Cured by Destiny

Chapter 8 — Hold of Fate

Dawn came very slowly, as if morning was trapped behind heavy snow clouds and did not want to arrive.

The snow had stopped, but the world remained white and still, almost dead quiet. A weak strip of light forced its way through the thick curtains and fell right on Su Wan’s bare wrist.

The red mark was deeper than last night.

It no longer looked like a simple scratch. It seemed like a living red thread, crawling slowly along the blue veins under her skin. Every time her heart beat, the mark pulsed and flashed slightly — as if a tiny, strange heartbeat lay hidden beneath her skin.

She turned the tap and rinsed her wrist with icy water. The cold stung and made her fingers numb for a moment. Water splashed in the sink. But the mark didn’t fade. In the wet shine it seemed even clearer, giving off an odd, mother-of-pearl glow, as if mocking her for trying to wash it away.

“Just a hallucination… from being too tired,” she murmured, voice thin and weak. Even she did not sound convinced.

She looked into the mirror. Her face was pale from lack of sleep. Dark circles sat under her eyes. Her lips were dry. For a blink she lowered her head to avoid the water — and then she saw it with the corner of her eye: the reflection’s mouth twitched into a small, cold smile. It moved so slowly that she almost thought she imagined it.

Her blood felt frozen. She spun around and pressed her back against the cold tile wall. Her heart hammered so hard she thought it might break out of her chest. She stared at the mirror — only her own scared face looked back, water dripping down her cheeks. There was no strange smile now.

Her hands shook. Her fingertips were ice-cold.

At that moment she felt something heavy and cold waking inside her — a force she could not see or touch. It seemed to rise from the ruins of those strange dreams and creep through the thin border between dream and real life. It wrapped around her limbs and settled on the red mark on her wrist.

---

Her phone buzzed on the sink, breaking the bathroom’s silence.

The screen lit up with one short message.

Shen Yu: I dreamed of you.

Seven plain words. No extra feelings. Yet the message unlocked something tight in Su Wan’s chest. Her breath caught and her chest felt tight.

He dreamed too? What did he see? The same endless snow? The same burning light? The cold silver needle? The red glow? Every detail of last night’s dream was burned into her memory. Could they have shared the same nightmare?

She stared at the cold screen a long time. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. Questions spun in her mind. Finally she typed with shaking hands:

What did you dream?

The green bubble sat alone. The screen went dark. No “typing…” no reply. Silence rose like a tide and chilled her.

Before she could force herself to be calm, someone knocked at the door.

“Dr Su! We moved the board meeting up. Ten minutes. Mr. Ning will attend,” the duty nurse called.

Her heart lurched. Ning Yu. The name fell like a block of ice on her chest and froze everything around her.

Ning Yu.

Her breathing scattered. The line between dream and waking blurred like wet paper. The emperor who once ordered her death in her dream and the powerful Ning Yu in the real world began to overlap in her mind.

“I’ll be there,” she answered, trying to keep her voice steady and low to hide the tremor.

She pressed her back to the cold door and slid down, burying her face in her hands. The red mark on her inner wrist kept beating, beating — strong and regular, like a second heart inside her.

---

The meeting room light was clinical and cold. Numbers and charts moved across a big screen. Everything looked sharp and lifeless.

Shen Yu sat several seats away. Calm and focused. When he leaned to whisper with a colleague, his eyes flashed bright under the lights — like a cold star on snow.

Su Wan watched him. Her chest tightened. She wanted to go to him and ask what he dreamed, and whether he heard the needle. But she held back. Some invisible weight held her feet and voice.

Then the heavy door opened.

Ning Yu entered.

He wore a dark, perfect suit. He walked slowly but his presence filled the room like a shadow. His eyes met Shen Yu’s for a short, direct moment. A chill ran through the air.

“Mr. Ning,” the hospital director said immediately, standing with respect.

Ning Yu nodded. Then his gaze moved across the room and landed on Su Wan — quiet, precise, and piercing. That look felt like an invisible ice spike. Her hand trembled and her pen nearly fell.

Images from last night flooded her: the emperor’s robes, snow stained red, the cold command: execution. Her breath hitched. She had to use all her strength to stay calm.

Ning Yu’s look lasted less than a second and then he turned away like nothing had happened. He sat at the head of the table with composed ease.

But as he moved, fire burned again under Su Wan’s skin. The red mark crawled, a hot pain rising up the vein beneath her sleeve like a waking snake.

