Lei Wei stared at the scroll as if it might bite him. His heart thudded like a drum in his chest, louder than the breeze rustling through the fig leaves above.
"Ren?" he called, glancing over his shoulder.
No answer.
The silence made the garden feel unnatural, too quiet for a place usually buzzing with cicadas and the muttering of Old Ren. Lei Wei held the scroll away from him like a suspicious vegetable.
"Ren, seriously," he called again, louder. "You're going to want to see this!"
"I think I just found a magical scroll!"
Still nothing.
"Just to prove I've not totally lost it.. I'm going to do something illogical or stupid.."
He swallowed and looked back at the scroll. The thread that bound it shimmered faintly...almost breathing.
Lei Wei's fingers trembled as he unwound the thread. It came loose with a whisper, like silk pulled through snow. The scroll unfurled slowly, as if reluctant to reveal itself. Inside, the paper was the color of sun-bleached bone, but what struck him most were the markings,not words exactly, but elegant characters that danced like living flame.
They formed a poem.
When silence awakens and memory weeps,
A name long buried shall stir from the deeps.
The voice of the void shall echo once more,
Unsealing the fate that slumbered before.
Born without star, without sigil or seal,
Yet fate shall bend beneath his heel.
No system shall claim him, no path define,
Yet all four powers shall he entwine.
Qi shall bow and Prana bleed,
Mana crack and Nether feed.
The stolen spark, the cursed flame
He bears no mark, yet all bear his name.
From shattered line and sacred doom,
He rises from an exile's womb.
Island-forged, forgotten, chained,
The child of silence, scarred and maimed.
Yanzhou shall quake beneath his tread,
Its cursed walls shall run with red.
Where watchers stood to guard the end,
He shall not break, but make them bend.
One eye shall see the past undone,
One hand shall hold the blazing sun.
One step shall tremble Heaven's floor,
The other break the Nether's door.
His voice shall split the skies apart,
A song of ruin wrapped in art.
The scroll that should have never breathed,
Now sings within the soul it sheathed.
Beware the storm with hollow crown,
The flame that never shall burn down.
The heir of crimson, veiled in shade,
Shall walk the path the gods forbade.
He shall not beg, nor shall he plead,
He is the hunger fate must feed.
A weapon forged from shattered trust,
A bloom of wrath rising from dust.
The keepers shall kneel or be undone,
Their balance shattered, thread by one.
The heavens weep, the stars grow pale,
When silence breaks the final veil.
For time shall coil and loop and bend,
And bring the world to one last end.
Unless the voice is understood,
And chaos bound for greater good.
Mark him well, the lost, the found
The boy who walks on hallowed ground.
Where blood shall flow and skies shall burn,
The Crimson Heir shall rise… and turn.
The moment he read the last line, something snapped.
Pain. White-hot and instant.
His hands dropped the scroll as his body seized. A sharp ache exploded in his head, behind his eyes, burrowing deep like a thousand needles pressing into his skull. The world blurred.
He staggered backward, clutching his temples, gasping.
And then the world fell away.
Not blackness.
Movement.
Time unraveled.
He was falling..not through space, but through moments.
Laughter. Children laughing.
Then screaming.
A field set ablaze. Blood. Fire. Screams again.
A woman sobbing into ashes.
A man on his knees, begging.
Then cheering. Celebration. Hands raised high. A baby held towards a crimson moon.
It wasn't a dream.
It was memory.
Thousands of memories. None of them his. All of them his.
Words swirled in the chaos....
Yanzhou.
The Prophecy.
Xuji.
The Scroll.
Pain again...this time behind his scar. It burned. He screamed.
Somewhere, far off, he heard Ren shouting.
"Lei Wei!" the old man's voice cracked with panic.
But the visions surged forward..
A battlefield.
One-sided. A massacre.
The defenders, ragged, weak...falling like broken reeds. Someone with golden eyes screamed a final command before being swallowed by flame.
An island. This island!!
Walls erupting from the ground, stone and steel, growing like thorns until they stretched to the sky. Trapping them. Trapping him.
Then a face...no, a presence.
A man in the sky. Power radiating from him like a sun of shadow and light.
His face was carved with anguish.
He looked down at the island with the eyes of someone sealing a grave.
"Yanzhou" the man whispered.
Lei Wei screamed.
He barely registered Ren collapsing beside him, grabbing his shoulders.
"Lei Wei! Talk to me! What's happening?"
But Lei Wei couldn't speak.
Not yet.
The visions faded as quickly as they came, leaving behind only nausea, cold sweat, and a throbbing in his skull like a wound.
His eyes fluttered open. Everything hurt.
The sky above was a blur.
Ren's face swam into view, wrinkled and terrified.
"Boy…what was that? Are you..."
Lei Wei stared at the sky, his breath ragged.
His eyes were red now, glowing faintly with a crimson hue, like dying embers. Liquid....not blood, but something darker, spilled slowly from the corners.
Ren recoiled.
"Lei Wei…your eyes…"
But the boy didn't seem to hear.
"Why…?" he whispered.
"Why what?" Ren asked, gripping his shoulders.
"Why....why....why.....?"
Lei Wei's voice cracked.
"Why did they trap us here..?"
"Why did they kill us brutally..why did most of us have to die..?"
Ren was confused with the words coming out from Le Wei's mouth.
"Why did they take away our memories..?"
"Why did they seize our freedom..?"
"Why...?"
Then he slumped forward into Ren's arms, unconscious.
The scroll disappeared into thin air. Ren didn't even notice the scroll and its disappearance.
And in the sky above the island, clouds began to swirl.