The last temple of the Dawn God leaned crookedly against the mountainside, its roof tiles cracked, its bells long silent. Moss had swallowed the carvings of old prayers, and the wind carried nothing but dust.
Yet tonight, a faint glow pulsed inside its ruin.
A wandering monk paused at the threshold. He had traveled for decades, tending shrines no one remembered. But this light—soft, trembling—felt different. It felt alive.
He stepped inside.
The temple's lone statue, once bright as sunrise, had dimmed to the color of ash. Its stone eyes flickered weakly as if waking from a long dream. He stood still for a moment, then bowed low.
"Shén," he whispered, "I offer what little faith remains."
A fissure spread across the statue's chest.
At first it was no more than a hairline crack. Then it widened—not with the sound of breaking stone, but with a slow, steady breathing, as if the world itself exhaled. Cold air seeped out, dimming the lantern flame in the monk's hand.
From the fissure, a shadow uncurled.
It did not fall like normal darkness; it drifted, light as smoke, shaping itself into a figure with no face and no form—only a presence, only hunger.
The monk stumbled back. "A spirit? A demon?"
The shadow tilted, as though listening—or perhaps recognizing.
"No… not listening. Recognizing."
"This god," it murmured, its voice layered with echoes of things forgotten, "is no longer needed. The world no longer remembers him. And what is forgotten…"
The lantern winked out.
"…belongs to me."
The statue's light flickered once—twice—and then vanished, drawn into the shadow's drifting shape. The ancient god's memory dissolved, leaving the temple colder, emptier than before.
Outside, the wind stilled. The mountain held its breath.
The shadow turned toward the horizon, where distant villages slept and prayers lay unanswered.
"More," it whispered.
"Much more."
And as the Shadow Eater seeped into the night, the first hairline cracks appeared across the sky—small enough to miss, yet enough to weaken the boundary between realms.
Far away, a child named Lí Zhì woke abruptly, clutching his chest, feeling a warmth and a chill rise together beneath his ribs. For a moment, the room's corners darkened; for a moment, light gathered under his skin.
Then it passed.
He did not yet know what it meant, nor did he understand the connection.
But the Veil had begun to tear.
And the world had begun to forget.