Chapter 3: From Ashes, a Second Path
Before Xiao Ning could comprhand what’s happening, the void around him shifted.
Images began to form—scenes begin to appeal in his mind– memories.
The images that surged into Xiao Ning’s mind were not his own, and yet they felt oddly familiar—woven into the fabric of his soul, as if they were buried echoes of a path he had once walked.
He was only seven.
A scrawny, barefoot orphan with dirt-streaked cheeks and eyes dulled by hunger. For two years, he had survived on scraps, dodging beatings, stealing just enough to avoid starving.
Then one day—perhaps by fate, perhaps by cruel coincidence—he stole from the wrong person.
It had been a simple plan. A dried meat bun tucked under the sleeve of a withered old man seated by the roadside, blindfolded, unmoving, like all the beggars that haunted the slums.
But the moment his fingers brushed the cloth of the old man’s sleeve, time seemed to halt.
His wrist was caught.
Not tightly, not violently—just... stopped. As if the world itself had frozen around that single motion.
The old man turned his head slightly, empty sockets wrapped in a black silk band.