Snow fell like scattered ash, clinging to the jagged rocks that crowned the ridge above the valley. Wind howled low through the cliffs, its voice mournful and hollow, as though mourning something lost to time.
A boy lay at the base of the cliff — no longer quite a boy, not yet a man.
He stirred.
The snow had not buried him. The wind had not claimed him. His body, though torn and scarred, bled no more. Even his breath, soft and even, seemed unnatural against the stark stillness of the mountain.
Then — his eyes opened.
Pale. Clouded. As if he had stared too long into a void and forgotten how light worked.
He sat up slowly, arms trembling as if learning motion for the first time. Muscles stretched, skin cracked. Beneath the layers of frozen dust, his frame gleamed faintly — not like flesh, but like something too stubborn to rot.
He blinked at the sky. He blinked at his hands. He did not speak. Because he did not know what to say.
He didn't even know his own name.
---
Further down the slope, the snow had thinned into ice-glazed grasslands where a single figure stood cloaked in maroon robes. The woman's posture was poised, but her fingers trembled as they clutched a jade talisman tight against her chest.
It pulsed. Slow. Deep.
As if it recognized something it hated — something it feared.
Yan Xue lowered the talisman. Her breath fogged in the air. For a long moment, she stood there in silence, unmoving, unreadable.
Then she turned back toward the mountain path. Her eyes, sharp and dark as obsidian, burned with one thought alone.
He lives.
---
Shen Yi did not know that name.
Not yet.
The village he stumbled into two days later was barely more than a cluster of wooden houses huddled together against the cold. Smoke curled from thin chimneys. A single bell rang at dawn. Children watched him with wide eyes; old men muttered prayers when he passed.
He didn't speak much. He didn't smile at all.
They called him "the ghost boy."
And in truth, he looked the part. His hair was black but streaked with silver at the roots, his skin pale as porcelain. There were scars down his spine that looked like claw marks and a strange darkness to his veins that flickered in torchlight.
The healer, a quiet old woman with clouded eyes, tried to inspect him once. She laid her hand over his chest, then snatched it back with a hiss.
"You're not… normal," she muttered, as if tasting poison. "Not demon, not spirit. But not human either."
Shen Yi only blinked. The words meant nothing to him. All he knew was hunger — not for food, but for meaning. For memory. For a face that would stir something.
But everything in his mind was fog.
---
He stayed in the village, doing chores to earn rice and a cot in the storehouse. He never tired. Never bled. A knife slipped once and cut his palm — but it sealed shut within seconds, leaving behind no wound.
The villagers whispered.
Some said he was cursed. Others said he was chosen. But no one dared ask him directly.
He didn't even know if he wanted to be asked.
---
Far from the village, within the heart of the Scarlet Immortal Sect, a storm brewed under layers of silence.
Elders debated in locked halls.
Scrolls trembled in their seals.
And deep beneath the Lotus Flame Hall, where only blood could awaken stone, a name pulsed on an old forgotten altar:
Shen Yi.
---
At the edge of that very sect, cloaked in crimson and shadow, Yan Xue stood before a sealed mirror of spirit-forged obsidian. Her gaze was cold. Unshaken. But her fingers dug into her palm until blood bloomed beneath her nails.
Her voice was quiet.
"He's alive."
The mirror rippled. It showed nothing but snow.
She didn't need proof. Her blood had told her what the heavens never could.
"You left me crying in the ashes," she whispered.
"You tapped my cheek and called me a crybaby."
"Then you ran, thinking I'd never find you again."
"You thought wrong, Shen Yi."
Behind her, a servant approached slowly, hesitantly. "Young Mistress Yan, the elders—"
"They don't matter."
"But the sect leader said—"
Yan Xue turned her head, slowly. Her eyes glinted like knives half-drawn.
The servant fell silent.
"I need a transfer scroll," she said. "To the Northern Outpost. There's a minor village there. I'll take the night ride."
"Alone?"
"I won't be alone," she said quietly. "He'll be there."
---
Back in the village, Shen Yi sat by the fire in the storehouse, legs drawn to his chest. He watched the flames flicker, felt the warmth on his skin. And still, there was no comfort in it.
Just a vague ache in the center of his chest — like something forgotten that refused to be gone.
Something… broken.
His name.
A voice.
A girl's cry.
And fingers… reaching toward his face.
He touched his cheek. The memory fled before he could hold it.
Who am I?
The wind howled outside, and the fire sputtered.
Far above, in the crimson halls of the Scarlet Immortal Sect, a vow born in blood was already walking toward him — cloaked in memory, weaponized in silence.
The next morning, the village stirred under a pale dawn.
