The wind had carried the hunter's words far behind them, but they lingered in Wuyin's thoughts.
You are not her.
She had expected enemies. She hadn't expected them to know her—or the girl whose body she now carried.
Their journey continued past the border into the southern plains. Sparse villages dotted the roads, but Wuyin kept them away from travelers. Her instincts buzzed too sharply. She couldn't risk leading danger to Yujin.
They arrived at dusk before the ruins that Wuyin had marked on a crumpled parchment. A place the fragments in her dreams whispered of—a forgotten temple with carvings worn smooth by time. Once the seat of a silent guardian sect, now only dust and memory remained.
Wuyin stood at its broken threshold, feeling the weight of buried truths.
"We're here," she said.
Yujin's eyes scanned the ancient stone. "It's older than any sect map I've seen."
"It's not on any," Wuyin replied. "But I've seen it."
They stepped inside. The temple's silence was deep, almost unnatural. It wasn't abandonment—it was reverence. As if even the dust remembered something sacred.
They reached the heart of the temple. There, half-buried in rubble, stood a statue of a veiled woman whose robes melted into stone. Her hand was extended toward a sealed doorway behind her, as if offering passage—or warning against it.
Wuyin approached, fingers brushing the statue's wrist. Something thrummed beneath her skin.
A memory stirred. A pale hand, small and trembling, touching this very stone. A soft voice in her mind: "If you reach here again… find it. Find the rest of me."
She looked to the base of the statue. There, carved in fading characters:
Bai Xiumei.
Yujin's breath hitched.
She didn't speak.
Couldn't.
That name.
It pulled something loose in her mind. A memory she had never questioned—her mother's name. The woman who had died when she was twelve. Who had been erased from every Bai Clan record, mentioned only once in whispers during her fevered dreams.
"…Why is it here?" Yujin murmured.
"She was a disciple of the Heavenly Silk Pavilion, wasn't she?" Wuyin asked softly.
Yujin nodded slowly. "My father said she died in a siege."
"Or was hidden here."
The seal behind the statue shimmered faintly as Wuyin stepped closer. Her blood responded to it—not as hers, but as the one she inherited. The stone parted with a hiss.
A passage yawned open.
Wuyin held out her hand. Yujin took it without hesitation.
Together, they stepped into the dark.