The wind howled through the shattered ruins of the temple like it was mourning something long lost. Yuzi stood in the center of the debris, her boots coated with the gray dust of crumbled stone and forgotten offerings. The ceiling had collapsed decades ago, vines now threading through fractured murals of celestial beings and beast-guardians.
She was alone.
Or so she thought.
"One must pay the price."
The voice came again. Not loud, not sharp, but soft, like it had always lived inside her bones. It echoed within her ribs, a slow drumbeat of memory she couldn't reach.
Her breath hitched.
The words wrapped around her soul like ancient bindings, and a sharp ache bloomed in her chest. It wasn't just pain, "it was familiarity." Like something sacred had been taken from her… again.
"What price?" she whispered, voice low.
She clutched the edge of the stone altar, trembling. Her fingers grazed over symbols, half-erased sigils from a forgotten formation. As if sensing her energy, the markings glowed faintly.
And then she saw something but couldn't catch it.
blurred face.
Not in the stone, not in the light, but in the echo of the formation. His silhouette danced within the ancient script like a flicker of fate, woven into a curse she didn't remember casting.
"Who is he… again?" she murmured, blinking rapidly.
It wasn't the first time she'd seen him like this. In dreams. In traces of broken talismans. In the wake of battle. Always watching. Always silent. And always out of reach.
Little Blue appeared beside her shoulder, quiet for once, its spiritual energy dimmed.
"You're in pain," it said, unusually gentle.
"No… I'm remembering something I never lived."
She dropped to her knees, her pulse erratic. The void inside her, the part she'd sealed after every lifetime, was stirring.
She had died twice.
The first time, on the eve of her 17th birthday, while walking home from school, hit by a car driven by someone who never even looked back. A forgettable tragedy to the world. But her soul… it hadn't moved on.
Instead, it had been reborn, thrown into a realm that didn't exist in any textbook. A broken world where an old man, cloaked in rotting robes and madness, experimented on her. He fused her soul with Little Blue and Little Yellow, two ancient spirits meant to stabilize or corrupt. She still didn't know which.
That world never had a name. Only pain.
And when she finally escaped, her body destroyed, her soul fragmented, she fell again. Into an ancient realm where her strength returned. She learned to use sacred scripts, mastered formations, and even challenged sect masters. She wore different names, wielded different swords.
She almost believed it would be her final life.
Until he appeared.
The man who killed her. Unknown. Silent. Cloaked in divine light.
She died in his hand, not out of weakness but because she refused to be a pawn in Heaven's game. Her last sight before soul dissipation was of Heaven Guards laughing over the corpses of her master and companions.
And then... she woke up. Again. Back in her original world.
A mistake… or a loop?
For the last five years, she'd trained this new body, hidden her cultivation, and searched for signs that her nightmare was more than a dream.
She found them in Country M. In the formations under broken cities. In the shifting winds around ancient temples. In the very way people ignored the mystic realm if it was folklore.
But something was changing.
The veil was thinning.
And she always felt the pull towards this unknown country. then she met Aiyu. this guy is mysterious. like fog around him. A danger she knew but not threatening.
She didn't know him. Not really. But every time their paths crossed, her soul responded not in longing, but in recognition. Like they were survivors of the same war, neither of them remembered starting.
And now, as she knelt among ruins, staring into sigils that pulsed with truth she couldn't read, a tear slid down her cheek.
"Why do I feel like something is missing?" she asked.
Little Blue hovered close, unsure. It had no answers. But the temple did.
From the deepest crack in the altar, a sliver of energy sparked, identical to the one she had seen in the forest. The same energy now pulsing inside her. Like she owed him something. Or maybe he owed her.
"Who are you…?" she murmured aloud to the sigil on the stone.
Little Blue hovered protectively near her.
"We should go," it said. "The remnants of this temple are cursed. The past is waking."
"But why me, Little Blue?" she whispered. "Why does this place... call me by name?"
"I don't know. Even I cannot read your soul fully. Too many seals. Too many... scars." She fell silent, watching as glowing runes along the temple wall flickered and then extinguished. A light wind passed, and in that moment, she remembered.
The second life? A cold world. In that of a stranger's body. And that old man…
He had called her "experiment." A soul torn open and fused with spirits. Pain. Fear. Rage. The violence of broken divinity.
"He called me 'Vessel,'" Yuzi murmured, her fingers brushing a cracked column. "He tried to rewrite my soul like a scroll."
Little Blue trembled beside her. "Stop... You shouldn't remember that place. You were supposed to forget."
But she didn't forget. Not all of it. Not even the third death. Five years of building her strength again. Hiding. cultivation. Waiting. Searching.
