The chains around his wrists were cold—always cold.

You adjusted the damp cloth over Dan Heng’s forehead, watching his lashes flutter as he drifted in and out of feverish sleep. The Vidyadhara’s body was resilient, but even dragons could wither under endless confinement. The cell was sparse, lit only by the faint glow of a single luminescent orb—enough to see the sweat on his brow, the way his fingers twitched as if grasping for a weapon he no longer had.

"Why… do they hate me?"

His voice was hoarse, barely audible, a bit timid. You paused, pressing the cloth firmer against his skin. He wasn’t supposed to speak. You, his caretaker, weren't supposed to speak to him either. The guards had warned you—"Don’t engage, don’t answer. He’s a criminal, not a patient."

But his eyes, when they opened, held no sin. Only exhaustion.

"You don’t remember anything, do you?" you murmured, against better judgment.

Dan Heng turned his face away, the heavy manacle around his throat clinking. "I remember chains. I remember… their voices. Calling me Dan Feng." The name dripped with venom—not his own, but theirs. "They say I betrayed them. That I deserve this."

The Xianzhou Luofu’s justice was swift, its punishments eternal. Dan Feng, the previous incarnation, had committed a crime so grave it warranted his rebirth—a forced erasure. But this new soul… he was born into shackles.

"Tell me," he whispered, tired. "If I’m not him… why do I still pay for his sins?"