Qin's POV
They say I was born blind.
But I know they're wrong.
What I lost in sight, the spirits gave me in return. My eyes may not see the living world like others do, but I see the truth beneath it—the bones that never sleep, the whispers that stain the air, the memories of pain left behind like smoldering ash.
I see what others cannot. And today, what I see is death.
It began as a flicker. A shadow bending wrong in the morning light.
I was tending to a fevered boy at the village clinic. My hands, trained by years of healing and passed-down chants, moved by instinct. The bitterroot tea steamed beside me, the boy's breath shallow but steady.
Then the air shifted.
Just… shifted.
Like the world forgot how to breathe.
The bamboo chimes stopped clinking. The incense refused to curl. My fingers froze on the boy's pulse.
Something had entered the village.
Something old.
"Miss Yao?" the boy's mother asked nervously.
But I couldn't answer. I was already standing, slowly, guided not by sight but by the trembling threads of spirit that now tangled around me like silk.
From across the street, I saw him.
Not with my eyes, but with the sense that lives behind my broken pupils.
A man walking past the tea house. His figure tall, confident—yet weighed down by something darker than gravity.
Wrapped around him was a storm of bone-shaped shadows. A ghostly spine dragging behind him. Skeletal ribs clung to his back like wings from hell. Every step he took left behind a faint imprint, like footprints burned into the soul of the earth.
He was no ordinary traveler.
He was marked.
And around him swirled the ghosts of the forsaken.
My heart tightened.
Who is he?
I stepped outside, letting the wind wash over my face. My cane tapped softly against the stone road as I followed the faint echo of his aura. The villagers greeted me in hushed tones—they always do, ever since I healed that girl who should have died from plague. Ever since I whispered a chant that made her fever flee.
They call me the girl with broken eyes.
They don't know how true that is.
Because my sight is fractured—not blind. I don't see people. I see the past they hide. The pain they carry. The death they bring.
And what I saw wrapped around that man—
Wasn't just death. It was something trying to be reborn.
I quickened my pace. The closer I got, the more the spirits grew restless.
Three of them—childlike, thin as parchment—drifted after him. Their faces were cracked, their mouths sewn shut with threads of ash.
But still they whispered, only to me.
"He carries the seal."
"He opened the bone."
"He is the one she wept for."
My chest tightened.
She?
I didn't know who they meant. But the ache in their voices struck something deep inside me—something old, something wounded. I stumbled slightly, and a vision bloomed behind my eyes:
A temple drowning in blood. A woman screaming. A scroll wrapped in flesh. A boy crying, a blade in his hand.
I gasped and gripped my cane harder.
The man had turned toward the mountain road—the path to the old temple ruins.
Of course.
The cursed place.
And without meaning to, my mouth opened.
"Liang Shen."
He stopped.
Everything went still. Even the ghosts held their breath.
He turned slowly. His presence loomed like a storm that hadn't yet rained. I couldn't see his face in detail—but I saw his outline, and the way the scroll on his back pulsed like a second heart.
He stared at me as though trying to recognize something he had forgotten.
"…Do I know you?" he asked, voice rough.
"I don't think so," I said, quietly. "But I see you."
He didn't scoff or look confused. He simply stood there.
Waiting.
I stepped forward.
"There are spirits around you," I said.
"I know," he replied.
No denial. No fear.
Only resignation.
That scared me more than anything else.
"I can help," I offered.
He tilted his head. "Why would you?"
"Because they're calling your name," I whispered. "And… they're calling mine, too."
His body tensed. His eyes flicked toward the child-ghosts behind him, then back to me.
"You're cursed," he said. Not a question.
"I was born that way."
He looked at me for a long time. I felt the weight of that gaze. Not judging. Not pitying.
Recognizing.
But before either of us could speak further, the air split.
A scream echoed from the trees.
Not human.
A howl of something broken, something hungry. Something born of spilled blood and shattered seals.
I turned sharply. Figures emerged from the forest—twisted shapes with skin like wax and mouths stitched shut. Corruption-born. Not spirits. Not demons. Something worse. Something in-between.
They charged at us.
Liang Shen moved like a flame—fast, fluid, controlled. His sword burned with spiritual energy, slicing through the creatures with precision. I chanted from memory, my fingers drawing runes in the air with trembling certainty.
They shrieked as I struck one with a purifying seal, smoke rising as it dissolved.
But there were too many.
One lunged at me. Claws inches from my throat.
Then—
A hand grabbed my arm and yanked me back.
Liang Shen.
Our skin touched.
And everything changed.
A vision burst through me—
A girl in a circle of talismans. Screaming. A boy reaching for her. A scroll of bone, pulsing. Fire. Blood. A vow broken. A kiss stolen.
My knees gave out.
Liang caught me, breathing hard. "You saw something."
"Yes," I gasped. "I think… I've seen you before. In another life."
He said nothing. But his silence screamed.
We both knew.
The corruption-born had vanished. For now. The scroll on his back had stopped pulsing, but I knew it was just sleeping.
The ghosts behind him hovered once more.
One floated close to me—her face stitched, her eyes glowing faint blue. She whispered into my mind:
"He is the vessel."
"You are the lock."
"Together, you will open the gate."
I turned to Liang Shen.
And just then—he looked at me not like a stranger.
But like someone who remembered.
---
A sudden wind rose.
From the trees, blood began to drip from the leaves—slow, deliberate. It pooled in the soil, forming symbols.
One word.
"Return."
---
And from behind me, the spirits chanted, softly, in voices only I could hear:
"It's him."
"The one who opened the seal."
"He must return what was taken… or we will all rot again."
The vision wouldn't let go. Even after my body collapsed, even as my breaths came in shallow, ragged gasps, I could still feel it under my skin.
Blood.
Scrolls inked in marrow.
A love once sacred, now severed by betrayal.
I lay there, trembling.
Liang Shen held my shoulders. His hands were strong, yet hesitant. Not the hands of a man used to comfort. But he didn't let go.
"Qin Yao," he murmured. My name on his lips felt foreign—like an echo from a place we'd both been but never named.
"I saw her," I said through cracked breath. "A woman. Surrounded by talismans. Screaming as the flames consumed her. She… she looked like me."
His fingers tightened for a moment, before releasing. Silence stretched between us like a fragile bridge. Then finally, his voice:
"Her name was Ru Lan."
The name made my heart stutter.
Why did it ache so much to hear it?
"She bled for the Bone Scripture," Liang said. "To seal it. To keep it from devouring the world."
"And you—?" I stopped myself.
But he understood.
"I tried to save her," he said, quietly. "But I was too late."
The way he said it—like a blade he'd kept buried for years—told me everything I needed to know.
Guilt was his companion.
And grief his curse.
Behind him, the spirits floated closer. The smallest ghost-child, with her cracked porcelain face, hovered just inches from my shoulder.
"She remembers," she whispered into me.
"She is remembering again."
Another ghost circled low to the ground, trailing ink-like mist. "You died with her. You will die again."
I blinked hard. "What do you mean? What am I supposed to do?"
But they didn't answer.
Instead, the blood still dripping from the trees coalesced into clearer writing—more violent now. Urgent.
"The bones must return. Or all will rot again."
Liang saw it too. He clenched his jaw, his aura flaring with heat.
"We need to leave this place," he said.
But I stayed frozen.
My palm still burned from where his hand had touched mine.
Because something inside me was waking up.
Something ancient.
Something forgotten.
And as I took one last glance at the temple path behind us, I whispered without meaning to:
"I've been here before…"