That evening, rain crept in from the sea, soft as breath and cold as regret. The kind of rain that carried silence with it—no frogs croaked, no crickets sang. Even the village dogs stayed quiet.
Shenhai knelt on the rough plank floor of the hut, brushing dust from beneath the sleeping mat where he had hidden the scroll all those years ago. His grandmother had long since gone to bed, her soft snores audible behind the linen curtain that divided their tiny home.
He drew the scroll out with care.
It had not aged.
Though it had passed through fire and time, the scroll's crimson binding was untouched. The seals shimmered faintly, etched in characters no one in the village could read. Not the healer. Not the monk. Not even Old Meng, the traveling scholar who had once claimed to have "dined with emperors and slept under stars carved by gods."
When Shenhai had asked what it said, Meng had simply stared at it for a long time and whispered, "Not yet."
He turned the scroll over in his hands now. His mother had given it to him before vanishing into flame and darkness. Whatever secrets it held—whatever truth had cost her life—it was here.
Still sealed.
Still silent.
But something had changed. Ever since the whispers began.
He set it gently beside the small altar where a stick of sandalwood burned. The smoke curled upward in ribbons, twisting like the river's current.
He moved next to the sword.
It was hidden beneath the floorboards behind his grandmother's sleeping mat. She never knew he had found it years ago—drawn to it by a dream in which a voice like thunder had said, "A blade remembers what the hand forgets."
The sword was long and narrow, its sheath black with time. The guard was shaped like crashing waves, and the grip had once been wrapped in white silk—now faded yellow, peeling at the edges. But the blade…
The blade was rusted.
Not just with age. But with silence. With weight. With memory.
This was his father's sword. Li Zhen the Stormblade, they had called him. A name that once made warlords pause and assassins reconsider their contracts. Until he disappeared—vanished into myth, leaving behind only this sword, and a woman and child in a fishing village no one remembered.
Shenhai unsheathed it slowly. It made no sound.
Just iron. Dark. Dull. Pitted. But somehow, he felt… watched.
He placed the sword across his lap, lit another stick of incense, and closed his eyes.
In his dream, he stood alone on a battlefield of bones, beneath a sky painted red.
The scroll floated in the air before him, spinning slowly. A voice—his mother's? His father's?—called out from beyond the wind:
"When the sea forgets the sky, and blood returns to stone, the sealed river shall open."
Suddenly, the scroll snapped open midair. Light poured from its center. Symbols flared—like swords—spiraling in the air around him, forming constellations.
He reached for them.
But something grabbed his wrist.
He awoke in a cold sweat, the incense burned to ash, the sword still across his legs.
The scroll lay untouched beside him.
Still sealed.
Still silent.
Until he noticed the first crack in the crimson wax.
Outside, thunder echoed far away over the River of Broken Swords.
The river was waking.
And so was something inside Li Shenhai.