The flames had long since died, but the heat lingered—woven into the stones, embedded in the charred bones of the temple that had once touched the heavens.
Li Zhen stood at the edge of the ruins, his boots sinking into soot and ash with every step. The sun hung low behind heavy clouds, casting an amber haze that turned every broken pillar into a silhouette, every blackened beam into the finger of a ghost.
The wind spoke through the cracks. Not words, but something older—regret, perhaps. Or the sound of memory trying to escape its own shape.
The sword at his side was silent, though its weight had grown heavier since they left the mist-shrouded village. Each step forward felt like wading through water that wasn't there, as if the temple itself were pushing back, resisting his presence.
Li Zhen paused near what once might have been the altar. Beneath the collapsed archway was a ring of melted stone, scorched into glass. Bones were scattered around it, some still wrapped in the remains of robes that might once have been white. Something had burned here—utterly. Violently.
A name clawed its way up from his memory, not his own, yet entirely familiar.
Zhen the Cursed.
He did not remember becoming that man.
But the walls did.
Beneath the soot, he uncovered writings—etched into stone, scratched into broken tiles, burned into wood. Ramblings, prayers, equations. Mad scrawlings that spiraled outward like spiderwebs infected with fever.
"There is no death. Only forgetting."
"The fire must return to the source."
"I AM NOT THE END—I AM THE MEMORY OF THE END."
In one chamber, half-collapsed and thick with smoke-stained air, he found what remained of a library. Scrolls turned to ash at a breath. Shelves twisted and charred into grotesque monuments of abandonment. And at the center, a mirror—untouched, flawless, cruel.
Li Zhen stared into it.
At first, only his reflection looked back.
Then, it blinked.
His breath caught.
The mirror fogged as if exhaling, and in its surface appeared another Li Zhen—this one thinner, gaunter, with hollow eyes and a burnt mark crawling up his neck. His robes were scorched black, his hands trembling from something more than age. Madness pulsed behind his gaze like a star collapsing.
Then the figure in the mirror smiled.
"Welcome back," it said in his voice.
Li Zhen stepped away. The room did not follow.
The reflection tilted its head. "We burned for the truth. Don't you remember? We begged the fire to show us eternity."
Li Zhen said nothing. His hand gripped the hilt of his sword, but the blade refused to stir.
"We broke the world," the voice continued. "And in return, it broke us. But there is still a path, brother. There is still flame beneath the ashes."
And then the mirror cracked—splintering down the center with a sharp, final sound.
The voice became a whisper in his ears.
"I never stopped burning."
That night, sleep came reluctantly.
When it did, it came in waves—coiled, sticky, tangled in the smoke of memory.
He dreamed of fire.
A hundred temples burned across a thousand lifetimes. He stood among the flames, watching himself laugh as monks screamed and statues melted. Pages of sacred texts flew like birds into the inferno, their words devoured by heat. And in the center of it all, Zhen the Cursed—mouth open in a scream that was not of pain, but joy.
"I saw the soul of the world!" he shrieked. "It is flame! It devours identity! It purifies the lie of form!"
Li Zhen tried to run, but the ash turned to hands—grasping, pulling, smearing his face with soot. The cursed one turned toward him, eyes glowing like molten gold.
"YOU WERE ME," he said. "AND YOU WILL BE ME AGAIN."
Then he awoke.
Smoke still clung to his tongue.
The next morning, he found the sword embedded in the stone where the altar had once stood. He had no memory of leaving it there.
When he touched it, it pulsed like a living thing.
"He is not dead," the sword whispered. "He is what is left behind when death fails."
"Was he me?" Li Zhen asked aloud, voice raw.
"He was a choice. A path you walked in another breath of time. You sought immortality in fire. And when you could not find it, you tried to erase the world."
Li Zhen stared at the ruins.
"I don't remember any of it."
"You're not meant to. Not all at once."
"But he remembers me."
"Of course. Shadows always remember the light that cast them."
Li Zhen closed his eyes.
In the darkness behind his lids, he saw the burning again. Not as dream—but as truth. The taste of smoke in his mouth. The weight of a torch in his hand. The scream of stone giving way to the hunger of flame.
And something deeper: the belief that to destroy the world was to set it free.
He opened his eyes.
"I'm not him," he whispered.
"Then prove it," said the sword.
As he left the temple, he passed a shrine nearly buried in rubble. He knelt and uncovered it with trembling fingers.
Inside was a single, unburned scroll—its surface still warm, as if hidden from the fire's touch by purpose or miracle. The ink was red. The language unfamiliar.
Yet the meaning burned into him the moment he touched it:
"The flame that devours lies is also the flame that devours truth."
He tucked it into his robe.
As he descended the mountain, the sky opened. Rain began to fall—not heavy, but steady, as if the heavens themselves were trying to wash away the ash that clung to his skin, his sword, his soul.
But even as the soot slid from his hands, the mark of the cursed flame remained—beneath the surface, in the memory of his dreams, and in the crack that now ran down the mirror of his mind.
He did not know yet if it would break him.
But he knew this:
Zhen the Cursed still lived in him.
And sooner or later, they would meet again.