There was no sky, only silence.
Not the silence of sleep or death—but a silence vast enough to swallow thought, memory, even time itself. It draped over the broken world like ash, smothering sound and light in equal measure. The air was too still. The stone too cold. And the man lying amidst the rubble had no name.
Not yet.
He opened his eyes.
And the world opened with him.
A skyless expanse loomed overhead, muted gray, neither night nor day. Clouds did not drift. The wind did not stir. Yet somehow, the sense of ending was everywhere—etched into the crumbled pillars, the shattered statues, the vines choking the last remains of what must once have been a temple.
He sat up.
Pain answered immediately, sharp and immediate. Not the pain of injury, but of rebirth. Muscles tensed from disuse. His lungs seized. Bones protested. And still, he moved, as if something deeper than instinct had pushed him forward—an echo of a man he did not remember being.
His hands, raw and calloused, gripped the earth. Dirt clung to his palms. Blood had dried on his fingertips.
He could not recall the fight.
He could not even recall his name.
But his body remembered.
A tremor passed through him as he pulled himself upright. Dust clouded his vision, and when it cleared, he saw it.
A sword.
Embedded in the stone before him, as if waiting.
It was not ornate. No jewels. No gold. The hilt was wrapped in black leather, frayed and faded. The blade, chipped in places, bore scars of violence long passed. And upon its steel were etched symbols—not letters, but runes. Faintly glowing, as though the sword breathed with its own rhythm.
He reached for it.
The moment his fingers touched the hilt, the air shivered.
And a voice entered his mind.
"Ah… so you've returned."
The man froze. The voice was not heard—it resonated. Not from around him, but within. A thought that did not belong to him.
He staggered back, breath caught in his throat.
"Who—who said that?"
"I did. The sword you died holding. The one that remembers what you do not."
He stared at the weapon, now pulsing softly with a light beneath its runes. It had no mouth. No eyes. But it watched him. He could feel it watching.
"I… died?"
"You did. Not just once. But that's another story."
He blinked. "I don't remember."
"Good. Some memories are teeth, not tools. Let them gnaw later."
He frowned. The voice wasn't cruel. Not mocking. But it knew. More than him. More than this place.
He reached again—this time, without fear—and pulled the sword from the stone.
It slid free without resistance.
The ground did not tremble. No thunder split the air. Only a shift in the silence, as if the world had taken a breath after holding it for too long.
The sword was warm.
Too warm.
He turned, taking in more of his surroundings. The temple—if that's what it was—had long since fallen. Columns snapped like bones. Statues worn faceless by time. Vines fed greedily on crumbled walls. The wind, finally stirring, carried the scent of moss and memory.
He stepped forward.
The sword weighed heavy at his side, not with mass, but with meaning.
He needed answers.
He needed a name.
"Li Zhen," the sword said, almost absently.
He halted. "What?"
"That was your name. Before. If you want it back, earn it."
"Li Zhen…" he whispered, the syllables strange on his tongue, but not foreign. Familiar, like a half-remembered melody.
The name rang in his bones.
Was it his?
He didn't know.
But he would wear it for now.
He wandered.
The ruined temple gave way to forest—thin, sickly trees bent by time. The sky above remained the same shade of non-color, as though light had forgotten how to bloom. Birds did not sing. No insects hummed. The silence was unbroken.
Until he saw the pool.
A small, still body of water, ringed by stone. Its surface was unnaturally smooth. Mirror-like. And in it, he expected to see his face.
He didn't.
No reflection greeted him. Only the gray sky, perfect and undisturbed.
He touched the water.
It rippled, and then—
A face.
His.
Staring back.
Only, it wasn't quite him.
The eyes were wrong—too dark. The mouth curled in a smirk he'd never worn. The figure raised its hand in greeting.
Li Zhen flinched back. The image shattered like glass, ripples spreading across the pool.
He stumbled away.
"What did I just see?"
"Your past. Or your future. Or neither. Shadows are never as polite as memories."
"That was me."
"A version. A ghost in the water. There are many of you left behind, Li Zhen."
"What do you mean many?"
"You broke before you died. Now you are the shard trying to find the mirror."
He gritted his teeth.
Nothing made sense. The sword spoke in riddles. The world felt unmade. But the ache in his chest, the weight in his sword hand—those were real.
He turned away from the pool.
And that was when he saw the figure.
A silhouette standing just beyond the tree line. Unmoving. Watching.
He blinked—and it was gone.
He ran toward where it had been, branches clawing at his skin. There was no trail. No sign.
Only a whisper, caught on the wind.
"Not yet…"
He stood still for a long time.
That night—or what passed for night—he found shelter beneath a crumbling pagoda overtaken by moss. The sword rested beside him, its runes dim now, as if asleep.
Sleep did not come.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the doppelgänger. The not-him in the water. The smile. The eyes like voids.
And a question—echoing louder than the silence:
If I'm not the only Li Zhen… which one am I?
"Sleep," the sword whispered.
"Dream. That's where the dead go when they have unfinished business."
And so he did.
And in the dream, he fell from a mountain, bleeding.
Alone.
He awoke at dawn.
If it was dawn.
The sky hadn't changed.
But something inside him had.
The silence no longer crushed him.
It waited.
As if expecting something.
And for the first time since rising from death, Li Zhen had a purpose.
He would find the one who wore his face.
He would find the shards of himself scattered through a world gone wrong.
And he would answer the question the sword refused to:
Why did I die?