The courtyard rested in stillness. Morning mist clung to the worn stones, drifting like a pale breath through the silent pillars.

  Daeryon stood beneath the eastern archway, arms folded behind his back, eyes fixed on the distant peaks that burned faintly in the dawn light.

  I hovered beside him, forcing my voice to stay steady. “There’s only one way to remove the elders without collapsing the entire sect.”

  I pressed on. “We need to catch them in the act, with those shadowed figures. If we reveal their dealings, their intent, their allegiance… then their deaths become law, not murder.”

  Daeryon fixed his gaze to me, expression unreadable. “Daniel,” he said slowly, “you keep mentioning these figures.” He paused, measured, heavy. “Tell me… what are they called?”

  The question struck through me like the toll of a bell.

  My mouth parted, but no sound came.

  Pressure gathered behind my eyes, as though a door had slammed shut in my mind. Names, familiar as breath, hovered at the edge of awareness. But each time I reached for one, it dissolved into silence.

  “I… they’re…” My jaw locked. My vision frayed at the edges. They have names. I know they do. I wrote them.

  Daeryon looked my way. The stillness between us deepened until even the world seemed to hold its breath.

  “Then speak their names.”

  I tried.

  Nothing came.

  Mist coiled around my feet, weightless and cold. My heartbeat slowed.

  A tremor rippled through me, not fear of Daeryon, but of the void where truth should have been.

  Daeryon looked at me, not with suspicion, but with something sharper, something that cut deeper than doubt.

  Concern. Quiet, steady, and far too human.

  “Daniel,” he said softly, “I trust you.” His voice didn’t waver, but a quiet gravity underlined every word. “Still… are you certain these shadowed figures exist at all?”

  The air thinned, and the world shrank to the space between his question and my silence.

  I opened my mouth to answer—

  Then the world bled.

  Crimson.

  Reality splintered.

  A flood of blood-red light devoured my sight, drowning the world in living scarlet.

  That damned system surfaced again, burning before my eyes.

  “Oh, child… you struggle to name them,” it resonated, every word scraping against my soul. “Because within your mind… they do not exist.”

  A scream tore from my throat. “You again! I know they exist, I wrote them! They were part of the plot…”

  “Plot.” The word boomed inside my skull.

  “You speak of lives as plot, of worlds as design. You kept the memories of those you loved and let the rest decay. Do not mourn the losses you chose.”

  My face twisted with anger. “Loss? You call that loss? You want me to remember those disgusting creatures? My life was already in ruins, and you want me to waste time thinking about them?”

  The crimson light pulsed once, and everything shuddered. “Child. You broke… and decided all things could be broken.”

  The red deepened, thick and viscous, blood swirling through water. “You abandoned what did not comfort you. You preserved only what mirrored your pain. You call it memory. I call it selfishness.”

  I screamed back at him. “Fine! I get it, you bastard, I abandoned my story! But I’ve already moved past that. I said I wouldn’t abandon it again. What the hell do you want me to do? It’s not like I can just remember things from years ago!”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  The Crimson System leaned closer, its presence a molten gravity that pressed against my soul.

  His voice roared inside my mind. “You think reclaiming your story absolves you? You still treat them as characters you can erase from existence. You haven’t reclaimed your story, you’ve reclaimed only the pieces you care about.”

  Crimson wings unfurled behind the voice. “You howl of reclaiming,” it rumbled, each word scraping across my mind, “yet you still stand apart. You speak of your world as if it were ink, when it has already become blood.”

  “Oh really, you bastard?” I hissed. “You want me to love a disgusting father? A whore who only thinks of the throne? Or the elders who turn children into weapons and pit them against each other? You want me to love them?”

  The voice turned cold, absolute. “Then you are no creator. You are a coward who crowns himself god, then flees when his creations reflect his own corruption.”

  The words tore through me, clean as blades.

  My thoughts ruptured, spilling into chaos.

  Faces surfaced in the crimson haze, distorted silhouettes, people I once named, shaped with care...

  Their eyes were hollow.

  Empty.

  My mouth went dry. “I don’t… I don’t care about them. I just…”

  Then his voice returned, softer now. “Creation is neither love nor hate, it is responsibility. Existence granted is a chain that cannot be severed without cost.”

  His presence drew closer, not as fury, but as inevitability. “You forged them, then abandoned them. You denied them purpose, denied them endings, denied them even the dignity of being remembered.”

  The voice paused for a heartbeat, then continued. “And now you tremble before the void you carved yourself.”

