The void did not spit them back out.


    It folded them, like a scribe tucking a love letter into a sleeve, creasing the world until the distance between here and there was nothing but a breath. One moment, Zhen’s lungs were collapsing in the dark. The next, cold air razored down his throat, and his knees hit solid ground with a jolt that sent fresh blood seeping through his robes.


    Beside him, Lián coughed, his fingers digging into the earth like claws. His sword lay a handspan away, its blade dulled by something thicker than dust.


    Zhen wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His palm came away smeared black. Not blood.


    Ink.


    "Ah," he croaked. "We’ve been written somewhere new."


    Lián’s gaze snapped up, sharp as a blade’s edge. Around them, the world resolved into something almost familiar, a courtyard, but not. The stones underfoot were too smooth, the walls too straight, the air too still. No wind. No birds. Just the oppressive weight of a sky that wasn’t quite sky, its color the dull sheen of old parchment.


    And the trees.


    Zhen’s breath hitched.


    They stood in perfect rows, their trunks too uniform, their branches stretching in symmetrical arcs. Not grown.


    Drawn.


    Their leaves rustled without sound, edges crisp as brushstrokes.


    Lián stood slowly, his sword held loose at his side. "This isn’t real."


    "Mm. But is it unreal enough to kill us?" Zhen prodded a pebble with his boot. It didn’t roll. It pivoted, as if pinned to the ground by an unseen hand.


    A whisper of silk.


    They turned as one.


    At the courtyard’s center stood a figure, tall, slender, its face obscured by a scholar’s hat, its robes the color of ink left to dry in the sun. Not black. Not gray. The absence of color entirely.


    It held a brush in one hand, its tip dripping something dark.


    Zhen’s phantom wound throbbed.


    The figure lifted its head. Beneath the hat’s shadow, there was no face. Only the suggestion of one, a stroke where a brow should be, a smudge for lips.


    Unfinished.


    Waiting.


    Lián shifted his grip on his sword. "Speak."


    The figure did not.


    Instead, it raised its brush and swept it through the air in a single, fluid motion.


    The world ripped.


    Zhen barely had time to lurch back before the ground where he’d stood peeled upward like paper catching flame, the edges curling into ash. The tear spread, racing toward them, not fire, not decay, but erasure. Where it passed, the courtyard dissolved into blankness, a scream of white silence.


    Lián grabbed Zhen’s arm and yanked him sideways. "MOVE!"


    They ran.


    The trees bent as they passed, their branches snatching at sleeves, their leaves whispering in a language neither of them knew. Behind them, the void yawned wider, swallowing the path whole.


    Zhen risked a glance back. The figure stood at the heart of the unraveling, its brush moving methodically, unhurried. As if it had all the time in the world.


    As if they didn’t.


    A gate loomed ahead, its arch carved with familiar characters, ones they’d seen stitched into the tapestry’s threads, ones that had shimmered in the dream’s false light.


    "Through!" Lián didn’t slow.


    They crossed the threshold, and the world snapped back into place like a scroll rolled shut.


    Zhen stumbled, his boots sinking into mud. Real mud. Thick, cold, reeking of rain and earth.


    The inn’s ruins hunched behind them, its roof caved in, its walls sagging. Not flickering between states anymore. Just dead.


    Lián’s chest heaved. His sword was still in his hand, its tip trembling ever so slightly.


    Zhen opened his mouth.


    A droplet hit his cheek.


    Then another.


    Rain.


    Real… rain.


    The kind that soaked through robes and washed away blood and ink alike.


    Lián exhaled, long and slow. His fingers flexed around his sword hilt, but he didn’t sheathe it. Not yet.


    Zhen wiped his face and grinned, though it felt like pulling teeth. "Well. That was…"


    A sound cut him off.


    Click.


    Click.


    Click.


    Jade beads, rolling across knuckles.


    They turned.


    The hooded man stood at the tree line, his face still shadowed, his fingers still moving. But this time, he wasn’t smiling.


    This time, he lifted his head, and the last bead dropped from his hand into the mud with a sound like a grave closing.


    The bead struck the ground like a cannonball…


    and in the instant it shattered, the man was gone.


    A heartbeat later, the shockwave hit, not in flesh, but in spirit.


