When the Sky Drowned

The rain had not stopped for nine days.

It wasn't natural. Not from the clouds. Not from the heavens. This rain was different — thick with the stench of spirit decay, heavy with grief, and tinged at the edges with whispers that should have been drowned.

Gu Yan stood at the edge of the world.

Or at least, the part of the Eastern Prefectures the maps no longer bothered to draw.

The cliffs of Jianmo Pass fell away into a basin where a great city had once flourished. Fengyin — the City of Bells. Home to scholars, sword saints, and a thousand generations of cultivators.

Now it was gone.

Not razed. Not conquered. Erased.

Where towers once pierced the sky, there was only water. Where markets had bustled and prayer halls rung with sutras, now floated twisted beams, lanterns half-burnt, and bodies with empty sockets. No soul dared linger.

Except Gu Yan.

His reflection stared up from the water — black robes soaked and clinging to lean limbs, hair tied loosely at the back, framing a face too young to look so old. His eyes were like ink over cold steel: blank, but not unfeeling.

The mirror on his back — the Mirror of Returning Echoes — thrummed against his spine.

It spoke, as it always did, not in words but in weight.

⚡ Memory.

⚡ Blood.

⚡ Betrayal.

The mirror remembered what the world wished to forget.

And Gu Yan was the only one who still listened.

He turned, and the soaked earth crackled beneath his boots. Near the cliff's edge, just before the drop into the drowned city, stood a stone altar. Cracked. Weathered. An old incense offering had long since disintegrated.

He knelt before it.

And from his sleeve, he drew a slip of paper.

One of the thousand pages left behind by his teacher — a man whose name Gu Yan had burned from his memory, as was the cost of inheriting the technique of the Nameless Sutra.

He placed the page on the altar. On it, a single character burned itself into being, not by ink — but by soul:

执 — To Cling.

"Is it weakness," Gu Yan whispered, "to remember?"

The wind howled in response.

Suddenly, from the trees behind, someone laughed.

Dry. Bitter. Familiar.

A man emerged. Cloaked in gray and wrapped in mossy talismans, his face half-hidden beneath a straw hat. In his hand: a staff that reeked of ancient Qi.

"I told them," the man said, "that the Heir of Silence would come here."

Gu Yan did not turn.

"They didn't believe me."

"They were wise," Gu Yan said. "I am no heir."

"Then why carry that mirror?"

"To bear a burden, not a legacy."

The man grinned. "You sound like him."

Gu Yan finally stood, slowly, like rising fog.

"You knew my teacher?"

The man nodded. "Before he erased me."

There was silence.

Then movement.

The man struck, faster than thought. His staff blurred, weaving lines in the rain that turned into glyphs. Runes spiraled, distorting space. Water rose and formed spears. Earth cracked into jagged teeth.

Gu Yan didn't flinch.

The mirror flared.

The glyphs shattered.

The water fell.

And memory surged.

Suddenly the forest flickered.

Gone were the trees. Gone was the rain.

Instead, Gu Yan stood in an old training ground, lined with bamboo. Young disciples knelt around a fire. His teacher stood at the center, face blurred but presence unmistakable.

"Power means nothing without sacrifice," the teacher had said. "If you wish to change fate — you must first give up everything it remembers of you."

The illusion faded.

The attacker gasped, dropping to his knees.

"You—you let me see it?"

Gu Yan approached, eyes distant.

"No," he said. "The mirror did."

"Why?"

"Because your memory still mourns."

The man wept without shame. "I never wanted to forget…"

Gu Yan said nothing. He placed a hand on the man's shoulder — and for the first time in years, warmth passed between two cultivators.

Then he walked away, back toward the edge of the drowned city.

Below the water, something stirred.

Not just bodies. Not just ruins.

Something alive. Ancient. Watching.

Gu Yan's mirror pulsed, slower now. He did not fear it. Whatever waited in the depths was old enough to remember the world before sects, before cultivation, before names.

And Gu Yan?

He was walking backward into the past.

Every step forward was a step into shadow.