The Crashing Realm

They fell.

Not through sky or space, but through essence. Through memories they didn't own and songs that had never been sung. Light distorted into colors unnamed, time hiccupped, and even pain seemed too stunned to catch up with them.

And then…

CRASH.

The world they slammed into didn't welcome them — it devoured them.

Gao Mingyu groaned, his body twitching like a broken puppet tossed carelessly onto jagged ground. Li Xuan landed beside him, her robes torn and lips pale. The white portal they had barely escaped through shimmered briefly in the sky above them before letting out a whimper and vanishing like a guilty whisper.

The silence that followed was not peaceful.

It was judgmental.

The sky of the realm above was cracked like shattered obsidian, with streaks of molten blue fire crawling across its seams. Black, copper-like trees stretched unnaturally tall, their branches twisting like the limbs of broken giants. A wind that wasn't wind howled — a memory of screams carried on air that had never existed.

This was the Crashing Realm — once a place of trial for celestial wanderers, now forgotten, broken, left to its own madness.

Mingyu sat up slowly, wiping dried blood from his lips. His tiger cloak was gone. In its place, he wore a tattered grey sojourner's overall — a hooded garment woven from realmsilk, tight to his skin but unnaturally warm. The hood covered half his face in shadow, concealing him like a fugitive ghost.

Li Xuan stirred and coughed, her voice hollow and thin. She wore the same overall — they were marked now, not by any clan or sect, but by exile. The fabric carried the scent of foreign stars and endless travel.

"We made it..." she whispered, her voice cracking.

"We fell," Mingyu replied bitterly, scanning the cracked horizon. "There's a difference."

They stood amidst a field of broken statues — ancient warriors of unknown origin, all crumbled mid-battle. Each face frozen in terror. Some were human. Others... unnamable. A few looked like twisted versions of themselves.

A strange moth fluttered past, its wings shaped like screaming mouths. It landed briefly on Li Xuan's shoulder before combusting silently into violet smoke.

"…Where are we?" she asked.

Mingyu took a long, shuddering breath. "I've heard of this place. Once. In a drunken prophecy from an old cultivator whose soul kept arguing with his liver. He called it Yulash-Mir. The Realm That Remembers Your Fall."

Li Xuan's face paled further. "That doesn't sound friendly."

"No," Mingyu said. "But it's forgotten. Which means Damian can't find us easily here. Not unless…"

"…he breaks through forgotten doors," she finished.

A rusted, crooked road emerged before them, appearing out of nowhere. Not built — revealed — as though the realm had acknowledged their arrival and wanted them to walk… somewhere.

"We're sojourners now," Mingyu muttered. "Travelers who never arrive. Hunted by the past. Cursed by the future."

He adjusted the strap of his overall. His face remained hidden, but a glint of something — grief? Guilt? — flickered in his eyes.

Li Xuan didn't speak. She simply walked. The road had chosen them, and hesitation in the Crashing Realm often led to being absorbed by one's own shadows.

Time bent.

They passed a lake that reflected their bodies, but not their faces. They passed trees that whispered insults in voices of old friends they'd failed. They crossed a plain where every footstep turned to ash, revealing bones of forgotten travelers beneath.

In the distance, lightning wept — silent, mournful flashes across a bruised sky.

Mingyu found himself thinking about Aunt Bao's severed arm. Rui Lin's rolling head. Elder Yan's body crumpling like a marionette. For the first time in centuries, he had felt helpless — truly helpless. The lazy tiger, too slow to protect his den.

His fingers clenched unconsciously.

"I should have fought," he muttered aloud.

Li Xuan heard but said nothing. Her own eyes were haunted. She had carried that portal in her soul for decades. It was never meant to carry two people. She felt brittle, like glass forged in guilt.

Then… they saw her.

A figure sat cross-legged in the center of a shattered courtyard, surrounded by floating parchment and rings of cracked inkstone. Reality bent around her, as if stories themselves were scared of misbehaving in her presence.

She wore the garb of a Story Binder — someone who could trap fate in sentences and bend reality with metaphors. Her face was half-burned, half-beautiful. Flames still smoldered where her right cheek used to be.

"You fell loud enough to wake me," she said, without looking up. "That's rare."

Mingyu paused. "Are you… from this realm?"

"No one is from here," she said. "We crash here. That's the rule."

She looked up, and for a second, her burned eye pulsed with eerie recognition.

"You're Gao Mingyu, aren't you? The tiger that naps through destinies."

Li Xuan tensed. Mingyu pulled his hood lower.

"Not anymore," he muttered. "We're just travelers now."

The woman smirked. "Even travelers leave trails. And Damian the Elf is sniffing yours. He will break through forgotten doors. Eventually."

Mingyu's breath caught. "Then we need to keep moving."

"No," she replied, standing up. "You need to crash deeper. Only then will this realm hide you properly."

Li Xuan's eyes widened. "Deeper than this?"

The Story Binder nodded. "There is a place called the Vein Archive — a library where fallen timelines bleed into ink. If you reach it, you might rewrite your tether to the waking realms. If not…"

"Then we fade," Mingyu finished.

The woman handed them each a broken compass. "These don't point north. They point to your worst regret. That's where your entrance lies."

Mingyu stared into his compass. It whirled like mad, then slowed… and pointed somewhere black. Somewhere that felt cold, even from here.

He already knew what it was.

And so they walked.

Two hidden souls in greyscale overalls, hunted by a being who shattered time for sport. The lazy tiger, now lean with fear. The once-proud Li Xuan, now quiet with rage.

Their compasses spun wildly, then locked in opposite directions.

Mingyu paused.

"We'll have to separate," he said.

Li Xuan shook her head. "We always knew running from the past was a solo path."

She adjusted her hood, hiding her face. "Find your regret, Mingyu. And if we make it out of this…"

He nodded. "Tea on the other side."

She managed a faint smile. "Not if you sleep through it."

They turned from each other, walking into different shadows. The Crashing Realm bent and reshaped to match their sins.

Mingyu's path twisted into a forest where every tree grew from a decision he'd refused to make. The branches hung heavy with unspoken apologies, and the wind carried the echo of Aunt Bao's scream.

Li Xuan's direction spiraled downward into a staircase made of shattered mirrors. Each step showed her face younger, more hopeful, until the mirrors cracked and bled ink at her presence.

They walked alone.

Each step forward drew the past closer.

And far, far above… something cracked open in the sky.

A dark slit in reality.

Damian had found the scent.