The sun hadn’t cleared the rooftops when Gracie stepped onto the balcony, the air still cool and hushed with early light. She chewed absently on a twig, letting the taste coat her tongue as she brushed. A clay bowl beside her held yesterday’s water, now still and clouded. She spat, rinsed, and leaned against the railing.

  After a stretch of silence, the sound of Kevin lacing his boots drifted in from behind.

  “Don’t go yet,” she said.

  He looked up, blinking. “Is something wrong? Just heading to the fields.”

  “No. Stay. We need to talk.”

  Her tone wasn’t panicked, but it wasn’t casual either. That was enough to make him pause.

  Kevin nodded and set the bag down. “I’ll get the tea.”

  Gracie offered him a small nod, but said nothing more. Instead, she turned and made her way back into the quiet hall, stepping lightly toward the small back room where Stacie sat in stillness.

  Gracie didn’t enter. Just leaned against the doorframe, arms folded loosely, waiting.

  Stacie’s fingers curled slightly where they rested on her knees. Her breath was slow and even, spine straight, the early light glinting off the edge of her glasses.

  When she finally opened her eyes, she found Gracie there, watching—not intruding, just there.

  “You didn’t go?” Stacie asked, voice still soft with quiet.

  “No. Not today.” Gracie replied. “Come to the common room when you’re ready.”

  Stacie tilted her head, curious but not resisting. “Trouble?”

  “Maybe,” Gracie said. “Or maybe it’s just time we stopped pretending.”

  —

  The three of them gathered around the low table. The tea steamed gently between them, the scent curling like breath over the rim of a porcelain cup.

  As Gracie poured tea, Kevin asked. “You want me to call Zack too?”

  Stacie shook her head. “If this is serious, he can wait. Better the three of us talk alone first.”

  She folded onto the mat, voice steady but sure. “Later, we tell him. But it’s been enough time. Eventually, he’ll have to confront what’s real. Whether he wants to or not.”

  Kevin sat and nodded, saying nothing—but he didn’t disagree.

  Gracie glanced between them, then down at her hands, as if searching for the right place to begin.

  “I had a dream last night,” Gracie said quietly. “Cheng He was in it. Younger, but the same eyes. He didn’t speak. Just… watched.”

  She paused. “There was a fan. Like the one he gave me. And a house. This house.”

  Kevin raised an eyebrow. “Stacie told me what went down yesterday. But honestly? Sounds like stress playing tricks. Dreams aren’t usually anything more than noise.”

  Gracie shook her head. “This wasn’t just a dream.”

  Stacie’s tone turned sharp, clipped. “That old man gives me chills. Every time he looks at you, it’s like he’s waiting for something to happen.”

  Kevin’s voice was quiet but grounding. “Regardless, you’re not alone.”

  Stacie gripped her cup tightly. “If there are ghosts here—if she’s not just stressed—then why are we still here? We should leave. Now.”

  Silence.

  She went on. “I know we don’t have money, or supplies, or even a map. But this place—something about it feels off. I keep thinking... if only that car had come with us.”

  Gracie blinked. “The airport car?”

  Stacie nodded. “We were in it together. All four of us. Then... here. And no trace of the driver. Or the car. Just this—this version of China without the rest of the world.”

  She looked at Gracie. “Tell me you haven’t thought of it.”

  Gracie hesitated. “I have. But we don’t even know where here is, or what’s beyond this town. We don’t know the rules. Not even if magic’s real.”

  She glanced between them, voice low. “And right now, this place—this house—it’s the only safety we’ve got. If we leave, then what? No food, no shelter. What happens when we run into bandits, or worse?”

  Stacie crossed her arms. “We have Kevin.”

  Kevin gave a dry laugh. “I’ve got one gun and maybe half a dozen bullets. That’s not a plan. That’s a delay.”

  Stacie shook her head. “Staying here isn’t helping. I don’t think technology is what brought us.”

  Kevin picked up the thread. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. Something else had to be behind it—some force we don’t understand. And if it’s real, someone out there must know how it works.”

  “The King,” Stacie said.

  Gracie immediately frowned. “The Imperial Court is dangerous. Wen Bo told me about Cheng He’s daughter. She caught the King's attention, and then… she vanished.”

  Stacie exhaled. “I don’t have time to wait. My mom—if there's even a sliver of something that can help her here, I have to find it. And if that means going to the capital, I will.”

  Kevin studied their faces, measuring the weight of their resolve. “A merchant I spoke to said a trade boat is leaving for the capital in a week. We could get passage. Blend in.”

  Stacie glanced up. “Really?”

