Shen Liang woke before dawn.
Not because the day demanded it—but because he could no longer trust mornings.
The ceiling above him was unchanged. The same faint crack ran along the beam to his left. The air was cool, still heavy with night. No reset. No disorientation.
Good.
He rose quietly and dressed, strapping his training sword across his back out of habit rather than need. His body felt… normal. No lingering pressure. No whispering void.
Which meant the world was waiting.
He left the house without announcing himself. His mother did not notice. She never did.
The western slope lay beyond the estate, shrouded in pale fog that clung to the earth like a warning. Shen Liang moved through it with familiarity. This place had always been ignored—too old, too forgotten, too inconvenient to maintain.
Exactly the kind of place truth rotted in.
The tomb emerged from the earth like a scar.
The stone slab was untouched.
Shen Liang paused, hand resting on its surface.
Yesterday—before the reset—this had been the moment everything changed.
This time, nothing resisted him.
He pushed the slab aside and descended.
Cold air wrapped around him instantly. The faint metallic scent of age lingered, but beneath it was something else—dense qi, stagnant yet potent. His meridians responded involuntarily, drawing it in.
So the effect remained.
Good to know.
He moved past the rows of inscribed boxes, ignoring names that meant nothing to him, until he reached the back.
The unmarked box waited.
Unassuming.
Wrong.
He opened it.
The images lay inside as before. Three black-and-white sheets, smooth and alien to the touch.
Shen Liang lifted the first one, studying it carefully. The desert. The man. The woman. The faceless child.
He had stared at the front before.
This time, he turned it over.
His breath caught.
There were markings on the back.
Not ink.
Not engraving.
They were pressed into the surface, shallow but deliberate, as if the material itself had been convinced to remember.
The characters were unfamiliar—but readable.
Not ancient script.
Not modern.
Something in between.
Shen Liang read them slowly.
"Something precious will be taken from you."
His grip tightened.
He flipped the second image over.
The same inscription.
But altered.
"Something you do not understand as precious will be taken from you."
His pulse quickened.
The third image.
He hesitated before turning it.
Then—
"Something irreplaceable will be taken from you."
Silence pressed in around him.
Shen Liang lowered himself to the floor, images spread before him.
"So that's it," he murmured.
A curse.
Or a law.
Or a consequence.
His mind returned unbidden to the previous cycle.
His mother's corpse.
The blood.
The cut.
Had that been the "precious" thing?
He frowned.
No.
She had never been precious to him.
Not emotionally. Not spiritually. Not even sentimentally.
She was an obligation. A source of resentment. A shadow that loomed over his childhood, not a light that guided it.
If the world—or whatever authored these images—believed her death was a loss meant to hurt him…
Then it had failed.
Which raised a far more troubling possibility.
Shen Liang's gaze darkened.
"This time," he whispered, "you'll take something else."
Something he actually cared about.
Something he had not yet identified.
Something he would notice only when it was gone.
A slow, unpleasant chill crawled up his spine.
He carefully placed the images back into the box, ensuring they lay exactly as before. He did not bend them. Did not test them. Not yet.
Provocation could wait.
Understanding came first.
As he sealed the box, a thought struck him—quiet, sharp, unwelcome.
What if the reset was not mercy?
What if it was correction?
A failed attempt.
The world rewinding to try again.
Shen Liang stood and left the tomb without looking back.
Outside, the fog had begun to lift. The sun was higher now, time continuing as it should.
No reset.
No scream.
No corpse.
Which meant the countdown was still running.
And this time, whatever was taken would not be so easily dismissed.
Shen Liang's expression hardened.
"If you want something precious," he said softly, "you'll have to figure out what that is first."
Shen Liang did not leave the tomb immediately.
The silence after the voice vanished felt heavier than its presence. Like a held breath that never exhaled. He stood before the unmarked box, staring at the images as though they might rearrange themselves when unobserved.
Slowly, deliberately, he picked up the third image again.
Not the front.
The back.
He had not checked it before.
The surface was rougher there, matte instead of glossy. Time-worn—but not blank. Faint lines were etched into it, shallow enough that torchlight barely caught them unless viewed at the right angle.
Shen Liang tilted the image.
Characters emerged.
Not carved.
Pressed.
Ancient script—older than the academy, older than most known sect records. The strokes were uneven, as if whoever had inscribed them had done so in a hurry… or in pain.
He traced them with his finger, lips moving soundlessly as he deciphered them.
Then he stilled.
That which you treasure will be taken.If nothing is cherished, understanding will be removed instead.
