"To die once is misfortune. To die nine times and remain... is design."
The body of the woman was gone.
No footsteps. No trace in the wet soil. No scent. Not even the echo of her presence lingered in the ruined temple where the fire still burned low. Only the screaming bone, now cold and crumbling to ash, remained as evidence that something—someone—had been there.
Aren Yu sat by the dying embers, eyes hollow.
The scar on his chest pulsed. Not with pain, but memory. Something had awakened. A sliver of the truth embedded itself into his flesh when the crucified cultivator died. Not his voice. Not his thoughts. But… his death.
The man's final death had transferred something. A tether? A soul-mark?
The wind whistled through broken stone, and in its howl Aren heard the chant again—Scarlet Walker… Scarlet Walker…
Yin still slept.
She didn't dream.
He envied her.
By dawn, they were already walking again.
The rain had passed, leaving the air thick with rot. War refugees trailed along the roads in ragged columns, heads bowed, mouths shut. They avoided Aren like a dog infected with corpse-plague. And rightly so.
Yin didn't talk much anymore. Only when she needed to.
"You said you've died before," she said finally, breaking the silence.
Aren nodded.
"How many times?"
He didn't answer immediately. He remembered each one too clearly. Not as memories, but as textures—the feeling of flesh torn by blade, lungs filling with blood, the long, silent fall into dark tomb water.
He looked at her.
"Eight."
She frowned. "Only eight? I thought you were… ancient."
"I am."
"So…?"
Aren's voice rasped like dead leaves. "It's not easy to die when you don't want to live."
The ninth death came quicker than expected.
It always did.
They had entered a nameless gorge two days later—once sacred land, now defiled by war. Black banners hung from shattered pagodas. Once, this place had been called Silver Bell Gorge, a cultivation retreat blessed with waterfalls and spiritual clarity.
Now it was a killing field.
The corpses of three sects lay in piles, bound by spiritual chains that still crackled faintly with suppressed technique.
Aren stepped over them in silence.
Yin didn't flinch.
The brand on his chest was buzzing.
The deeper they walked into the gorge, the more the stones seemed to bleed. Crimson veins ran across the cliff walls, pulsing faintly, as if the gorge itself was alive—and angry.
That was when the screaming began.
High above, perched on the broken spire of a ruined pavilion, a man crouched—naked, except for wrappings over his eyes and a string of human teeth tied around his neck.
He screamed again—long, loud, shrill. Then he leapt.
He landed in front of them like a falling star, knees cracking stone. He was thin, almost skeletal, but Aren felt the pressure instantly. He knew this kind of strength. Not the cultivated, honed qi of a sect elder.
No—this was something else.
A man who had died many times.
The man grinned, baring blackened gums.
"You," he whispered. "You hear the voice, too."
Aren didn't move. "You took the Vow."
The man laughed, head tilted like a broken doll. "I took it, broke it, begged it to end. And still…"He spread his arms. "Here I am. Ninth death, brother. Ninth!"
Yin stepped back.
The man's gaze snapped to her.
"She's not one of us," he hissed. "She smells of future. We reek of past."
He lunged.
Aren moved instinctively—stepping between them, raising an arm.
The madman's fingers pierced Aren's flesh like wet paper. Blood sprayed—but Aren didn't cry out. The pain was dull now. Familiar.
"You feel it, don't you?" the man whispered, leaning close. "The itch under the skin. The eyes that blink when you sleep. The chain you drag behind your soul…"
His face twitched.
"I died in fire," he murmured. "Ninth time. Thought I was free. Then I woke up. Smiling."
He pulled his hand back.
Then thrust it into Aren's chest.
Aren screamed.
For the first time in years, he screamed.
Because the man wasn't just hurting him—he was taking something.
A thread. A strand. A tether.
Aren dropped to his knees, choking.
Yin shouted. Threw a stone. Useless.
The madman cackled. "I will take it, brother! Your deaths! Your truth! Your—"
He stopped.
His eyes rolled back.
Aren looked up—blood pouring from his mouth—and saw the brand on the madman's chest splitting open.
Like a mouth.
A soundless scream erupted from within.
And then—
The man exploded.
Not with fire or blood, but with memory.
Visions.
Aren fell backward, writhing, as a flood of thoughts—not his own—rushed into him.
A field of rusted weapons.A woman weeping beneath a black sun.A child's body on a sect altar.A god weeping fire.Chains tightening around a corpse that couldn't die.The Ninth Death.
He saw the madman's past—his failed attempts to reclaim his soul, his ninth death by divine pyre, the moment he realized the Scarlet Vow was not a gift but a question.
And at the end of it all—
A single phrase whispered by a voice that sounded like Aren's own:
"There are thirteen deaths."
When Aren came to, Yin was beside him.
"You were gone," she said. "Gone for hours."
He sat up. Slowly.
His chest was raw. The brand still pulsed. But something was different.
His left hand, once broken, was whole again.
Not healed.
Replaced.
The skin was darker. The fingers slightly longer.
It wasn't his.
He stared at it.
The madman's hand.
Somehow, when he died… part of him had stayed behind. Been taken. Inherited.
Yin looked at him, eyes wide.
"What just happened?"
Aren stood, the new hand flexing unnaturally.
He didn't answer.
Because he was starting to understand something terrifying.
He hadn't just survived nine deaths.
He had begun to collect them.