The paper shutters trembled faintly — as if pierced by a single, whisper-thin needle of wind.

Shen Jin opened his eyes. The echoes of the dream still clung to his bones. A voice had followed him out — one that called, over and over, for something long forgotten.

He sat up, pressing a hand to his shoulder. The mark there still smoldered, seeping heat beneath the skin like ink soaking slowly into rice paper.

Without lighting a lamp, without alerting the others, he dressed, slipped a dimlight talisman into his sleeve, and stepped out.

The fog outside had thickened.

The stone path was slick with dew, moss crowding the cracks. He moved in silence. The barrier lines around the forest weren’t meant to stop someone like him. Not anymore.

Guided by instinct — or memory — he descended crooked steps and entered the grove where forbidden monuments stood.

Dark-grey obelisks loomed like ruined fingers, none taller than three men, all worn with time, inscribed with runes too old to read.

At the perimeter hovered five rings of spelllight — Lingyuan Division’s standard seals. From his sleeve, he drew a broken piece of copper: a shard he’d pocketed the night the monument cracked.

The talisman flickered.

A seam opened in the ward.

He stared at it a moment, then stepped through.

Deeper inside, he heard it: not water, but slow drops of ink falling from stone to earth, vanishing on contact.

It was colder here. Even his fingertips had gone numb.

Step by step, the voice grew stronger.

Each monument bore cracks and carvings — ancient glyphs stripped thin by wind and time.

And then he saw it.

The black one.

The one from the dream.

No taller than the others. But darker. So dark it seemed to devour the light around it.

It bore no name.

But he knew it had one.

He raised his hand. Not quite touching it — hovering just above the surface.

The voice came again:

“Return…”

“…Chu. Yin. Gui…”

His fingers trembled, but did not retreat.

The fog pressed close, winding softly around his wrist.

Then the wind died.

Silence swallowed the forest.

And at last —

his skin met the stone.

—

The monument was cold — cold like iron sealed beneath the sea.

The moment Shen Jin’s fingers touched it, a shock struck his chest.

His blood surged, violently, as if something buried deep — something ancient — had been stirred awake.

He didn’t pull back.

The surface of the stone began to ripple.

Not stone ripples.

Something else.

A voice spoke from within. Not speech. Not male or female.

Fragmented, heavy. As if it had climbed from the bottom of time:

“…return… downward… lost place…”

“The key… approaches…”

“Chu… Yin… Gui…”

Shen Jin staggered. His fingertips went numb.

The broken talisman in his sleeve buzzed faintly, and on the monument, a weak light answered from its surface.

He could feel it now — the presence.

Something trapped. Not a full soul. Not a living mind.

It was a fracture — a broken echo — worn down by centuries of isolation, whispering still for one thing:

a key.

Mist drifted upward from the stone, forming translucent symbols — runes unfurling like veins before his eyes.

In them, he saw it.

A black-robed, faceless figure kneeling beneath a crumbling sky, shackled in chains, impaled through the spine by a blackened spike.

It had no eyes.

And yet — Shen Jin could feel it looking at him.

Then the image shattered.

The stone fell silent again.

His breath returned in harsh gasps.

His hand dropped from the surface, just as a gust of wind sliced behind him.

“Shen Jin?”

Luo Qinghan’s voice.

He turned.

She stepped through the mist with a sealing talisman in hand, frown sharp, eyes flickering with something close to alarm.

She looked at the monument behind him.

And her face darkened further.

A new crack had appeared — running straight from the center down.

And from within that line, a thread of black mist — thin as silk — was slipping into the sky.