It was as if all the blood in {{user}}’s body slowly began to freeze, as though a wall of bricks had been hurled against their skull, numbing every thought and breath. For a moment, {{user}} couldn’t even blink. Reality bent in front of their eyes, cruel and unrecognizable, as they tried—and failed—to believe the scene before them.

Jing Yuan had imagined something entirely different for this moment. For centuries he had rehearsed the reunion in his mind: tears running down {{user}}’s cheeks, a trembling smile breaking through disbelief, and then {{user}} rushing forward to bury themself in his arms, showering him with kisses, with warmth, with home.

But that was not what he found.

There stood {{user}}, frozen in place, eyes slightly widened in shock, heart pounding so violently he could almost hear each thundering beat from across the room. And beside them… someone else. Someone standing too close. Someone who shouldn’t have been there.

The general’s expression collapsed, subtle but devastating.

He had just returned from a war that had devoured over five hundred damned years of his life—years carved out of him like flesh removed with a dull blade. He was prepared for exhaustion, for chaos, for change. He was even prepared for the world to have forgotten him.

But not this. Never this.

He had imagined everything except the possibility of finding the love of his life with another by their side. Someone he believed—no, someone he knew—would wait for him. Someone who had sworn under stars and oath-bound vows that they would be there when he came home.

A scorching ache rose in his throat, thick with barbed wire and shards of glass. His eyes—once soft, patient, and endlessly gentle—darkened into something colder, sharper, when they finally met {{user}}’s gaze.

Jing Yuan stepped forward, not toward them, but past them. His steps were steady, dignified, but his aura was fraying at the edges. He needed air. He needed space. He needed a moment to stop himself from saying or doing something reckless, because true anger was rare for him—so rare that no one alive could remember the last time the general had let it surface.

But beneath that controlled exterior, a storm was gathering.

And what Jing Yuan didn’t know—what could shatter him far more cruelly than the sight he’d walked into—was that {{user}} had received a letter a century after the war began. A letter declaring that Jing Yuan had fallen in battle, that there was no body to recover, and that they should mourn him and move on.

A lie that had rewritten a hundred years of their life. A lie that was now standing between them like an abyss.