Chapter 16: Cottage of the First Divergence
The path wound through forests older than stories.
Mist clung to the trees like memory. Even Bai, normally full of snark and swagger, was quiet as they walked. The map pulsed softly at Yan's side, glowing gold at the edge of its fold — as if the paper itself remembered this place better than any living soul.
After hours of silence, the trees broke.
A cottage stood in the clearing, small and humble. Ivy clung to the walls. The windows were fogged over. The door hung slightly ajar.
It should have been comforting.
It wasn't.
---
Daojin frowned first. "I feel… two timelines here. Competing."
"Same," said Fragmenta, eyes flickering faintly. "Like something happened here that wasn't allowed to happen."
Bai crept closer, nose twitching. "Whatever it was, it got overwritten. But the echo stuck."
Seraphon drew his sword. "It's a memory scar. A place where reality nearly branched, but the branch snapped off."
Yan stepped through the door.
The air was thick inside. Not dusty — just slow. Like every second took effort to move.
And there, seated at a small table beside a long-cold hearth, was himself.
---
Not a dream.
Not a vision.
Another Yan Long sat there — older, more tired. A streak of white marked his hair. His eyes were sharp, but dulled by time. A sword lay on the table beside a worn teacup. But it wasn't the Whispering Blade.
It was a farming sickle.
The man looked up.
"Finally came back, huh?" he said.
The real Yan froze. "Who… are you?"
"Who you could have been," the man replied. "If you'd said no to the forest. No to the Blade. No to the System."
He gestured around the room. "This is where I stayed. Brewed tea. Helped passersby. Lived out a quiet life. The world burned outside, but not here. Here, I was… free."
"But you chose nothing," Yan said, stunned.
The man didn't argue.
"That was the choice."
---
Outside, the wind shifted.
The map pulsed violently. Then split down the center — gold on one side, gray on the other. Two paths. One real. One forgotten.
Inside, the old Yan stood.
"Before you leave," he said, "I have to ask. Would you have been happier here?"
Yan looked at the cottage. The quiet. The simplicity. The total lack of dragons, systems, and world-ending stakes.
Then he looked at Fragmenta. At Seraphon. At the Whispering Blade on his back. At Bai, who now sat cautiously by the door.
"No," Yan said softly. "I would've been safe. But not me."
The old version nodded once.
"Good answer."
And with that — he dissolved. Slowly. Like sand on wind.
---
When Yan stepped out, the sky above cracked slightly — and then healed.
The map rewrote itself, gold pulsing brighter now.
> [Past Divergence Resolved: 84% Path Integrity]
[Narrative Clarity Restored]
[Reward: Echo Skill – "Stillness Amid Chaos"]
"What's that mean?" Bai asked.
"It means I remember why I made the first real choice," Yan said. "And what it cost."
Daojin clapped him on the shoulder. "Then you're ready."
"For what?" Fragmenta asked.
Yan looked at the newly revealed mark on the map — a jagged, dead city etched in black stone.
The Broken City.
"For where it all ends," he said. "Or begins again."