Scene: The Ancestral Home — Present (Past Midnight)
Violet's voice breaks the silence like a quiet crack through glass.
The fire flickers low between them — Yè Yī's careful roast of beef turning in the dim orange light, smoke curling through the night air. He doesn't look up at first, still half-convinced this strange girl will vanish if he pays her too much attention.
But she doesn't.
She never does.
Violet leans forward, shadows lacing across her face, the flicker of the flame making her eyes look alive — too alive.
"Do you want to know what happened here?" she asks again, softer this time, almost teasing, but underneath it, something ancient hums.
The air tightens.
Yè Yī feels it — that unspoken wrongness in the earth, the faint hum beneath their feet.
He finally meets her gaze.
"Should I?" he asks.
Violet smiles — that kind of smile that isn't happiness, but a memory trying to stay buried.
"Only if you're ready to never sleep the same way again."
Yè Yī barely blinks before Violet yanks his wrist.
"Wait—hey!"
"Don't panic," she mutters, smirking. "Just… hold still."
The air twists. The night rips open like wet paper.
Suddenly, they're standing in the same yard — but everything's different.
The sky glows orange. Wind carries ash.
Voices echo from inside the house — urgent, military, angry.
"What—what did you do?" Yè Yī demands, his voice tight.
"Nothing illegal… yet," Violet says, squinting through the heatwaves. "We're not here. Just watching. Think of it as… playback mode."
"Playback what?"
Before she can answer, a sharp, familiar voice slices through the smoke — cold, commanding.
Huáng Nián Qīng.
She steps out of the main hall, flanked by black-suited ET agents. Her coat flutters behind her, silver insignia catching the firelight.
Violet tenses. "There she is… queen of bad decisions herself."
The agents scatter — some scanning the soil, others breaking through floor tiles. One kneels, holding a glimmering device.
"Core residue retrieved, ma'am."
Nián Qīng's tone is icy. "Record everything. Leave the rest. We move in twenty."
Flames roll from a burst pipe. The walls groan.
"Real and awful, isn't it?," Violet says. "She's the one who led ET here. They were looking for something under this house — and they didn't care who got in the way."
She looks at him sideways. "You didn't know, did you?"
Yè Yī shakes his head slowly. "I didn't even know I had a home like this."
"Yeah," she says quietly. "You were never supposed to."
They watch in silence as the agents mark symbols on the scorched ground. One of them kicks aside a broken plaque — the family crest.
Violet folds her arms.
"I didn't expect—"
"Yeah, no one does," she interrupts, glancing up at the collapsing roof. "ET doesn't visit for tea. They ransacked this place like it owed them an apology."
He stares at the flames licking the ancestral walls — places he never even got to know.
Violet sighs, softer this time. "Come on, ghost-boy. We've seen enough."
"What happens to them?" he asks.
She hesitates — just long enough for him to notice. "That part… you'll remember when you're ready."
The fire flares — light swallows everything.
When it fades, they're back by the dying campfire, their half-eaten meal cooling in the dark.
Yè Yī doesn't speak for a long time.
Violet pokes the coals with a stick. "You owe me dessert for that."
He looks up, dazed. "You're serious?"
"Dead serious." She smirks. "Time-traveling burns calories."