Chapter 2: The Woman Who Should Not Exist

Jiàn Lian awoke to silence.

Not the silence of an empty street, nor the hush of the midnight wind. This was absolute silence—a void where even his own breath made no sound.

The ground beneath him was not stone, not wood, not earth. It was fabric—silk, shifting and writhing like something alive. He pressed his palms against it, and the moment his fingers made contact, the silk hardened into cold stone.

Jiàn Lian staggered to his feet.

The door—the woven door—was gone.

And he was no longer in Shuoyun.

Around him, the world stretched into a vast, half-formed city. Streets spiraled into nothingness, buildings stood only in fragments—roofs floating above doorways that led to nowhere. The sky above was neither night nor day, flickering between a gray dawn and an endless, starless void.

The air was heavy, thick with something unspoken.

Jiàn Lian’s throat tightened. This was not a place where the living belonged.

A whisper brushed against his ear.

"You should not have come."

Jiàn Lian turned sharply.

A woman stood before him.

She wore flowing robes of silver and black, embroidered with shifting patterns—cranes taking flight, mountains rising and crumbling in an eternal cycle. But it was her face that made his breath still.

She had no eyes.

Where her eyes should have been, there was only silk, woven into the shape of eyelids. And yet, Jiàn Lian felt her gaze settle upon him.

The air around her shimmered, as if the world itself did not know if she was real.

Jiàn Lian’s voice was hoarse. “Who are you?”

She tilted her head, her silk eyelids remaining unnervingly still. “The better question is—who are you to step into the city of the Unwoven?”

Jiàn Lian’s stomach turned.

He had heard that name before.

The Unwoven—a cursed existence, neither dead nor alive. Spirits whose threads had been cut too soon, erased from fate’s design. No memories. No graves. No past.

Jiàn Lian clenched his fists. “I came here looking for someone. A woman. Mei Rin.”

The woman stilled.

He took a step forward. “She disappeared five years ago. Her red thread unraveled. But I found it again—it led me here. Where is she?”

The woman sighed.

The sound was not human.

“She is here,” she said softly. “But she does not remember you.”

Jiàn Lian’s pulse pounded. “What do you mean?”

The woman lifted a hand.

The air rippled—the buildings twisted, the streets unraveled like silk. And then, they were standing before a tea house, its entrance veiled by strands of floating fabric.

Inside, people sat in silence.

Or rather, shadows of people.

Their forms flickered between solid and translucent, as if the world had forgotten whether they should exist. None of them spoke. None of them moved.

And there, by the window, sat Mei Rin.

Jiàn Lian’s breath caught.

She looked exactly as she had on the night she vanished—dark hair falling over her shoulders, white robes embroidered with golden peonies.

His fingers trembled.

“Mei Rin,” he whispered.

She turned. Their eyes met.

And there was nothing.

No recognition. No warmth.

She looked at him the way one looks at a stranger.