The sun rose above indigo mountains, bleeding gold through the lattice windows of the Heavenly Sect's highest pavilion. Autumn leaves drifted like silent snowflakes, catching light before they vanished into the courtyard below.
Inside the chamber, silk sheets rustled with each labored breath.
Zhung Hang lay dying.
His body—once a fortress of tempered Chi and iron will—was now a ruin. Skin paper-thin over protruding bones, veins mapped in faded gold beneath translucent flesh. His hair, once midnight black, now snow-white and unbound, spilled across the pillow like a funeral shroud. Each breath came shallow and rattling, as though his lungs had forgotten their purpose.
Around him, twenty-three disciples knelt in a perfect circle. Some wept openly, tears streaming down faces too young to understand the permanence of death. Others stared hollow-eyed, as if denial alone could stitch time back together and restore their master to them whole.
The air was thick with camellia incense and medicinal herbs—ginseng, lotus root, dragon's beard—remedies that had failed to save him. Beneath it all lingered the copper tang of blood from his cracked lips. Outside, rain tapped the paper windows in mournful rhythm.
Life and death flowed like a quiet river. Today, the current carried him toward the shore.
Little Chen—barely sixteen, face streaked with tears—leaned forward from his place in the circle. His voice cracked like thin ice breaking underfoot.
"Master… did you have any regrets?"
The question hung in the air, heavy as stone.
Zhung Hang's eyes, clouded with age and Chi depletion, struggled to focus on the boy's face. When recognition finally came, he smiled—a smile both tender and broken, like sunrise through cracked glass.
He nodded once, slowly.
The room grew heavier, as if the mountain itself leaned in to listen. Disciples shifted forward, desperate to catch every word, every last lesson from the man who had shaped their lives.
Jing Mei, the prodigy who had once shattered a boulder with a single palm strike, gripped the edge of the bed. Her knuckles turned white. "Tell us," she begged, her usual composure crumbling. "Whatever it is, Master, we'll make it real. We *swear* it."
Zhung Hang's gaze softened as he looked at each of them in turn—these children he had raised, trained, loved as his own. His voice came thin as reed paper, yet steady as a mountain stream.
"Two regrets."
He paused, and a cough rattled his chest. Blood flecked the silk sheets. Jing Mei reached to wipe it away, but he shook his head gently, stopping her.
"First…" His fingers trembled against the sheets, searching for strength that was no longer there. "I will not see you grow. I will not watch you become grandmasters, sect leaders, legends beneath the heavens." His voice caught. "I will not see Little Chen survive his first tribulation lightning… or Jing Mei's wedding under the peach blossoms in spring."
Little Chen sobbed harder, pressing his forehead to the floor. Jing Mei bit her lip until it bled, tasting salt and iron as she fought to maintain composure.
"Second…" Zhung Hang's eyes drifted to the window, where rain streaked the glass like the world itself was weeping. "I could not shield my wife from the Heavenly Demon."
A collective gasp rippled through the circle. Few disciples knew the full story—Master Hang had never spoken her name since the war ended, keeping his grief locked behind the walls of duty and teaching.
"Her name was Xain Xe," he whispered, and saying it aloud after decades felt like reopening an old wound. "She died in my arms on the Ashen Plains. The Demon's shadow struck her down while I was too slow, too weak to protect her. My Flame Burst… barely singed his robes." His voice cracked. "After her, the Demon took Master Luo. Master Wei. Master Qiao. So many fell because I wasn't strong enough fast enough when it mattered."
Silence descended—only rain and ragged breathing remained.
Then, gathering the last fragments of his strength, Zhung Hang spoke his final words to them:
"But you—you must *be strong.* Be responsible. Be kind to one another and to those who cannot defend themselves. Carry the heart of the Heavenly Sect forward: unyielding, burning bright, true to the very end."
He drew a final breath, tasting iron and camellia smoke mingled on his tongue.
His eyes sharpened—focused, for one crystalline heartbeat, on every tear-streaked face around him. Little Chen's trembling hand reaching toward him. Jing Mei's clenched fist pressed against her heart. The youngest disciple clutching the wooden practice sword he'd carved himself, the one Master Hang had praised just last week.
Then the light behind his eyes went out like a candle flame.
Zhung Hang died at three hundred years old, peaceful, surrounded by love and devotion.
Yet in the final flicker of consciousness before the void claimed him, a memory clawed its way up from the dark recesses of his mind.
