The child approached slowly, the parchment beneath its feet rippling with every step. No eyes, no mouth — yet the pressure of its gaze pressed into Jia Lin like a pen bearing down on fragile paper.
"Do you know what you are?" it asked, without sound. "A draft. A character written by a lie."
Jia Lin raised her blade.
"Then rewrite me."
The child's quill glowed, and the world fractured.
Suddenly, she stood in a village she had never known, with people who knew her name. A mother called her daughter. A woman claimed they were betrothed. Children clung to her robe.
And none of it was real.
"Your first trial," the child said, appearing again among them. "Live as the person they remember — or lose the one you truly are."
Jia Lin felt her resolve buckle.
Her blade pulsed in her mind. The Final Step Gu whispered: Sever.
She whispered back: No.
Instead, she walked among the memory, letting their love pass through her. When the village faded, she had not struck a single illusion — but neither had she surrendered to it.
"You chose to remember yourself," the child said, now seated atop a floating phrase. "Then take this."
It tossed her a Gu — soft, glowing faintly.
Echo Heart Gu: Rank 4 — Stores fragments of your truth to anchor against narrative collapse.
She placed it inside her aperture.
The mythscape trembled.