Aashish_Kookna

“If you could relive your life—not to chase fame or fortune, but to right your deepest regrets—would you dare face your own past?”

Yun Fei was an ordinary man in his thirties, living a life soaked in the bitter wine of missed opportunities and mistakes. A failed business, a broken family, friendships turned sour, and the loss of the only girl who truly loved him—his world was a long list of what-ifs and if-onlys. He wasn’t evil, but he had been weak. Not cruel, but often silent when he should have spoken. His was a life not ruined by one catastrophic event—but by a thousand small regrets that, over time, swallowed him whole.

And then he died.

Not in glory, not in battle, not even in some poetic tragedy.

Just… alone. Forgotten.

But death wasn’t the end

Born Again with My Future Regrets

The quiet hum of his bedroom light felt like static in Yun Fei's ears.

Too many system notifications. Too many fragments of timelines brushing up against reality.

And Lin Xiya… She was more connected than he realized.

He opened the Regret Index again, this time bypassing normal protocol.

Warning: Risk of Sanity Damage Increases.

The interface trembled, like a heartbeat underwater.

Then, one by one, glowing threads appeared—laced between names he knew, places he remembered… and at the center: Lin Xiya.

But something strange shimmered behind her thread. Not red. Not blue. Something silver. Elusive. Locked.

> Class: Hidden Chrono-Regret. Access Denied. Key Required.

And somewhere deep inside, the system whispered a name he hadn't heard in a decade:

She stood at the sink, washing her face, when it happened again.

The world around her was a city on fire. Ash rained down like snow. Sirens screamed, but no one was left to hear them.

She stood barefoot on broken glass.

And ahead of her, in a glass dome filled with vines, was a boy.

But as she stepped closer, she saw the pain in his eyes—the ache of sacrifice.

But this version of him looked older. Hardened. Dressed in a black coat that rippled like smoke.

"You shouldn't be here," he said softly.

"This isn't real," Lin Xiya whispered.

"It was. For a long time. Until you died."

"In that world… you died. And I lost everything."

She stepped forward, tears rising. "I don't want to remember this."

He smiled. "You were never supposed to. But your thread resisted deletion."

Then he raised a hand—and touched her forehead.

A black feather. A shattered mirror. A golden ribbon.

Back in her room. Crying. Kneeling. Holding something in her hand.

The Architect's chamber was a place of silence.

Null 447 floated before the monolithic figure of his superior—The Architect of Null Paths—a being shaped like a tattered robe stitched with code.

"I failed," Null 447 said. "Yun Fei has bypassed Dream Ring limitations. Emotional divergence exceeded projection. Thread inheritance is mutating."

The Architect spoke without sound.

Null 447 twitched. "Affirmative. Lin Xiya now exhibits cross-timeline memory leakage. Unknown Dream Class. May be host to a Swan Ring Echo."

The Architect pulsed with colorless light.

"Prepare the Hush Protocol. Detach her from his thread before the bond completes."

"Requesting clarification: Why him? Why allow Yun Fei to become a carrier?"

Then the Architect's whisper, like a rusted gate creaking open:

"Because regret… births the strongest stories."

The next day, Yun Fei met Lin Xiya under the same bridge.

"I saw you," she said before he could speak. "But not you. A version of you where I died."

"I think that was real," she continued. "And now, I'm remembering."

He showed her the Index. The locked thread. The word: Swan Ring.

"I think we're part of something older than just one life," he said.

Lin Xiya pulled something from her pocket—a black feather.

Their feathers pulsed. Soft light spilled into the air. Symbols danced.

New Joint Memory Path Available. Open Dream?

Chapter 12: The Architect’s Hand