INVITATION WRITTEN IN BLOOD
In the twenty-third year of the Yonghe reign, when the autumn winds scraped the mountains like fingernails across bone, Liang Wen received the invitation.
It arrived at dusk.
The courier did not knock.
He simply stood outside the bamboo gate of Liang Wen's crumbling ancestral home, unmoving, head bowed as if in prayer. The sky behind him burned the color of opened flesh.
Liang Wen noticed him only because the chickens had stopped clucking.
Silence in the countryside was never mercy.
It was warning.
Wen stepped outside with a lantern. The flame trembled violently, though there was no wind.
The courier's robe was imperial black, stitched with a golden dragon that seemed to twist as the light shifted. His face was hidden beneath a bamboo hat.
"State your business," Wen said.
The courier did not lift his head.
Instead, he extended both hands.
Upon his palms rested a Go stone.
Not black.
Not white.
Red.
Wet red.
It dripped.
One drop struck the dirt at Wen's feet.
It was blood.
Fresh.
Wen's throat tightened. "What game is this?"
The courier finally spoke.
His voice sounded as if several people were speaking from the same throat.
"By order of Heaven's Mandate, you are summoned to compete in the Imperial Go Convergence. Refusal is treason. Participation is survival."
The lantern flame went out.
Darkness swallowed the courtyard.
Wen heard something tear.
Not cloth.
Not paper.
Flesh.
He stepped back.
When he relit the lantern with shaking fingers, the courier was gone.
Only the red stone remained.
And beneath it—
Two human eyeballs, staring upward, still wet and trembling in the dirt.
THE GAME'S SUMMONS
Liang Wen had once been called a prodigy.
Before famine hollowed his cheeks.
Before debt swallowed his family estate.
Before his father hung himself from the old locust tree after losing everything in a gambling den.
Go was the only inheritance Wen had left.
He studied the red stone in his hand.
It pulsed faintly.
Like a heartbeat.
On its surface, faintly carved, were two characters:
生死
Life. Death.
He should have burned it.
Instead, he felt something else.
Excitement.
A dangerous, shameful curiosity.
Because in the game of Go, survival did not belong to the righteous.
It belonged to the one who saw further.
THE JOURNERY
The invitation directed him north, toward Mount Heiwu — a place villagers avoided even in daylight.
They said the mountain swallowed sound.
They said travelers walked in and never walked out.
They said the forest there did not grow toward the sun—
It grew toward blood.
Wen traveled for three days.
On the second night, he encountered another invitee.
She sat beside the road beneath a dead willow tree.
Her robes were scholar's gray, but stained at the hem with something dark and crusted. Her hair was long, tied with a white ribbon that had once been clean.
She was holding a Go board across her lap.
The pieces on it were not placed randomly.
They formed a pattern.
A perfect enclosure.
Every white stone surrounded.
Every black stone consumed.
She did not look up when he approached.
"You received it too," she said softly.
Wen stopped. "The red stone."
"Yes."
Her voice was steady. Too steady.
"Liang Wen," he said cautiously.
She finally looked at him.
Her eyes were sharp. Intelligent.
And rimmed with exhaustion.
"Mei Lian."
The air between them felt heavy.
Like a board waiting for the first move.
"You're going to Mount Heiwu," she said.
"Yes."
"Good."
She lifted one white stone and crushed it between her fingers.
It cracked like brittle bone.
Inside it—
A fingernail.
Human.
Still pink at the base.
Wen recoiled.
"They're not stones," she said quietly. "They never were."
THE FIRST HORROR
They reached the mountain on the fourth day.
Mount Heiwu did not rise from the earth.
It hunched.
Like something crouched.
The path upward was lined with wooden poles.
On each pole hung a head.
Not decayed.
Preserved.
Their mouths were sewn shut with black thread.
Their eyelids had been removed.
Every pair of eyes stared toward the summit.
Watching.
Waiting.
Wen felt Mei Lian's hand brush his sleeve.
"Don't look at them too long," she whispered.
"Why?"
"Because they blink."
He froze.
One of the heads twitched.
Its eye rolled.
It focused on him.
A muffled scream erupted from behind the stitched lips.
The thread tightened.
The head split open down the middle like overripe fruit.
Inside—
Black stones poured out.
