She had no cultivation rank. No path. Yet the Gu stayed. That was enough.
— In a northern sect's observatory, a fate-path elder stirred from meditation. The constellations on his fate-scroll dimmed as if the stars refused to bear witness.
"A mortal remembers too early," he muttered. "And so the heavens forget in kind."
Elder Mu Bei. Rank Seven, fate-path. The last thread of Twilight Silken Sect, and even that was fading. His sect's doctrine spoke not of controlling fate, but of observing its unraveling.
Now, before him, the threads of prophecy had not frayed. They had ceased to exist.
He rose without sound. The star mirror cracked without cause. No Gu reacted. No call was sent.
But the girl's name began to form on his lips.
— Deep in the dream-path archives of a rogue faction, a vision flickered. Not a future, not a past — a voice before story. A novice disciple wept, not knowing why.
— Heaven's Will did not react, but it did pause — for the span of a mortal breath.
The Gu on her spine pulsed again.
The girl staggered through the ruins of the forgotten village, each step echoing with a name she still could not say. It was not hers. It had never been hers.
And yet—it waited.
She passed a well where no water had ever been drawn. A statue worn down by wind—yet the eyes still watched.
Each place she touched gave her a feeling: not of memory, but of unfinished myth.
The Gu pulsed again.
This time, her breath caught. Not from fear, but recognition. Not of the past. Of something before the past.
"Did I exist before I was named?" she asked the silence.
The silence answered.
Not in words, but with a ripple.
Far above, in the Immortal Tomb, the echo turned.
"She is remembering... from before the script."
In Fang Yuan's aperture, a clone blinked. Something brushed his soul—not strong, not invasive.
Just familiar.
A child's thought that had not yet taken form.
"If she remembers before the world remembers her," the clone whispered, "then the story is folding."
He reported nothing.
Some truths, Fang Yuan believed, were best read after they had been forgotten.