---
The wind carried the scent of damp soil and silence.
Xu Lian stood before the old riverside hut, its wooden frame leaning with age, the roof slumped on one side like a man who had forgotten how to stand tall. Grass had overgrown the path to the door, vines twisted around the frame like nature trying to reclaim it. The place hadn't been touched in years — just like the name it once belonged to.
His fingers brushed the warped doorframe.
"Still standing," he muttered. The words felt foreign in his mouth. He hadn't spoken aloud in days.
Inside, dust stirred like ghosts in the air. Every step awakened creaks and groans — not from the wood, but from memories buried beneath it.
There was a crack in the floorboards where she used to sit.
The low table they carved together still bore the scar of an old knife slip and a shared laugh.
Everything was still here — only she wasn't.
He sat in the center of it all — this shrine of silence — and pulled out a letter from the fold of his sleeve.
Its paper had yellowed.
Its ink, though faded, still told the truth.
"I'll be back before sundown. Wait for me by the river. I'll bring the peach blossom wine you love. Don't worry... this time, I won't be late."
But he had been late.
And she had waited.
And now she would never wait again.
Xu Lian stared at the letter until it blurred, until he could no longer see the words — only her smile, and the way it had quietly stopped.
---
Outside, the river moved — cold, endless, and patient.
The same river that had witnessed their promise.
The same river that had carried the silence after her death.
He stepped barefoot into its current, let the chill bite into his skin, let it burn away the numbness.
"I promised," he whispered.
"I failed."
And then, lower — almost a breath:
"I still want to keep it."
---
The current flowed around him, but inside his chest… something shifted.
A warmth. A tremble. A pain so old he had forgotten its name.
---
The Monologue:
He had lived these years like a shadow pretending to be a man.
And yet, beneath the silence… something had survived.
Not ambition. Not talent.
Just one thing.
A vow.
He had failed it.
But he had never abandoned it.
That vow was not a memory — it was a wound.
And wounds, when left open long enough, begin to take shape.
A scar is still part of the body. A broken promise is still a path.
In the stillness, he felt it:
A faint pulse — not in his veins, but in the soul he thought had already withered.
A root.
Fractured. Brittle. But present.
And then, not a voice… but a knowing. A truth without sound:
> "You have entered the First Realm of the Cycle of the Dying Vow: Fractured Root."
He didn't understand it fully. Not yet.
But he knew what it meant.
This time… I will not fail.
---
That night, in the hut where memories clung like shadows, Xu Lian opened his eyes — truly opened them — for the first time in years.
Outside, the river kept flowing.
Above, the stars blinked cold and distant.
And somewhere far above all things, Heaven paused. Not in approval. Not in mercy.
Only in recognition.
The forgotten path had awakened.
And so had the man who once walked it.
---