Dozens.
Clattering onto the path.
They moved.
Not rolling randomly.
Crawling.
Toward Wen's feet.
He staggered back.
The stones vibrated violently before embedding themselves into the soil, arranging into a grid.
A Go board.
Formed from earth.
And then—
A voice.
Not from above.
Not from below.
From everywhere.
"First match begins."
The ground split open.
A man rose from it.
His skin was gray and cracked like dried clay. Black stones were embedded beneath his flesh, shifting visibly under the surface like parasites.
His eyes were missing.
In their sockets—
Two white stones.
Perfectly placed.
He opened his mouth.
Black liquid spilled out.
"Play."
THE RULES WRITTEN IN FLESH
A wooden table burst upward from the soil.
Upon it—
A Go board.
But the grid lines were carved into human skin stretched tight over a wooden frame.
The pores were visible.
Tiny hairs protruded.
It was breathing.
Slowly.
The eyeless opponent sat opposite Wen.
Mei Lian gripped Wen's wrist.
"Do not lose."
"What happens if I do?"
She didn't answer.
The eyeless man reached into his own chest.
He dug fingers beneath his ribs.
Pulled.
A cracking sound echoed.
He removed a stone.
A black stone.
It was attached to veins.
He severed them with his teeth and placed the stone on the board.
The skin twitched where it landed.
Blood welled along the carved lines.
Wen swallowed bile.
He reached into the bowl beside him.
The white stones were warm.
Too warm.
Like teeth freshly torn from a mouth.
He placed his first move.
The board sighed.
The match had begun.
THE COST OF MISTAKES
The eyeless man played brutally.
Aggressive.
Relentless.
Wen responded instinctively, mind narrowing into survival mode.
The forest fell silent.
Even the wind had stopped.
Midway through the match, Wen hesitated.
A miscalculation.
A weakness in his formation.
The eyeless man placed a stone.
A capturing move.
Wen felt something tighten around his ankle.
He looked down.
The earth had wrapped around his leg like a hand.
Bones cracked.
He screamed.
The board vibrated.
The captured white stones bled.
Mei Lian shouted, "Sacrifice the corner! Trade it!"
Wen's vision blurred from pain.
He shifted strategy.
Abandoned territory.
Built strength elsewhere.
A counterattack.
The eyeless man tilted his head unnaturally.
The white stones in his eye sockets rotated.
The final move came suddenly.
A ladder trap.
Perfect.
The eyeless man froze.
Cracks spread across his body.
Black stones burst from his skin.
He screamed.
A sound like metal scraping against bone.
His flesh split open from chin to groin.
Inside him—
A Go board.
And on it—
Hundreds of screaming faces embedded as stones.
They writhed.
Begging.
The body collapsed.
Shattered into pieces.
The earth swallowed it.
Silence returned.
Wen fell to his knees.
His ankle was twisted grotesquely.
But not broken.
The ground released him.
The voice returned.
"Liang Wen. Victory."
A pause.
Then:
"Mei Lian. Next."
THE TRAGIC BEGINNING
Another table rose.
Another opponent emerged.
This one was a child.
No older than seven.
Her eyes were sewn shut.
Her hands were bound behind her back.
A rope ran from her spine into the soil.
Like a puppet string.
Mei Lian's face drained of color.
"No…"
The voice was calm.
"Opponent selected from previous convergence."
The child's mouth opened.
Inside it—
Black stones stacked where her tongue should be.
Mei Lian stepped forward.
"If I refuse?"
The ground shifted.
Heads along the path began to scream in unison.
"Refusal equals forfeiture."
"And forfeiture?"
"Conversion."
The child sat at the board.
The ropes pulled her upright.
A stone was forced into her mouth.
She choked.
Coughed blood.
It landed on the board.
Marking the first move.
Mei Lian's hands trembled.
Wen grabbed her sleeve.
"Win."
She looked at him.
In that moment, something fragile passed between them.
Shared horror.
Shared understanding.
If one of them lost—
They would become part of the board.
Forever.
Mei Lian sat.
Placed her first stone.
The board pulsed.
The game resumed.
And above Mount Heiwu—
The sky darkened.
Not with clouds.
But with something vast.
Something watching.
The convergence had begun.
And only the fittest would leave the mountain alive.