Xiyue pressed her palms against her temples, trying to stop the flood, but it kept coming—images and sounds and feelings that belonged to someone else, pouring into her brain like water into a sinking ship.
A girl, fifteen maybe, crying in a cart with other girls. All of them dressed up like dolls, all of them shaking.
Someone saying "you're lucky, the Emperor needs new concubines" like it was a gift and not a sentence.
The same girl, years later, standing in a corner during some festival. Watching other women laugh and drink and show off their silk robes.
Watching him—the Emperor—walk past without even glancing her way. Not because he was cruel. Because she literally didn't exist to him.
More memories. Faster now.
Being assigned to the Cold Palace after some political thing she didn't even understand.
Being forgotten.
Fever starting in her chest, getting worse, no one coming.
Days alone. Nights alone.
Coughing blood into that cracked bowl.
Realizing, somewhere in the dark, that this was it. This was how she'd end.
And then—
Nothing.
A void where a person used to be.
Xiyue's hands dropped from her face. She was still on that dirty floor, still in that tiny room, still wearing a dead woman's body.
"Fuck," she whispered.
The blue screen flickered back into existence.
[Memory integration: 47% complete.]
[Warning: Emotional overload may destabilize host.]
"Little late for that warning, don't you think?"
No response. Of course.
She tried to stand. Made it to her knees before her legs gave out.
Tried again, grabbing the wall this time, using it like a crutch. The wood felt slimy under her fingers, damp with something she didn't want to identify.
The room spun. Settled. Spun again.
Dehydrated, her brain supplied. Malnourished. Possibly anemic based on the pale hands. And did I mention the heart failure?
Right. The heart failure.
Xiyue looked around properly for the first time.
It wasn't a room. It was a cell.
Four walls made of packed mud and rotting wood. A door that was more gaps than planks. A bed of moldy straw in the corner, flattened into the shape of a person who'd lain there too long.
A rusted basin with something crusted at the bottom.
A clay jar that might have held water once but was now just... empty.
No window. No candle. No blanket.
This was where they'd put her to die.
Her. The original her. The girl who'd cried in that cart and never stopped crying until her heart gave out.
Xiyue's chest ached. Not the cardiac kind this time.
She was about to try the door when the screen lit up again.
[SURVIVAL MISSION ACTIVATED!]
[Objective: Find potable water.]
[Reward: Unlock [Minimap] function.]
[Failure: Death by dehydration in < 24 hours.]
Xiyue stared at it.
"Seriously? You're giving me quests now? Like I'm in some kind of... game?"
[Mission accepted automatically. Host has no choice.]
"Oh, that's comforting."
[Mission details updated. Water source location: 50 meters northeast. Source: Abandoned well.]
The screen flickered and disappeared, leaving her alone with the dark and the smell.
She pushed the door.
It swung open.
Outside was... not better.
A courtyard, maybe. Hard to tell with all the weeds. They grew everywhere—knee-high, waist-high in some places, choking what might have been flower beds or walking paths once upon a time.
The ground underfoot was cracked stone, uneven, ready to twist an ankle if you weren't careful.
The sky was doing that thing where it's not quite sunset but not quite dusk. Orange and purple smeared across the clouds like a bruise.
Xiyue took a step. Then another.
Her body screamed at her with every movement. Muscles she didn't know she had protested. Her heart did that stutter-skip thing that made her freeze until it evened out again.
Fifty meters, she told herself. Just fifty meters. You've run marathons. You've done thirty-six-hour shifts. You can walk fifty meters.
She couldn't. But she did it anyway.
The well was exactly where the system said it would be—tucked in a corner of the courtyard, half-hidden behind a collapsed trellis. Ancient stone, moss-covered, with a wooden bucket attached to a rope that looked like it would snap if you breathed on it too hard.
Xiyue peered over the edge.
Darkness. Complete, absolute darkness. No way to tell how deep it was or if there was even water at the bottom.
This is how horror movies start, she thought. Stupid girl checks creepy well alone at dusk.
But her throat was sandpaper and her tongue felt too big for her mouth.
Xiyue grabbed the rope.
Pulled up the bucket.
It was heavier than expected, which meant—hopefully—that there was something in it. She hauled hand over hand, muscles trembling, sweat breaking out on her forehead despite the evening chill.
The bucket appeared over the edge.
Water. Dirty, sure. Probably full of bacteria and parasites and things that would make a modern doctor scream. But water.
She lowered it carefully, set it on the ground, and just looked at it for a long moment.
Boil it first, her training said. You need to boil it. You need to sterilize it. You need—
She was already drinking.
