The next few days passed in quiet motion.
Lin Wuyin didn't speak of the forest again, nor did Bai Yujin bring it up. Yet both could feel it — the shift in the air between them, like a single red thread trembling in anticipation.
During the mornings, they sparred.
Yujin, ever graceful with the twin crescent-blades she carried in jeweled scabbards, was no longer simply a merchant heiress playing warrior. Her movements were precise, efficient — she had trained in secret far longer than she let on.
Wuyin knew. She could read it in the way Yujin's stances rooted, the slight hesitations revealing the phantom habits of another life.
After all, Wuyin too carried the memories of blood beneath her skin.
"You were taught to kill, not defend," Wuyin said during one session, their blades meeting in a clash that rang through the bamboo courtyard.
Yujin didn't answer right away. She pushed back, breathing lightly. "And you weren't?"
Wuyin gave a quiet smile. "I killed to survive. Not all killers are raised with purpose."
Yujin's eyes darkened with something unreadable. "I never had a choice."
The moment passed, but something unspoken lingered.
That night, Wuyin sat in her room, studying the black scrolls of the Silent Monarch's techniques. They were cryptic things — written not in ink, but in patterns of qi-sensitive ash that shifted under certain forms of intent. She still couldn't read them fully, but one phrase kept repeating:
"Where the roots remember what the sky forgets."
She thought again of the banyan tree near the clearing where she had first awoken in this world — its twisted branches had wrapped around stone, bone, and time. Beneath it, she'd first heard the dying whispers of the girl whose body she now inhabited.
"Find it. Please… don't let it stay forgotten."
She reached for the folded map tucked in her inner robe.
Tomorrow. She would return.
But not alone.
—
"Yujin," she said the next morning, as they stood near the gates of the Bai estate.
Bai Yujin glanced up from where she was adjusting her travel cloak. "Hm?"
"I'm going back to the forest," Wuyin said plainly. "Where it began. I need to know what lies buried there."
Yujin's hands paused. "Do you want me to come with you?"
Wuyin hesitated.
It would be safer to go alone.
It would be easier to slip into shadows without anyone beside her.
But…
"I don't know what I'll find," Wuyin murmured. "But I'd rather not face it without you."
Yujin's expression softened.
"You're not very good at asking people to stay by your side," she said lightly.
"I'm not," Wuyin admitted. "But I'm learning."
Yujin smiled, and without another word, took Wuyin's hand in hers. "Then let's learn together."
—
They departed by noon.
Along the winding paths of old woods and low mountains, Wuyin remained watchful. Her gaze scanned the surroundings not only for danger, but for memory — for signs of a life not her own, buried beneath soil and silence.
That evening, they camped beneath the same banyan tree.
Yujin stirred the fire as Wuyin walked around the perimeter. She traced her steps to the spot where she had first awoken years ago — a small hollow in the roots, half-covered by leaves.
She knelt there, placing a hand on the bark.
"Still hiding things from me?" she whispered.
The tree did not answer. But as the moon rose, pale and distant, Wuyin saw something.
A glint beneath the leaves.
She reached for it — a shard of jade, cracked down the middle, marked with a single character:
"Wen."
Wuyin stared. That wasn't her name.
It had to belong to the girl. The one whose voice she had heard. The one who gave up her last breath so Wuyin could awaken.
And as she stared at the jade, a sound echoed faintly behind her — wind brushing through leaves in the shape of a sigh.
Yujin came to her side. "What is it?"
"A name," Wuyin said softly. "Or the beginning of one."
She closed her fingers around the shard, the cool jade pressing against her palm.
Yujin didn't press for more. She simply stood with her, beneath the moon, beneath the tree, as a thousand silent stories whispered through the night air.
Wuyin looked up.
She would find the rest of that name. And when she did — the truth behind it.
Even if it was buried in bones and silence.