By then, Yu Jin was already somewhere else.
The small room in Qingqiu was gone.
The warm lamplight had vanished, along with the rustling bamboo forest, the distant evening drum, and the familiar scent of the mountain air.
All of it had disappeared.
There was no sky here.
No earth.
No horizon.
Nothing that could tell her where this place began or where it ended.
There was only fire.
Clusters of flames floated throughout the endless space, suspended in the darkness like countless burning stars.
They neither rose nor fell.
Instead, they revolved slowly through the void, drifting in silent circles as though each flame possessed a life of its own.
Some burned close to her, while others flickered far away.
Their light appeared and disappeared within the boundless darkness, stretching endlessly in every direction.
Yu Jin floated among them.
There was nothing beneath her feet and nothing supporting her body, yet she did not fall.
She simply remained suspended there, weightless, as though gravity had ceased to exist.
Yu Jin could not tell how long she had been there.
A second?
A moment?
An hour?
Perhaps even longer.
Time itself seemed to have disappeared.
There was no wind and no sound, only countless flames revolving slowly around her.
Yu Jin tried to move.
Her body did not respond.
She could not move her fingers, her arms, or her legs.
It was as though she had been separated from her own body, leaving only her consciousness trapped within this strange space.
What is this place?
The thought had barely formed when a sound suddenly reached her.
Yu Jin froze.
It was not a human voice, but neither was it the wind.
In fact, she could not even tell whether she had truly heard it.
The sound seemed to bypass her ears entirely, entering directly into the deepest part of her consciousness.
Then one voice became many.
They overlapped, layer upon layer, coming from both near and far.
Ancient.
Indistinct.
Like waves rising from an endless sea, they surged toward her from every direction.
Yet every word fell clearly into her heart.
“She has come.”
Yu Jin’s mind tightened.
Another voice followed, then another, until countless whispers seemed to merge into one.
“The Emberwing has awakened.”
The flames surrounding her trembled.
Yu Jin’s eyes widened.
Emberwing?
Before she could understand what that meant, the voices rose again, this time seeming to come from everywhere at once.
“The dream…”
A brief silence followed.
The entire space seemed to hold its breath.
Then—
“…will open once more.”
The words struck her consciousness like a wave.
Yu Jin’s thoughts instantly descended into chaos.
Where am I?
What did they mean when they said she has come?
Who was the Emberwing?
And what did it mean for the dream to open again?
Yu Jin wanted to ask.
She wanted to struggle free.
At the very least, she wanted to move.
But she could not.
Her body remained suspended helplessly among the flames.
No matter how hard she tried, not even the tip of her finger responded.
The only thing she could still feel clearly was the center of her forehead.
Heat.
Yu Jin’s attention immediately shifted toward it.
The space between her brows was burning.
Not merely warm.
Burning.
Beneath that scorching heat, something was pulsing.
Thump.
Yu Jin’s breath caught.
Thump.
Again.
The sensation followed a steady rhythm, almost like a heartbeat.
Except it was not coming from her chest.
It was coming from the center of her forehead, as though a tiny flame had taken root there and was now beginning to grow.
Little by little, the heat intensified with every pulse.
The flames surrounding Yu Jin seemed to respond.
One after another, they began to burn brighter.
The temperature rose, and the endless space gradually turned crimson beneath the growing firelight.
Yu Jin tried to clench her teeth.
The heat was becoming unbearable.
It poured through her consciousness and every part of her existence until she could no longer tell where the flames ended and where she began.
Too hot.
It felt as though she were being melted from the inside out, as though everything she was would soon dissolve into the endless sea of flames.
Then Yu Jin gradually realized that something was wrong.
Despite the overwhelming heat, she was not burning away.
The flames were not destroying her.
They were not trying to reduce her to ashes.
Instead, they were entering her, surrounding her, and calling to something buried deep inside her.
Gradually, beneath the unbearable heat, Yu Jin understood.
She was not being burned.
She was being— awakened.
The realization surfaced without explanation.
Yu Jin did not know why she understood it.
She simply did.
Something that had remained silent for far too long was being forcibly dragged from its sleep.
The flames continued to burn, but Yu Jin’s body slowly began to change.
At first, every part of her had been tense, instinctively resisting and rejecting the scorching force surrounding her.
Then, little by little, her body relaxed.
Her shoulders loosened.
Her hands slowly opened.
Her suspended body gradually stretched out within the sea of flames.
Resistance gave way to acceptance.
Rejection became response.
The fire around her surged. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
For one brief moment, Yu Jin had the strange sensation that the flames were no longer separate from her.
Then the fire ahead suddenly changed.
Yu Jin’s gaze sharpened.
The countless scattered flames began to gather at a single point.
One after another, streams of fire twisted together, and the surrounding light grew brighter.
Within that burning radiance, a silhouette slowly appeared.
Yu Jin stared ahead.
The flames parted, and a man emerged from within them.
He wore long black-and-gold robes.
The dark fabric fell around him without movement, while the edges reflected a faint, cold gleam beneath the firelight.
He simply stood there, silent and motionless, as though he had always been waiting within the flames.
Yu Jin could not see his face clearly.
No matter how hard she tried to focus, his features remained blurred beneath the shifting light.
Only his eyes were clear.
Deep.
Cold.
Awake.
Those eyes looked directly at her.
There was no visible emotion in them, yet Yu Jin had the strange feeling that nothing about her could remain hidden beneath his gaze.
Her thoughts.
Her confusion.
Even things buried deeper than memory itself.
He seemed able to see all of it.
Yu Jin froze.
Strangely, however, she was not afraid.
She felt no instinctive urge to retreat.
There was no fear and no awe.
Instead, something entirely different rose within her.
Familiarity.
Yu Jin stared at him as her heart trembled faintly.
Why?
She did not know him.
At least, she did not remember knowing him.
Yet the longer she looked at the figure, the stronger that feeling became.
It was not the vague familiarity of seeing someone who resembled an old acquaintance.
It went far deeper than that.
It seemed to exist before thought, before memory, and before anything she could explain.
For some inexplicable reason, Yu Jin wanted to approach him.
The impulse came naturally, almost instinctively.
She wanted to move closer.
Just one step.
Perhaps if she could get close enough, she would understand why he felt so familiar.
Yu Jin tried to move.
This time, her body responded.
Slowly, she moved toward him.
But just as she was about to take that first step—
BOOM!
The entire space shook violently.
Yu Jin’s eyes widened.
The floating flames suddenly reversed direction.
Every flame that had been drifting peacefully through the void was violently dragged backward at the same time.
The sea of fire twisted.
The darkness trembled.