    It slammed into their cores, rattling divine bones like dice in a gambler’s cup. Zhen’s teeth cracked together with a sickening snap, blood blooming across his tongue. Lián staggered, his sword arm raised instinctively, as though to block a blow that had already landed deep within.


    “Gods-damned!” Zhen spat crimson into the mud. “What the hell was that?”


    Lián’s fingers flexed around his hilt, his knuckles white as bone. “I don’t know,” he said, too calmly. The kind of calm that comes just before a blade finds its mark.


    “But now we can be sure. He was the cause.”


    Dust hung heavy in the air, shimmering in the slanted sunlight like powdered glass. As it settled, the scene emerged, and the truth gaped wide before them.


    The inn wasn’t just ruined. It was erased. Where warped timbers had once stood, there was only a raw wound in the earth, puckered, sunken, as if something immense had bitten down and swallowed.


    And beyond that...


    the void had grown.


    It wasn’t a darkness born of nightfall or silence.


    It was hunger, made manifest.


    The world curled inward at the edges, trees dissolving into mist, rocks unraveling like thread. Even the air itself seemed to come undone, folding, fraying, vanishing.


    The land did not break.


    It forgot how to be.


    Lián didn''t wait for it to remember.


    "Hold on!" he snapped.


    Zhen turned just in time to see Lián drive his sword into the air itself, not a strike but a turn, the blade slotting into the world''s hidden lock like a key forged for this exact moment.


    Silver light cracked along the edge, bleeding into the rift like ink into fresh paper.


    The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    He seized Zhen''s collar and flung them both forward.


    The void screamed.


    Not with sound.


    With absence.


    A tidal pull in reverse, trying to claim what wasn''t yet dead.


    Zhen''s feet left the ground, his body wrenching sideways as the world tried to keep a piece of him. He felt his shadow stretch behind him like taffy caught on a nail, and for one vertiginous instant, it didn''t want to come.


    Then everything snapped.


    And they were through.


    The sky above Tian was piercing blue.


    Too bright. Too perfect. Like it hadn''t noticed what they''d just come from.


    Zhen hit the courtyard tiles hard enough to crack the edge of his spine. His lungs seized. He rolled onto his side, coughing up more black than red this time, the taste metallic and bitter with something older than blood.


    Ink.


    It coated his teeth like ash.


    Lián dropped beside him, panting, his hair half-loosed and his robes soaked through with rainwater and divine sweat.


    He didn''t speak.


    They were in the back gardens of Tian. He recognized the koi pavilion to their left, the magnolia grove to the right. Real stone underfoot. Real sky above. The clamor of gods arguing three towers over.


    Home. Maybe.


    Zhen didn''t trust it.


    He sat up slowly, wincing. "That''s twice you''ve dragged me across reality like a sack of mortal rice."


    Lián didn''t rise.


    He crouched there, eyes fixed on the ground behind Zhen. Silent. Still.


    Zhen squinted at him. "Didi?"


    Lián''s mouth was tight. "Don''t move."


    Zhen froze. "There better not be a spider."


    Lián''s voice was cold as steel. "Look behind you. Slowly."


    Zhen turned.


    A reflecting pool stretched out behind him, one of Tian''s sacred ones, meant to catch the stars at night. Now it held only daylight.


    And his reflection.


    Except... not just his.


    His shadow stood behind him in the water, stretched tall and slightly off-center, like an echo drawn by a shaking hand. Its head was tilted, the way the figure in the dream had tilted its head. Listening.


    No face. No movement. But it was there.


    Watching him.


    Zhen shifted. The shadow didn''t.


    His stomach flipped.


    He turned back to Lián, forced a grin. "Well that''s unsettling."


    Lián''s knuckles were white around the hilt of his sword. "It didn''t want to let go of you."


    Zhen swallowed. His fingers brushed his chest. "I saw images of a scroll, a living breathing, three dimensional…scroll," he said. "There was a man with a brush and no face. He didn''t speak, but I knew him."


    "The one from the courtyard?" Lián asked.


    "No." Zhen''s voice dropped. "Another one. Older. Or newer. I can''t tell. But they''re connected. The one with the beads and the one with the brush. Maybe two sides of the same brushstroke. I think..." His fingers twitched. "I think they''re rewriting the world. Piece by piece. And the void is the eraser."