She tried to follow the meeting, but words became distant — like hearing people speak through thick water. A low sound circled the edges of her mind, like wind in the dream or an old whispered warning.

You disobeyed.

The sentence from the dream echoed, clear and cruel. It cut into her mind like a carved word.

She looked up, searching for where the voice came from.

Ning Yu spoke calmly about a project. Shen Yu read reports. Everything seemed normal.

Then, for a split second on the wall where Ning Yu’s and Shen Yu’s shadows overlapped, she caught a flash — a thin silver light that vanished in an instant, like an after-image.

Her breath sped. Her palm grew hot. The small silver needle her grandfather left, tucked in her white coat pocket, started to tremble against the fabric. A tiny, high “ting” rang out — almost too quiet to hear, but it pricked straight at her chest like a needle of sound.

Shen Yu looked up sharply. His face changed from calm to something like alarm. He turned his gaze straight toward Su Wan.

Their eyes met.

The room felt frozen. He heard it too. He felt the needle’s strange trembling.

He opened his mouth as if to speak, but at that instant Ning Yu cut in. His voice was clear, low, but it filled the room: “Dr Su, the final signature on last quarter’s special medicine use — was it approved by you?”

All eyes snapped to her like spotlights.

Su Wan froze. Her hand jerked and the pen fell from her fingers with a soft c***k. She forced herself to look at Ning Yu and managed to say the word, “Yes.”

“This batch involves large funds,” Ning Yu said without emotion. “We need strict checks.” He added calmly, “I will have it rechecked.”

Shen Yu leaned forward, voice low and protective. “Are you saying there may be problems with the process or data?”

Ning Yu’s glance was cool, almost smiling in a way that was not warm. “Just routine. Ensure there is no mistake. Dr. Shen, no need to worry.”

The meeting’s atmosphere fell colder than before.

Su Wan’s heart was a wild drum. The pull she felt — like an invisible string — tightened. Everything seemed to slide toward the direction the dream had shown.

---

After the meeting the crowd emptied like a tide going out. The hall felt suddenly empty and hollow.

She leaned against the cold wall, fingers clenched around the small silver needle in her pocket until her knuckles whitened. Its tiny vibrations moved through cloth and skin up to her heart. The tremor felt urgent, like something wanting to break free and fly away.

“Doctor Su.” A familiar low voice behind her.

She turned. Shen Yu stood there.

He looked at her pale face, then at her hand in her pocket. “You heard it too?” His voice was low and firm, seeking confirmation.

Her breath stopped. “What?” she tried to hide one last piece of composure.

His eyes were sharp as blades. He stepped closer. She could smell the faint antiseptic on him and a cool scent like a pine forest after snow. He said quietly, each word clear: “That sound — like metal resonating — like your needle. It’s trembling.”

Under his gaze, her last defenses fell. She closed her eyes and then opened them again, tired and resigned. “The sound from the dream,” she whispered. “It’s from the dream.”

He didn’t ask more. Both understood in that look: their odd, shared dream had not ended. The thread it cast had wrapped around their real lives and was pulling them toward a dark unknown.

---

Night deepened. The hospital lights glowed like a tired fortress.

Su Wan sat alone in the quiet duty room, holding the grandfather’s silver needle. Moonlight washed across it and gave the needle a faint, moving glow. It had stopped shaking, but it seemed to breathe on its own.

Outside, wind rose again and fresh snow beat softly on the glass.

Her wrist still burned. The red line shone faintly in the dim light, alive and pulsing with every heartbeat.

On the top floor of another building, Ning Yu leaned beside his huge window, watching the snow fall. He rubbed an old jade pendant in his hand. In the moonlight, the dragon carving on it glinted darkly.

He closed his eyes and the dream wind burst back into him: endless snow, a single firm figure, a curse crying like blood. I want to change fate.

He opened his eyes and saw a tiny hairline c***k on the jade pendant — a new c***k that had not been there before.

Snow lit his face. His expression was deep and unreadable, tangled with dreams and heavy debts from a past life.

---

Wind moaned from the horizon and moved through the frozen city. It slipped through glass and walls and touched three lives wrapped by invisible threads.

The little silver needle lay in moonlight, waiting to tremble again.

The red line on the wrist burned on, like a tightening shackle.

Dream and waking life — two tracks once side by side — now crossed at the fate’s crossroads. They had begun to overlap, and nothing could stop their slow, shaking merge.