The last spoonful of porridge was cold by the time Lei Wei forced it down. He sighed dramatically, as though finishing breakfast were a burden fit for a martyr. Beside him, Old Ren shuffled out of the hut with a bundle of tangled nets in his arms and a scowl already forming on his face.
"You're still here?" Ren grunted.
"I'm contemplating the future," Lei Wei replied with all the gravity of a philosopher.
Ren squinted at him. "Contemplate faster. These nets won't mend themselves."
Lei Wei groaned and stood up like a man sentenced to a life of hardship. "You know, in some other life, I was probably a scholar. Or a noble. Or a wandering poet with no chores."
Ren handed him a fraying net that looked like it had survived a war. "In this life, you're my ward and these knots need fixing."
"Tragic."
"Be grateful I don't make you herd chickens."
"Don't tempt me. At least chickens don't judge my knot-tying skills."
Ren didn't answer...he was already hobbling to the shade of the fig tree, muttering about "kids with their heads in clouds." Lei Wei followed reluctantly, dragging the net behind him like a defeated banner.
He flopped down under the tree and stared at the mess of rope in his hands. It looked more like a failed art project than anything seaworthy.
"Why do we even need this many nets?" he muttered as he struggled with a knot that looped into itself like it was mocking him. "We live on a cursed island. The fish should just surrender themselves out of pity."
He tugged. The knot tightened.
"Brilliant," he muttered, chewing the inside of his cheek. "Maybe I really was a noble. Maybe in some other life, people paid to watch me not do chores."
The net suddenly flopped onto his lap, as if tired of being manhandled.
"Old Ren, I think this one's beyond saving," Lei Wei called lazily.
"You're beyond saving," Ren replied from behind the hut.
"Fix it or I'm making stew with turnip for the fifth night in a row."
A threat, and an effective one.
"Fine, fine..." he grumbled, giving the net a stern glare.
Ten minutes passed.
Maybe fifteen.
Mostly spent rearranging the net into new shapes, then blaming the wind when they collapsed. Eventually, when Ren's footsteps faded and the clink of clay pots signaled he was busy cooking or plotting more labor, Lei Wei quietly stood.
The net remained on the grass, half-mended, fully disrespected.
With practiced stealth..because sneaking out was an art, and Lei Wei fancied himself an artist, he crept around the hut and toward the back garden.
It was his refuge.
A quiet place of crooked rows and wild corners, where Old Ren's radishes warred with invasive mint and moss grew with the arrogance of royalty. Lei Wei stepped carefully between the rows and knelt beside a patch of sleeping daisies. He plucked a stray weed and flicked it aside.
This was where he thought best.
This was where dreams clung longer.
He stretched out on his back between the rows, hands behind his head, and stared up through a tangled canopy of fig leaves and sky.
"Why do I remember trees that don't exist?" he whispered aloud.
The sky didn't answer. It never did.
He thought about his dream, the white forest. The black sky. The voice calling his name.
'Yanzhou.'
He didn't even know what it meant. A place? A person? A memory?
His scar throbbed faintly beneath his robe, right below his collarbone. The same dull pulse that always came when the world felt…off.
A breeze passed over the garden.
The fig leaves rustled.
And then...
Thwack!!!
Something smacked the top of his head.
Hard enough to make him jolt upright.
"Ow!" he hissed, rubbing his scalp. "What in the name of sky-fish..?"
He blinked.
Lying in the garden, nestled among a patch of clover, was a scroll.
Lei Wei stared.
Then looked up.
Nothing.
Only the same pale sky, slow-drifting clouds, and the distant wall that ringed the island like the edge of a forgotten world.
He looked back down.
The scroll hadn't moved.
It wasn't large..about the length of his forearm. Bound in silk the color of aged ivory, frayed at the corners but unmarred. No seal. No writing. Just a single thread binding it shut, woven with strands of some material that shimmered faintly even in the shade.
He didn't move.
Didn't breathe.
"Okay…" he whispered. "Either I just got assaulted by divine stationery… or something very weird just happened."
The scroll pulsed.
Softly.
A heartbeat beneath silk.
Lei Wei scrambled back on all fours, heart racing.
"Nope. Nope. No heartbeat scrolls. That's a rule, right? That should be a rule."
But curiosity had already sunk its hooks into him. He edged forward slowly, like a cat stalking something it didn't understand. He reached out, hesitated, then finally touched the scroll.
Warm.
Too warm.
Like it had just fallen from someone's hands.
He lifted it gently. It was heavier than it looked. Denser. Like it held something more than paper and ink.
"Ren is never going to believe this."
And for once, Lei Wei wasn't sure he did either.
The scroll sat cradled in his palms like a secret the world had buried and forgotten… only to be handed to a boy who spent his mornings failing at nets and talking to radishes.
"What do I even do with this?" he whispered.
The scroll pulsed again.
As if answering.
He turned it over. No markings. No seals. No writing on the outside.
But it pulsed once,gently against his palms.
As if it recognized him.
As if it had been waiting.
His heart beat faster.
"Ren…" he whispered without looking away, but there was no answer.
The garden felt a thousand miles from the world now.
He stood there, scroll in hand, a storm behind his ribs.
What is this?
No one saw it fall.
No one would believe it if they had.
But in that moment, the silence of the island deepened.
And somewhere, far above the clouds…
…a realm of gods and balance trembled.