    Lián stared at him. "And you… let it write you?"


    Zhen looked at the pool again.


    The shadow was gone.


    He let out a breath he didn''t realize he was holding.


    "Not let," he said. "It just started. And for a moment, I couldn''t tell where I ended and the ink began."


    Lián stood at last. His posture was stiff, shoulders tight with thoughts he wasn''t saying. He sheathed his sword with a soft click.


    "We need to report this."


    "We need to lie about this," Zhen corrected. "You saw the generals. You think they''ll let us out again if they know we brushed up against a sentient void that wants to turn me into calligraphy?"


    Lián hesitated.


    "...Fine," he said at last. "But I''m going to carve protection sigils into your damned shadow if it tries that again."


    Zhen cracked a grin. "Aw. You do care."


    "I just don''t want to drag your smirking corpse back to the Tribunal again."


    As they walked away, Zhen cast one last glance at the pool.


    The water was still. Empty.


    But in the faintest shimmer at the edge, like old ink clinging to paper, something rippled.


    A half-formed stroke.


    Unfinished.


    Waiting.


    Zhen Wei’s house smelled like sandalwood, dust, and ink-stained recklessness.


    Stacks of scrolls and half-read tomes leaned against every available surface, some propped open with teacups, others slowly collapsing under the weight of divine neglect. The sitting cushions didn’t match. The table was lacquered in chipped cinnabar red and held exactly three objects: a brush stand, a bowl of candied hawthorn slices, and a sword wrapped in silk napkins.


    Lián Zhiruo stepped over a pile of sun-bleached poetry anthologies and sniffed. “You live like a scholar possessed by a raccoon.”


    “I am a scholar,” Zhen said from across the room, elbow-deep in a cabinet full of questionable wine. “And I’ve never once bitten a mortal in a trash heap.”


    “Yet.”


    Zhen reemerged triumphantly with a bottle. “Found the plum one!”


    Lián took it wordlessly and dropped onto a cushion that gave an ominous pffft of displaced stuffing. He stared at the ceiling beams, still visibly rattled despite the relative peace. “This place is a disaster.”


    “Thank you.” Zhen flopped down beside him, one leg slung over a stack of herb manuals. “I designed it to reflect the chaos of my soul.”


    Lián raised a brow. “Your soul is a fire hazard.”


    They sat in silence for a moment. Outside, the koi pond gurgled gently. The late-afternoon sun slanted in through carved windows, turning the motes of dust into slow-drifting constellations.


    A splash.


    Then a gurgling blorp.


    Lián glanced out toward the garden. “That fish just glared at me.”


    Zhen sipped from the bottle. “That’s Wèi Wèi. She judges all who enter. Especially people who knock over my scroll towers.”


    “She has good taste.”


    Another splash. This one more dramatic.


    Wèi Wèi launched herself halfway out of the pond, slapped her tail on the surface like a petty immortal banging a gavel, and vanished back into the water in a storm of bubbles.


    Zhen squinted. “...Okay, that one might’ve been for me.”


    Lián tilted his head. “Do you train your pets to reflect your personality, or does the chaos just... gravitate?”


    Zhen passed him the bottle. “It’s more of a vibe.”


    They drank in silence for a while, letting the soft rustle of pond reeds and the clatter of scrolls settling fill the gaps between their thoughts.


    Finally, Lián set down the bottle and said, “So. The void. The painter. The dream that almost turned you into a decorative stroke on some ghost’s calligraphy.”


    Zhen groaned and rubbed his face. “Yes, that.”


    “What now?”


    Zhen hesitated, then leaned back on his elbows, eyes narrowed toward the ceiling. “I don’t trust the Tribunal. Not after the way they looked at us like funeral expenses on legs.”


    “No one assigned to investigate a world-ending threat should be told ‘you’re perfect because you’re expendable,’” Lián said dryly.


    “Exactly. So if we don’t trust the Tribunal…” Zhen sat up, tossing a candied hawthorn slice into his mouth and talking around it, “then who do we trust?”


    Lián exhaled through his nose. “I haven’t a clue what this void is or what that painter is up to. But I don’t like being two steps behind something that eats reality.”


