Sea

At first, Xu Lian thought she had finally died.

The world around her was soft and translucent, as if the sky itself had been molded from fluted glass at sunrise, tinted in delicate shades of peach, lavender, and gold. The colors shimmered as they moved, swirling in fluid, dreamlike formations that stretched into an infinite horizon.

She stood upon a small island, no more than a few paces across, its surface made of smooth, white sand, cool beneath her bare feet. Surrounding her, a vast, silent sea stretched outward in all directions---but the waves never truly crested. Instead, they lapped gently against the shore, as if they, too, were not quite real.

Everything here was muted, suspended between existence and nothingness.

A dream?

No.

Something more.

A mindscape.

Xu Lian shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. She had read about places like this in old cultivation manuals, a spiritual sea, a manifestation of one’s essence. But those were the realms of immortals, of those who had cultivated for decades, centuries even.

She was just a human. A mere traveler. A girl who had barely scratched the surface of cultivation, never reaching anywhere near enough power to have an inner world like this.

The realization sent a cold ripple through her bones.

"Then that must mean..."

She was dying.

A breeze stirred, lifting strands of her hair as it passed, not cold, not warm, just... present.

Then, she heard it.

A voice.

Distant, blurred, as though carried from the other side of the world.

The words were faint, unraveling as they reached her, but she knew... someone was calling her.

She turned, straining to listen, her heart beating in slow, deliberate pulses.

The sound was lost in the shimmering air, swallowed by the iridescent glow of the sky.

"Who...?"

Her chest felt heavy, a warmth pressing against her skin, not painful, but... persistent. Nagging.

Xu Lian lifted a hand to her collarbone, fingertips grazing the source of the sensation something small, smooth, and vibrating ever so slightly.

She reached into the folds of her ruqun, fingers closing around something cool and solid.

Slowly, she pulled it free.

The jade amulet.

It pulsed softly in her palm, its edges glowing with a faint ethereal light. A steady hum traveled up her fingertips, neither alarming nor entirely familiar.

She frowned.

"When did it start glowing?"

Xu Lian had not planned to stop at the fortune teller’s stall that day.

The marketplace had been alive with noise, filled with the scents of sizzling street food, the chatter of traders, the clang of hammers striking iron. It was a place of bargains and deceit, where merchants spun half-truths as easily as they measured silk, where pickpockets wove through crowds like fish through reeds.

And yet, beneath all the commotion, there had been a single stall that no one approached.

It was small, nearly swallowed by the vibrant chaos around it. A simple wooden table, draped in faded red silk, its edges frayed with time. Behind it, a woman sat motionless, her frame hidden beneath layers of dark robes, her face shadowed beneath a deep hood.

Her presence was wrong.

Not because she was monstrous, nor even strange in an obvious way. But because, in a place bursting with life, she was utterly still.

Her booth had no incense curling into the sky, no colorful banners calling customers forward. There was no sign, no price, no promise of fortunes told.

And yet, when Xu Lian passed, the woman lifted her head.

A shiver ran through her.

The woman’s face was weathered, lined with the weight of years, yet it was her eyes that unsettled Xu Lian most.

They were a pale, clouded gray, not blind, not quite, but something worse.

Something all-seeing.

Eyes that did not simply look at her, but through her, stripping away pretense, unraveling the layers of self one usually kept hidden.

"A traveler," the woman murmured, her voice dry as brittle parchment.

Xu Lian nearly took a step back. She had not spoken. She had not given her name.

"A name untethered. A fate unwritten. A thread unspooled, yet bound all the same."

Xu Lian frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”

The woman only chuckled, a low, knowing sound, as if she had heard this response a thousand times before.

Her gnarled fingers reached into the folds of her robes. For a moment, Xu Lian thought she would pull out some trinket to sell, like every other merchant in this place.

But instead, she placed a single jade amulet on the table before her.

The stone was deep green, smooth, its surface untouched by age. Unremarkable.

