Qin's POV
Snow fell quietly that morning—so soft it looked like ash.
It blanketed the scorched earth of the village, erasing the soot and blood beneath it. But no amount of snow could hide the truth burned into my memory—the flames, the screams, the undead.
I stood alone just beyond the shrine, clutching my side where a gash throbbed with each breath. The fire was out, but the world was no warmer. My soul felt colder than the wind that howled through the ruins.
Liang Shen had gone deeper into the cave, searching for old records—anything that might help us understand the curse we had uncovered. I had stayed behind to rest, though rest was a lie. I couldn't stop trembling.
But it wasn't just from pain.
It was the dream.
It came to me just before the fire, and it returned again last night—sharper, louder, more horrifying.
---
In that dream, I stood in a field of untouched snow, under a sky that churned like a dying beast. A red river cut through the land, sluggish and thick. As I approached, I saw it wasn't water—it was blood, and floating within were bones. Tiny ones.
The remains of children.
Their skulls stared up at me from beneath the surface, eyes hollow, mouths wide in eternal screams.
I tried to move, but my legs wouldn't listen. Then came the voice.
A whisper like frost cracking glass.
> "You've seen them before, Qin Yao. But you were too afraid to understand."
I turned and saw a figure cloaked in black snow. No eyes. Just a mouth—grinning.
It raised its hand and carved a symbol into the air—a twisted, intersecting pattern of slashes and circles. The moment I saw it, my forehead burned.
When I woke, my mouth was dry, and blood trickled from my nose.
---
Now, in the soft daylight, that symbol remained seared into my mind. Compelled by a force I couldn't name, I knelt near the edge of the shrine and began to draw it in the snow with trembling fingers.
A triangle. A spiral inside it. Four broken lines crossing a circle.
I didn't know what it meant, but my soul did. Every part of me screamed that I shouldn't finish it. But my hand moved on its own.
As soon as I drew the final stroke, the wind howled, and the snow shifted—
Revealing footprints.
Tiny, child-sized. Dozens of them. Encircling me.
But I was alone.
My breath caught.
Then a voice cried out—not a scream, but a child's sob.
I turned toward the sound and ran. Near the woods, I saw a boy kneeling in the snow. Shen Yuan—Mei'er's little brother. His lips were blue, and his eyes wide and vacant.
"Yuan?" I called, heart racing. "What happened?"
He didn't speak. He only pointed.
I followed his gaze.
An old man lay there, frozen and pale—the traveling physician who had come through days before. His chest was bare, his skin cracked from cold.
Dead.
But there, on his ribcage, burned into his bones—
Was the symbol from my dream.
I staggered back.
Shen Yuan muttered softly. I leaned close.
"What did you say?"
"The man in the snow told me to draw it," he whispered. "He said it keeps the voices away."
I felt bile rise in my throat.
I scooped Shen Yuan into my arms and ran back to the shrine.
---
When Liang Shen returned, snow clung to his shoulders and his eyes looked… haunted.
"I found something," he said. "An old ritual—buried deep beneath the temple."
I told him everything. The dream. The symbol. The boy.
And the corpse.
He listened in silence, only breaking it with a single question. "Can you draw it again?"
I hesitated, then picked up a charcoal shard and drew the symbol on the stone floor.
He reached into his cloak and pulled out a cracked bone fragment, yellowed with age.
"I found this near the Bone Chalice ruins. It doesn't belong to any adult."
He held it beside the symbol I drew.
They matched perfectly.
"This was carved onto the bones of a child," Liang said grimly.
I felt my knees weaken. "They used children… in their rituals?"
Liang nodded, jaw tight. "Their bones were more 'pure.' That's what the scroll said."
Horror rooted deep in my chest. "How could the sect—?"
"They were desperate," he said. "Trying to bind something they couldn't destroy."
I looked at Shen Yuan, asleep by the fire. His breath was shallow.
And glowing faintly beneath his skin—was the same symbol.
I knelt beside him. "It's… spreading."
Liang leaned in. "No. It's not spreading."
"It's being revealed."
---
Then came the knock.
Not on the wooden door. But on the stone wall.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Three times. Slow. Hollow.
We froze.
Shen Yuan stirred.
"They've found him," he whispered, voice no longer a child's.
Liang Shen rose and moved between me and the wall.
A moment later, the wall cracked—dust spilling from its seams—and from the gap…
A hand of bone reached through.
Before we could react, a gust of spiritual force erupted.
The shrine trembled.
I threw myself over Shen Yuan.
And Liang—
He threw himself over both of us.
His arms wrapped around me, shielding me with his body. "Close your eyes," he whispered.
His voice was closer than it had ever been. His breath warm on my ear. His heartbeat hammering against mine.
"Liang—" I choked.
"I'm not letting them take you."
It was instinct. But in that terrifying second—beneath that crumbling ceiling, the bone hand reaching for us, symbols burning into a child's skin—our worlds collided.
And I knew.
I wasn't afraid anymore.
Not with him.
---
The tremor faded. The wall sealed again.
We stayed like that for a breathless minute. Then another. And then… Liang slowly pulled away, still holding my gaze.
"We can't stay here," he said. "The shrine won't protect us anymore."
"What do we do?" I asked.
He looked down at Shen Yuan, who had begun muttering again.
> "The river calls.
The key bleeds.
Bone to bone."
Liang stood and picked up the scroll again.
"There's a place—north of the valley. Where the snow never melts. The scroll mentions it as the origin. The 'source of the marrow.' I think that's where we have to go."
I nodded, forcing the panic down.
We had no other choice.
But as I wrapped Shen Yuan in my cloak and prepared to leave, I caught a glimpse of his arm.
Another symbol.
But not the one I had seen before.
This one was new.
A spiral—wrapped around a lotus flower.
My blood turned to ice.
I had seen it before.
Etched on the altar of the cleansing spring… where no child had ever been allowed.
I looked at Liang Shen.
He saw it too.
He didn't say anything.
But he knew.
This was only the beginning.