The Bellkeeper led without asking if he would follow. Her steps were unhurried, deliberate enough to force his own pace into rhythm with the soft chime of the bone-forged bells at her hip.
The tunnel narrowed, walls beading with moisture that caught the torchlight in restless glints. Behind them, the frost-veined passage lay silent again, as if the man in the scaled cloak had been nothing but a trick of the cold.
Except for the ache in Qin Mo's sword arm where the ice chain had wrapped, and the faint splinter pattern of frost still etched into the steel.
"You crossed someone you shouldn't," the Bellkeeper said without turning.
Qin Mo kept his voice flat. "You know him."
"I know the type," she said. The bells gave a low double note as she ducked under a low arch. "They call themselves Keepers too, though of what depends on who's asking. He holds frost like you hold fire. The difference is, he's been doing it long enough to forget what he was before."
"Long enough to know your name," Qin Mo said.
That earned him a look over her shoulder—a brief flicker, more warning than curiosity. "Names are expensive here. Don't spend mine where I can't collect it back."
They came out into a cavern whose ceiling was lost to shadow. A thin mist clung to the floor, swirling in lazy eddies around the bases of stone pillars thick enough to hold a city's weight. Somewhere beyond the reach of the torch, water fell in a steady, hollow rhythm.
The Bellkeeper stopped by one of the pillars and set her torch in an iron sconce. "You still have the shard?"
He didn't answer.
Her gaze sharpened. "Don't test me. It hums when it's close to fire or frost, and it's humming now."
Qin Mo touched the place inside his robe where the wolf king's core rested. "What do you want with it?"
"What I want," she said, "is for it not to end up in the hands of a man who can freeze your heart before you finish drawing breath."
He let that sit between them a moment. "So you're claiming the moral high ground."
"No," she said. "I'm claiming survival."
Her tone was even, but the bells at her hip gave a sharp, discordant note—as if something unseen had passed too close. She turned her head toward the mist, listening. Qin Mo shifted his stance, free hand brushing the hilt.
A shadow moved in the fog. Not the tall, deliberate gait of the frost man, but quick, low, and many-legged. The torchlight caught a glint—wet chitin, serrated like broken glass.
[Uncatalogued presence detected. Threat class: Predatory swarm.]
The Bellkeeper's hand dropped to the largest bell. She struck it once, hard. The sound was not loud so much as deep—low enough to buzz against bone, to make the mist shiver. The shadow froze mid-creep, limbs curling inward.
"Stay close," she said, and stepped into the fog.
They moved together, the bells marking a path the swarm would not cross. Through gaps in the mist, Qin Mo caught glimpses of the creatures—carapaces laced with pale fungus, eyes like beads of onyx. When the sound faded, they twitched forward; when it swelled, they sank back.
He kept his voice low. "Your bells keep them away."
"They keep them listening," she said. "The trick is making sure they never hear the silence."
A passage opened ahead, narrow and steep. The Bellkeeper went first, bells chiming in a pattern Qin Mo realized was deliberate—long, short, short, long. The swarm followed at a distance, never closing the gap.
By the time they emerged into open air, the moon had sunk behind a ridge. Mist poured from the cavern mouth into a pine-choked hollow. The Bellkeeper stopped at the edge and faced him.
"You want answers about the Sect. About why they sent you to die with the king. Fine. But understand—your fire isn't the only thing they fear. It's just the only one they can't leash."
"And the frost?" he asked.
She glanced back at the cave. "The frost answers to someone else. Someone who'd rather see your fire burn out than share the mountain with it."
The bells chimed again, softer this time. "You survived the wolves. You kept the shard. That makes you useful—for now. If you want to live long enough to decide what to do with that use, you'll stay where the bells can reach you."
She stepped past him into the trees. "If you wander back into frost alone, don't expect to find the way out."
The wind shifted, carrying the faintest echo of the ice man's voice from somewhere deep in the pines: Fire blinds.
The shard at Qin Mo's chest warmed, as if in answer.
[Quest Updated: Line of Fire and Frost — Choose alignment path before shard infusion. Warning: alignment will influence all future devours.]