Shen Liang read it again.
And again.
His first reaction was irritation.
"That's it?" he muttered. "A threat vague enough to mean anything?"
Then the meaning settled.
His mother.
The first time.
"She meant nothing to me," Shen Liang said aloud, voice echoing faintly off the tomb walls. He searched himself for grief—and found none. Only memory. Habit. Residual awareness of inconvenience.
If the curse—or whatever this was—had taken something precious from him before, then it had failed.
Or—
His breath slowed.
"Or it took something else," he said quietly.
He frowned, rubbing his temples.
Had anything felt… missing?
Yesterday—the other yesterday—after he had awakened from the void, there had been a moment. A fraction of hesitation. A delay in thought he could not account for.
He dismissed it at the time.
Now he was no longer sure.
Shen Liang placed the image back into the box and sealed it. He left the tomb with measured steps, mind already cataloguing variables, possibilities, counters.
If something precious was to be taken—
Then today was not over yet.
The sun was still high when Shen Liang returned to the estate.
Too high.
He paused at the gate, frowning.
"Wasn't it later?" he murmured.
The angle of the light bothered him. He could not articulate why—but something about it felt incorrect. As though the world had been nudged a fraction out of alignment.
He shook his head and stepped inside.
His mother's voice rang out immediately.
"Liang'er! Did you forget something again?"
He turned toward the sound.
And hesitated.
She stood in the courtyard, arms crossed, expression sharp as ever—but for a moment, Shen Liang could not recall her name.
Not her title.
Her name.
The realization struck him like a slap.
His heart skipped.
"…Mother," he said finally.
The word felt… imprecise.
She scowled. "What are you standing there for? You're late."
Late for what?
The thought surfaced unbidden—and lingered too long.
Shen Liang opened his mouth to answer, then stopped.
Late for—
The academy.
Yes.
Of course.
Why had that taken effort?
He nodded stiffly and turned away before she could say more. His steps were quicker now, uneven. A thin thread of unease wound tight around his chest.
As he walked the familiar streets, details began slipping through his fingers.
A vendor greeted him by name.
Shen Liang responded a beat too late.
A group of students passed, laughing loudly. He recognized their uniforms—but not the sect insignia stitched into the sleeves. He stared until they noticed and scowled at him.
"Watch where you're going, freak," one snapped.
Shen Liang blinked.
Freak?
He knew why they called him that.
Didn't he?
The academy gates loomed ahead.
Ancient stone. Formation lines.
Magic.
Qi.
Yes.
Those words still had meaning.
Relief flickered—then faltered as he realized he had needed that reassurance.
The lecture hall felt wrong the moment he stepped inside.
Not visually.
Conceptually.
He took his seat among the E and F ranks, as usual. Familiar faces surrounded him.
Too familiar.
He knew these people.
He just couldn't remember from where.
The master entered.
Robes. Flat gaze.
Authority.
Shen Liang felt it instinctively—but the name of that authority slid away when he tried to grasp it.
The master spoke.
"The assignment is simple."
Shen Liang flinched.
Not because he had heard it before.
But because he couldn't remember when.
His fingers dug into the desk.
Focus.
Breathe.
This was the curse.
Not death.
Not blood.
Erosion.
Understanding.
The master continued speaking, but the words began to blur together. Shen Liang caught fragments but the structure dissolved before it could settle.
Someone laughed.
Shen Liang turned—
And for a terrifying second, he did not know why laughter existed.
His breath hitched.
The sound registered as noise. Reaction followed. Meaning lagged behind.
"No," he whispered.
He clenched his fists beneath the desk, nails biting into skin. Pain grounded him—just barely.
That which you treasure will be taken.
He had told himself he treasured nothing.
That was the mistake.
He treasured understanding.
Clarity.
Control.
The ability to see the world as it was and dissect it without mercy.
And now—
It was being peeled away.
Layer by layer.
By the time the bell rang, Shen Liang was sweating.
He stood too quickly, chair scraping loudly against the floor. Heads turned. He ignored them and walked out—walked, not ran, because he still remembered how to move normally.
Barely.
Outside, the sky looked wrong again.
Too bright.
Too wide.
He stared at it until his eyes hurt.
"What… comes next?" he muttered.
The question frightened him more than anything else that had happened.
Because he truly did not know.
And worse—
He was no longer certain he would remember the answer even if he found it.
Somewhere beneath the western slope, in a place without light or time, something shifted—not with anger, not with satisfaction, but with quiet inevitability.
The payment had begun.
And it would not stop at one thing.