Yet something about it made the air feel thicker.

"Take it."

Xu Lian hesitated. “I don’t---”

"Take it." The woman’s voice did not rise, yet it left no room for refusal.

Slowly, Xu Lian reached out. Her fingers brushed the jade. It was cool, but strangely comforting.

The moment her skin met the stone, a ripple passed through the air, as if the world itself had exhaled.

A whisper of something old brushed against her consciousness, gone before she could grasp it.

Xu Lian swallowed. “How much?”

The woman’s lips curled into something that was not quite a smile.

"This is not something you buy."

Xu Lian frowned. “Then why give it to me?”

The woman leaned forward, the shadows beneath her hood swallowing the contours of her face. A gust of wind stirred the market, yet not a single strand of the woman’s robes moved.

"Because one day," she said softly, "it will be important."

Xu Lian looked down at the amulet again.

By the time she looked back up, the woman was gone.

The stall had vanished.

Only the amulet remained, clutched in her fingers.

And for the first time, she felt as though she had just made a bargain she did not understand.

The humming intensified.

A vibration---not just through the amulet, but through the very fabric of the world around her.

The sky darkened, colors folding into one another like spilled ink.

The voice no longer a whisper, but something clearer.

Broken words, as though carried across a vast chasm:

“... don’t... leave... him...”

Her breath caught.

"Who?"

The sand shifted beneath her feet. The waves tilted, and suddenly, the world lurched.

The island was collapsing.

Xu Lian gasped as the sky twisted into a kaleidoscope of colors, swirling into a vortex above her. The amulet flared with light, and before she could react, the ground disappeared. The world was falling.

No. She was falling.

No, flying.

A single point of light appeared in the endless darkness below, small at first, but rushing toward her at an impossible speed.

Her fingers twitched.

A tingling spread through her limbs, first her toes, then her arms, as if blood and energy were returning to a body that had been still for too long.

The light consumed her vision.

The warmth of the amulet flooded through her, and then---

She blinked.

Slowly, her eyes opened.

A breath.

Soft. Shallow.

Then another.

Xu Lian’s eyelids felt like they had been weighed down by stone, but something---something persistent---urged them to lift.

The world was not as she had left it.

"Don’t leave him."

Her fingers twitched, barely brushing the fabric of her ruqun.

Something smooth and cool met her skin.

She exhaled softly, eyes fluttering open only to find herself locked in the gaze of a stranger.

Mo Chen was close .

Too close.

He had leaned down slightly, one hand braced against the bedside, the other resting near the softly glowing jade amulet that pulsed beside her. His dark robes pooled around him, the long sleeves trailing against the stone floor.

He did not move.

His face remained calm, but his eyes, dark as a starless night, held an unreadable weight to them.

Cold. Indifferent. Yet... watching.

Xu Lian’s breath hitched. Her mind was still sluggish, trying to piece together the fragments of memory, but her body reacted first. Her fingers tightened around the amulet.

The warmth pulsed through her palm, and a whisper of something long forgotten stirred in the back of her mind.

Mo Chen’s gaze flickered, just for a moment.

"You're awake," he said at last. His voice was low, smooth, edged with a quiet detachment.

Xu Lian swallowed. Her throat ached. The dryness scraped against her awareness like sandpaper, and when she tried to speak, her voice came out hoarse.

"Where..." She cleared her throat, forcing the words. "Where am I?"

A pause. Then there was the smallest shift in the candlelight as Mo Chen straightened, his sleeves falling back into place as he pulled away.

"The Northern Sky Temple," he answered.

Her brows knitted together. That name she had heard it before, whispered in rumors, buried in forgotten texts.

But... it shouldn’t exist anymore.

The weight of the silence between them pressed down, thick as a suffocating mist.

Xu Lian inhaled shakily, forcing her sluggish mind to catch up. She was in a bed, a real bed, soft beneath her aching limbs. The air, once biting cold, now carried the faint scent of burning embers. The flickering glow of coal braziers cast wavering shadows against the cracked stone walls, filling the space with an eerie warmth.

