“Brother, did you hear that?”
The voice came from inside his body, or rather, it resonated from every molecule in this curtain of rain. Lu Mingze stood beside him, his figure seeming almost transparent in the rain, as though he might dissolve at any moment into this boundless sorrow. He didn’t look at Lu Mingfei, but stared into the bottomless well, his expression impossible to read.
“Hear... what?” Lu Mingfei’s voice was as dry as dead leaves scraping together.
“An echo,” Lu Mingze said softly. His golden eyes glimmered in the gloom, their light faint but unshakably steady, like two stars guiding lost travelers toward an unknown land. “Not the echo of a sound, but... the echo of existence. Something doesn’t want to simply disappear. It’s still there, stubbornly vibrating.”
Lu Mingfei raised his head in bewilderment and followed his gaze toward the darkness that swallowed everything. At first, there was nothing there but despair. But the longer he looked into that pure darkness, so deep it seemed ready to suck in his very soul, the more he felt he could make out something.
Not light.
More like a scar.
A twisted, intricate mark traced by an almost imperceptible golden thread, so faint it was nearly an illusion. It didn’t belong to this world. It was more like someone had used tremendous force to cut open a gash in the canvas of “reality,” exposing the void beneath. And that gold was seeping out from the void... an obsession.
“What... is that?” Lu Mingfei murmured, feeling his soul tremble.
“A signature.” Lu Mingze’s voice
