Darkness.
Endless, boundless darkness.
Lin Wan stood within the suffocating void, yet for the first time, she felt no fear.
Not because she wasn't afraid.
But because—
she had heard her own heartbeat.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Yet she quickly realized something.
That wasn't her heartbeat.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
The sound was coming from behind her.
Lin Wan froze.
She didn't turn around.
Because she remembered something Captain Zhang had once told her.
—Don't let it see you.
But this time, what truly terrified her wasn't the thing behind her.
It was the voice.
"Lin Wan."
Soft.
Gentle.
Familiar beyond words.
It was her own voice.
"Lin Wan."
It called her again.
Even the pauses were exactly the way she normally spoke.
It sounded like the real Lin Wan.
Standing behind her.
Waiting for her to turn around.
Lin Wan clenched her teeth.
She didn't answer.
Behind her, footsteps began to sound.
One step.
Two.
Three.
Closer.
Closer.
Until the footsteps stopped less than a meter behind her.
"Why won't you turn around?"
Lin Wan's fingers slowly tightened.
She finally understood.
The shadow wasn't simply trying to kill her.
It was learning.
Learning her voice.
Learning her memories.
Learning her fears.
Even—
learning her.
"You want to become me."
Lin Wan spoke quietly.
The thing behind her remained silent for several seconds.
Then—
it laughed.
"No."
"I don't want to become you…"
It leaned closer to her ear.
Its voice was gentle enough to make her skin crawl.
"I want to become a better version of you."
—
Suddenly.
The darkness before Lin Wan split open.
Through the crack was a hospital room.
White walls.
A white bed.
White curtains.
A little girl lay curled beneath the blanket.
It was Lin Wan.
When she was young.
She was trembling violently.
Outside the hospital room stood a woman.
Lin Wan couldn't see her face.
But she heard the woman speaking.
"She could see them from birth."
"This child cannot be allowed to remain."
Lin Wan's pupils contracted.
She had never remembered this scene.
Not once.
The "Lin Wan" behind her whispered:
"This is something you forgot."
"And it's also something it desperately doesn't want you to remember."
Lin Wan stared at the hospital room.
The little girl suddenly sat upright.
She wasn't crying.
She simply stared at the corner of the room.
There was nothing there.
Then—
a black figure slowly emerged from the wall.
It had no face.
No features.
It raised one finger and gently placed it against where its lips should have been.
"Shh."
"Don't tell anyone."
—
Lin Wan's entire consciousness turned ice-cold.
She finally remembered.
The first time she had seen a shadow.
It wasn't in the basement.
It wasn't in the sanatorium.
It was when she was very young.
That was the day she first heard a dead person speak.
And it was also the day—
the System first discovered her.
"So…"
Lin Wan whispered.
"I wasn't turned into an anomaly later."
The shadow behind her quietly answered:
"No."
"You've misunderstood."
"You were never selected."
Lin Wan suddenly turned around.
Someone identical to her stood behind her.
No face.
Yet it wore the clothes she knew better than anything.
Even its posture was exactly the same.
It raised one hand.
Slowly, it pointed toward Lin Wan's chest.
"You were simply…"
The shadow paused.
Its blank face suddenly split open with a thin crack.
As if it were smiling.
"the first one they ever created."
—
BOOM!
The entire space violently shook.
Countless fragments of memory exploded apart.
Lin Wan saw more.
A laboratory.
Endless rows of cold metal chambers.
One infant after another.
None of them had shadows beneath their feet.
Except one.
One infant had a black shadow.
But the shadow wasn't attached to the baby's feet.
It was—
growing from inside the baby's body.
Lin Wan's consciousness went completely blank.
"That's impossible…"
The shadow whispered:
"Of course it's possible."
"Because you weren't created to be its vessel."
"You were what remained after its first failure…"
It paused.
That blank face slowly widened.
"the original specimen."
—
At the same time.
Deep within the Observation Layer.
The faint black fragment that had almost ceased to exist suddenly began trembling violently.
Captain Zhang's consciousness finally awakened completely.
But the moment he opened his "eyes," he saw someone standing in front of him.
Lin Wan.
Her back was facing him.
Completely motionless.
Captain Zhang froze.
"Lin Wan?"
The woman slowly turned around.
She had a complete face.
Lin Wan's face.
She smiled.
"Captain Zhang."
"I found you."
Captain Zhang's consciousness sank instantly.
Because he finally noticed.
She had a face.
And the real Lin Wan—
had never told him what she feared the most.
Yet the woman standing before him smiled and gave him the answer.
"What I'm most afraid of…"
"is that one day, you won't recognize me."
Captain Zhang froze completely.
Then—
the shadow beneath his feet suddenly recoiled.
Not from fear.
It was a warning.
A faint voice emerged from deep within the shadow.
"Don't believe her…"
Captain Zhang's pupils contracted.
That voice—
was the real Lin Wan.
But the woman's smile slowly froze.
She lowered her head.
Looking at the shadow beneath Captain Zhang's feet.
Then—
for the first time—
she showed a genuine emotion.
Anger.
"Why aren't you dead yet?"
From somewhere deep within the darkness, Lin Wan's voice softly echoed.
"Because…"
"You forgot something."
"A shadow can imitate its master."
"But there is one thing it can never learn."
The woman froze.
Lin Wan spoke word by word:
"The feeling of being afraid to lose someone."
The next instant—
Captain Zhang's shadow suddenly exploded outward!
The entire Observation Layer trembled.
For the first time—
a sound emerged that did not belong to the System.
It sounded like something that had been sleeping for countless years…
was slowly opening its eyes in the deepest darkness.
The mechanical voice suddenly erupted into a frenzy.
"Warning."
"Third consciousness detected."
"Warning—"
"Unknown lifeform authority detected."
"Authority level…"
The mechanical voice abruptly stopped.
Three full seconds passed.
Then—
for the first time—
the System spoke with something dangerously close to fear.
"…Lin Wan."
"She has awakened."