In Fang Yuan's aperture, the scroll refused to dry.
He had written no new move. No law. No path refinement.
But still, the parchment blurred — as if a name kept trying to inscribe itself and failed.
"It is not forgetting," he thought. "It is evasion."
Elsewhere, the girl stood by a hollow stone. Her eyes had not changed. But her thoughts no longer belonged entirely to her.
The Gu pulsed. This time, it echoed not in her body — but in the world around her.
A withered tree leaned.
A distant stream curved.
The sky hesitated.
She spoke no command.
But cause had begun to answer effect.
Some Gu do not wait for names.
They wait for moments when the world is willing to be rewritten.
Fang Yuan let the scroll fall.
It did not touch the ground.
And above both, the Starlight Echo dimmed — not from loss, but from recognition.
"I was not the one writing," it murmured.
"She is."