*Months ago. A dusty book corner of his table where forbidden texts were kept.*
He had found a book with no title, bound in black leather gone soft with age, pages brittle as dead autumn leaves. He had opened it on a whim during an idle afternoon.
The words had burned themselves into his memory like a brand:
> *Everything is an Illusion.*
> *None of it is Real.*
> *Heaven was Playing you.*
> *NOTHING MORE THAN A DAYDREAM.*
He had laughed then, tossing the book aside. *Superstition. A madman's ramblings. Philosophy from someone who couldn't accept their own failures.*
Now, as his soul slipped into darkness, the words returned—mocking, merciless, undeniable.
---
A robotic *beep-beep-beep* pierced the silence.
His eyes snapped open.
White ceiling tiles. Harsh fluorescent lights that stabbed into his retinas. The sharp sting of plastic tubing shoved down his throat, making him gag reflexively. An antiseptic smell hit him like a physical blow—sharp, chemical, utterly *wrong* after centuries of mountain air and incense.
He tried to sit up. Couldn't. His arms were restrained with soft cuffs, standard hospital policy for coma patients who might injure themselves upon waking.
Panic surged through him. Where was his Chi? Where was the warmth in his meridians, the flow of energy that had been as natural as breathing for three hundred years?
Nothing. Empty. Dead.
A monitor screamed in alarm at his elevated heart rate.
Nurses rushed in, their voices overlapping in urgent medical jargon he barely comprehended.
"Mr. Zhung! You're awake!"
"Get the doctor—now!"
"Sir, please try to stay calm—"
He stared at the IV dripping clear fluid into his vein, at the wires attached to his chest, at his arms—young arms, unmarked by battle scars, weak and atrophied from disuse.
The doctor entered minutes later, clipboard in hand, voice professionally gentle but clinical. "Mr. Zhung, you've been in a coma for two years. You were struck by a delivery truck. Severe head trauma, massive blood loss. You're very lucky to be alive."
Two years.
Three hundred years of cultivation, battles, love, loss, triumph, teaching—*gone*. A dream conjured by a damaged brain as it tried to make sense of trauma and oxygen deprivation.
The doctor kept talking about recovery timelines, physical therapy, psychological counseling. Zhung Hang heard none of it. He couldn't speak around the tube in his throat, couldn't scream the questions burning in his mind.
*Was any of it real? Xain Xe—was she real? Master Luo? Little Chen? Were they all just chemical phantoms dancing through my dying synapses?*
Something inside him hollowed out, collapsing like a building with its foundation removed. No warmth of Chi. No spark of purpose. Just the cold drip of saline and the indifferent beep of machines that measured his existence in heartbeats and oxygen levels.
---
Days blurred together in a haze of tests, tubes being removed, learning to walk again on legs that barely remembered how. When they finally discharged him, he stood outside the hospital in borrowed clothes, holding a plastic bag containing his old outfit—still stained with two-year-old blood.
His savings: depleted by medical bills. His apartment: evicted months ago. Rent due on a home that no longer existed.
He walked the streets in a daze, feet carrying him without conscious direction. The city was louder than he remembered, more chaotic. Car horns blared. People shouted into phones. The stench of exhaust and street food made him nauseous after dreaming of mountain air for what felt like lifetimes.
His feet stopped outside a gated villa in the wealthy district. Marble lions flanked the entrance. The hedges were perfectly manicured. Through the windows, he glimpsed movement—familiar figures he'd known since birth.
His parents.
His mother, Mrs. Hang, emerged wearing pearls and a tailored coat worth more than most people's monthly salary. His father followed, scrolling through his phone with the distracted irritation of someone for whom money had become a problem rather than a solution.
Zhung Hang stood at the curb, baseball cap pulled low.
They walked past him without a second glance. To them, he was just another homeless vagrant cluttering their pristine neighborhood.
They didn't recognize the ghost of their son.
"Mr. Zhung! You're back!"
The voice boomed from across the street. Uncle Zhou, the old grocer who'd given him free candy as a child, waved enthusiastically from his shop beneath the same faded red awning.
Zhung Hang turned toward the familiar voice.
His mother's head snapped around.
Recognition dawned.
*Smack.*
Her palm cracked across his face with enough force to snap his head sideways. The sound echoed down the street like a gunshot.
"You *dare* show your face here, you useless thing?" she hissed, her perfectly made-up face contorting with rage and something darker—disgust.
Blood filled his mouth from a split lip. He said nothing, just stared at her with eyes that had witnessed three hundred years of life and death, even if it had all been an illusion.
