Chapter 4: The Threads That Lie

Jiàn Lian’s blood ran cold.

"Her thread may have never existed at all."

The silk-veiled woman’s words clawed at his mind, unraveling everything he believed.

No.

That was impossible. He remembered Mei Rin. He remembered her laugh, the way she traced the red thread with her fingers, the warmth of her touch.

Jiàn Lian gritted his teeth. “You’re wrong.”

The woman did not flinch. “Am I?”

Jiàn Lian turned back to Mei Rin, who was still watching him with that polite, empty expression. She looked so real. So much like the woman he loved.

His voice was hoarse. “Mei Rin… I remember you. Our thread was real.”

Mei Rin frowned slightly, as if his words confused her. She lifted a delicate hand and brushed her fingers through the air.

Jiàn Lian’s breath hitched.

Her fingers passed through nothing.

No thread.

No fate bound them together.

Jiàn Lian’s stomach twisted painfully. He had followed a red thread here—he had seen it. He had felt it pulling him toward her.

So why wasn’t it here now?

The silk-veiled woman’s voice was gentle, but it carried a terrible weight.

“Are you certain the thread you followed was Mei Rin’s?”

Jiàn Lian’s heart pounded. What?

The woman stepped forward, and with a slow, deliberate motion, she lifted her hand.

The world shifted.

The floating strands of fate twisted, unraveled, and rewove themselves—but this time, Jiàn Lian saw them differently.

There were red threads, but they did not belong to him.

His own thread shimmered in the air before him, twisted and tangled beyond recognition. It looped around things it should not have touched, frayed at the edges where it had been torn and rewoven.

Jiàn Lian’s breath grew unsteady. This—this wasn’t normal.

Threads were sacred. They were unchanging.

Fate did not break. Fate did not lie.

And yet… his thread had been altered.

A horrifying realization clawed its way into his mind.

“What happened to me?” Jiàn Lian’s voice was barely above a whisper. “What… did I do?”

The silk-veiled woman sighed. “Five years ago, fate unraveled. Something that should have never happened… happened.”

Jiàn Lian’s chest tightened. “Mei Rin disappearing?”

The woman nodded. “Yes. But perhaps not in the way you remember.”

Jiàn Lian staggered back. His memories—were they even real? Or were they threads that had been rewoven to make him believe they were?

The world around him felt suddenly unstable. The half-formed streets trembled. The air cracked with whispers of forgotten voices.

And then—

A hand touched his.

Jiàn Lian flinched.

Mei Rin was right in front of him, fingers curling around his wrist. Her eyes were dark, searching, as if she were trying to grasp something just beyond her reach.

“…Jiàn Lian?”

His breath caught.

She knew his name.

Something flickered in her expression—something distant but real.

Jiàn Lian swallowed hard. “You remember?”

Mei Rin’s lips parted—

Then, suddenly, her body convulsed.

She gasped, eyes wide with terror as her form flickered, breaking apart like torn silk. Her breath came in sharp, pained gasps.

“No,” the silk-veiled woman murmured. “She is unraveling.”

Jiàn Lian’s chest seized. No—NO.

Mei Rin’s fingers dug into his arm. Her body was vanishing, thread by thread.

And then, in a voice choked with desperation, she whispered—