Her eyes flickered downward.

Mo Chen’s hands were empty, but she had the distinct feeling he had been holding something only moments before.

Then she noticed the small ceramic cup sitting beside her bedside.

The faint remnants of medicinal herbs lingered in the air, clinging to her senses.

He had been taking care of her.

Why?

She wet her lips, glancing down at the jade amulet still resting against her palm.

It was no longer glowing.

"Why am I here?" she asked finally.

Mo Chen did not answer immediately. His gaze flickered, not at her, but at the amulet.

"That," he said slowly, "is a question I have been asking myself."

Xu Lian frowned, her fingers tightening instinctively around the jade.

There was something about the way he looked at it, as if it meant something to him, yet he could not place why.

She inhaled sharply, shifting slightly against the mattress, and immediately regretted it.

Pain flared at her side, not sharp, but deep, a dull ache that settled into her bones.

Mo Chen watched impassively as she winced.

"You were injured," he said flatly. "Deep lacerations, blood loss. You would have died if I had left you outside."

His tone was detached, but there was something off about the way he said it.

He made it sound as if he should have left her there.

As if he had meant to.

Xu Lian swallowed.

"I see."

The weight of exhaustion still pressed heavily against her limbs, but her mind was sharpening now, slowly, carefully assessing the man before her.

Xu Lian had never seen a man like him before.

His presence was too still.

Not the ordinary kind of stillness, the kind born from patience, from careful discipline, but something deeper, something unnatural. As if the very air around him held its breath.

His robes pooled around him like spilled ink, their fabric dark and heavy, yet unruffled by the faint warmth of the nearby braziers. Even the flickering candlelight, which cast restless shadows across the walls, seemed hesitant to touch him, as though recognizing something not meant to be illuminated.

And his eyes.

She had known men with dark eyes before, kind ones, cruel ones, liars, lovers, merchants, beggars. Their gazes had been warm, cold, greedy, distant, but always human.

His were not.

Mo Chen’s gaze was black, endless, unreadable. Not the absence of light, but something else entirely, like the night sky before the stars were born. Like a void untouched by existence.

He was beautiful, in the way a sharpened blade was beautiful, sleek, refined, yet made for the sole purpose of destruction.

His long hair, dark as polished obsidian, fell in a loose curtain over his shoulders, partially tied back with a simple silver ornament, unadorned but elegant. Strands of it caught the dim glow of the firelight, giving the illusion of shadow and light shifting through silk.

His features were sculpted with a precision that should have made him delicate, ethereal, almost unreal. And yet, there was a coldness to him, a distance that turned beauty into something untouchable.

The kind of face that should have been carved into stone in some forgotten temple, revered but never understood.

Even the air around him felt different, he did not move, yet she could sense the weight of his presence, as if gravity itself shifted around him.

This man was not like others.

This man was mortal but not mortal.

Xu Lian swallowed, her fingers tightening around the jade amulet as she forced her breath to remain steady.

Her body ached. Her mind was clouded. But one thought pierced through her exhaustion like a blade through silk.

She had stumbled into something far greater than herself.

And she did not yet know whether that was a blessing, or a curse.

She shifted slightly, her fingers trailing against the smooth jade, and tested the air between them.

"...Who are you?"

The candlelight flickered, casting shifting shadows against his face.

For a moment, she thought he wouldn’t answer.

Then he slightly shifted his refined frame.

"Mo Chen."

A name without title. Without explanation. As if it should mean nothing.

Yet somehow, it felt heavier than it should.

Xu Lian licked her lips, her pulse steady despite the weakness in her limbs.

A temple that should not exist.

A man who did not belong to this world.

And an amulet that had just pulsed with an unfamiliar energy.

Her fingers closed around the jade once more.

She did not understand what had happened.

But she knew, somehow... this was only the beginning.