"I gave you *life,*" she continued, her voice rising to a shriek that drew stares from passersby. "And you wasted it! Wishing you were born is like begging a rabid dog to join the family. You're an embarrassment. A failure. A stain on our name."
His father stood slightly behind her, stone-faced, saying nothing in his son's defense.
"Mrs. Hang," his father finally interjected, voice low, "we're in public—"
*Crack.*
His father's fist connected with Zhung Hang's jaw. Stars exploded behind his eyes as he hit the pavement, cheek scraping concrete, tasting blood and rain and three hundred years of held-back rage.
Something inside him snapped.
Not broke—snapped into perfect, crystalline clarity.
He rose slowly, deliberately. Blood dripped from his chin onto his borrowed shirt. When he spoke, his voice was raw but steady, every word a blade.
"I'm *glad* you disowned me." He met his mother's eyes without flinching. "Glad I escaped two parasites in human skin who only ever saw their children as investments. You remember my brother? Your favorite son who stayed, who obeyed, who did everything you demanded?"
His mother's face paled.
"He hanged himself in your garage with his own belt. Because you tormented him until death felt like mercy." Zhung Hang smiled—a terrible, empty expression. "Now your company's bankrupt. Karma finally arrived, and she brought receipts."
He turned and walked away, their shouts fading behind him—shrill, desperate, ultimately meaningless.
Rain soaked him to the bone. He had no umbrella, no destination, no purpose beyond putting one foot in front of the other.
Across the street, beneath a shared umbrella, stood Mei Ling. His high school sweetheart. The girl who'd promised forever in whispered secrets, who'd left him the night before his accident for someone with better prospects.
She was kissing her new boyfriend now—slow, deliberate, a public display. Her eyes flicked toward Zhung Hang, and for just a moment, he saw something flash across her face. Obsession? Regret? Schadenfreude?
Then it was gone, and she was just another stranger under an umbrella.
He kept walking.
---
His apartment—a small studio he'd managed to find that accepted his damaged credit—had peeling paint, a flickering lightbulb, and a refrigerator that hummed like a dying animal. On the counter sat one bottle of cheap liquor, the kind that burned going down and left regrets in the morning.
He drank straight from the bottle. The burn was real. The only real thing left in a world that felt like tissue paper, thin and temporary and ready to tear.
He laughed—sharp, broken, edging toward hysteria. Then sobbed. Then laughed again until the sounds blurred together into something inhuman.
The kitchen knife sat where he'd left it after making dinner years ago. Clean. Sharp. The blade caught the flickering light—the same glint as the Flame Burst that had once saved Master Luo in a life that never existed.
His hand trembled as he picked it up.
In the steel's reflection, he saw Little Chen's tear-streaked face. Heard the boy's voice: *Be kind, Master. Be responsible.*
"I tried," Zhung Hang whispered to the empty room, to the ghost of a student who had never been real. "I tried so hard to be good. And what did it get me?"
He pressed the blade to his throat. The metal was cold, almost comforting in its certainty.
"Next life," he said softly, "I'll be the demon. No more kindness. No more sacrifice. No more being Heaven's plaything."
The cut was clean and deep. Warmth spilled down his neck—real blood, no Chi, no cultivation, no second chances.
He chuckled once, softly, as darkness closed in for the second time.
*Freed.*
In the space between heartbeats, between worlds, between the dream and the dreaming, Zhung Hang made a vow that burned hotter than any Flame Burst:
Next life, he would follow his heart without apology. Even if Heaven and Earth stood against him. Even if Life and Death barred the way. Even if humanity itself was the price.
Let the world call him demon.
The diary's words echoed one final time:
> *Everything is an Illusion.*
> *None of it is Real.*
> *Heaven was Playing you.*
This time, he would play back.
---
## Epilogue: The Mark
When the paramedics found him hours later—alerted by neighbors who'd heard the thud of his body hitting the floor—the knife was still loosely held in his hand.
His eyes were open, staring at nothing.
A faint smile lingered on his lips, as though death had been a relief rather than an ending.
On his chest, directly over his heart, a burn mark had appeared—perfectly circular, roughly the size of a coin, glowing faintly with golden light.
The shape of a flame.
The coroner noted it in his report, dismissed it as a chemical burn from the spilled alcohol, nothing more.
But in the morgue, under harsh fluorescent lights at three in the morning, the mark pulsed once.
Twice.
Then vanished completely, leaving only unblemished skin.
Somewhere—in a place between dreams and waking, between one life and another—a new world stirred.
And in that world, something dark was being born.
**End of Chapter 2**