The Return Undeserved

The sky had not yet brightened when the camp stirred.

A chill blanketed the valley where broken trees and scorched stones whispered of war. Ash still clung to their boots, to their breath, to their hearts. Silence had become a fifth companion now, just as heavy as their packs.

Camellya adjusted the straps on her armor, fingers tight with deliberation.

"We move before noon. No ceremonies. No grand farewells."

"Like thieves in the dark?" Shen Yan asked, his voice dry, but not unkind.

She didn't look back at him. "No. Like survivors."

From a distance, Su finished packing the supplies—rations, dried herbs, a folding tent. The fire was already out. There would be no trace of them come morning.

Xue Yiran stood a few paces away from the others, arms crossed tightly under the long sleeves of her robe. Her eyes hadn't left Jin Mu since dawn.

"I'm coming," she said flatly.

Camellya didn't respond at first. Just met her gaze.

"You know this isn't going to be a clean walk through fog, right?" Camellya finally said. "The Vault isn't a library. It's a grave for minds like his."

"I'm not here for permission," Xue replied.

She turned her gaze back to Jin, who sat by the roots of a charred tree, knees hugged to his chest, watching shadows move between the rocks.

She'd braided his hair that morning.

It was a simple act, maybe even silly, but the way he had leaned into her touch—gently, uncertainly—had made her heart thud painfully.

She hadn't meant to care this much. Not for someone she once thought beneath her. Not for a regressor she didn't know existed.

But in this fragile, hollow boy with haunted eyes, she saw something she never had in anyone before:

Vulnerability without deceit.

And something told her—

If she left now, she'd never see him again.

They moved in silence.

Through the fractured canyon, over rivers dyed grey from the fallout of divine powers. Past forests that no longer bloomed, but waited—like old, wounded beasts nursing phantom scars.

The Vault of the Severed Root lay far in the north. Past the known territories. Past the buried empires. Beyond maps, beyond the whispers of even the most broken cults.

But Camellya knew the way.

Because long ago, when she'd still worn her title as a chained sword-bearer of the Ashen Choir, she'd studied sacrificial reversal as a forbidden art. She had failed then.

She would not fail now.

On the second day of travel, Jin began to murmur.

Just fragments.

A word. A sound.

Sometimes a name: "...Su...?"

Other times a question without form: "Where…?"

He would look around, lips parted, eyes wide with a kind of infant fear.

It tore something inside Xue Yiran every time he did.

That night, after camp was set and Shen took first watch, she sat next to Jin and offered him half her share of the sweet grain cakes they'd bartered from a roaming trader earlier that week.

He blinked at it. Then took it with both hands, cradling it like something sacred.

"You're warm," he whispered suddenly.

Xue's breath caught.

"What?"

"Your hands… they're warm."

His voice was so small. So genuine.

It frightened her more than anything else in the world.

She nodded, swallowing her emotion.

"Yeah. I guess they are."

A pause. Then:

"...Thank you," he murmured.

It was the first full sentence he had spoken since his mind broke.

And when she smiled—it was the first true smile she'd worn since before he left the Sect.

The third night, they camped beneath the edge of the Wailing Pines—a cursed woodland where the trees bent inward like conspirators and whispered when the wind passed.

Camellya stood watch, blade unsheathed, aura low but coiled like a serpent.

Su lay curled near the fire, dreaming faintly of her little brother's laughter.

Shen Yan sat sharpening his blade. With one arm, it took longer, but the sound of metal on stone kept his mind steady.

And just outside the flickering firelight, Jin Mu sat beside Xue, staring at the sky.

There were stars above them—distant, indifferent, cold.

"I think," he said suddenly, "I used to know those stars."

Xue turned to him slowly.

"You… remember them?"

Jin's brows knit. He looked down at his hands.

"No. Not really. It's like… echoes. Shapes. Like a song you forgot the words to, but remember the tune."

Xue's voice dropped.

"Do you want to remember?"

He didn't answer at first.

Then, so quietly she almost missed it:

"No."

She froze.

He turned to her, expression earnest.

"I don't know who I was. But I think he hurt people. I think… he killed people. If that's who I was, I don't want to go back to being him."

Xue's throat tightened.

For a moment, she wanted to say no, you were kind, you were brave, you saved us, but how could she?

How could she convince him of his own past goodness when he couldn't even recognize his reflection?

