星河千载冷，

  尘世一花生。

  天上孤光远，

  人间有梦成。

  The stars stretch cold across a thousand years,

  While in the dust, a fragile flower blooms.

  The heavens remain distant, untouched, alone,

  Yet on the earth, dreams rise and fall like tides.

  001

  Prologue

  "There is nothing more treacherous than the human heart."

  墨塵 (Mò Chén) had seen it too many times to count.

  Mortals wept with hollow sorrow, grief vanishing like morning mist the moment ambition took its place. They whispered sweet oaths beneath moonlit skies, only to sever them with cold steel at dawn.

  Once, he thought he understood the heavens, the earth, the balance between light and shadow. But humanity was a puzzle without end, too fragile to endure eternity, too greedy to accept oblivion. They clawed at the fabric of existence, desperate to carve their names into a world that would forget them before the next season’s bloom.

  And so, he left it all behind.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  For centuries, Mò Chén had dwelled in the quiet ruin of a forgotten temple, where the wind carried only the echoes of his solitude. Time passed like a dream, weightless, unmeasured. Below, mortals lived and died, rising and falling like waves against the shore.

  He did not care.

  But the stars,

  The stars endured.

  Even as empires crumbled and the heavens shifted, they remained untouched, cold and indifferent to the rot of the mortal world. He envied them, these silent witnesses of eternity.

  If only he could be as they were.

  Without sorrow.

  Without regret.

  But the universe was cruel.

  On the night when the clouds broke and the stars shone brightest, fate intervened.

  A mortal stumbled into his domain.

  Bloodied.

  Desperate.

  Breathing as if she had defied death itself.

  A human.

  His fingers curled around the hilt of Beidou, his sword, silent, patient, long since untouched by battle. The woman, no, the girl, collapsed at the temple’s threshold. Her breath was shallow, but her will unbroken.

  She did not intend to die, even when the world willed it.

  Mò Chén watched in silence. A single droplet of blood traced its way across the cold stone floor, an offering to a god who no longer listened.

  Foolish.

  How foolish it was for mortals to believe they could outrun fate.