The rain had stopped, but the world still felt drowned in silence.
Mist drifted between the trees, curling around Jian Wu's steps as he wandered through the forgotten valley.
He didn't know how long he'd been walking.
Maybe hours. Maybe days.
The forest had no end, only whispers, wind, and the faint pulse on his chest that refused to fade.
Each beat of that mark felt alive, like something watching from beneath his skin.
He stopped at the foot of a ruined temple. Its roof had long collapsed, leaving only fractured pillars and a broken statue of a faceless deity. Moss covered everything. The air smelled of stone and memory.
Jian Wu stepped inside. The moment he crossed the threshold, the wind outside died.
Total silence.
He dropped his small satchel and sat against the cold wall, hugging his knees.
His body trembled. Not from fear, from exhaustion.
"Why…" he whispered, staring at the dim mark glowing through his torn shirt.
"Why me?"
The question vanished into the emptiness.
Then something answered.
"Because you are empty."
Jian Wu's head snapped up. His pulse spiked.
The voice wasn't human, it was deep, layered, like countless echoes speaking in unison.
"The void needs emptiness to exist. And you… are the perfect vessel."
He stumbled backward, slamming his hand against the pillar. "Who's there!?"
No reply. Only the wind creeping back through the cracks of the old walls.
He clenched his fists. "Get out of my head!"
But the voice didn't leave.
It softened. It sounded almost… patient.
"You defied heaven, Jian Wu. You refused the order written by the stars.
And because of that… you heard me."
His breath quickened. "You're not real."
"And yet, I speak."
The mark on his chest pulsed again, brighter this time. His vision blurred, blue light spilling from his pupils. The world shifted.
The ruined temple melted away.
He stood in a vast ocean of stars. Endless and cold.
Each star pulsed like a heartbeat, and from the distance, a figure floated, cloaked in black flame, its form vague, shifting, impossible to define.
"You are the first to hear the Void since the breaking of Heaven," the figure said.
"The world called you nothing. But nothingness is where all things begin."
Jian Wu's voice trembled. "Why… show me this?"
"Because your path is not chosen by heaven… but by silence."
The stars around him started to tremble, shattering one by one.
The figure's voice grew fainter, scattered like ashes in the wind.
"Remember, child of the void… power does not come from what you have…
but from what you've lost."
Jian Wu gasped as he fell back into reality. The temple returned. His hands pressed against the dirt floor, sweat dripping down his forehead.
The mark on his chest glowed faintly, pulsing like a sleeping heart.
He stared at it for a long time.
Then, slowly, he smiled, a sad, fragile smile.
"I've lost everything," he whispered.
"So maybe that's why… you chose me."
He looked around the ruined temple again. In the dim light of dawn, it no longer looked like a place of death.
It felt… like a beginning.
He stood and walked toward the entrance.
The morning sun broke through the clouds, painting gold across the trees. The wind picked up again, soft, warm, alive.
And somewhere deep inside him, the voice murmured one last thing:
"Walk forward, Jian Wu. The heavens no longer own you."
He closed his eyes for a moment, then exhaled.
"Then I'll make my own path."
And wi
th that, he stepped out into the light, a nameless boy carrying the silence of the universe within his heart.