  He nodded. “We’d need coin. A story. Maybe even help from the Changs to get on it. But it’s a path.”

  Gracie’s jaw clenched. “Going to the capital means telling the truth. And once we do, there’s no going back. If we’re found out... we won’t be treated like guests. Or even foreigners.”

  Kevin leaned forward. “Something is already wrong. Cheng He knows we don’t belong. No commoner here talks like we do. He probably thinks we’re runaway nobles—or worse.”

  Stacie’s fingers twitched at the mention.

  Kevin continued, voice low. “He’s being careful, sure. But it’s not out of kindness. It’s caution. He suspects us.”

  Gracie stared at the fan, still sitting by the window. “You think something’s coming?”

  Kevin didn’t look away. “I think it already is.”

  The silence that followed wasn’t empty—it was dense, thick with the weight of choices waiting to be made.

  Then Kevin leaned back, hesitating. He tapped a finger against his cup.

  If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  “There’s something else,” he said at last. “A story. A legend I heard… not long after we arrived. Locals don’t talk about it much, but it caught my ear.”

  He glanced at them. “It reminded me of something from our world.”

  Then, slowly—carefully—he began to speak. Of the Three Pure Ones. Of Yuanshi, Lingbao, and Daode. Of the early people, of temples lost to time, and gods that were once revered, then feared.

  It is said that in the time before the counting of days, before kings carved borders and before stars had names, three beings descended from the void. They came not on wind, nor wave, nor will—but as though the heavens themselves had stirred from slumber and whispered a secret too old to name.

  The early people named them the Three Pure Ones, though no tongue could shape their true names. To them, they were gods. Not gods of love or justice, but forces more ancient than either. They were feared, yes—but more than that, they were believed. Temples were raised in their honor, and the people called them by their honorific titles:

  The first was Yuanshi, He Who Woke the World with a Word.

  His eyes spun like galaxies—cold, vast, and without mercy. He whispered names into being: mountain, sea, sorrow. Where His gaze fell, forests rose in silence; where He passed, time bent like reeds in wind.

  The second was Lingbao, He Who Writes What Must Be.

  He shimmered with the dying light of stars and wore a crown of fractured moons. Scrolls bled ink before His quill touched them, their words forming as if fate itself could not wait. Where He passed, crossroads unraveled and choices shrank to single, cruel lines.

  The third was Daode, He Who Speaks With Stolen Mouths.

  He always came last, as if even the cosmos dared not name Him first. A shifting shadow steeped in incense and rot, His face changed with each hour—child, elder, corpse. He sang songs that no living thing remembered, yet every ear ached to hear. Where He passed, dreams withered, and memory faded.

  Their worship spread across the First Empire, from the icy peaks of the North to the lush waters of the Southern delta. Kings claimed divine right through their visions. Crops flourished under sacred chants. Storms obeyed whispered prayers. For a time, it was said the gods still walked among mortals.

  But mortals are quick to forget.

  As centuries wore on, the faithful grew few. Prayers grew quiet. Temples fell to ivy and wind. The Pure Ones were no longer honored but studied, theorized, doubted. Scholars claimed their miracles were tricks. Kings fought wars without omens. Even newborns drew breath without blessing.

  And the Three... changed.

  Yuanshi’s gaze, once turned outward, began folding inward. He named things that should never be named—skyless teeth, fleshless hunger, the womb of endings. Those who heard those words awoke screaming and died without names.

  Lingbao rewrote fate with a crooked quill, damning men to lives they never chose. Lovers drowned in dry wells. Mothers birthed stillborn flames. Entire villages vanished, their histories excised from memory.

  Daode no longer sang. He whispered instead—into minds, into graves. The mad began to speak his name in tongues. The dead began to dream.

  The gods were no longer pure.

  From the seat of power, Emperor Wei—last son of the golden line of Zhou—watched as his empire crumbled. Rivers dried. The sun scorched the soil. The people starved in silence. In desperation, he summoned emissaries to seek the gods on their high mountain once more.

  The first, Jiao the scholar, sought Yuanshi. He returned wan and hollow-eyed, as one who had beheld truths too vast to bear.

  “To know is to forget. To name is to end.”

  His own name he could no longer speak, nor seem to remember it.

  The second, Zhen the healer, sought out Lingbao in the deep places. She returned shivering and blind-eyed, as though her body no longer belonged to her—but to the fate she had chosen, or that had chosen her.

  “There is salvation,” she whispered, lips cracked and bleeding, “but suffering is its only gate.”

  Xu, the general, sought Daode in the far reaches. He returned as one unmade—his eyes red with weeping, his gaze ever cast down. Whatever he had seen had broken the spine of his valor.

