Ruo didn't take her hand.
Not because he didn't want to—but because something told him she wasn't offering help.
She was offering judgment.
"What do you mean... the game's begun?" he asked, voice dry, unsure whether it was the sudden heat of the pendant or the sharpness in her eyes that made his mouth so dry.
She didn't blink. "You activated a glyph that hasn't responded in six centuries."
"How was I supposed to know—?"
"You weren't." She finally lowered her hand. "That's the point."
Ruo glanced at the cracked stone behind him. "So what happens now?"
She didn't answer immediately. Her gaze drifted up to the clouds. "You'll be hunted. Watched. Tested."
"By who?"
"By everything that sleeps beneath the stone." Her voice softened. "And by the ones who never sleep."
Ruo swallowed hard. "Do you have a name?"
She hesitated. "Call me Xue."
That wasn't a name. It was a word—snow. Just snow.
But somehow, it suited her.
Back in the outer reaches of the capital, deep beneath a mansion whose windows never opened and whose halls echoed with silence, a man in golden robes stared at a black lotus blooming in a bowl of blood.
It had bloomed only twice in his lifetime.
The first time, a city vanished overnight.
This time… he wasn't sure what would vanish.
But something had changed.
The seal had cracked.
Ruo followed Xue down a street he'd never noticed before.
That was strange in itself—he'd lived his whole life in Shuangwei's tangled maze of alleys and lanes. But this path curved oddly, too clean, too quiet. Almost like it didn't exist until just now.
Xue walked with purpose, her boots making no sound on the stone.
"Where are we going?" he asked.
"You need to see it."
"See what?"
"The consequences."
They stopped before a weathered house. A simple wooden door, crooked windows, peeling paint—nothing remarkable.
Until Ruo stepped inside.
The air inside hummed. Not with sound, but with memory.
And lying in the center of the room, untouched by time, was a skeleton in tattered robes. Its bony fingers still gripped a cracked pendant—just like his.
Ruo froze.
"That was the last one," Xue said quietly. "The last boy chosen by the glyph."
He stepped back.
"Wait. You said I wasn't supposed to activate it—"
"You weren't."
"Then why did it respond?"
She looked at him. Her expression was unreadable. "Because you weren't born here."
That hit harder than he expected.
"Of course I was," he said. "I've always been here—"
"Your soul wasn't."
Ruo's breath caught. "What... what does that mean?"
"It means you remember less than you think."
In the Void, Zixuan's hand trembled.
It wasn't fear. It wasn't even rage.
It was curiosity.
He whispered a name. The stars pulsed.
"Xue…"
That name hadn't been spoken in eons.
And yet… she wasn't supposed to be in the lower realms. She wasn't supposed to be aware.
The veil was thinning.
And the boy—Ruo—was peeling back its edge with every breath he took.
Back in the ruin-house, Ruo turned to the skeleton again. "Why is he still here? Why hasn't anyone moved him?"
"They can't see him."
"What?"
"This house doesn't exist for anyone else. Not really."
Ruo's eyes drifted to the pendant clutched in bone. "He failed, didn't he?"
Xue nodded. "He didn't understand the cost. You might."
He felt the weight of his own pendant grow heavier.
"Then what's the first step?" he asked. "If I've already crossed the line... what now?"
Xue smiled faintly, and it was the kind of smile that didn't belong on someone her age—too tired, too sad, too old.
"You don't walk the path, Ruo."
"You are the path."