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The Temple slept, but Rei did not.
He wandered through its whispering halls, guided only by the dim glow of spirit-lanterns and the pull of something ancient, coiled deep inside his chest. Each footstep echoed like a word unspoken — a rhythm that stirred memory more than stone.
Tonight, the glyphs did not glow.
But they ached.
He reached the quietest part of the Temple — a side hall rarely used, its walls lined with blank scrolls and unopened jars of ink, all waiting for words that never came.
There, he sat cross-legged beneath a window that framed the moon. His hands, scarred by the resonance of forgotten syllables, trembled faintly as he reached into his robe and pulled out a single fragment of parchment.
Burned. Torn at the edges. Written in a hand not his own.
Just one word:
"Shān."
---
A Memory Buried
His mind drifted.
Not into sleep — but into recollection.
He was eight years old, hiding beneath a shrine's broken steps. Outside, the world burned. A village without a name, razed not by war, but by Wordhunters — fanatics who believed that no one but the Sealed Temples had the right to speak.
His mother had known better.
She was not a warrior. Not a priest. But her voice had power — not because it commanded, but because it comforted.
> "Rei," she had whispered that night, pressing the parchment into his hands, her voice shaking with more love than fear,
"If you forget everything else, remember this."
She had drawn the character slowly — 山— mountain.
> "We are not the storm. We are the thing that endures it."
She hadn't survived the night.
The glyph had burned into the skin above Rei's heart when the Wordhunters found her — a final surge of protection, cast without rage, only resolve.
Years later, when Shān-Luò found him — bleeding, mute, hidden beneath charred stones — the glyph still pulsed.
> "You are not meant to speak yet," the old man had said. "But one day, your silence will roar."
---
The Shadow Within
Back in the Temple, Rei traced the edge of the parchment again. It hadn't aged. Not truly. The ink resisted time — as all real Words did.
He wondered, not for the first time, what his mother's name had been. He had never heard it spoken again. In this world, names had power. And power could be dangerous.
He pressed the parchment to his forehead, then folded it carefully back into the inner pocket of his robes.
Footsteps interrupted the silence.
It was Mìng — silent as always, though he never used that silence to hide.
> "You carry a ghost," the blind boy said, standing at the edge of the corridor. "But it is not hers."
Rei looked up, startled.
> "What do you mean?"
Mìng did not move closer. "Her voice left you a shield. But your Word came long before her. You were named by something older."
> "I don't understand."
> "You will."
Mìng turned to leave — then paused.
> "When the Temple calls you again, do not speak first. Let it speak you."
---
In the Shadow of the Mountain
Rei stayed long after the moon passed its peak.
He lit a single candle. No glyphs. No invocation.
Then, on a new scroll, he wrote her Word again:
Shān.
But this time, he added his own beneath it..
Xuān
Mountain. Echo.
Two names, one silence.
He watched the ink dry — not fade, but settle — as if accepting something at last. When he closed his eyes, the ache in his glyphs softened.
Not because they had stopped calling.
But because he had started to listen.