a world where Fate was a thread that could be broken, of a forbidden Gu that could turn back the very river of time.
It was a dangerous story, one that made the elders spit to ward off evil and the children fall silent. It was the story of an era's end and of a dawn that was yet to prove its worth. Meng Ru did not know why the tale surfaced now, but as he lay in the suffocating darkness of the hut, he felt a sliver of ice in his gut.
This was not just any dawn. It was a dawn paid for in blood and madness. And it seemed to be about to be opened.