The road from the mountain was overgrown.
Vines crawled over the stone path like veins through dead skin. Trees leaned in from both sides, their branches twisted and blackened by fire long faded. The once-clear sky trail was now shaded, dim even in daylight.
Mo Tian walked with a limp.
Each step pulled at torn muscle, but he didn't slow down. He had no destination, only direction. Forward.
The world hadn't changed much. It had just moved on without him.
He passed what was once a guardian statue—now broken in half, its top lying face-down in a patch of moss. Birds nested where its eyes once glowed.
Farther down, he crossed an old shrine stone. Someone had scratched words into it.
"The Crimson Lotus has fallen."
"Let its cursed flame be forgotten."
He said nothing.
The forest quieted as he passed. No birdsong. No insects. Only the soft drag of his boot and the low rustle of wind through burned leaves. The world still remembered him, even if no one else did.
And somewhere beyond this path, she was still out there.
He had no proof. No divine sign. But the curse… the curse always brought them back together.
It was patient. Cruel. Like fate with a grudge.
He kept walking.
---
Far away, across a quiet valley near the edge of a secluded city, Bai Xueyin stood at the edge of a mirror pond.
Her reflection stared back with perfect stillness. Silver-white hair flowed down her back, caught gently in the breeze. Her robe, clean and precise, bore no dust, no stain. Her sword rested in its sheath, untouched since her last mission.
But her fingers trembled.
Only slightly. Barely enough to notice. But she saw it. And she hated that she did.
Behind her, a voice spoke.
"Saintess Bai. News from the east. The mountain… it burned again."
She didn't move. Her eyes stayed fixed on her reflection.
"What did they find?" she asked.
"No bodies. Just one mark. A lotus scorched into the earth."
Silence stretched between them.
The messenger waited, uncomfortable.
Bai Xueyin turned slightly, just enough to see the man's expression. Nervous. Curious. He didn't know what he was asking for.
She didn't speak. She raised her hand.
The man bowed and backed away without another word.
When he was gone, she looked down at her hand.
Still trembling.
She clenched it into a fist.
It wasn't fear. She didn't fear him. Not anymore. She had made peace with what she'd done. With what had to be done.
But if he had truly survived again… if the curse still clung to him… then the cycle hadn't ended.
And neither had her part in it.
---
Back on the forest path, Mo Tian stopped.
He smelled smoke.
Not the kind from fire or ash. This was incense—sweet, cloying, mixed with the copper tang of dried blood.
He followed the scent to a clearing where someone had set up a small altar. Stones in a circle. Offerings of dried fruit and spirit paper. A name had been carved into the ground.
"Bai Xueyin."
He stared at it for a long moment.
Not in surprise. Not in confusion.
Just a quiet, tired bitterness.
He had seen this before.
Some worshipped her. Called her the Saint of Final Mercy. The one who ended suffering by cutting it out at the root.
Others feared her. Said her sword carried a curse that made those it touched forget who they were.
And some… some knew she had fought him. That she had stood over his broken body more than once and walked away.
To them, they were legends. Fated rivals. Two immortals bound in a cycle no one else could understand.
To him?
They were unfinished business.
-----
Mo Tian moved past the altar without a word.
The wind picked up behind him, lifting dust from the stone and scattering the fruit like forgotten prayers. He didn't care who had built it. The name carved into the dirt meant nothing.
Names were easy to carve.
Much harder to erase.
He followed the path until it led to a village—small, quiet, nestled between jagged cliffs. A place that had likely never seen a battle but still bore the weight of someone else's war. Doors were kept shut. Eyes watched from behind curtains.
He walked through the center of the road. People parted, saying nothing.
It wasn't fear. Not exactly.
More like instinct. Like animals sensing a storm before it came.
Mo Tian stopped near an old market stall. The vendor behind it, a crooked old man with half his teeth missing, stared at him.
"You're not from here," the man said.
"No."
"You smell like something that shouldn't have survived."
Mo Tian didn't respond.
The vendor chuckled, but it wasn't a kind laugh.
"They say the Crimson Flame walks again. That the man who can't die crawled out of a grave the world forgot."
Mo Tian met the old man's gaze.
"What else do they say?"
"That the woman who killed him is still hunting. That she's not done."
The wind shifted.
Mo Tian turned without a word and walked away.
Behind him, the old man kept talking—to himself, to the ghosts, to no one.
"Two souls tied by hate. Two blades meant to meet again."
---
At the same time, in the high hall of a sect built on silver and silence, Bai Xueyin stood before her sword.
It hung suspended between two iron pillars, bound by thin threads of spirit silk. Light shimmered across the blade's surface, but it cast no reflection. Not anymore.
She reached toward it, but didn't touch.
She felt it pulsing. Faint. Like a second heartbeat. Her sword had always been connected to her through her soul, through her discipline.
But now it responded to something else.
To him.
The curse wasn't just a bond between bodies. It lived in their weapons. Their memories. Their hatred.
She closed her eyes and let herself feel it. Just for a moment.
That emptiness. That silence that came when he was gone… and the sharp pull that said he was no longer gone.
She hated that she could still tell the difference.
A voice broke through the quiet.
"You knew he'd return."
It was her uncle, one of the last surviving elders from the Pure Soul Palace. His robe brushed the floor like dry leaves. His face was sharp. Cold.
Bai Xueyin didn't turn to him.
"He never truly left," she said.
The elder's tone was careful.
"This time… you must end it. The heavens are watching."
"They always watch," she replied, her voice low.
"But they are not patient. Not with ones like him. Or you."
She said nothing.
He stepped closer.
"This is your last chance to sever the thread."
Her fingers curled slightly, just above the blade's surface.
She thought of the altar. The last time she saw him. Broken. Silent. Still breathing.
She had walked away that day.
Everyone called it mercy.
But mercy had never felt that heavy.
---
Far beyond, Mo Tian sat at the edge of a cliff overlooking the valley below.
The village lights flickered in the distance. He could still hear the old man's voice in his mind.
He closed his eyes.
And for a moment, he felt something.
Not a vision. Not a message. Just a pull. A shift in the wind that didn't belong to the weather. A weight in the chest that wasn't pain.
He opened his eyes and whispered.
"You felt that, didn't you?"
He didn't expect an answer. But he knew.
So did she.