  From that hour, he spoke no more.

  Wrathful and broken, Emperor Wei declared war on the heavens. He ordered the temples razed, the gods’ names erased, their images struck from stone. And yet, the land grew only worse. Plagues spread like shadow. Trees bore fruit filled with ash. Rivers ran backwards.

  The people cursed the gods. But curses are prayers in reverse.

  And the Three listened.

  They returned—not as protectors, but as something else. When the stars flickered wrong and the wind carried voices that spoke before words, the people remembered what they had forgotten. They remembered fear.

  Now they are whispered of only in myth—The Treacherous Three.

  They are no longer Pure.

  They are no longer One with Heaven.

  They are no longer gods.

  But they are waiting.

  So beware when silence grows loud. When dreams speak in ancient tones. When names you’ve never known slip uninvited from your tongue.

  Do not pray to what once answered.

  Do not seek what once guided.

  Do not love what once watched.

  For the Treacherous Three live.

  And as with all things, names have a way of returning.

  And when they do, the Three Treacherous Ones will rise again.

  When he finished, the room felt colder—like something old had been disturbed.

  Gracie looked pale. Stacie’s doubt had vanished, replaced by something keener—recognition, and a flicker of fear.

  “I knew there was something more to this place,” she whispered. “Something deeper than tea and robes and strange politics.”

  Gracie swallowed. Stacie laughed—not from humor, but nerves.

  “So, we’re living in the middle of a myth now. That’s... that’s just great.”

  But the tremble in her voice gave her away.

  “It’s not just myth,” Gracie said, her tone low, almost reverent. “It matches. The structure, the motifs—everything about it echoes what we learned back home. But no one here calls them ‘Pure.’ Not anymore.”

  Stacie shifted uncomfortably. “I knew there was something more to this place. I felt it. But this? Gods who change, who forget themselves… who come back corrupted?” She looked at Kevin sharply. “And people still worship them?”

  Kevin nodded. “In secret. Or in fear. I don’t think the old temples were completely abandoned—just buried.”

  Gracie was quiet, but her mind raced. “If this is true—if the Three Pure Ones exist here… it means we’re not just displaced in space, but in culture. In faith. In memory.”

  She rubbed her arms, suddenly cold. “And if pieces of our world are bleeding into this one…”

  “Then something big is happening,” Kevin finished. “Bigger than just us.”

  Gracie’s eyes found the window, where the sky had begun to turn a deeper blue. She could feel it—something trembling at the edges of the world, like a bell about to ring.

  “This changes everything,” she whispered.

  Kevin leaned forward, voice softer now. “That story—it felt like it was meant for us.”

  Gracie didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.

  Her silence was an answer.

  Stacie, ever the one to voice what others held in, exhaled hard and said, “They weren’t just stories. They were warnings.”

  Kevin nodded.

  They weren’t alone.

  They weren’t the first.

  And maybe—just maybe—

  They weren’t the last.

  Gracie leaned back, arms wrapped around her knees. “So the question now is… what part do we play in this?”

  No one answered.

  Because no one knew.

  Kevin leaned in, voice hushed now, like they were being listened to. “If something from our world is here—really here—then we need to understand what’s waiting for us in that capital. Because I think the King and Queen know. People say they’re religious, but their beliefs are hidden—even the nobles don’t speak of it.”

  Gracie frowned. “Secrets kept only within the royal family…”

  Kevin met her eyes. “To understand this, to find what brought us here, we have to go there.”

  “And when we do?” Gracie asked. “What happens when we tell the truth? When they realize we’re not supposed to exist? We’ll be prosecuted, not protected.”

  Kevin sighed. “Maybe. But if we don’t go… we’ll never know who brought us here. Or why.”

  “We’ll tell Zack soon,” Gracie murmured. “He deserves to know, even if he’s not ready.”

  The air was heavy again, the weight of uncertainty clinging to every breath.

  Eventually, the words ran out. For now, silence said enough.

  Gracie rose and went into her room, where her hidden belongings sat.

  She dug through them quietly, fingers brushing past notebooks, wrappers, a cracked charger.

  Then, finally, her fingers found it.

  She pulled out her iPhone.

  The screen flickered to life after a long breath—dim, dust-kissed, but still beating. She plugged in the earbuds, her thumb hovering just long enough before pressing play.

  A song she loved began to trickle into her ears—familiar, soft, grounding.

  Important choices.

  Meaningful decisions.

  It was all a bit overwhelming for Gracie.

  So, she did what always calmed her. Even in times of crisis.

  She listened.