The pines shuddered again.
Not wind — weight. Each impact was slow, deliberate, like the mountain itself was counting.
Mist tore apart around a shape that was both too tall and too long. Horns curved back from a skull plated in dark ridges. Between them, the faint glow of copper mane bled into white fire.
Qin Mo knew that gait. The Bellkeeper's breath caught.
"It shouldn't be alive."
It wasn't. The mane hung in tatters; half the jaw was bone. Every step clicked faintly — not the sound of joints, but the sound of something holding them together.
The splinter unit reacted first. Lines shifted, bows coming up. The lead rider barked an order, and six shafts tipped with frost-fire arced toward the thing.
They didn't land. The air before the beast warped, heat and cold both coiling in a shimmer. Arrows snapped in mid-flight.
Qin Mo felt the shard at his chest tighten, as if recognizing kin.
"Not a wolf king," he said. "A crown-bearer."
The Bellkeeper's bells trembled once, a note that seemed to weigh the air. "And bound. Look at the spine."
Chains of etched iron ran from the base of the skull down the back, vanishing into the beast's chest. With each breath, runes along the metal flared. The splinter unit hadn't come to fight it — they had brought it.
The lead rider dropped his hand. The beast moved.
It didn't charge like the living kings — no low rush, no weaving. It simply walked through the first rank. Armor split without slowing it. Horses screamed and went down. Frost clung to the corpses before they hit the ground.
Qin Mo drew steel. "You wanted to see what I'd do if I didn't run," he told the Bellkeeper.
"I still do."
He moved. Hybrid power bit into the rock, frost anchoring each step, heat driving the next. The beast's head turned at the motion. Eyes — if they were eyes — burned a pale, impossible white.
The first paw came down where he had been. Rock split. Shards skated on the frost-slick ground. He slid under the limb, cut at the inner joint. Steel bit — then jarred. Not bone. Metal under hide.
[Observation: Reinforced construct. Organic tissue minimal. Vital nodes masked.]
The beast pivoted with unnatural precision. The chain along its spine sang as it turned. Qin Mo dropped low, Flame Step flaring, and cut for the chain itself. Sparks leapt, but the etching held.
Behind, the splinter unit recovered. Half formed a perimeter, the rest began driving the beast toward him like hounds on a boar.
"They're using me to keep it busy," he said.
"That means they think it can kill you," the Bellkeeper replied from somewhere above — she'd taken the ridge, moving without a sound.
Another paw came. He met it with frost, forcing the limb to slow, then drove heat into the same point. Steam exploded under the hide, and the beast jerked back. The chain sang again, louder.
One of the riders shouted. The beast's head snapped toward the voice — not the nearest man, but the one giving orders. It moved, chain dragging the rest of it like a puppet's string.
"That's the handler," Qin Mo said.
The Bellkeeper's bells gave three hard notes. "Then cut the hand before the leash."
He didn't argue. Flame Step carried him past the beast's flank, frost scattering underhoof strikes. He came up behind the lead rider as the man turned to issue another order.
Steel met the back of the man's knee. He dropped with a yell. Qin Mo's second cut took the arm holding the chain's talisman.
The beast froze.
For one breath, it looked at nothing. Then the glow in its eyes shifted, copper bleeding into the white.
The Bellkeeper's voice came cold. "You just set it free."
The handler's scream cut short. The beast's jaws closed where his chest had been. Chains snapped one by one, each break a crack of air.
The shard against Qin Mo's chest burned. Not warning — calling.
The beast's head swung toward him. No puppet string now. Its own will.
The freed crown-bearer came on like an avalanche given thought.
Each step cracked stone, shaking frost and needles from the pines. The heat in its mane didn't burn—it roared cold, the kind that bit deeper than winter. Qin Mo's breath plumed white; the shard at his chest thrummed like a second heart.
He didn't wait. Flame Step burst beneath him, a low arc carrying him to the beast's blind side. Frost surged along the blade, tempering the heat until steel sang with both edges of the spectrum.
He drove for the throat.
The cut split hide, then sparked—runes carved into the flesh itself flared in answer. Power kicked him back like a hammer. His boots slid, frost skittering underfoot.
[Warning: Energy feedback detected. Source—symbiotic seal, residual handler command.]
The beast struck low. Qin Mo twisted, letting the paw tear his shoulder instead of taking the skull-crushing bite. Pain flared hot and sharp; Endurance bled it down to a hard pressure.
From above, the Bellkeeper's bells rang three sharp notes. Frost lanced from the ridge, slamming into the beast's foreleg. Steam exploded from the impact as ice met the inner heat.
"Break the seal!" she shouted.
He saw it then—hidden under the mane, just above the breastbone, a knot of metal and bone fused into the flesh. Chains had led there once. Now it glowed faintly, pulling the beast's own fire inward.
Flame Step again—short, brutal. He came in low, let the frost bite first to numb the heat, then drove the point through the knot. Steel punched bone, metal, and something that screamed without sound.
The glow in the beast's eyes shattered into shards of copper and frost.
It roared—not bound, not commanded. Pure fury. The pass shook; gravel cascaded from the cliffs.
"Now you've done it," the Bellkeeper muttered, but she was moving, dropping from the ridge to flank it.
Qin Mo didn't try to kill it in one stroke. He bled it—cuts along the legs, a stab to the flank, dodging each counter like a wolf harrying a bear. Frost slowed its turns; flame punished the pauses. The Bellkeeper's strikes landed like bells tolling doom, each impact ringing in bone.
At last the beast staggered. The seal at its chest guttered out.
It collapsed to one knee. For a moment, its head dipped, eyes locking with Qin Mo's—something passing there, not gratitude, but recognition.
Then it fell, copper mane dimming to ash.
[Target slain: Crown-Bearer (Hybrid Construct).]
[Attributes gained: Strength +4, Endurance +3, Perception +2.]
[Unique synergy unlocked: Heat/Frost Weave — alternating elements amplify penetration by 22% for three strikes after swap.]
The Bellkeeper crouched, running a gloved hand over the broken seal. "Not Azure Flame's work. Older. Worse."
Qin Mo cleaned his blade, breath still coming in deep pulls. "And someone brought it here anyway."
She met his eyes. "Then someone thinks they can control the dead."
From far below, horns answered—deep, rolling, the kind that carried over valleys.
Neither of them moved for a long moment.
"Company," she said.
Qin Mo sheathed his blade. "Then we move before they take the crown."
They left the corpse cooling in the mist, the broken seal still faintly warm, and vanished into the pines as the horns drew nearer.