Heartfelt

"There is nothing more treacherous than the human heart."

墨塵 (Mò Chén) had seen it too many times to count.

Mortals wept with hollow sorrow, grief vanishing like morning mist the moment ambition took its place. They whispered sweet oaths beneath moonlit skies, only to sever them with cold steel at dawn.

Once, he thought he understood the heavens, the earth, the balance between light and shadow. But humanity was a puzzle without end, too fragile to endure eternity, too greedy to accept oblivion. They clawed at the fabric of existence, desperate to carve their names into a world that would forget them before the next season’s bloom.

And so, he left it all behind.

For centuries, Mò Chén had dwelled in the quiet ruin of a forgotten temple, where the wind carried only the echoes of his solitude. Time passed like a dream, weightless, unmeasured. Below, mortals lived and died, rising and falling like waves against the shore.

He did not care.

But the stars, The stars endured.

Even as empires crumbled and the heavens shifted, they remained untouched, cold and indifferent to the rot of the mortal world. He envied them, these silent witnesses of eternity.

If only he could be as they were. Without sorrow. Without regret.

But the universe was cruel.

On the night when the clouds broke and the stars shone brightest, fate intervened.

A mortal stumbled into his domain.

Bloodied. Desperate. Breathing as if she had defied death itself.

A human.

His fingers curled around the hilt of Beidou, his sword, silent, patient, long since untouched by battle. The woman, no, the girl, collapsed at the temple’s threshold. Her breath was shallow, but her will unbroken.

She did not intend to die, even when the world willed it.

Mò Chén watched in silence. A single droplet of blood traced its way across the cold stone floor, an offering to a god who no longer listened.

Foolish.

How foolish it was for mortals to believe they could outrun fate.

—❖—❖—❖—

Mo Chen listened.

The wind howled like a restless spirit, pressing against the broken temple, its whispers slipping through the cracks in the stone like a long-forgotten prayer. It was cold, relentless, weaving through the decaying corridors of the Temple of the Northern Sky as if searching for something---or someone.

The sound was familiar, a stark contrast to the desolation around him. A distant echo of the past, always persistent, never truly silent. It filled the empty spaces, the hollows of his mind where memories lingered like the faintest hum beneath a song long silenced. A world lost in its own sorrow.

He stood at the edge of the ruined temple, his gaze fixed on the bitter expanse of the Northern Sky. There, the jagged spires of the 归墟山脉 (Mountains of the Returning Void) clawed at the heavens. The mountains were ancient, their peaks sheathed in mist, their jagged forms towering and endless.

Below, the land descended into a chasm of shifting clouds, their shapes churning like the bruises of a fading sunset, blue-grey, ink-dark, and restless. A reflection of the sorrowful path he had once walked.

For centuries, the temple had stood defiant against time, perched upon the highest peak like a lone, forgotten sentinel. Once, it had been a place of convergence between the heavens and the earth, where cultivators sought enlightenment beneath the watchful gaze of the stars.

The winds that howled through its open eaves were once seen as messengers of the gods, whispering truths that could awaken the deepest hearts. Now, they were only a cold herald of an ending world.

Even stone, however stubborn, could not withstand eternity. The once-glorious pillars, their intricate carvings half-swallowed by decay, stood as fractured monuments to a forgotten age. The golden murals, once vibrant with celestial deities and forgotten legends, had faded into ghostly remnants, their colors now a memory.

What remained was a hollow shell of what had once been a beacon of wisdom.

A ruin, just like him.

The Temple of the Northern Sky had not always been a place of silence. Long ago, it had been a sanctuary for the greatest sages, a place where the air was rich with the fragrance of incense and the crackling warmth of candles.

Scholars had sat beneath the luminous sky, tracing the movement of the stars, seeking answers to questions the world had forgotten to ask.

But nothing lasted forever.

Mo Chen had not always been alone. Once, his name had been known, his power vast, his knowledge as boundless as the night sky. He had stood at the threshold of the highest realms of cultivation, destined for greatness.

But that had been another lifetime ago, before time itself had become his enemy, before the weight of eternity had eroded his soul.

The centuries had stripped him of his purpose, piece by piece, until only a shadow remained. He had outlived everything: his sect, his friends, his enemies---everything except the aching weight of existence itself.

What was the purpose of living when the world had moved on without him? When all that was left were the ruins of memories, wispy and elusive at the edges of his mind?

Now, he was little more than a specter haunting the halls of this forsaken temple.

Unlike the others who had perished here, those who had passed into the afterlife, Mo Chen could not fade. He had tried. Many times. But death, it seemed, had no mercy for those who had transcended mortality, leaving him trapped in an endless existence.

