The well beneath the Eastern Sky was not marked on any celestial map.
Its entrance had been swallowed centuries ago by creeping moss and disuse — no lanterns, no guardstones, no hovering sigils to indicate it had ever been part of the great celestial network.
Only he remembered it.
Only he still came.
Mo Yujin stood alone, boots dusted with frost, cloak trailing against the cold marble floor. The ruin stretched wide around him — once a temple, now a skeleton of archways and broken pillars. Light filtered through cracks in the stone ceiling above, catching on frozen motes in the air.
And there, in the center, was the well.
Square, deep, ancient.
Dry.
He stepped forward.
His hand hovered over the rim, fingers ghosting along the moss-covered edges until they landed on a faint line of script — nearly invisible.
命若浮影.情如燃雪.Life is a floating shadow. Love, burning snow.
He had carved those words himself.
Ten thousand years ago.
For her.
🌸 Meanwhile, in Peach Blossom Sect...
Lian Qiao paced the floor of her room like a koi in a teacup.
She couldn't sit. Couldn't rest. Her hands itched, her thoughts scattered.
The scroll Master Bai had shown her still pulsed faintly on the table beside her — now sealed again, silent, as if sleeping after sharing its dream.
And yet she couldn't shake what she saw.
That was her. That girl in red. That voice, that scream. And him — the cold man with wild eyes and clenched fists.
Mo Yujin.
She thought of how his eyes flickered in that vision — not the emotionless steel she had seen in real life, but haunted, desperate.
What happened to them?
She touched her chest, half-expecting to feel some scar, some mark from the memory. But there was nothing. Only warmth. A thrum.
Like a thread, pulling her eastward.
Later that evening, when the rest of the sect had turned in for the night, Qiao stood at the highest terrace of the Peach Blossom Pavilion, arms wrapped around herself.
The stars above glittered, cool and distant.
And then — a shimmer.
A faint glow.
At first, she thought it was a trick of the light, but no — a tiny flicker of silver hovered just past her fingers.
A thread.
Fine as mist, glowing faintly. Not tethered to her body, but… reaching toward her.
She touched it.
It accepted her.
And the world shifted.
🌌 Back beneath the Eastern Sky...
Mo Yujin's hand tightened on the well's rim.
Something tugged.
A pulse. Soft. Familiar.
A soul-thread.
He looked up just as the air shimmered before him — space twisting gently, not rupturing but responding.
And then — a flash.
She was there.
Lian Qiao stood at the edge of the ruin, barefoot, eyes wide, breath caught.
They stared at each other across stone and frost and lifetimes.
"…You," she whispered.
He didn't move. Couldn't.
"Why do I remember you?" she asked, stepping closer, voice trembling. "Why do I feel like I've… lost you?"
He remained silent.
But in his chest, the ice cracked.
And he finally said the words the heavens had silenced in him for an eternity:
"Because once… you did."