Fate is not kind. Fate is not cruel. Fate is law.
And Gu Yan had broken that law by simply existing.
The verdict came beneath the cold sun, before the mountain's breathless wind. Elders stood in a ring of robes and silence, the high platforms carved with sigils that shimmered faintly with divine approval. Behind them, disciples gathered like shadows — hundreds of eyes, none brave enough to meet his own.
Gu Yan stood barefoot, blood crusting over bruises that marred his ribs. His cultivation robes — once white and golden with the crest of the Verdant Sun Sect — had been stripped from him. They gave him plain gray cloth now.
Gray, like the threadless dead.
Before him, Elder Lin raised a single finger. It glowed faintly, resonating with Heaven's Law.
"You were born without a Fate Thread," the elder said, voice even, almost bored. "You walk outside the Heavenly Mandate. We cannot keep you here, Gu Yan."
He spoke the name like it was a mistake. A smudge on clean parchment.
Gu Yan did not bow. He did not kneel. His body hurt too much, and his soul had bled dry the moment the [Thread-Seers] confirmed it: he had no thread.
Not an evil one.
Not a cursed one.
None.
"I trained," he said. His voice cracked like dry stone. "I endured more than anyone. Why was that not enough?"
The wind answered him, tugging at the corners of his ragged sleeves.
Elder Lin did not look cruel. That would imply emotion. No — he was the face of the system itself. Not justice. Not malice. Just certainty.
"To keep one without Fate," the elder replied, "is to draw Heaven's gaze. To invite tribulation upon our sect. You are no longer welcome among us. The cliff will be your gate. If Heaven disapproves, let it take you."
That was mercy, in this world.
Death, offered kindly.
A threadless life… could not be allowed to continue.
They led him past the gates, down the spiraling stone path that led to Nameless Cliff — where condemned cultivators were sent to vanish.
Gu Yan did not resist. There was nothing left to fight with. His dantian was cracked from his last sparring match, when the elders turned blind eyes as senior disciples tried to break him.
They wanted him gone. And Heaven had no use for the unwanted.
He stood at the edge. Below, the fog swallowed the earth. The drop was long. A body would break on the jagged rocks. A soul would scatter.
"You will not be remembered," Elder Lin said. "No shrine. No name on the wall. No legacy. Walk on, Gu Yan."
He turned to face them — all of them — one last time. He saw disciples who had eaten with him, laughed with him. Some lowered their eyes. Some didn't bother.
He remembered their smiles. Their small kindnesses.
And now, their silence.
"You say I am nothing," Gu Yan whispered. "But I have bled. I have burned. I have endured."
He stepped backward. One foot into the void.
"I will make the heavens remember me."
Then he fell.
There is a moment between life and death when time forgets how to move.
Gu Yan hung in that moment — weightless, threadless, untethered.
Wind screamed past his ears. Clouds rushed to meet him.
He did not close his eyes.
He fell into silence.
Then — impact.
Pain was the first god to greet him. It baptized him in white fire.
His ribs shattered. His left arm twisted beneath his weight. The world spun, then steadied — dim and gray and full of ache.
He had landed on a ledge far below. A jagged shelf of stone halfway to death. The fall should have broken him completely.
Instead, he awoke in a cave carved by nature or fate — he no longer cared which.
Rain dripped from the ceiling, into a puddle that shimmered with faint light. And in that pool of water sat a mirror.
It was small. Round. Edged in strange silver etched with symbols he could not read — symbols that pulsed when his blood touched them.
He crawled to it.
The moment his fingers brushed the glass, a voice without sound rang through his skull:
> [Fate: Absent.]
[Thread Status: Null.]
[Initializing Reversal Protocol.]
He gasped, dropping it — but the mirror hovered, floating just above the ground, casting no reflection.
> [You are outside the Dao.]
[Do you wish to remain forgotten… or walk the Reversed Path?]
A choice.
An offer.
A curse.
Gu Yan looked into the mirror, though it did not show his face. He saw instead a hundred threads hanging in darkness — gold, red, silver, black — weaving a great tapestry, one he had never been allowed to touch.
"No one will choose me," he whispered. "So I will choose myself."
> [Path Confirmed.]
[First Fragment Required: Seek the dying.]
The mirror pulsed.
Outside, in the forest below, Gu Yan heard the rustle of leaves. A body crashing. A voice cursing.
Someone was bleeding out.
A bandit. A killer. Fleeing a battle.
Gu Yan stood, staggering. He followed the sound.
He found the man leaning against a tree, coughing blood. A shallow sword wound across his chest bled with every heartbeat.
"You're not one of them," the man wheezed, eyes wild. "Get away."
Gu Yan didn't speak.
He saw it now — a glowing red line, barely visible to the human eye, hanging from the man's chest like silk in moonlight.
A Fate Thread.
Broken. Fraying.
> [Fragment Available: Dying Will | Violent Spirit | Survivor's Stubbornness]
Gu Yan reached out.
The mirror burned bright.
The bandit screamed — or maybe Gu Yan did. Energy rushed into his veins, not Qi, not spiritual power, but something deeper. Identity. Instinct. Fate.
> [Absorbing Fragment... Complete.]
He fell to his knees, gasping. The pain faded.
Something inside him… settled. Hardened.
His cracked bones still ached. But he stood.
Stronger? No. Not stronger.
Stolen.
He looked at the corpse.
"Your end gave me a beginning."
Then he walked away.
From the trees above, the sky remained gray.
No thunder came.
No divine punishment.
The Dao had not noticed.
Yet.
But it would.
One day soon, Heaven would look for a boy it cast down.
And find a man it could no longer erase.