    Zhen frowned, then slowly looked toward the wall.


    A scroll hung there, half-dusted, bearing a single name in elegant, spare calligraphy: 守藏君 – Shǒu Cáng Jūn.


    Lián followed his gaze. “You think he’ll talk to us?”


    Zhen’s mouth twisted. “He remembers everything, even the things Heaven wants forgotten. If anyone knows what’s going on, it’s him.”


    Lián considered that. “You sure you want to knock on the door of the guy who keeps the things Heaven fears?”


    Zhen smirked. “Better than letting the void sketch its masterpiece on my backside. I’m not that kind of canvas.”


    Outside, Wèi Wèi breached dramatically again, spraying water across the garden stones.


    Lián wiped a droplet off his cheek with a sigh. “Fine. Let’s go see the Archivist of All the Terrifying Things.”


    Zhen raised his cup. “To deeply bad decisions and gods with secrets.”


    Lián clinked his cup against it. “Again?”


    Zhen: “Always.”


    Tian’s lower districts shimmered in the pale afternoon light, their winding walkways layered like a painter’s underdrawing, golden clouds skimming just above cobbled stone, and the air thick with the scent of immortal plum trees.


    Zhen Wei led the way, robes flaring behind him like a slightly scorched banner of defiance.


    Lián Zhiruo followed at a slower pace, arms crossed, his sword bouncing lightly at his hip. “You’re walking like someone with a very specific plan.”


    “I do have a plan,” Zhen said, tossing another candied hawthorn in his mouth. “Step one: arrive. Step two: charm the grumpiest man in all of Heaven into opening his glorified broom closet.”


    Lián arched a brow. “You mean the Celestial Archive of Lost and Forbidden Things?”


    “Same thing. Honestly, I don’t know why he gave it such a long name. ‘Grumble House’ would''ve sufficed.”


    The path narrowed into a staircase flanked by obsidian pillars carved with shifting characters, ancient scripts that only rearranged themselves when no one was looking. The air changed here, denser, older. It smelled like old ink and dreams left out in the rain.


    At the bottom: a massive bronze door, untouched by time and sealed without seam. No handle, no inscription, no keyhole. Just silence. And an overwhelming sense that the door was... aware.


    Lián stopped beside him. “So. How do you knock on something that predates the concept of sound?”


    Zhen cracked his knuckles. “Watch and learn, Didi.”


    He stepped forward, placed his palm flat against the bronze,


    …and promptly got zapped backward by a spark of celestial rebuke.


    He landed on his back in a patch of moss.


    Wèi Wèi the koi would’ve laughed.


    Lián leaned over him, deadpan. “Ah yes. The ancient and subtle art of slapping immortal artifacts.”


    Zhen coughed. “Might’ve deserved that.”


    “You definitely deserved that.”


    Zhen sat up, brushing moss from his sleeves. Then he cupped his hands around his mouth, tilted his head dramatically toward the door, and bellowed:


    “SHOU’ER! IT’S ME! I BROUGHT A GUEST AND PROBABLY A HEADACHE!”


    Silence.


    Then:


    “I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE. THE DOOR JUST TRIED TO SMITE ME, WHICH MEANS YOU’RE LISTENING.”


    Still nothing.


    Zhen squinted. “Alright. Plan B.”


    He took a deep breath and sang, off-key, loudly, and with a kind of chaotic reverence only Zhen could muster:


    “Ohhh mighty Archivist, keeper of scrolls,


    Let us in now, or I’ll sing from my soul!


    I know where your tea stash is hid on the shelf,


    And I’ll spill the location to Lián himself…”


    “Zhen Wei.”


    The voice didn’t come from behind the door. It came from within it, each word unspooling from the bronze like an old scroll reluctantly unfurling.


    Zhen straightened immediately. “Ah. There he is.”


    The door creaked. Slowly. Resentfully.


    With a final grinding sigh, it parted just enough for a slim crack of light to spill through.


    “Enter,” came the voice again, dry as sun-baked ink. “But do not touch anything.”


    Lián muttered under his breath, “Already my favorite god.”


    Zhen elbowed him. “Behave. He likes me.”


    “To everyone’s eternal confusion.”


    And together, the two gods stepped through the seal of memory into the heart of forgotten things.