So instead, she reached out and gently, gently brushed his hand with her fingertips.

"You weren't perfect," she said softly. "But you were never a monster."

He stared at her hand.

Then… didn't pull away.

Far above them, beyond sight, a storm began to form over the Frozen Expanse—where the Vault waited buried in a spiral of dead gods and lost names.

Camellya looked to the horizon, eyes sharp.

"We're getting close," she said.

Shen looked up.

"Feels like something's watching us."

Camellya didn't reply.

She already knew.

Something was.

They reached the threshold by dusk.

The entrance to the Vault of the Severed Root was not carved by mortal hands. No glyphs, no runes, no door. Just a gnarled ravine that split the earth like a scar, its edges veined with black crystal and bones.

The moment Jin Mu stepped within a dozen paces of it, his legs buckled.

He dropped to his knees.

Xue caught him immediately. "Jin—?"

But his eyes were open. Not empty—not glassy. No.

Terrified.

His pupils shrank. His breath shortened. His mouth opened as if to scream but no sound came.

He was remembering something.

But it wasn't a memory from before the mind-wipe.

It was something older. Something locked deeper than even regression.

A visceral soul-memory buried by time, trauma, and sacrifice.

The Vault called to him.

"Do we go in?" Shen asked quietly, standing just behind them, sword sheathed and head bowed toward the dark opening.

Camellya nodded once.

"It's the only way."

"Does he even know what's inside?"

"No. That's why it might work."

Xue looked over her shoulder. "Explain. Now."

Camellya stepped forward, kneeling on one leg beside Jin.

"The Vault reacts to pain. To distortion. To the fraying of identity and soul. If you walk in whole, you're torn to shreds. If you walk in shattered, it tries to sew you back together."

Shen frowned. "That sounds like blind luck."

"It's not. It's ancient. The Vault is one of the Old Foundation Constructs. Predates the System."

Xue blinked. "You mean—"

"Yes. Before the Pathways. Before the Sequences. Before cultivation was ever called that."

She looked at Jin.

"And he's exactly broken enough to survive it."

They made camp just outside the fissure.

The shadows stretched unnaturally long here. The sun refused to settle directly above the Vault, as if the heavens themselves denied its existence.

That night, Jin Mu didn't eat. Didn't speak. Just stared at the void.

Camellya gave him a sleeping draught, just light enough to dull his panic. Xue helped him lie down, her fingers brushing the side of his face with painful gentleness.

"We'll bring you back," she whispered. "I promise."

But dreams had their own will in places like this.

That night, inside the drug-soft haze of his broken mind, Jin Mu dreamed of a garden.

Not the Eternal Pavilions. Not the slave-barracks. Not the archives.

This garden was different.

Dead trees growing upside down. Leaves that wept blood. Statues broken at the throat. And at the center—an altar made of shattered books and severed hands.

He approached slowly.

There was a child standing beside the altar.

The child had his face.

But younger. Wild-eyed. Laughing.

"You're late," the child said, voice like rusted bells. "I've been waiting."

"…Who are you?"

"I'm the part of you you gave away to gain power," the child said, smiling. "I'm what you sacrificed."

And suddenly, the altar behind him burned blue—not flame, but memory.

Names. Screams. Orders barked in a language Jin no longer remembered. The smell of copper and betrayal.

He staggered back.

"No… I didn't—"

"You did," the child whispered, eyes glowing. "And you'll do it again. Because that's the kind of person you are."

And just before the dream collapsed—

The boy smiled, raised a single finger, and whispered:

"I forgive you."

Jin woke gasping.

His throat raw.

Xue was there. Instantly.

He clutched her tunic before he even knew what he was doing, like a drowning man holding driftwood.

"I—I saw me."

"I know," she said gently. "You're safe."

He shook his head. "No. No I'm not. I never was."

He began to cry.

Silently. Then louder. Then a sound like something torn.

Not for pain.

But because for the first time since he woke up broken—

He remembered something.

At sunrise, they prepared for the descent.

Camellya drew a rune-scar into the dirt—a spiral with nine jagged thorns—and lit a violet flame at its center.

"Once we enter," she said, "Time may not pass the same way. Stay together. Do not answer if something calls your name."

Jin stood now.

Still pale. Still trembling. But upright.

He looked at Xue, then at Shen, then at Su, then Camellya.

"…I'm ready."

And then, without another word—

They stepped into the Vault.