Location: Mt. Qinglong Periphery – Abandoned Weather Station 'Foxlight'
They arrived just past dawn.
The cabin was barely visible beneath a thick blanket of snow. Wind howled softly across the high ridge, as if the mountain itself had been holding its breath since Amei last walked here.
Lin Feng pushed open the warped door. Dust and memory spilled into his lungs.
Amei stepped in behind him. Her breath caught.
"It's exactly how I left it."
He turned.
"You were here alone?"
She nodded.
"After your 'death.' After they wiped everything. This place... resisted the deletion. Maybe because no one else knew it existed."
"Why does it feel like the walls remember me?"
She touched the wooden frame.
"Because they do."
Interior – Hours Later
A fire crackled in the old hearth. Amei sat wrapped in the same faded red blanket from her last stay, staring at the snow outside. Lin poured tea with unsteady hands.
"You really never told me you loved me?"
She raised an eyebrow.
"I was seventeen. You were half-invincible and fully oblivious."
"Fair."
Silence settled. But it was gentle now.
"I'm scared, Lin."
"Of what?"
"That I'll forget again. Or that I'll remember something that breaks me."
He sat beside her, slowly. Carefully.
"Then I'll be here. If you collapse, I'll pull you back."
She leaned against his shoulder.
"And if you forget?"
Lin smiled faintly.
"Then you'll do what you always do."
"Which is?"
"Find a way to slap the soul back into me."
Cut To: Rootlight Deep Crypt
The High Monitor stood before a massive cryo-sarcophagus.
Lights blinked.
Steam hissed.
A label etched in faded glyphs:
[TEMPORAL WARDEN: SUBJECT Z-LIN]
**Status: Dormant. Relation to Lin Feng – **Ancestral Fragment.
A voice whispered from the dark:
"You're waking him?"
"The boy's bloodline needs reminding. Before he becomes more than even we intended."
The chamber rumbled as the sarcophagus opened.
Inside… a figure with Lin's face.
Older. Colder.
And utterly without mercy.
Back at the Cabin
Amei stirred.
"Something's coming."
Lin looked up from the fire.
"You felt it too?"
Outside, the snow had stopped falling.
But the sky was wrong.
Too still.
Too folded.
Like time had blinked sideways.
Amei whispered:
"Whatever they're sending… it's not human anymore."