Chapter 12: The Voice That Should Not Speak

Jiàn Lian’s breath was shallow.

Mei Rin stood before him, but it wasn’t just her.

Something else lurked within her shadow, beneath her skin, behind her hollow gaze.

"You shouldn’t have come," she had said.

But the voice that spoke was not hers alone.

It was layered. Twisted. An echo of something ancient, something wrong.

Jiàn Lian’s fingers curled. "Mei Rin."

She tilted her head slightly, her expression unreadable.

The wind stirred around them, rattling the withered lotus petals at their feet. The air smelled of dying flowers and something else—something decayed.

Jiàn Lian stepped forward.

The moment his foot touched the ground—

Mei Rin’s form flickered.

For a brief second, her face distorted—as if something else was trying to push through.

Jiàn Lian’s chest tightened.

This wasn’t just a ghost of her existence.

Something had claimed her.

Something that should not exist.

"...Who are you?" Jiàn Lian’s voice was quiet, but firm.

Mei Rin’s lips parted.

Then—

The world around them shuddered.

The gray mist thickened, curling like fingers around the dead field. The wind died instantly, plunging the air into a suffocating stillness.

And then—

Mei Rin smiled.

But it wasn’t her smile.

It was something else's.

Something unnatural.

Something that did not belong to this world.

"You already know," she whispered.

Jiàn Lian's breath hitched.

A memory slammed into him.

The void between fate. The place where lost souls went but never returned.

A presence lurking in the darkness, watching, waiting—something that had been searching for an opening.

And now, it had one.

Jiàn Lian’s jaw clenched. "Let her go."

Mei Rin blinked slowly.

Her fingers twitched at her sides, as if struggling against invisible restraints.

Then, in a voice barely her own, she murmured—

"...I can’t."

Jiàn Lian’s stomach twisted.

Mei Rin wasn’t just trapped.

She was bound.

His hands trembled at his sides. "Who did this to you?"

For a moment, silence.

Then, the thing inside her—the thing that had no name, no form, only a voice—

laughed.

It was soft, quiet, but it crawled under his skin like the whisper of something watching from the dark.

"Why do you think?"

Jiàn Lian’s blood ran cold.

The unraveling threads. The disturbance in fate. The burning scent of silk.

Everything had led to this moment.

Everything had led to—

Him.

Jiàn Lian’s throat tightened. "It was me."

Mei Rin’s flickering form stilled.

Her lips parted as if to speak, but nothing came out.

Because deep inside, buried beneath the presence that had latched onto her—

She knew it was true.

Jiàn Lian had defied fate for her. Had broken the rules of existence itself.

And in doing so—he had opened a door.

Something had answered.

Something had come through.

And now, it was using her as its vessel.

Jiàn Lian’s hands trembled. His chest ached with something unbearable.

This was his fault.

And he would fix it.

Even if he had to tear apart fate itself.

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