  His pressure crushed against me. “I didn’t know,” I said, breath breaking. “But you’re wrong. The characters I made are still alive, I just need to remember them. You tell me to take responsibility for them, then I must refuse. Like you said, this world isn’t paper anymore. They made their choices.”

  His voice sharpened. “So now you place the blame on them. But that doesn’t absolve what you caused. After all, you made them this way.”

  Silence.

  I couldn’t argue. He was right, I’d created them this way.

  The crimson light coiled inward, folding into wings that wrapped around my core.

  He spoke again. “You once asked what I wanted.”

  A stillness fell over eternity.

  “But my answer remains the same. What you want has always been the only thing that mattered. Yet desire without embodiment births only ghosts.”

  Heat surged through me. “Now… move your Chi.”

  My mind froze. “What? You think I know how?”

  “Move it,” he commanded. “If you don’t know how, ask Daeryon. You are a ghost, but your bond has granted you power. Use it… or remain nothing but an outsider.”

  I felt it, my vast Chi, a storm waiting to be touched.

  “I…” My voice cracked under the weight of it.

  The crimson presence thinned. “Child of ink and dragon blood.”

  Its tone softened. “If you truly wish to reclaim your story, stop playing god at the edges. Gods watch from thrones.”

  The crimson walls shuddered, folding inward like closing wings.

  “You will walk among them. You will bleed with them. They are no longer words on a page, but beings. You may not erase them with thought alone.”

  A single pulse of crimson light flared.

  “To shape a world, you must live within it.”

  Then the pulse vanished. Silence reclaimed the courtyard. The crimson glow faded into the pale wash of dawn, leaving me kneeling among the cold stones, breath ragged, though I had no lungs.

  For a long moment, I didn’t move. The world had been drained of color; only the faint mist and the echo of that voice clung to the edges of my mind.

  Then his voice reached me through the haze. “Daniel! Daniel, where are you?”

  At first, there was static, pressure rippling through the air, a shimmer at the courtyard’s edge, and then his form solidified before my eyes. I could finally see him again.

  “Finally.” His tone wasn’t angry, but it carried weight. “Where were you? You vanished again, just like last time. I couldn’t sense you at all; your Chi just... disappeared.”

  His eyes narrowed slightly. “What exactly is happening, Daniel?”

  I tried to speak, but the words caught halfway between defiance and exhaustion. “I… I know this sounds strange, but please, trust me.”

  I drew a shaky breath. “They exist, the shadowy figures I told you about. I just… I’m having trouble with my memory right now.”

  Daeryon studied me for a long moment before exhaling. “If I didn’t trust you,” he said, voice low and steady, “we wouldn’t have come this far. You have my trust, Daniel. You never failed me before.”

  That hit deeper than I expected. All I could think about was how much our bond had grown.

  I swallowed hard, finding my voice again. “Okay… Daeryon, I need your help.”

  Daeryon raised a brow. “With what, exactly?”

  I straightened, the echo of the Crimson System still burning behind my eyes. “I need to learn how to use my Chi.”

  Daeryon’s gaze sharpened, though faint amusement flickered beneath it.

  “Yeah, right,” he said, folding his arms. “Since you first awakened your Chi, you’ve never been able to use it… or rather, you never truly tried, did you?” His tone carried no mockery, only the kind of honesty that cuts clean.

  I opened my mouth to defend myself, but the truth stopped me cold.

  Daeryon tilted his head slightly. “But first, why now? Why the sudden need to learn Chi?”

  My voice came out low, stripped of any pretense. “I don’t even know why,” I admitted. “But what I know is if I can learn to use Chi, even a little, I’ll be closer to getting my memories back.”

  He studied me for a long breath before nodding once. “Then I’ll teach you.”

  He turned, cloak whispering behind him as he walked toward the inner corridors. “Follow me.”

  We passed through the quiet halls of the Kang Sect, where low-burning torches flickered and disciples moved in silent discipline.

  At the far end, beyond carved doors and ancient seals, lay a vast training chamber, a stone circle lined with glowing inscriptions, each mark breathing faint traces of dragonfire.

  Daeryon stepped inside first. The floor responded to his Chi with a low hum. “This is my personal training chamber,” he said. “I can’t take you to the main hall, I can’t have the disciples seeing me talk to thin air. Now come.”

  I followed him into the chamber. The air shifted, heavy yet alive, vibrating faintly against my skin.

  Daeryon’s eyes glinted in the half-light. “Let’s begin.”

  As the doors closed behind us, it felt as if the mountain itself held its breath once more.

  Who do you think is right?