The dawn mist rolled over the hills like a slow-moving sea, pale and quiet. Dew clung to the crooked fences and the half-awake flowers that bowed to the morning. A rooster screamed somewhere far away, as if warning the world that time still moved.
Lin Yan woke to the sound of wind chimes.
They hung above a simple wooden window, shaped from reeds and shells. The air that passed through them made a low, trembling sound—like voices whispering through glass. Lin Yan blinked, the sound pulling him from a dream he could not remember.
For a long moment, he lay still.
His hands felt calloused. His breath fogged faintly in the cold. When he tried to recall who he was, his mind met only silence—an endless white plain where memories should have been. He knew the meaning of fire and sky, but not home. He remembered words but not names.
Even his reflection in the small water basin beside the bed looked unfamiliar. A boy of sixteen stared back—sharp-eyed, hair black as river ink, skin pale from the mountain cold. His gaze carried a quiet heaviness, the kind that belonged to someone who had seen too much, yet remembered nothing.
Outside, the village of Ronghe slowly woke.
Smoke rose from cooking fires. Children chased one another past the stone bridge. Old women drew water from the well, their laughter brittle and kind. To them, Lin Yan was simply the orphan from the northern woods—a boy found unconscious three winters ago, clutching a strange black seed that no one could open.
They called him Yan'er.
And he lived quietly. He chopped wood, mended fences, helped the herbalist when needed. He had no strange habits, save one—he never looked at the sky for long. Every time he did, a faint pain pulsed behind his eyes, like something vast and unseen pressing down.
That morning, the herbalist Old Wei found him at the edge of the forest.
"Yan'er!" The man's voice cracked through the mist. "You're late again. The dew will drown the ginseng if we don't pull it soon."
Lin Yan turned, smiling faintly. "Sorry, Master Wei. I… lost track of time."
"Lost track, eh? You and your wandering head." The old man squinted at him. "You dream too much for a village boy."
Lin Yan didn't reply. He just knelt by the roots, hands moving with practiced grace. Soil brushed his fingers, cool and damp. Beneath his touch, the earth seemed alive—breathing, whispering. Once, as he pressed deeper, the soil trembled slightly, and for an instant he felt something pulse beneath it. Like a heartbeat.
He froze.
Then it was gone.
Old Wei noticed nothing. "Careful, that's the best root. Fetch it clean. We'll sell it in the market by noon."
Lin Yan nodded, though his gaze lingered on the hole he'd just dug. For a second, the shape of it looked… wrong. Like the pattern of a lotus, dark and symmetrical, fading quickly into ordinary dirt.
He shook his head. Maybe he was imagining it again.
Maybe he always had.
---
That night, the wind rose.
The reeds swayed around the village, singing low and hollow. The moon hid behind clouds that looked too heavy for rain. Lin Yan lay awake, staring at the ceiling. He heard the wind chimes whisper, but they didn't sound like wind anymore.
They sounded like breathing.
"Who's there?" he whispered.
Silence. Then—drip—a sound like falling water. He looked toward the window.
Outside, the mist was black.
Not night-black, but ink-black, thick and shifting like it had weight. Within it, faint shapes moved. He could almost make out… petals. Thousands of them, drifting and curling, forming and unforming again. And in the center of it all, a dim light pulsed—a lotus made of shadow.
Something deep within his chest responded.
A heartbeat that wasn't his own.
He clutched at his shirt, eyes wide. The black seed—the one he'd been found with—glowed faintly against his skin through the fabric, as if awakening after years of sleep.
Then came a voice.
Not spoken, not heard—but felt.
> "Lin… Yan…"
The world tilted. The air seemed to freeze. His knees gave way, and the next thing he knew, he was on the floor, gasping as though drowning.
Memories that weren't his flashed before him—burning skies, a wall that remembered names, a lotus blooming over corpses. A boy walking across time. A hand tearing through heaven.
He screamed.
And just as quickly—it stopped.
When he opened his eyes again, he was in bed. Morning sunlight filtered in, golden and soft. The window was open, wind chimes swaying gently. Everything was normal.
Except for the mark on his palm.
It was faint—almost invisible—but there: a pattern of black veins forming the outline of a lotus.
He hid it quickly when Old Wei knocked. "Up, boy! The traders from the east are here!"
"Yes," Lin Yan said, his voice hoarse.
He dressed, stepping outside. But as he walked through the village, his eyes lingered on the people. Every face looked… fragile. Every sound, distant. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a quiet certainty grew—this world was real, and yet not. Something beneath it all was shifting, waiting for him to remember.
---
Days passed.
The lotus mark darkened. At night, he dreamed of a sky tearing open. Of an endless wall carved with forgotten names. Of himself—alone—standing before it, hand outstretched.
Sometimes, he woke with black dust in his palm.
Then came the storm.
It struck without warning, a spiral of lightless clouds spinning over Ronghe. The villagers screamed, running for shelter. Lightning fell—not golden, but violet, cracking like glass. Lin Yan stood in the rain, unable to move. The wind bent around him, forming shapes like eyes, watching.
Old Wei grabbed him. "Yan'er! Inside!"
But the moment he touched Lin Yan's shoulder, the lightning struck.
It didn't burn. It folded—the sky folding in on itself like torn paper, reality wrinkling around the boy. For a heartbeat, everyone froze mid-motion, their eyes blank white, their mouths open in silence.
And Lin Yan saw it.
Behind the storm. Behind the world.
A giant lotus, its petals made of void, spinning slowly in a sky of broken stars.
A whisper followed.
> "You broke me once. Now I return you to what you began."
Then darkness.
---
When he woke again, the world was calm. The village was intact, but empty. The houses stood, untouched. The fires burned low. But no voices called. No footsteps sounded.
He was alone.
And in the center of the village square, where the well once stood, a single black lotus grew from the stone—alive, breathing faint light.
He approached it.
The mark on his palm burned. The lotus turned toward him, and for a moment, his reflection in its surface wasn't his current self—it was someone older, colder, infinite.
"Who am I?" he whispered.
And from the depths of the petals, an answer rose, echoing like thunder spoken through water.
> "You are the question Heaven could not answer."
The wind blew. The petals scattered.
And Lin Yan, the boy with no past, stood alone beneath a trembling sky that had begun to remember him.
---
(Chapter 9 End)