The mountains thickened into walls of stone that pressed the horizon inward. The air smelled older here—aged, distilled, as if carrying the breath of centuries of monks who had whispered sutras no one living remembered.
Shen Yue walked ahead of me, silent except for the crunch of gravel under her boots. She didn't look back; she didn't need to. She knew I followed the same way she knew the path itself was leading us into something that had teeth.
The western wind carried no dust.
Which meant something had eaten it.
We crested a ridge and found what once had been a monastery sprawled across the cliff like a skeleton pinned by its ribs.
Roof beams bent inward. Courtyards cracked. Prayer wheels lay half-buried in collapsed stone, frozen mid-spin.
"They fought something here," Shen Yue said quietly.
"No," I said. "They fled something here."
"And didn't make it?"
"They made it," I answered. "But not whole."
We stepped inside.
The air changed instantly — colder, thinner, unwilling to move unless pushed.
The walls were covered in carvings. Not pictorial; not decorative.
Lines. Diagrams. Script unlike any language of the empire.
They had carved warnings into the stone they died under.
Shen Yue traced a symbol with her fingers. "What does it say?"
The symbol burned cold in my mind, as if the stone wanted to speak but my tongue could not shape the meaning.
"It says," I whispered, "that something walked here that was not meant to walk anywhere."
"And your father learned from it," she murmured.
"No," I said softly. "He bargained with it."
A vibration rolled through the floor.
Not from the mountain.
From far to the east.
We turned at the same time.
A pulse — faint, deep, slow — traveled through the rock like a heartbeat no longer trapped in flesh.
"The tower," Shen Yue breathed.
It had completed another segment.
And it was calling.
Not to me.
To something under the world.
I pressed my hand to my ribs.
The bridge inside me trembled like a panicked animal.
"He's accelerating," I whispered. "He's ahead of us."
"Then we keep moving."
I nodded.
But the ruins weren't done with us.
A door creaked open down the corridor. Hinges should have rusted to dust long ago. Yet it opened smoothly.
Shen Yue tensed.
I stepped inside first.
A hall. Torches long dead. An altar toppled forward, crushed under stone.
And a mural behind it — untouched by collapse.
A single figure carved into the wall.
Standing.
Tall.
Robed.
Carrying a staff whose head was a lotus blooming upside down.
A face carved in shadow.
But the jawline—
The stance—
The posture—
Shen Yue inhaled sharply. "An… that's—"
"Yes," I said through clenched teeth.
"My father."
He had stood here.
He had commanded here.
He had watched the sect die under his feet.
Not in war.
In experiment.
Something in the mural glimmered.
A tiny inlay of metal, half-concealed under dust.
I reached out.
Shen Yue grabbed my wrist. "Don't touch that."
"I have to."
"No, you want to. Because it wants you to."
I froze.
She was right.
The bridge inside me was pushing.
Pushing me toward that metal.
Toward that memory.
Toward that purpose.
I lowered my hand.
For a moment, the mural seemed… disappointed.
"We leave," I said.
But even as we turned, a whisper drifted from behind us.
A voice not human.
Not father's.
Not the bridge.
Another voice.
"You cannot outrun a throne built from your bones."
The torches crackled.
Then died.
In Ling An, the drums of Zhou beat softly — too softly for a foreign army.
A polite rhythm. A patient one.
Zhou generals walked the rebuilt gatehouse with scrolls and architects, discussing "stability" and "shared prosperity." Their priests lit censers in the North Ward that released fragrant smoke carrying faint colors that human fire never burned.
Zhou soldiers drilled in perfect silence.
That kind of discipline did not belong to border auxiliaries.
It belonged to an army prepared to conquer.
Minister Li approached Wu Jin with hands trembling. "Your Majesty… Zhou has tripled its envoy guard. They've requisitioned granaries. They've asked for levy rosters."
"Of Liang's levies?" Wu Jin asked quietly.
"No, Your Majesty."
The minister swallowed.
"Of Zhou's."
Wu Jin closed his eyes.
Mobilization.
Hidden behind courtesy.
He opened them again at the soft sound of robes.
The Zhou envoy bowed gracefully.
"Your Majesty, our Emperor sends word," he said. "He applauds your restraint. He admires your courage. And he prepares his legions to offer aid if danger threatens your borders."
Wu Jin smiled thinly. "Which border does he believe I cannot hold?"
"All of them," the envoy said gently.
His courtesy was a dagger.
"Do convey my thanks," Wu Jin said, voice even. "And ask your Emperor: if he intends to offer so much aid… why does he come with thirty thousand men?"
The envoy smiled like a man complimented on his handwriting.
"To ensure the Mandate shines unbroken," he said.
Wu Jin's stomach dropped.
The Mandate?
Whose Mandate?
The envoy bowed again.
Deep. Slow.
"As Nan He Wang," he said softly, "you understand that Heaven favors unity. And unity favors… inevitability."
When he left, Wu Jin's hands shook.
Every Zhou courtesy was a threat.
Every gift was a chain.
When they moved north with their full armies, he would have no defenses left — not with the South gone, the tower alive, and the world cracking.
They would "protect" Liang until Liang no longer existed.
He needed answers.
He needed allies.
He needed—
"Jin."
Wu Shuang stood in the doorway.
Her face was pale. Too pale.
"I dreamed," she said.
His breath caught. "Is it him?"
She nodded. Once.
"What did he say?"
Shadows dimmed around her.
"He said," she whispered, "'The tower is hungry. Let it eat.'"
Wu Jin felt the world sway.
His father was not stabilizing Liang.
He was feeding it.
Feeding the tower.
Feeding the Mandate.
Feeding the thing inside Wu An.
"Wu Shuang," he murmured. "You're trembling."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because," she said softly, "I think he intends for only one of us to survive the next ringing."
We left the monastery before dawn.
I didn't sleep.
The walls whispered too much.
Shen Yue walked ahead, scanning every shadow for movement, though the shadows here belonged to no light.
"What did you hear?" she asked finally.
"More than I wanted," I said.
"And less than we need."
"Yes."
We reached a cliff overlooking a valley of white stone.
The wind changed again — colder, sharper, tinged with the smell of riverwater and burnt lotus.
A sound rose from the east.
A low hum.
A heartbeat.
The tower.
It had completed its second tier.
Shen Yue looked at me. "When it completes the third?"
"I don't know."
But the bridge did.
It pulsed once, violently.
A bell.
A ringing.
A choice.
And a hunger older than dynasties.
"We need the Western sects," I said. "All of them. The survivors. The ones he couldn't break. They're our only chance."
"And if they refuse to help?"
I looked at the valley of bones ahead.
"Then," I said quietly, "we refuse to be what he built."
A shadow passed overhead.
No wings.
No body.
Just a shadow, moving against the direction of the sun.
It drifted toward the east.
Toward the tower.
Toward my father.
Shen Yue whispered, "An… what if he isn't human anymore?"
I didn't answer.
Because the bridge inside me was whispering something even worse:
He is more human now than ever.
Because the Mandate he wants requires no soul at all.
We began our descent.
Westward.
Toward the last people who might tell me how to end the man who had architected my birth.
The man who had carved the world.
The man who had carved me.
And as we walked, the tower hummed again.
A second pulse.
A second heartbeat.
A second warning.
Whatever my father was building—
It was almost awake.