Snow crunched under hurried feet as farmers emerged with water buckets and dull tools. Children chased chickens across ice-patched alleys. Above them all, smoke curled lazily from rooftops, thick with the scent of dried fish and winter roots.
But it was none of this that caught the eyes of the village guard standing at the eastern watchpost.
It was her.
A figure in crimson robes, boots unsoiled by the mud, a cloak fluttering behind her like a burning banner. Her eyes were calm, but the way she carried herself—the absolute stillness between each step—shouted power louder than any shout could.
"Who—?" the guard began, but his throat tightened when she drew closer.
That aura.
That pressure.
He bowed instinctively. "Cultivator… senior… may I ask your name?"
The woman glanced at him, and her voice was soft.
"Yan."
That was all.
---
She passed through the village like wind through glass—silent, untouched, unforgettable.
And in the far corner, in the stable yard where buckets froze half full, Shen Yi was splitting firewood when he saw her.
The axe in his hands paused mid-swing.
Something inside him twisted.
She hadn't even looked at him. She passed across his vision like a dream that refused to end—but in the instant their paths crossed, he felt something deep inside him stir.
His breath caught. His body remembered something his mind did not.
The axe fell from his hand.
He watched her disappear behind the old healer's home, heart racing for no reason he could explain.
"Who…?" he murmured.
No answer came.
But deep in the center of his chest, where his pulse should've been steady, there was a single, dissonant throb.
---
Yan Xue stood before the old healer a moment later.
The woman blinked at her, cloudy-eyed, but not unseeing.
"You carry pain," she said without prompting. "And not the fresh kind."
Yan Xue didn't reply.
The healer's gaze sharpened. "He's in the stable yard. Been splitting wood since dawn. Doesn't sleep much. Doesn't eat much either."
"I know," Yan Xue said quietly.
"You came for him, didn't you?"
Yan Xue didn't nod. Didn't speak. But the silence was answer enough.
The healer sighed. "Then be careful. He may not remember who he was… but that doesn't mean he's someone new."
---
Back in the yard, Shen Yi picked up the axe again, hands still slightly shaking. The wind had stopped. But the world felt louder. Clearer. Like someone had removed a veil he didn't know he'd been wearing.
And when he turned—
She was there.
Standing not ten steps away. Arms folded. Eyes unreadable.
He blinked, stunned, staring. She didn't flinch. Didn't speak.
He didn't know why—but something about her filled him with both unease and… longing.
"Have we met?" he asked, voice uncertain.
Yan Xue's lips curved faintly—something between a smirk and a scowl.
"No."
That one word shouldn't have hurt. But it did.
"I thought…" he started. "You seem familiar."
Her eyes narrowed.
"And you seem like someone who's forgotten many things."
He flinched. That… was not wrong.
"I don't know who I am," he admitted after a moment. "I woke up under the cliffs. I don't remember anything before that."
"Convenient."
The word cut deeper than the wind.
Shen Yi frowned. "Do you… know who I am?"
A pause.
Then: "I know what you are."
He stared at her, heart beating faster.
Yan Xue stepped closer. Her voice dropped.
"You're a shadow wearing a man's face. A whisper without a name. A corpse that refused to die."
He backed away slightly, pulse racing.
"I didn't mean to upset—"
"I'm not upset," she said coldly. "I'm watching."
"Watching what?"
"To see how long your peace lasts."
He opened his mouth, then closed it. There was something in her gaze — not just anger. Something more ancient. Personal. Like she carried a wound carved into her soul.
"Why does it feel like I should know you?" he whispered.
Yan Xue didn't answer.
She turned and walked away.
---
That night, Shen Yi couldn't sleep.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her face.
Not just from today — from somewhere deeper. Like a memory clawing its way up through drowning silence.
He heard a girl crying.
He saw flames.
Snow.
Blood.
And the faintest echo of a voice:
"You crybaby."
He sat up, gasping.
And far away, on the hill just beyond the village, Yan Xue sat under a frost-covered pine, staring at the stars.
Her hand rested over her heart.
She hated him.
She remembered everything he'd done.
The screams. The blood. The emptiness after her family's bodies lay cold beneath the ruins.
But when he had looked at her today…
He had looked at her like he didn't know her at all.
And somehow — that hurt more than if he had remembered and laughed.
---
Back in the village, Shen Yi stood outside, shirtless in the cold, watching his breath mist in the moonlight.
He didn't feel the frostbite. His skin never cracked. His blood never froze.
He was… wrong.
Unnatural.
And now he knew someone else knew it too.
He looked toward the hill where she had vanished.
"Who are you?" he whispered.
"And why… do you make me feel like I've already broken your heart?"
End of Chapter 1