The mist in the valley moved like long strands of cloth played with by a gentle wind from a world that knew no boundaries, as if the place itself were breathing with a slow, careful rhythm.
Ruan stood in the middle of that mist, his body still filled with the lingering cold of the gray energy that had entered him moments ago—a foreign sensation that made each breath feel as though it passed through a thin barrier between life and death.
He felt a subtle tremor within his chest, a tremor born from a heartbeat that was not his, a heartbeat that echoed like an ancient voice forced awake after sleeping for thousands of years.
Every step he took made the valley floor give off a faint echo, as though the world was trying to remember the being who once walked this same path in ages long past.
As the mist slowly parted—opening a path as if drawn back by invisible hands—Ruan saw another figure sitting cross-legged atop an ancient stone covered in thin cracks. The stone looked as though it had endured a thousand seasons without shifting even once, and the body seated upon it blended so deeply with the surroundings that it seemed to have been part of the valley since the world's first dawn.
Ruan approached with slow, careful steps, for his body was still far from stable, and every strange heartbeat in his chest dragged his awareness inward, forcing him to acknowledge that he carried something he did not understand.
He stopped at a safe distance—though there was no true definition of safety in a place like this—and looked at the figure with eyes that slowly adjusted to the faint light produced by the mist.
The figure was a man with long white hair pouring down both sides of his body, as if his hair were a frozen river that had stopped flowing in the middle of time. His skin was pale, fragile, and cracked like earth long deprived of rain, yet despite his body showing clear signs of death, there was no stench nor hint of decay.
The body was still—but not the stillness of an ordinary corpse.
It was the stillness of someone waiting for something, or someone.
Ruan swallowed slowly, feeling his throat sting, then whispered softly, his voice trapped in the air as if the valley itself refused to let it fall,
"Was it you who called me earlier, or was I simply hearing a faint voice from this place—something not meant for the world of the living…"
His voice disappeared instantly. No echo returned. No sound bounced off the valley walls. It was simply absorbed by the mist.
But something inside him responded.
The heartbeat in Ruan's chest gave a gentle jolt—not painful, but strong enough to halt his breath. He clutched his chest with one hand, running his fingers over his skin, hoping to find something there—a mark, perhaps, or a scar—but found nothing but his own body, even though that body was no longer entirely his.
"There's something inside me…" he murmured. "I don't know if it's you or something you left behind…"
The valley wind halted at that very moment, as if the world felt the need to give a stage to a conversation between life and something that had crossed beyond death.
Ruan forced himself to take one more step closer to the seated figure. He could now see the man's face more clearly—the thin skin stretched over high cheekbones, the tightly closed eyelids already drying at the edges.
That face looked like the face of someone who had carried a great burden for a long time, yet also someone standing on the edge of a monumental decision he wished to leave behind for the world that followed.
Ruan whispered again, this time with a deeper, more cautious tone,
"Whoever you are… I want to know why I can see you. Why I've been hearing a voice in my head ever since I awoke…"
As he spoke, something impossible happened.
The figure's eyelids moved—just slightly—like someone awakening from an unimaginably long slumber.
The movement was small, nearly imperceptible, yet enough to make Ruan stumble half a step back, his breath catching from a shock so sharp his chest burned.
"Could you be… still alive…" he breathed, though the words died before they reached the air.
A thin gray light seeped through the scarcely opened eyes—not a painful light, but one that pierced directly into the mind, as though it were searching for something inside Ruan.
Ruan's body trembled as he felt a soft wave of energy touch his soul—not his flesh—but his very being. It crawled outward from the figure, touching him like invisible fingers evaluating whether he was worthy.
"You're… judging whether I'm worthy…" Ruan murmured, his voice shaking with emotions he could not understand.
The mist behind the figure reacted in an inhuman way.
It swirled like a whirlpool, opening a path into something that looked like a space not belonging to the valley.
Within that whirlpool, Ruan saw a vision—not from the present, but from a time long past. A vision of someone still alive when this place had yet to become a graveyard of corpses. A vision showing the same figure, sitting cross-legged, alive, emanating a flow of dark energy that streamed like a calm black river.
Ruan stared at the vision with his mouth slightly open, breath frozen in his chest.
The figure was alive.
The figure was powerful.
The figure looked like a sovereign standing upon the threshold of life and death.
And then the voice within Ruan's chest spoke again—
clearer, closer—
as though the figure whispered directly into his bones.
"Life and death are merely doors you must pass through if you wish to understand the world in its entirety…"
Ruan staggered backward. He did not cry, did not scream, did not beg.
He simply stood frozen, letting his body and mind be swallowed by a vision he had never imagined he would witness.
"What do you mean…" he managed, voice caught between despair and awe.
"What are you showing me…"
The vision collapsed like falling sand, and the mist shut the path once more. But the symbol on the corpse's chest began to glow softly, as though the light from that ancient memory had been left behind in the form of a sigil.
The sigil brightened, producing ripples of light that drifted upward before flowing toward Ruan. The energy was not harsh. Not forceful. Not painful. It moved like a gentle thread returning to its rightful home.
Ruan tried to back away,
"Don't… I don't know if I can withstand this… my body is too weak…"
But the voice responded again.
"You were chosen not for your strength… but for your will to live…"
The stream of light entered Ruan, slipping through his skin, his bones, and finally reaching the center of his chest. He felt a coldness pierce through him—not a freezing cold, but a cold that revived the parts of him already on the verge of death.
The heartbeat within him thumped hard—once, twice—and then Ruan's entire body lost balance.
The world around him warped slowly, like mist being dragged by an immense tide. The air lost its shape, the valley's sounds collapsed, and the soft light from the mist faded until there was no distinction between the real world and the darkness that swallowed it.
Ruan felt himself pulled into something shapeless—
a place where time did not move—
and within that pull, he could think only one thing before his consciousness slipped away:
The Ancient Corpse Heart… has awakened within me…
And he fell into a darkness so thick the world seemed to die with him.