The sun had not yet risen, but the sky glowed faintly behind thick temple clouds, as if dawn itself feared what the day might bring.
Yue Xi stood barefoot on the outer terrace of the Moon Shrine, wind tugging at her white ceremonial robes. Her hair was unbound. Her hands trembled.
She had seen herself die and fall in love in too many ways to count.
In dreams. In reflections. In visions that came like thunderclaps in her mind.
Each time, it was for him.
Each time, the war claimed her first.
The curse was real.
It hadn't just stolen their past.
It stalked every future.
And now, as she stood at the edge of memory and divinity, the air itself began to shift.
Meanwhile, in the valley below…
Lián Kai stood at the edge of the forest that bordered the shrine's sacred grounds, the hem of his cloak soaked with dew and blood not his, but from the last battle he'd fought to reach her.
He looked up at the towering spires of the temple and closed his eyes.
He remembered it burning.
He remembered loving her and all them shared across time.
He remembered her dying in his arms.
He remembered her calling his name with her final breath. Again. Again. Across lives, centuries, worlds.
"Why do I always survive you?" he whispered to the wind.
"Why do the gods make me remember it all?"
He had tried to bury her memory in steel and duty. He had tried to forget the softness in her voice, the fire in her eyes.
But the soul does not forget what it was born for.
---
At the same time…
Yue Xi turned from the terrace. She could feel him.
Not physically. Not even spiritually.
But soul-deep.
A pressure in her chest, not painful but overwhelming, like light trying to break through a sealed jar.
She returned to the Mirror Hall one last time. Alone.
No bells tolled.
No oracles watched.
She stepped before the mirror and whispered:
"Let me see the truth. No riddles. No fragments. Just him. Just… us."
The mirror shimmered.
Her vision flooded with gold and crimson.
---
The Vision:
A thousand scenes flickered:
Her as a scholar hidden in a ruined library, kissing him between the ruins of a forbidden war.
they both shared an intense kiss as she slamming right into his muscular body and planting a big wet kiss right on his smiling lips. "I missed you soooo much." she said
she feel his cock getting hard beneath. As she planted her hands down his robe while gently caressing his cock
Then that vision ended like a mirror glass
then another began
Her in armor, calling his name as she was pulled into a vortex of light.
Him falling to his knees, again and again, each time at the side of her broken body.
Her being reborn. Again. Again. The gods trying to erase her.
Him finding her. Again. Again. Both falling in love
over and over
The gods failing.
And one memory that hurt the most—
In a time long past, she stood on a bloodstained altar, facing the gods who demanded her loyalty.
They told her: "Choose. The mortal or the divine."
She had chosen him.
The sky had cracked open.
That was when the curse was born.
---
Back in the present…
Kai crossed the final boundary — the invisible veil between the sacred and the forbidden.
He should not have been able to. The wards should have stopped him.
But they didn't.
Because she wanted him near.
---
He found her in the Mirror Hall.
She turned slowly, her eyes full of everything — shock, tears, centuries, recognition.
Kai stepped forward, stunned silent.
He did not fall to his knees this time.
He simply said:
> "You remember."
And she whispered, a single tear slipping free:
> "All of it."
Their hands met at the center of the chamber, between shadow and light, between memory and now.
A pulse of divine energy erupted around them—quiet, slow, warm. Not enough to shatter the curse… but enough to awaken it.
Above them, a crack split through the stained-glass dome like the first fracture of an earthquake.
The gods had felt it.
And they were watching.
The moment their fingers touched, something ancient woke.
The stained-glass dome above Yue Xi and Kai groaned, light fracturing through the colors like spilled oil. The divine wards hidden in the temple's foundation shimmered — not in protest, but in warning.
The gods were watching.
And they were not pleased.
---
Far above the mortal plane, in the Astral Chamber of the Nine, the veil between worlds rippled.
A voice, neither male nor female, thundered softly:
> "The priestess has remembered."
Another answered, colder, edged like ice:
> "And she dares touch the warborn again."
> "She was warned," spoke a third, ancient and hoarse. "She made the vow. Her soul was sealed."
But the eldest god — the one who held the Ledger of Time — let out a sigh that rumbled across realms.
> "And still… they find each other."
---
Back on the mortal plane…
Yue Xi pulled her hand back, her breath uneven, but her eyes stayed locked on his.
As he planted a kiss on her lips
This is madness," she whispered. "To even be here—like this—it invites divine judgment."
Kai did not move closer. But the intensity in his gaze deepened.
> "Then let them judge," he said. "Let them see the blood I spilled to reach you. Let them measure the centuries I've waited."
> "You don't understand," she said. "They don't just punish love. They erase it. They tear it from the soul."
> "Then why do I still remember every time you died?"
Silence.
Even the wind in the temple went still, as if the walls themselves feared to echo those words.
---
Yue Xi turned away, her hands shaking. The fragments of her past lives still rippled inside her like shattered glass.
> "In one life," she said softly, "I was burned at the stake as a heretic for loving you."
"In another, I was buried alive beneath a collapsing temple."
"In another, they blinded me with divine fire."
She turned back, eyes wet but steady.
> "And in each one, I loved you again. Why? Why do I keep choosing this pain?"
Kai stepped forward, finally, voice low:
> "Because the soul knows what it was born for. Even if heaven forgets."
---
Elsewhere, in the Temple's High Tower…
The Overseer knelt before the celestial relic: a great bronze disc etched with star-script, spinning slowly with each shift in fate.
A crack had appeared in its center — thin, jagged, and glowing red.
> "They've triggered it," the Overseer whispered.
A monk behind him asked, "Shall we cast judgment?"
The Overseer stood.
> "No. We prepare the Trial."
---
Back in the Mirror Hall…
Yue Xi and Kai stood in silence, the light around them dimming.
Then, with the quiet grace of an oracle ready to face the storm, Yue Xi spoke:
> "If the gods seek a trial, we face it together this time. I will not let them rip me from you again."
Kai nodded once.
> "Then we meet fate as one."
Their hands joined once more — not in defiance, but in resolve.
The cracked dome above them pulsed.
---
And across the heavens, the gods began to write their decree:
> "Let the past lives speak. Let the sins rise. Let them stand beneath the celestial judgment, where all hearts are weighed. If they endure… the curse shall break."
"If they fail… they shall be reborn apart for all eternity."