Jiàn Lian’s breath stalled.
The woman before him—the woman he had spent five years searching for—looked into his eyes with no recognition.
She did not know him.
Mei Rin’s lips parted slightly, her dark eyes filled only with curious detachment. “Are you lost?” she asked, her voice soft, but empty—as if her soul had been hollowed out.
Jiàn Lian’s throat tightened. “Mei Rin,” he whispered, stepping forward. “It’s me. Jiàn Lian.”
She blinked once, then tilted her head slightly. Nothing.
Not even the faintest flicker of familiarity.
His stomach twisted.
This wasn’t possible.
He had held her hands beneath the red lanterns of Shuoyun, traced the red thread that bound their fates together. She had loved him. She had been his.
She could not have simply forgotten.
Jiàn Lian turned sharply to the silk-veiled woman beside him. “What’s wrong with her?” His voice was rough, barely contained. “Why doesn’t she remember?”
The woman’s silk-covered eyes remained unreadable. “Because she is one of the Unwoven now.”
The words stabbed deep.
Jiàn Lian’s heart pounded. No.
No, that was impossible. The Unwoven were those whose threads had been erased—people who had died before their time, lost to fate itself.
But Mei Rin hadn’t died. She had disappeared.
Jiàn Lian clenched his fists. “You’re wrong. Mei Rin’s thread led me here. If she were truly Unwoven, there wouldn’t be a thread to follow.”
The woman was silent for a long moment. Then, finally, she whispered—
“Are you sure?”
Jiàn Lian stiffened.
Slowly, the woman raised her hand—and the air around them shifted.
Threads appeared—thousands of them, shimmering in the dim light. Some glowed silver with forgotten memories, others frayed black, whispering of lives lost too soon. They crisscrossed the tea house, winding through the silent figures sitting motionless at their tables.
Jiàn Lian’s pulse pounded as his gaze darted among them, searching desperately for one thing.
A red thread.
Mei Rin’s thread.
He found nothing.
His breath hitched. His hands turned cold.
No red. No sign of their bond.
It was as if their fate had never been tied at all.
As if she had never belonged to him.
A heavy weight settled in Jiàn Lian’s chest. He turned back to Mei Rin, his voice barely more than a whisper. “Do you really not remember me?”
She studied him with quiet curiosity, then…
She smiled.
But it was a stranger’s smile. Polite. Empty.
“I’m sorry,” she said gently. “I think you must have mistaken me for someone else.”
Jiàn Lian felt like he was suffocating.
This wasn’t right. It wasn’t possible.
Mei Rin was his fate.
He had followed her thread across five years, across dreams and prayers and unanswered whispers. It had led him to her.
So why—why wasn’t she his anymore?
A shiver ran through his spine as a dark, terrible thought took root in his mind.
What if Mei Rin had never been meant to exist at all?
The silk-veiled woman’s voice was quiet but unyielding.
“The Unwoven are those who were erased before their time,” she murmured. “Not only from life—but from fate itself.”
Jiàn Lian’s heart stopped.
He turned to her sharply. “What are you saying?”
The woman held his gaze.
“I’m saying… Mei Rin’s thread may have never existed at all.”
Jiàn Lian’s world shattered.
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