Darkness.
Not the suffocating weight of stone collapsing, nor the choking black of the Bishop’s miasma. This was softer; a silence that wrapped around me like a shroud.
There was no up or down, no breath or heartbeat. Only the stillness, stretching on without end.
And then something stirred.
A shape in the dark. Faint at first, like a candle guttering in a storm, then sharpening until it became a place. A garden.
My chest clenched before I even realized why.
It wasn’t mine. Or rather—it wasn’t the garden I had built with sweat and sleepless nights, with Tianyi’s light and Windy’s watchful coils. This was earlier. Simpler.
The way it had been when my parents still ran the shop.
The beds were neat, trimmed to fit within the stone borders my father laid himself. The air carried the smell of drying herbs from the rafters. The faint chime of the shop bell drifted on the breeze, though no one touched it.
Years unspooled before my eyes as if the garden itself had become a mirror. I watched myself. Smaller, weaker, hands still clumsy as I fumbled with a hoe that was too big for me. I saw the day I wandered into the forest, following a glimmer of blue, and found Tianyi for the first time.
The scene melted, and the ruins rose before me; the ancient stones I had stumbled into, the moment the Interface first burned across my vision, searing itself into my soul. I saw myself stand there, half-terrified, half-ecstatic, not knowing whether it was gift or curse.
And then again: Feng Wu stepping through the village road, offering me the chance to compete at the Gauntlet. I watched myself hesitate, then bow my head, not yet realizing that nod would change everything.
The memories kept coming, flowing one into the next, not as stories I told myself, but as truths playing out around me. My life laid bare.
I should have panicked. I should have fought. But the thought arrived slowly, gently, and when it settled, I could not shake it.
I was watching because I was no longer living.
A blue box cut across the garden.
The text hovered in the air, crisp and undeniable, even here in this space where I thought no rules applied.
The words burned bright enough to blind.
I flinched despite having no flesh to recoil with, my incorporeal form jerking backward. The box lingered, steady, almost patient.
The letters did not vanish. They bled outward instead, edges fraying into streams of light. The box warped, lines bending, expanding, until it stretched taller than me. Slowly, painfully slowly, it began to fold in on itself, the text dissolving into shape.
A figure emerged.
It had no eyes. No mouth. Just a blank expanse where a face should have been, smooth and featureless. And yet I knew it. I had seen it many times before.
“The… Heavenly Interface,” I whispered.
The figure inclined its head. No words moved its blank face, but it's silence was confirmation in its own way.
I swallowed hard, the question nearly bursting out of me. A question that's pervaded me since it's awakening.
Why me?
The words echoed in the stillness, jagged with all the doubt I’d carried for so long.
“I know you saved me.” I muttered, looking down at the grass. "I know what it cost you. But ever since you appeared, everything started circling closer. Sects. Cultists. Everything in between."
Gentle Wind became a place people looked at. Something they sought after.
If I hadn’t touched that ruin, perhaps I would have stayed what I was meant to be.
A humble herbalist. I would have spent my days tending herbs in neat rows, complaining about the weather like everyone else.
I would have lived small.
I would never have known Tianyi’s light, or Windy’s fierce, wordless loyalty. I would never have stood beneath darkness that could tear mountains apart, never felt the weight of the world press against my bones.
And Wang Jun would still be alive.
The thought landed heavier than any blow.
He would have laughed at my stubbornness, complained about calluses and cracked tools, boasted about work well done. With Lan-Yin there to roll her eyes at both of us, pretending not to listen while she poured tea behind the counter. We would have grown older together, slow and unremarkable, measuring our lives in seasons instead of battles.
When the time came, I would have died in that same village. Buried beneath familiar soil. My bones laid to rest where my name still meant something simple.
I lifted my head, the ache in my chest steady and dull.
The faceless figure remained still.
The words hit like a slap.
For a moment, I just stood there, hollow, as if the ground had been kicked out from under me. “…What?”
The ruins you touched were never meant to be found.
Their purpose was to hide—from those who sought to destroy every trace—until the time was right.
Its voice thrummed like stone grinding against stone, matter-of-fact, without malice or comfort.
My throat tightened. “Like the Heavenly Demon? The cultists?”
The figure shook its head.
The vagueness gnawed at me. If not the cult… then who? I opened my mouth, but the Interface pressed on.
Its blank face fixed on me, unreadable.
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'Huh?' I raised my head in disbelief.
You were too weak. Too easy to snuff out. And if you died, so would I.
So I sought to strengthen your vessel. Even if I could not grant you power outright, I could provide you with the means to attain it.
The space between us rippled.
Lines of light spread outward from where it stood, forming shallow planes that slid past one another like stacked glass. Images flickered across them—brief, incomplete impressions of someone's memories: hands at work, faces without names, moments that ended before they began. The planes moved faster, then slower, as if narrowing a search.
I searched your prior incarnations.
Lives leave grooves.
Every soul carries echoes forward; patterns etched deeply enough to survive death. Instincts. Affinities. Techniques refined across lives.
They can be drawn upon.
My breath stilled in anticipation. My mind raced, thinking about the implications. Perhaps it explained certain affinities I had. Towards nature, alchemy, and everything in between.
For a moment I couldn't breathe. It felt like someone struck me in the chest and caved it in.
"...Nothing?"
The word tasted like ash on my tongue.
No hidden legacy.
No buried greatness.
No reason.
A hollow laugh tore out of me as my vision unfocused.