No peace would come for him, not even in the embrace of oblivion.

Turning away from the bitter landscape, Mo Chen stepped through the half-open temple doors, his movements fluid as shadow. A distant flash of lightning flickered across the sky, its cold silver light etching jagged shadows across the crumbling walls.

For a brief moment, the faded murals seemed to awaken, their spectral outlines trembling against the stone before vanishing once more into darkness.

Between the warm, golden glow of the odd candle flame that still flickered on the far side of the hall and the pale, ghostly light cast by the storm beyond, the chamber seemed suspended in an uneasy limbo, neither fully alive nor entirely abandoned.

The world outside howled in a storm of turmoil, but here, time had grown distant.

The Temple of the Northern Sky was now a place of haunted silence, a space where time lingered like an unspoken sorrow. It was a place where even the heavens refused to shine without interruption, where every breath carried the weight of a forgotten past.

The light of the candle flickered with an uncertain will, as though it was unwilling to stay alight. And when the wind whispered through the cracks of the stone, it almost seemed to speak the names of those long gone.

Mo Chen did not flinch. He simply watched. There was little else to do now but wait for the storm to pass, for the light to fade.

The storm outside was a constant, as unchanging as his own existence. In many ways, it was the only thing left that could still reach this place.

The world outside had changed, its once-pristine beauty ravaged by time and forgotten promises, yet the storms remained the same. Nature, in all its fury, still had dominion over the land. Still, in its savage brilliance, it could awaken echoes of the world that had once been.

Mo Chen exhaled, the mist of his breath visible in the frigid air, though the cold no longer reached him. Time had ceased to matter long ago.

And yet, something about the light, the interplay of shadow and flicker, caused a feeling deep within him to stir.

Not longing. No. That was a luxury long forgotten, an illusion shattered by centuries of solitude.

Not regret. Regret required the desire to change the past, and Mo Chen knew better than to harbor such foolishness. The past was a place of no return, a land of ghosts.

It was something colder, quieter, a hollow ache lodged so deep within him that even now, after eons of silence, he could not name it. A fragment of himself that still clung to the remnants of a life he could never reclaim.

He turned away from the temple’s open threshold, his gaze passing over the scattered scrolls and books that lay abandoned on the floor. Some had been placed with care, others left where they had fallen, their bindings faded and torn.

These were the records of a long-lost knowledge, forgotten histories, writings of scholars who no longer walked this earth. He had read them all, countless times, yet their meanings had become lost in the mists of his own fractured mind.

The wisdom contained in those pages no longer held the answers he sought. What was the point of it all?

Knowledge no longer served him. Power no longer called to him. Even time itself had ceased to matter.

What was left for an immortal who no longer sought the heavens, yet could not fall to the earth? What purpose could there be for a man who had outlived his own reason to live?

Another gust of wind forced its way through the temple’s cracked walls, extinguishing a candle in the far corner of the hall. The flame sputtered out, its last ember curling into the shadows.

The air was thick with the scent of wax and aged parchment, mingled with the bitter chill of the storm that threatened to swallow the world whole.

Mo Chen watched as the candle’s final flicker faded into the darkness. There was no need to relight it.

Yet, as the darkness settled, a faint sound echoed through the temple, a voice, or perhaps the memory of one, calling from the depths of the storm.

—❖—❖—❖—

The storm answered. Not with thunder, but with movement.

Far above the crags of the 归墟山脉, (Guī Xū Shānmài) in the hollows where light never reached, they stirred. Dozens of glowing white eyes blinked open, their hunger flaring like embers starved of air. The 噬魄妖 (Shì Pò Yāo) watched from their perch in the cliffside, skeletal limbs clinging to stone in unnatural silence. Their forms were shrouded in mist and shadow, but the way they moved skittering, too fast, too wrong, spoke of no beast born of heaven or earth.

They did not breathe. They did not speak. They only waited. And below them, the scent of spirit drifted through the trees, faint, battered, but bright. Their prey was near.

Xu Lian didn’t know what waited above. Only that the mountains had changed.

The mist was thicker now. Too thick. It clung to her skin and filled her lungs like ash. Each step sent shockwaves through her already- battered legs, and every breath burned cold.

Her cloak was torn. Her knees bled from the last fall. Her qi reserves were nearly drained, but she didn’t stop.

She couldn’t.

Something was following her.

She didn’t need to see it to know.

The trees no longer whispered.

They watched.

And from somewhere far above, though she could not see it yet, she felt the gaze of something ancient, hungry, and wrong.