Ling Yue stopped sleeping well after the Hall of Records.
Not because of dreams.
Because of clarity.
She would wake suddenly, breath caught in her throat, heart racing as if she had just remembered something important — only to realize there was nothing concrete there. No images. No faces.
Just certainty.
Something had been taken from her on purpose.
---
The Immortal Realm responded to her change before she did.
She began noticing how often she was redirected away from fate terraces. How assignments were quietly altered. How certain immortals lowered their voices when she passed.
She smiled anyway.
It was easier than asking questions.
---
"You're lingering again."
The silver-haired immortal appeared beside her without warning, gaze fixed on the distant weave of light below.
Ling Yue clasped her hands behind her back. "I like this place."
"You were never meant to return here," the woman said calmly.
Ling Yue tilted her head. "Then why does it feel like my feet know the way?"
Silence.
Then: "Because memory is not the only thing Heaven restricts."
---
That night, Ling Yue did something she had never dared before.
She followed the pull.
It wasn't loud.
It wasn't forceful.
Just a quiet insistence beneath her ribs, guiding her steps away from the upper halls and into older paths — places the Immortal Realm had stopped maintaining because no one used them anymore.
The air grew heavier.
Threads of fate shimmered faintly ahead, thinner here, less controlled.
Ling Yue knelt.
Her fingers hovered above the weave.
"I won't touch," she whispered. "Just… let me look."
The threads responded.
Not violently.
Eagerly.
---
Images flashed — not memories, but echoes.
Shadow folding around light.
A pause in destruction.
A name whispered into emptiness.
Her head snapped back as pain lanced through her skull.
Ling Yue gasped, clutching her chest.
"That's not supposed to happen," she whispered.
She had looked.
And fate had answered.
---
The lotus bud at her side flared suddenly, heat surging through her palms.
A single petal unfurled.
Ling Yue froze.
"No," she breathed. "You weren't supposed to—"
The air cracked.
Not sound.
Pressure.
Someone was coming.
Ling Yue turned just as golden light flared at the edge of the terrace — Heaven officials emerging from folded space, expressions cold and precise.
"Ling Yue," one of them said. "Step away from the threads."
She straightened slowly, heart pounding.
"What happens," she asked quietly, "if I don't?"
The official's gaze flicked to the lotus — now glowing unmistakably.
"Then," they said, "we will have to assume you remember."
---
Far beyond the Immortal Realm, in a place without sky or ground, Ye opened his eyes.
The pull was no longer faint.
It was unmistakable.
"…She's awake," he murmured.
Shadow stirred.