"The dead do not breathe. And yet, in the cold stillness beneath ten thousand years of frost, he did."
Darkness.
It was not the kind that blinded, nor the kind that hid—it was the kind that remembered. A silence so heavy that even thoughts felt like intrusions. The air was colder than the grave, and yet something stirred beneath it.
A breath.
From within a stone coffin layered in shattered ice, fingers twitched. Then a fist clenched. Somewhere deep beneath the Northern Ashen Mountains, in a tomb untouched by time, a figure rose with breath steaming in the frozen dark.
His eyes opened slowly.
They were silver—no, empty. Not lifeless, but blank, like mirrors that hadn't been polished in centuries. His skin was pale, bruised from frost, his long black hair frozen to the stone slab beneath him. He wore no robe, no sect crest. No ring of identity.
No name.
"Who… am I?"
The whisper echoed off the tomb walls, like a breath speaking to itself. But the silence had no answers.
⛩️ Ancient Ruin – Silent Void Sect Burial Grounds
He stumbled out of the coffin, barefoot, his steps shaky. All around him were rows of shattered burial urns, faded talismans, and walls carved with martial scriptures—most worn away, as if time itself had tried to erase them.
Carved above the door:
"Only the Hollow Remember."
He touched the rune. A spark flared in his mind.
Suddenly—
A vision. A battlefield of fire. A name screamed in anger. A hand reaching for him… then black.
Gone.
"…Was that me?"
His body convulsed. Qi stirred—raw, untamed. But there was no foundation. His dantian was empty—or worse, it felt hollow.
Yet in that emptiness… something pulsed. A rhythm. Like a heartbeat—but quieter.
Dum. Dum. Dum.
The Hollow Pulse.
🩸 A Ghost in the Snow
He emerged into the blinding white of the mountain's edge. The ruin's door cracked open behind him, and the world outside was wind, snow, and silence. But something had changed.
A shadow loomed in the snow.
A cultivator, wearing the sigil of the Iron Fang Sect, eyes glowing red, blade drawn.
"Who walks from the grave of traitors?" the man growled. "No one enters the Silent Void. You're not supposed to exist."
The nameless man didn't answer. He looked at his trembling hands. His body was weak, starved, untrained.
But his mind…
"I don't remember my name. But my fists remember something…"
The Iron Fang cultivator surged forward.
CLANG.
Barehanded, he caught the sword with nothing but intent. Blood ran down his palm—but the cultivator's eyes widened.
"You… you're using intent?! That's… That's Voidstyle!"
The fist moved. Not fast, not strong—but absolute.
One strike. The air split.
The snow froze mid-fall.
The Iron Fang disciple collapsed, eyes still open, blade still raised.
Dead.
🌑 Echo Fragment Unlocked
[Fragment: Past Life – Echo 17/1000]
"Silence is not the absence of sound. It is the presence of intent." – Hollow Disciple
A ripple ran through him. The cold no longer hurt. The hunger faded. His breathing slowed into rhythm with the Hollow Pulse.
"I don't know who I was. But I'll find out."
"And if this world has forgotten me—"
"—I will make it remember."
He turned toward the path of the sects—where wars brewed, where dragons slept beneath mountains, where the strong ruled and the weak obeyed.
He walked barefoot into the snow, unarmed, unnamed, reborn.