"If this modern world still connects to the Mystic Realm… I will find the bridge," she said quietly.
The blue spirit blinked. "Even if it means challenging Heaven's decree?"
Yuzi's voice was steel. "Heaven has made me its toy. It's time I rewrite the rules."
Little Blue didn't argue. She turned away from the ruins, her footsteps heavy, but behind her, the formation still glowed softly. And in its center, the faded image of the man's eyes faded slowly into the dusk.
Meanwhile, High Above the Mystic Realms
Aiyu floated above the snow-capped spine of the Himalayan borders, his robes trailing behind him like shadows cast from a different world. Below, the sacred temples of Country I shimmered faintly under the moonlight, protected by formations older than memory.
Inside his sleeve, he clutched the ancient communication scroll.
"Joseph," he spoke through spiritual projection. "Seal the sacred site near the twin mountains. No human steps foot near it. Not now."
Joseph's voice returned, calm but edged. "The people will start asking questions."
"Let them ask. The dead don't talk." Aiyu replied coldly.
Nearby, Jivan stood in silence, watching the stars. His thoughts were elsewhere, on how the world was shifting. How human greed had turned soul contracts into currency. How even the sacred borders weren't enough anymore.
And how Aiyu, the one once sealed by Heaven itself, was again stepping too close to forbidden truths.
Jivan remembered well the 200 years ago, Aiyu had vanished, punished for trying to bend the will of the heavens. When he returned, it was with a scar across his spirit… and no memory of who tried to destroy him.
Now, he felt it happening again.
Aiyu's boots crunched against the frozen gravel as he stood before the invisible boundary, the hidden wall that separated the sacred mountains from the human world.
Behind him, Joseph and Jivan followed silently. The corpses of a few manipulated soul beings infected by false gods and power-hungry ritualists lay scattered nearby. Their forms still steaming from the purity of Aiyu's spirit-fire blade.
Aiyu turned his attention to Jivan, who hadn't said a word since the last battle.
"What's the report on Country M?"
Jivan looked up, his face grave. "The ancient temple's formation was partially disrupted again. But this time… it was different."
"How?"
"The pattern... it reacted to someone's soul. Not destruction. Not absorption. Like it was trying to recognize someone."
Aiyu's eyes darkened. A memory tugged at his ribs, an unspoken thread he couldn't name.
Her face again…
Instead, he closed his eyes, just for a moment. And in that breathless space of silence. He felt it again.
The golden pearl. A sliver of his soul essence. Flickering. Moving. Not dormant.
Still tied to her. Still active. That should've been impossible.
His cultivation had burned that essence to its peak for years. When he embedded it in her wounded soul, it should have detached. But it hadn't.
And now, while meditating, he'd seen flashes.
A broken sigil. An ancient temple in Country M. Someone is trying to ruin sacred scripture, but not fully succeeding. Almost as if they wanted to activate something… not destroy it.
And in the center of that vision, a foggy silhouette. Feminine. Power coiled beneath her skin like a storm waiting to bloom.
Yuzi?
He couldn't be sure. And that uncertainty, that pull, was beginning to wear on him.
He turned away from the digital maps and whispered more to himself than anyone else in the room: "I don't know who she is…"
He touched the spot on his chest where the golden pearl once sat.
"But it feels strange… and like an unanswered question."
On the other side of the world. The wind changed. Yuzi looked up. A subtle shift in the air, like fate redirecting its gaze. She didn't know why her soul burned at the sight of this blurred face, or why she cried every time she saw it. it's been 2 lives and still she is clueless.
She only knew one thing:
"Something's waking up."
And it would either unravel the world..... Or reveal the truth they were both running from.
Far Across the World in Deep Forest Villa,
Inside a hidden villa, lit by a single candle and surrounded by ancient charm seals, a woman cloaked in black stared at a glowing image on a floating screen.
She smiled, gently running a finger across his face.
"He still carries the golden pearl," she whispered. "Foolish boy."
Behind her, a spy knelt in silence.
"Should we move?"
The woman laughed softly, a sound like winter wind. She placed the device down and turned to her private altar, a cracked sculpture from a forgotten dynasty. On it lay a feather, a blooded token, and a shard of sapphire.
"Not yet. Let them dance. The strings are tightening. The pearl will lead us where we need to go."
She turned toward a sealed scroll on the table, wrapped in ancient blood oaths.
"Let him chase. Let her forget," she whispered, lighting a black candle.
"The script is older than heaven. And the final act… is almost upon us."
"Besides," she whispered, "she hasn't remembered anything yet."