The Dream with No Door
The night was heavy.
Like a sealed tomb pressed against the ribs.
Shen Jin had never truly fallen asleep —
not since the monument.
But something had drawn him under, eventually.
He now lay on a narrow, crooked bed within a half-rotted guesthouse, tucked inside a fog-choked courtyard on the outer rim of the Division's restricted zone.
There were no candles lit.
No guards.
The paper window screens barely held back the night's cold breath. Faint creaking echoed from beneath the floorboards — insects or rot, perhaps — pacing slowly just beneath his reach.
His eyes stayed closed.
Sweat slicked his brow.
The monument's pull hadn't left him.
Its residue still coursed through his blood — sharp and slow, like a language that bled itself through the body instead of the tongue.
He drifted — not into sleep, but into something deeper.
—
The dream opened without warning.
He stood barefoot in a field of shattered tablets — jagged shards of stone, etched with markings that didn't resemble any script he knew.
They gleamed faintly under a nonexistent sky, like fragments of something once divine, now broken.
Above him: no stars.
Around him: no air.
Ahead —
A palace.
Or what was left of one.
The ruins stretched over a fog-white sea, built in angles the human eye struggled to follow.
Its walls curved inwards, as if collapsed beneath the weight of something too old to name.
There were no beams. No pillars.
And yet, it stood.
The doors hung open.
Beyond them, a massive skeleton lay sprawled across the crumbling floor.
It was not human.
Nor beast.
Its ribs coiled like spirals.
Its spine was punctured in a dozen places — as if something had been forcibly torn from it.
It had no skull.
Only a hollow ring of vertebrae where the head should have been.
Shen Jin wanted to move.
But his legs wouldn't respond.
Then —
A flicker of color.
He turned, sharply.
A streak of pale blue drifted through the mist:
a figure in robes, hair half-undone.
She moved lightly, like a breath —
and stood at the foot of the broken stair, facing the opposite side of the palace.
It was Luo Qinghan.
Not entirely her.
Not entirely a shadow either.
She wasn't looking at him.
She seemed distant —
as if her form had wandered into some dream of her own and gotten lost along the way.
Shen Jin tried to call out.
No sound came.
He could only watch as she stepped slowly forward, feet skimming the ash-streaked bones beneath her — and climbed the steps into the palace, without hesitation.
Like she had always known the way.
Her figure vanished into the dark.
And the shards beneath Shen Jin's feet began to crack.
Thin fissures spread from his soles, slithering up his limbs — and from within them, he could feel memories stirring.
Memories that didn't belong to him.
Something ancient peeled against his skin, trying to surface.
"Return."
The voice again.
Closer, now.
This time, not spoken from around him.
It came from within.
—
Shen Jin jerked awake.
The brazier beside him was cold.
The wind outside hissed against the broken walls like blades drawn against bone.
He was sweating — but shivering too.
Beneath his robe, the mark on his shoulder glowed faintly.
He sat up.
The dream still clung to his throat.
He dressed in silence, pulling the outer robe over his shoulders, and stepped outside without lighting a lantern.
Far off in the distance, beyond the courtyard's ruined fence, a faint light flickered above the mist —
a beacon on the edge of the sealed sector.
The monument, even from here, still breathed.