Names Carved in Shadow

It started with a whisper.

Not the kind that speaks aloud, but the one that moves behind your thoughts. The kind that rearranges your memories and makes you believe they were always like that.

Lin Feng woke in the dead hours of false dawn, sweat slick on his back, breath sharp in his chest. The Void Keys hummed around his core, uneasy—not out of fear, but out of recognition.

He turned to the horizon, where the starlight flickered and dimmed, as if something vast had passed between them and the rest of reality.

Ruoxi stirred beside the dying campfire, sitting upright with a hand on her blade. "You felt that too?"

"Someone just said my name," Lin Feng muttered.

Yue Lian's voice came from the shadows. "But none of us did."

Seeking answers, Lin Feng leads the group to the ancient ruins known as the Obsidian Archive—an underground vault of sealed identities, where forgotten names are carved into blackstone by monks who surrendered language.

It's a place not written on any map.

They find it only because Lin Feng's Hollow Mark burns a path through the air.

As they descend into the Archive, they begin to forget basic words. Yue Lian tries to speak and finds her tongue still.

Ruoxi whispers: "It's rewriting our ability to remember language."

But the deeper they go, the stronger Lin Feng feels it.

Until they find it:

A black wall. Covered in names. One of them glowing faintly red.

His name. Lin Feng.

But it's not the only one.

Right beneath it—another name is slowly carving itself into the stone.

Xuanyin.

A surge of memory hits him.

A boy. A temple. A pact made in darkness. A promise broken.

Xuanyin—the name he once held in a different life.

The moment he became more than mortal… and less than human.

He sees shadows watching. Faces with no features. Voices calling him brother. One in particular:

"You left us to die, Xuanyin."

"Now we return."

Lin Feng collapses, convulsing. The walls tremble.

Ruoxi grabs him. "What the hell is this place doing to him?!"

Yue Lian, eyes wide: "Those aren't names. They're seals."

The stone fractures.

A hand made of ink and screams bursts through.

From the black wall, a figure steps forward.

A girl. Barefoot. White robes tattered. Eyes missing.

"Xuanyin," she says, voice raw with betrayal.

Lin Feng opens his eyes.

"Shi Hua."

She was once his junior sister. The one he trained with. The one he left behind when the Void consumed his first self.

She now walks with the power of a thousand cursed names.

"I came to bring you back," she says. "To finish the Sect's last lesson."

Ruoxi steps between them.

"Not today."

Shi Hua fights not with swords or spells—but with forgotten truths.

She makes Yue Lian fight a phantom of her own dead master.

She makes Ruoxi see a version of Lin Feng who chose godhood over her life.

Lin Feng resists—but his name on the wall burns brighter.

She chants: "Your name is not Lin Feng. It never was. Say it. Reclaim it."

He closes his eyes.

Then opens them, calm.

"I buried that name. I won't dig it up for guilt."

"Then I'll dig you up," she screams.

But her blow lands—and does not break him.

Because Yue Lian severs the illusion.

And Ruoxi knocks Shi Hua unconscious with the hilt of her blade.

They do not kill Shi Hua.

They carry her body out.

Lin Feng watches the wall one last time. The name Xuanyin dims. Fades. But does not vanish.

"You were me once," he whispers. "But I am not you."

Behind him, Yue Lian asks, "What now?"

Ruoxi shrugs. "He has more enemies than we have fingers."

Lin Feng turns to them.

"We find the rest. Before they find me."

Above, the clouds move like watching eyes.

And far, far away, a hooded figure sits before a wall of names…

One hand raised to carve the next.

To be continue...