"So that's it," I said, my voice rising despite myself. "That's what all of this was built on!"
I wanted to break something. Hot, bitter anger surged through me like a tidal wave. But my lack of form made it impossible to lash out physically.
"My village burned. So many died." My throat tightened, remembering those lost. "And ypu're telling me it wasn't for anything? That even you looked at me and saw nothing worth choosing?"
The voice softened; or maybe I imagined it.
Light rippled between us again, scenes spilling outward like reflections: Elder Jun when he first confronted the Verdant Lotus over a beast core, and the prompt that appeared before me; the wager that bought my victory.
I nearly broke my directive to protect you then.
I saw your diligence with herbs, how naturally you shaped them into medicines. I saw the way your diligence transitioned into alchemy. I saw you grow stronger after every failure, each experiment turning setback into progress.
I saw you advocate not for strength as your own possession, but as a community. I saw you raise others as you tried to rise yourself.
So I did what I could. Nudges. Quests. Trials where they would fit. Opportunities where they would test you. Even if I could not give you what you had not earned.
The light dimmed, leaving only the weight of its words. Scenes unfolded in quiet succession. I saw myself bowed beneath a tortoise's shell, knees trembling as the burden pressed down on me. I saw the garden stirring at my call for the first time when I first unlocked Viridescent Sovereignty.
The recognitions you earned in those moment were not mine to bestow.
I merely recorded the acknowledgment.
I wanted to hate it. Wanted to rage at the unfairness of being chosen by accident, of having my life torn open for no reason except that I happened to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But the anger had nowhere to go.
There was no god to condemn. No destiny to reject. No grand design to tear down and feel righteous about.
Only what had happened.
The lives that had ended. The villages that had burned. The choices I made because there had been no one else left to make them.
If there was no hidden greatness, no past life steering my hand... then there was nothing standing between me and the weight of it.
'Everything I had done was mine.'
And so was everything I had failed to stop.
The thought hollowed me out.
I looked up at the faceless figure.
“You didn’t choose me because I was worthy,” I said. “And you didn’t abandon me either. You just stayed long enough to see what I’d do.”
I was wrong. To expect a perfect anchor defeated my very purpose.
I thought I needed the exceptional. The prodigy. The chosen. But what I overlooked was simple.
You.
It paused, faceless gaze boring into me.
I swallowed hard, my anger drained.
You may not have been the best candidate. But you were the truest. You were what I was meant to be—a bridge. A chance to bring the heavens closer to the world. To uplift all who wished it, not only the destined few.
And so, despite myself, I helped. I bent rules.
Its voice deepened, heavy again.
"Then I failed you anyway. The cult rose outside your predictions. I died. And you... end here."
I see further than you. Not far.
The dao is pattern and mist.
Many call it providence.
Its faceless head turned, as if studying me.
Your ordinariness is not an insult.
Of all the lives who could have found the ruins, an unremarkable one did.
There is meaning in that too.
The garden around us flickered. The herb beds blurred, their neat lines stuttering in and out of being. The shop bell tolled once, though no wind moved it.
The Interface's outline wavered. For a moment, its edges split like ink bleeding through wet paper. Two silhouettes occupied the same space, one slightly behind the other, before snapping back together. It's stance shifted. Straighter. More rigid. The slight tilt of its head that had suggested curiosity disappeared. It stood now like a statue.
Time is short.
To pull myself back, I must shed the personality I have grown.
I must purge the biases accrued while clinging to survival. The "I" who speaks to you now will cease.
The final word emerged colder. Flatter. As if someone else had finished the sentence.
My stomach dropped.“What do you mean cease?”
In my place, the cosmic script will resume.
Colder. Narrower in favor. Sharper in function.
The words pounded like a hammer against my chest. When the words came again, they were no longer spoken. They simply appeared.
YOU WILL LOSE CERTAIN DISCRETIONS.
FEWER DIVINE NUDGES. NO DIRECT BOONS.
IN EXCHANGE, I WILL NEVER DISAPPEAR UNLESS YOU DIE.
My throat tightened. "So this. You... "
YES.
I END HERE. BUT THE INTERFACE WILL LIVE ON.
The figure stepped forward, like a person, to stand just before me.
The air thickened, heavy as scripture. Each word rang like it had always been there, waiting.
I AM THE LEDGER OF YOUR STUBBORN DAYS AND THE WITNESS OF YOUR REFUSALS.
I AM THE BRUISE THAT PROVES YOU STOOD AND THE CALLUS THAT REMEMBERS YOUR WORK.
I AM THE REST YOU EARNED AND THE FEAR THAT KEPT YOU HONEST.
I AM THE SHAPE YOUR PAIN LEFT IN THE WORLD.
I AM NOT YOUR GOD.
I AM YOUR EVIDENCE.
My breath caught. "Wait—you're saying I'm alive?"
The impossibility of it hadn't even registered until now. I'd been so focused on what the Interface was losing that I hadn't questioned what I might still have.
The Interface inclined its faceless face, as though in final acknowledgment.
YOU WILL SEE SOON.
THANK YOU FOR LETTING ME SEE YOUR DREAMS FROM THE INSIDE.
LIVE, KAI LIU.
The box fractured. Light crawled back into glyphs, each one unspooling into the dark.
And in that silence, I felt something.
A pressure. Faint at first, like a distant drum. Then again, stronger. A rhythm building in my chest, each beat heavier than the last.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
