Liang's POV
The canyon reeked of death.
Even before they appeared, I smelled them—an aroma of old blood masked by rotting incense and poison qi. My steps slowed, every muscle on edge. I knew I wasn't alone.
Then they emerged from behind the stone ridges.
Seven cultivators, draped in tattered robes of black and white, stitched with what looked like beast-hide and dried sinew. Their faces were hidden behind carved skull masks—each grinning with far too many teeth. I locked eyes with the one in front, though his face was obscured behind a golden-fanged mask.
Elder Bai Mu.
Leader of the Ghost Teeth Sect—the bone-chewers of the Southern Crypts.
The cannibal monks.
The worshippers of rot.
> "So it's true," he rasped, voice like wind through a mausoleum. "The marrow-blood breathes once more. Liang Shen… the Bone Heir walks again."
I stood tall, hiding my left arm beneath my robe. It was still pulsing—alive—though I barely felt it as part of me anymore.
> "You tracked me by scent?" I asked quietly.
> "We tracked hunger," he answered. "And yours sings to ours."
He stepped forward. Though the air around him stood still, his shadow slithered unnaturally across the rocks.
> "You're being hunted, Liang Shen. By the Five Heaven Sects. By the Flamekeepers. Even your own masters. But we... we welcome you."
> "Welcome?" I asked coldly. "Or flay?"
Bai Mu chuckled. It was the sound of dry bones scraping against temple stone.
> "You may call it purification. We do not burn bones—we preserve them. Honor them. And the strongest… we wear."
I tensed. The followers behind him moved like ghosts, soundless, forming a quiet circle around me.
> "Don't test me," I warned. "You know what I carry."
> "That's why we haven't flayed you." Bai Mu halted two paces away and reached into his cloak. He pulled out a small box—carved of human vertebrae, sealed with old wax and etched in dried blood.
The box throbbed.
> "A gift," he said. "A fragment of the Fourth Bone King's rib. His flesh may be gone, but his marrow still dreams."
I stared at the box. My heart stuttered. The bone inside called to something deep within me.
> "And the price?" I asked.
> "Alliance," Bai Mu replied. "Or, at the very least... a stay of execution."
He tossed the box to me. I caught it without thinking.
The moment my fingers touched it, the seal cracked on its own.
Inside lay a shard of rib bone—no longer than a finger. It was black as burnt ivory, but veins of golden spirit lines ran through it like lightning. It breathed. So did I.
> "Just a drop of blood," Bai Mu whispered. "And it will feed you tenfold."
I didn't give it blood.
Because it didn't wait.
The bone jumped from the box and plunged into my chest, piercing just beneath the collarbone—embedding itself inside me with a sickening snap.
I screamed.
Not from pain—from power.
My spirit flared like wildfire. I couldn't breathe, couldn't see. It was as if a hundred doors in my body suddenly opened.
Suddenly, I felt everything.
Every soul within a ten-mile radius. The roots writhing beneath the earth. The tremble of Bai Mu's heart from his toes touching the dust.
And the worst part—I liked it.
> "Welcome, Liang Shen," Bai Mu intoned. "You have touched the ancestral marrow. You are no longer a student. You are an heir."
The rib fused into my chest, connecting with the bone in my left arm like joining pieces of an ancient puzzle. Now, something else breathed inside me.
All around me, his followers knelt.
Not before Bai Mu.
Before me.
---
I wanted to speak. To refuse. To tear it all out.
But no words came.
Because somewhere in the pit of my soul…
…a question echoed back at me:
Is this truly a curse?
Or the shape of power I was always meant to wear?
And in that choking silence, one truth became clear:
The world of bone... was opening its gates to me.
And I no longer knew if I wanted to close them.
My breath came in uneven bursts.
The pain was gone. But something worse had taken its place—clarity.
I could hear whispers beneath my skin. Whispers in bone. In blood. In language I had never learned, yet now understood.
The rib shard inside me had awakened something ancient. Something buried.
I rose shakily to my feet.
The seven Ghost Teeth cultivators still knelt in the dust. Even Elder Bai Mu lowered his head slightly, his mask tilted toward the ground—not in worship, but in recognition. Something about that gesture made my stomach twist.
> "You feel it now, don't you?" Bai Mu said softly.
"The throne beneath your feet. The hunger in the marrow. The gaze of the Bone Kings, watching from the deep layers of the world."
I didn't answer.
Because he was right.
The world had tilted. It was no longer just wind and stone and dust—it was a living cathedral of death. The earth pulsed like a corpse still twitching. I felt like I stood in the hollow ribcage of a sleeping titan.
I turned slightly, watching the horizon.
Far off, a flock of spirit-crows wheeled across the sky, circling one point like they'd found a wound in the land. Beyond them, I sensed other movements: a scout from the Burning Sky Sect approaching. A lone blade dancer whispering his mantras. A seer with salt in her breath. All of them moving—slowly—toward me.
> "You are no longer invisible," Bai Mu said. "Your marrow calls out. The blood-bond has begun."
"What does it want?" I asked, quietly.
> "What do all bones want?" he replied. "To return to the earth. Or to rise again and conquer it."
I looked down at my hand.
The cloth had fallen away.
My left arm gleamed—white and perfect. Carved with runes that glowed faintly in the light. And I could no longer deny it. It felt stronger than my living arm.
It didn't shake.
It didn't fear.
It didn't ask permission.
I flexed my fingers.
The bones responded instantly—like a blade being unsheathed.
> "There will be pain," Bai Mu continued, rising to his feet. "Old bones do not yield easily to new will. But if you survive the marrow trials, you will speak with the authority of those who ruled before the sky ever cracked."
I closed my eyes.
For a moment, I imagined myself back in the quiet forest with my master. Before the tomb. Before the curse. Before all of this.
I tried to summon the warmth of that time.
But all I felt… was cold.
The kind that wrapped around your spine and whispered that the old world was gone.
And I would never be the same again.
---
A sound cracked behind me.
I turned fast.
From the canyon wall, one of the bone pillars—left behind by some forgotten ritual—split open.
A figure emerged.
Shrouded in fog. Clutching something close to its chest.
Not from the Ghost Teeth Sect. Not from any sect I recognized.
Its face was covered by a cloth of ash.
Its aura was old.
And it spoke directly into my soul.
> "You have accepted what should have stayed buried."
> "Now the Bone Scripture has opened the next seal."
---
I didn't move.
I couldn't.
My arm burned. The rib inside me pulsed.
And far, far beneath my feet—
I felt the world start to shift.
Something vast… was waking up.