Cupping her hands, scooping up the cold liquid, gulping it down like she'd never tasted anything better. It tasted like minerals and moss and a little bit like dirt.
It was the best thing she'd ever drunk in her life.
[Mission complete.]
[Minimap unlocked.]
[New feature available: Vital Sign Monitoring (Enhanced).]
The screen popped up, but Xiyue ignored it. She was too busy not dying of thirst.
When she finally stopped, water dripping down her chin, she noticed something else.
Beyond the courtyard walls—much farther than she'd realized—the sky changed. The orange and purple gave way to gold. Real gold, catching light, reflecting off something massive in the distance.
She stood up. Walked toward the broken gate at the courtyard's edge. Pushed through.
The view opened up.
Hills. Rolling green hills, descending toward a valley. And in that valley, sprawling across what looked like miles, was a palace.
Not a building. A complex. Dozens of buildings, hundreds maybe, with curved roofs and painted eaves and walls that gleamed like they'd been washed that morning.
Towers rose at intervals, their tips catching the last of the sunlight. Gardens spread between structures, neat and geometric even from here.
And everywhere—everywhere—people moved like ants along paths and bridges and staircases.
The Imperial Palace.
The center of everything.
And she was on the outside. In the Cold Palace. The place where they sent people to be forgotten.
That's where he is, she thought. The screaming guy.
The blue screen pulsed helpfully.
[Distance to target: 2.3 kilometers.]
[Recommended action: Begin approach at dawn.]
[Current status: Host too weak for travel. Rest recommended.]
"No shit," Xiyue muttered.
She turned to go back to her cell—because apparently that's what it was, her cell—when something moved in the corner of her eye.
She froze.
The weeds in the courtyard rustled. Not wind—there was no wind. Something was in there, moving low to the ground, making its way through the overgrowth.
Xiyue's heart rate spiked. The screen flashed red.
[Warning: Potential threat detected.]
No kidding.
She took a slow step backward. Then another.
The weeds parted.
Eyes. Small, black, reflecting what little light remained. A long body, gray-brown, with a hairless tail dragging behind.
Rat.
Big rat. The biggest rat she'd ever seen, and she'd seen some doozies in the ER waiting rooms of public hospitals. This thing was the size of a cat. Maybe bigger.
It stared at her with those tiny black eyes, completely unafraid.
And it was eating something.
Xiyue couldn't tell what. A piece of—something. Maybe old food. Maybe not. She didn't want to know.
Her stomach growled.
Loud. Insistent. Painful.
She hadn't eaten in—how long? The original owner had been starving for weeks before her heart gave out. And Xiyue had just burned what little energy she had left hauling water from a well.
The rat kept eating. Kept staring.
And for one horrible, shameful second—
For one second, Xiyue wondered what rat meat tasted like.
[New Mission Available: Secure Food Source.]
[Recommended action: Set traps in abandoned structures.]
[Warning: Malnutrition accelerates organ failure. Current estimated lifespan: 68 hours.]
The screen's cheerful blue glow felt like a mockery.
Xiyue looked at the rat. The rat looked at her. It made a small sound—a chitter, almost curious—and went back to its meal.
She couldn't do it.
Not yet. Not today.
She backed away slowly, step by step, until she reached her door. The rat didn't follow. It just kept eating.
Inside the cell, darkness had fully fallen. No moon through the nonexistent windows. No candle.
Nothing but her and the memories and the blue screen that wouldn't stop blinking.
Xiyue sank onto the moldy straw. It crunched under her. Something skittered in the corner—a smaller rat, probably, come to check out the new occupant.
She should be scared. She should be panicking. She should be doing something, anything, instead of sitting here in the dark.
But her body had nothing left.
The screen flickered one last time.
[Day 1 complete.]
[Survival status: Critical but stable.]
[Bonding progress with target Ye Rong: 0.01%.]
[Note: Target unaware of host's existence. Recommend rectifying this soon.]
Unaware of my existence, Xiyue thought. Like everyone else in this world.
The original owner had been invisible her whole life. Died invisible. Would have stayed invisible forever if Xiyue hadn't shown up.
But Xiyue was here now.
She closed her eyes. Listened to her own heartbeat—too slow, too weak, but still beating. Listened to the rats in the walls. Listened to the wind picking up outside, whistling through gaps in the wood.
Somewhere out there, in that golden palace, a man was screaming.
Somewhere out there was her only chance.
The last thing she saw before sleep took her was the blue screen, still glowing faintly.
[Time remaining: 67 hours, 42 minutes.]
[Recommendation: Rest.]
She slept.
And dreamed of a girl in a cart, crying.