The mountain wind had not changed.It whispered with the same soft drag against stone,spoke in the same rhythm of frost settling against her cheeks.
But Shuangli's breath was no longer passive.It was measured.
Every step she took was not to walk the path—but to see it.
She had been here before.
Not once, not twice—a thousand times, in her first life.
The child had been waiting, buried in snow and silence.This time, she would not arrive late.
Her maid walked quietly beside her, unaware of the weight now curled around her mistress's soul.
The guard followed at distance, eyes watchful.Nothing in their manner had changed.
They had not watched her die.
They had not heard her scream when her daughter crumbled in her arms like frosted silk.
Only she remembered.
The system had said nothing since she awoke.
No flashing screens.No flickering text.
Only that pulsing awareness behind her thoughts—a presence waiting for her to make the first move.
She did not call it.
She did not need to.
She remembered the way.
By the time they reached the ridge, she knew it was close.
Her footsteps slowed,then stopped beneath the same twisted willow.
The tree bent in the same weary shape.
But this time, the sound came sooner.
Not a cry.
A breath.
A single, wet gasp.
The guard stilled behind her.She raised a hand before he could move.
"No," she said softly."I know where she is."
She walked off the path.
The mountain gave way beneath her with a silence that felt rehearsed.
There it was—
The strange spiral in the snow.A pattern of drift that didn't match the wind.
She stepped carefully into it.
And then she saw them.
Not gently posed.
Still broken. Still desperate.
The man lay further down, limbs twisted wrong.The woman was half-buried, hands frozen into the fabric of the child she had tried to save.
There had been no ambush.No beast.No bandits.
Only the cruel, unblinking cold of abandonment.
Shuangli knelt beside the child again.So small.
So quiet.
So close to being lost.
She didn't hesitate this time.She reached out.
And the child whimpered—weak, but familiar.
It wasn't recognition.
Not yet.
But something had heard her coming.
The interface flickered behind her eyes.
[Fated point reached.][Would you like to begin soul-binding sequence?]
She did not respond.
She didn't need to.
Her hand was already bleeding.
This time, it was not instinct.
It was ritual.
Her blood touched the child's stomach.
The runes began to form.
Her mana twisted.
But this time, she held it with more grace.More certainty.
She knew the pain.She knew the price.
And she would pay it again.
The wind rose like breath caught in a throat.
The glyphs glowed.
The child's chest trembled.
Then—that first true breath—
Frost spilled from her mouth.
The girl changed again—silver-blue scales, tiny horns, limbs becoming what they were never meant to be.
But Shuangli did not cry this time.
She only held her.
The system flickered once more.
[Name the soul.]
She whispered—
"Ruxia… Bing Jiuhua."
Graceful frost.The sorrowed bloom of ice.
The name wrapped around the child like silk.
The wind softened.
The mountain listened.
And this time…
the frost did not take her.
The palace welcomed her back in silence.
No bells. No announcements. No questions.Just corridors that curved like memory, and courtyards still painted in the light of frost that came from no season.
Shuangli walked without ceremony, the child held against her chest, swaddled in silence.
Behind her: a maid who said nothing.A guard whose eyes never met hers.
Before her: a hundred doors she no longer wished to open.
She did not return to the great chambers of her family.
She asked for an unused winter pavilion near the eastern gardens—one reserved for guests of lesser blood, with no attached concubines, no neighboring courtyards.
The request was strange, but not alarming.
"A wish for quiet," she explained. "The mountain left me with thoughts I must still sort."
No one argued.
No one ever argued with Shuangli Shi Lenghua.
The child remained hidden.Not locked away—but unannounced.
She did not name her publicly.She did not summon spiritualists or tutors.She simply carried her, and no one dared ask.
The first cracks began in subtle shifts.
She declined her usual place in morning meditation council.
She ceased attending internal spell calibration sessions.
She no longer wrote scrolls for the annual ancestral offerings—the calligraphy she'd once been famed for now absent.
When asked, her attendants said:
"She sleeps longer now.""Her mind is heavy with cold.""She has been quieter."
Which was not a lie.Only… the wrong silence.
Behind closed doors, she began the process.
Not of fading—but of letting them believe she was fading.
It began with mana rhythm.
She sealed her inner meridian tempo into a slower cycle.Not erratic enough to draw concern—only enough to register as drain.
The court's spiritualists, who tracked elemental pulse across the noble ranks for balance and ritual alignment, would begin to notice.
"Stone House's frost-bloom wanes."
"Mana depletion? Or soul quieting?"
"She's never spoken of illness. Perhaps she's simply dimming."
Shuangli made no correction.
The system remained silent.
Or rather, listening.
It spoke only when she asked:
"How long before this decay becomes irreversible in the eyes of court?"
[Projected perception of decline: noticeable within two weeks.Critical whispers: three months.Formal dismissal or relocation offers: within one to two years.]
Good.
That was the pace she needed.
She kept Jiuhua in her private chambers, tended only by herself and a newly reassigned maid whose tongue had been removed before birth—a silent girl trained by spiritual orders.
The child grew slowly. Quietly. Watched.
Shuangli spent her days in stillness, but her mind moved like the mountain mist—circling the patterns of a death no one knew had once occurred.
They won't strike again, she thought.Not until I matter again.
So she made herself not matter.
A ghost in silk.A fading brilliance no longer useful.
When the empress finally sent a private missive inquiring of her health, it was short.
"I am steady in soul, but frayed in spirit," Shuangli wrote, her hand slow, her brush imperfect.
"I find myself colder than I remember. The mountain has not left me. Perhaps it wishes to keep me."
The empress did not reply.
That was good.
Let her begin to forget.
Let the court begin to shift its weight to others.
Let the petals of favor fall elsewhere.
The system flickered quietly one night as Jiuhua slept beside her.
[First fracture complete.][Rumors: 7][Position threat: Decreasing][Favor status: Slipping][Political weight: Reducing][Projected course stable.]
[New quest: Establish external relocation path.]
She closed her eyes.
And let the frost deepen.