The doors of the Blackwind Archive boomed shut like a tomb sealing.
Metal scraped stone with a scream that rang in every ear.
Outside, the wind howled once and died.
Inside, the world fell silent.
It was not the silence of peace.
It was the silence of a mausoleum, thick and choking.
A silence that felt alive.
Lanterns burned low, their flames thin, flickering in thick glass cages.
They threw sickly yellow light across cracked stone walls.
Smoke pooled high in the vaults, collecting like fog that couldn't escape.
The air was old.
It smelled of wax burned to ash, blood dried to black, parchment rotted damp.
Each breath was thick, dry, wrong.
Scrolls lined sagging shelves, bound in black twine that flaked at a touch.
Some were immaculate, symbols crawling in tiny, careful patterns.
Others lay split open, words oozing like black blood.
Stone tablets were stacked in corners and propped against walls.
Their carvings were so deep they seemed to bleed darkness.
When a disciple stared too long, the symbols twisted, shifting into shapes that threatened to claw at sanity.
Disciples shuffled in, their boots scraping frost-slick stone.
Their breath steamed in front of them, caught in the lantern glow.
No one spoke at first.
They spread out slowly, eyes darting.
Fear held them back, but not for long.
Greed always found a way.
One boy reached too quickly.
He grabbed a scroll bound in black twine, tearing it open.
Symbols erupted in light, burning into his eyes.
He screamed.
High and thin, the sound bounced off walls meant to muffle prayer.
He dropped the scroll and clawed at his face, blood pouring between his fingers.
Jin Xiu didn't even flinch.
He watched with amusement as the boy was dragged away by silent assistants.
Then he reached higher, pulling down a larger scroll that glowed red like a wound.
"Better," he whispered, licking cracked lips.
"This is the one. This will make me strong."
"This will make me a god among worms."
Another disciple cradled a stone tablet.
Her fingers trembled as she traced the runes.
They flared and burned lines into her flesh.
She gasped once.
Blood dripped onto the floor in slow, heavy drops.
But she didn't let go.
Elsewhere, two boys fought over a single scroll.
They rolled across the cold floor, screaming curses.
Their blood smeared ancient inscriptions that pulsed and flickered.
Assistants watched without emotion.
They waited until one stopped moving.
Then they dragged both bodies away.
The Archive didn't care.
It had seen it all.
It would see it again.
Whispers filled the dark spaces between shelves.
Voices that weren't voices promised secrets no one should know.
They hissed bargains in languages older than memory.
Some disciples wept, clutching their ears.
Others fell to their knees, mouths opening to speak words that weren't theirs.
The Archive drank it all.
Wei Lian moved among them like a ghost.
He didn't reach for anything.
Didn't flinch at the screams.
He watched Jin Xiu's mouth curl in a bloody grin as he read.
He saw a girl claw at her own face to stop the words.
He heard the wet, choking sobs of a boy who realized too late he couldn't let go.
Wei Lian felt nothing.
No pity.
No fear.
He let the cold into his bones.
He breathed it deep, letting it carve his mind to a razor edge.
Inside, the Human Root pulsed slow and controlled.
Below it, the Chaos Root slumbered.
Vast.
Patient.
He moved deeper into the Archive.
Past shelves that groaned under the weight of ancient sins.
Past inscriptions that moved when no one watched.
Frost spread across the floor in branching veins.
The air turned sharper, colder, biting his lungs.
Lantern flames hissed and guttered but refused to die.
He crouched by a fallen shelf.
Scrolls lay in a pile, some reduced to pulp.
Others twitched, symbols crawling like insects seeking a new host.
He watched them burn themselves out.
He watched the words gutter and die.
He didn't touch them.
Behind him, another disciple shrieked.
He slammed his head against a wall, trying to drown out the voices.
Blood spattered old stone in arcs that steamed in the cold.
Wei Lian didn't turn.
His black eyes were fixed ahead.
Unblinking.
He moved to the back of the Archive.
Where the frost lay thickest.
Where the air was dead still.
Lanterns burned low, casting more shadow than light.
Their smoke crawled along the ceiling like blind animals.
The smell here was stronger—blood, mold, the thick stench of old death.
He scanned every shelf.
Every tablet.
Every whisper.
Here, even the assistants wouldn't follow.
They lingered at the edges, eyes wary.
They knew this was where the Archive kept its worst lies.
He found it half-buried in rubble and frost.
An old book.
Not a scroll.
It was bound in cracked black leather, dry and flaking.
The cover was warped, split along the spine.
Runes crawled over its surface like dying embers.
A lock dangled, snapped and rusted.
One corner was blackened, the shape of a burned-in handprint.
It looked like something that had been alive once.
Wei Lian studied it in silence.
He felt the Archive watching him.
Judging him.
The air seemed to hold its breath.
Shadows bent toward him.
Lantern flames shivered.
He crouched, fingers brushing frost from the cover.
It burned cold at his touch.
Heat pulsed from it, dry and hungry.
Symbols twisted under his skin.
They didn't beg.
They demanded.
He let them.
He closed his fingers around the spine.
The leather cracked beneath his grip.
Silence deepened to something suffocating.
The Archive itself seemed to lean closer.
The whispers fell silent.
He lifted it free of the rubble.
Dust cascaded in slow drifts around his boots.
Frost cracked and fell like glass.
It weighed too much for its size.
Heavy with promise.
Heavy with threat.
Wei Lian didn't blink.
Didn't hesitate.
He stood slowly, cradling it in both hands.
His breath fogged in the freezing air.
He watched the symbols crawl one last time and fade.
The old leather seemed to settle under his grip.
He didn't look away.
Didn't question.
Didn't fear.
He accepted it.
All of it.
Every cost.
Because this was power.
And he was the only one here willing to pay the price.