The clouds broke just after dawn.
The rain didn't stop. It simply grew thinner, like mist pulled back through tired lungs. Pale light touched the wet stone of the hills as if afraid to be seen.
Mo Tian stood at the edge of a shallow ridge, staring down into the valley below.
A village lay nestled in its arms — small, crumbling, half-forgotten. Smoke curled lazily from one chimney. The others were cold. A road ran through it like a scar.
He didn't care about the village.
His eyes were on the path beyond it — the one leading east.
He had dreamed of that path. Not recently, not clearly, but often enough to remember the way it curved. The way the wind changed when you stepped past the fifth marker stone.
He had walked it once.
With her.
Back when they still believed they were fighting for the same thing.
His hand curled slightly at the memory. Not in anger. Not even in pain. Just… reflex.
A name stirred at the back of his throat. He didn't say it.
Saying it would make her real.
And he wasn't ready for that.
---
Bai Xueyin stepped through the forest, her boots light on the wet leaves.
The trees thinned here. The fog gave way to half-light and shadow. Her cloak was heavy with rain, but she didn't feel the weight.
Her thoughts were elsewhere.
She had followed this path once before — years ago, when the war was still young, and the heavens hadn't yet made their verdict.
Back then, she had believed in answers.
Now, she only believed in threads. Some tangled, some torn, and one that refused to break.
Her fingers brushed the hilt of her sword.
It hummed — faint, familiar.
She knew what it meant.
He was near.
Her heart didn't race. It didn't even tremble. It simply… slowed.
Like it was listening.
---
At the edge of the village, a child stared at Mo Tian from the safety of a doorway.
She was small, no more than seven. Mud streaked her cheeks. Her hands clutched a bundle of herbs like a shield.
Mo Tian didn't move.
He didn't smile. Didn't speak.
But after a long moment, he gave the faintest nod.
The girl vanished into the house.
He exhaled.
He had nothing to offer these people. No safety. No warmth. Just a shadow that passed too slowly to be ignored.
He stepped past the village and followed the road toward the eastern pass.
The wind shifted.
He stopped.
His eyes flicked to the horizon. The sky was breaking open just slightly — streaks of dull orange slicing through gray.
And with it… the faintest thread of energy pulled across his chest. Not physical. Not spiritual. Something else.
He didn't speak her name.
But it echoed in him anyway.
---
Bai Xueyin paused by the fifth marker stone.
It was chipped. Overgrown. Half-swallowed by roots.
She remembered touching it once. Not because it mattered, but because he had. She had followed behind him, quiet, studying his steps like a puzzle she didn't want to solve.
That had been a different time.
But memory was not bound by time.
It walked beside her now.
Each step forward tasted like old breath and unfinished words.
And somewhere ahead…
He walked too.
----
The road curved into a narrow pass, carved long ago by monks whose names no one remembered.
Stone lanterns stood along its edges, most cracked or hollowed out by time. One still burned — barely — a pale blue flame that shivered in the wind.
Mo Tian paused beside it.
He didn't light it. Didn't look for who had. He simply stood, staring into the bend ahead.
He felt it now.
That pressure.
That weight.
That quiet in the bones that came before something important.
His hand rested near his sword, but he didn't draw.
He didn't need to.
Some things announced themselves without sound.
He took one more step.
And she was there.
---
Bai Xueyin stood at the top of the rise.
Rain had stopped. The air was cold.
Her cloak moved with the wind, long strands of white hair drifting like threads of moonlight across her shoulders.
She did not look surprised.
He didn't either.
They simply stood.
Ten paces apart.
The world held its breath.
No swords. No techniques. No blinding flashes of light. Just two people who had not seen each other in nearly a hundred years.
But had never truly stopped seeing each other.
Bai Xueyin's eyes narrowed slightly. Not in anger. In focus. As if trying to determine whether what stood before her was real… or memory made solid.
Mo Tian's gaze was steady. Hollow at first glance. But behind it—
Fire. Regret. Familiarity sharpened by time.
He didn't speak.
Neither did she.
Because what was there to say?
That she had left him in a pit of burning ruins?
That he had cursed her name across lifetimes?
That their bond, no matter how frayed, still burned beneath their skin?
The wind shifted again.
Not with force — but with warning.
They both felt it.
A cultivator's sixth sense. The heaviness of karma pulling taut like a thread between them.
Neither moved.
It was not time to fight.
It was not time to speak.
It was simply time… to see.
To remember.
To feel the shape of the wound before tearing it open again.
---
A bird cried in the distance.
The clouds drifted.
The moment passed.
Bai Xueyin turned first. Not away. Not yet. Just enough to step off the path and disappear behind the curve.
Gone.
Mo Tian stayed where he was.
His breath left him slowly, like smoke through broken glass.
He looked at the stone lantern again.
The flame inside flickered once. Then went out.