The road does not ask for names, only footsteps.
---
[First-Person – Age 13]
The wind smells different outside the mountains. Sharper. Hungrier.
I had spent thirteen winters watching clouds drift above those ridges, dreaming of the world beyond the cedars. Now that I was walking into it, I felt no triumph. Only quiet.
The blind old man had died three days before I left.
No grand farewell. No riddles. Just a single line scrawled in the dust beside his grave: "Walk as the song walks—free, but never aimless."
I burned the old hut down. Not from grief—but from reverence. Some things must return to silence.
I carry the Divine Zither strapped across my back, wrapped in cloth so it draws no eyes. I eat little. Sleep less. The road is narrow, and bandits are bold where the Empire's reach thins. I play only when I must.
But still the strings hum at night. They remember more than I do.
---
Three weeks into his journey, Li Yun arrived at the outskirts of a frontier town called Stone Reed—a trade stop nestled between forest and marsh, reeking of smoke, sweat, and secrets.
No great clans ruled here. No noble banners flew. Just merchants, mercenaries, and those too tired to dream.
Li Yun kept his hood low, eyes watchful. He exchanged a pouch of dried roots for a night's shelter in a half-rotted inn, its name long lost to peeling paint.
That night, he played.
Not for coin. Not for glory.
He played for the dead.
---
The common room had emptied by the time the final note faded. A barkeep paused mid-wipe, transfixed. A mercenary at the corner table sat with tears streaming silently down his face.
No one spoke.
Even the drunkard who'd been shouting for another pitcher of rice wine fell quiet, his mouth hanging open like a struck bell.
It wasn't just music. It was memory made sound.
And somewhere, outside the walls, something listened.
---
[First-Person – Late Night, Stone Reed]
I should not have played.
It calls to things I don't understand. Not beasts or men—older things. Things that remember the first heartbeat of the world.
When I play, it's like lighting a fire in a cave that's been dark for centuries. Something will come to look.
Tonight, I dreamt of black strings—strings that bled ink and wept stars.
And in the distance, a voice I know but cannot name, whispering:
"Not yet. But soon."
---
The next morning, a storm rolled in from the eastern marshlands. Gray clouds clung low, and the streets of Stone Reed turned to muck. Merchants shouted half-heartedly beneath their soaked canopies, and children ran barefoot through puddles, laughing like ghosts.
Li Yun sat beneath the eaves of the inn, a bowl of steamed rice cooling in his lap. His gaze was far, fixed on the mist that curled at the edge of the horizon like smoke from a dying fire.
Something was coming.
He felt it not with his ears, but with the strings of his soul. A tension in the melody of the world—like a dissonant chord waiting to resolve.
He stood and walked toward the marsh road.
---
The path narrowed as he traveled. Trees gave way to tangled reeds, and the scent of rot filled the air. Time moved strangely here—slower, yet sharp, like the pause before a blade falls.
That's when he heard it.
Not a beast's growl. Not a man's shout.
A flute.
Delicate and haunting, it drifted through the fog like a memory left unfinished. The notes curled around his thoughts, urging him forward.
He followed.
---
She stood atop a half-sunken log, her robes fluttering despite the still air. A mask hid her face—bone-white, with three vertical black lines across the cheek. In her hand, a bamboo flute carved with silver vines.
Li Yun stopped ten paces away.
The girl's music halted. Her masked face tilted slightly.
"I wondered if the song would draw you," she said. Her voice was soft, but it cut through the fog like silk through paper. "The world is not yet ready for what you carry."
Li Yun's eyes narrowed. "Who are you?"
She raised her flute again. "A shadow. A warning. A mirror."
Then the mist around them moved.
Shapes took form—shadow beasts, all ribs and claws, crawling from the reeds with eyes like burning coals. Ten… twenty… more.
The girl vanished into the fog.
---
Li Yun didn't speak. He set the Divine Zither before him, knelt in the mud, and touched the strings.
A low vibration filled the air—a rumbling, ancient tone that echoed from the earth itself.
The beasts howled and charged.
His fingers danced.
The melody he wove was sharp and discordant—an aria of conflict. The air shimmered, and illusions unfurled: a forest of blades, a storm of broken glass, a phantom army marching in time with his notes.
The beasts faltered, their minds splintering beneath the assault of layered sound and false memory.
And then… silence.
---
When the last creature fell, its body dissolving into smoke, Li Yun's shoulders slumped. Blood ran from his lip where his teeth had clenched too hard. His fingers trembled.
The zither steamed in the cold.
In the distance, the masked girl watched from atop a branch, unreadable.
"You survived," she murmured. "Good. That means the other one will come soon."
Li Yun looked up. "What other one?"
She vanished once more into the mist.
Only her flute remained, still echoing somewhere far behind the veil of reeds.
---
[First-Person – Nightfall]
I've learned two things today.
First: my music is not just art. It is weapon, memory, and map.
Second: there are others who play the hidden songs of the world—and not all of them are allies.
I do not know who she was. Or what she meant. But something has awakened. Something old.
And I… I am still just learning how to listen.
The rain ceased by dusk, but the mist did not lift. It clung to Li Yun like a second skin as he ventured deeper into the marsh, guided not by logic, but by an unshakable pull—like a forgotten melody tugging at the edge of consciousness.
His path led to an overgrown hill, swallowed by bramble and vine. Half-buried stone steps rose from the muck, leading into a cave mouth choked by silence.
There were no beasts here. No birds. Only stillness. Sacred. Heavy.
Li Yun's fingers brushed the zither on his back, and the strings quivered—not in fear, but recognition.
He descended into the dark.
---
The cave was ancient, cut not by man but by intent.
Walls lined with carvings danced in the flickering light of a summoned flame: symbols of instruments, celestial beasts, and… eyes. Eyes that watched. Eyes that listened.
In the center of the chamber stood a stone pedestal. Upon it, a sealed scroll bound by seven golden threads and a single jade bell.
As he stepped closer, a voice bloomed within his mind—clear, resonant, without source or language.
"Seeker of the Dissonant Chord… you are early."
The scroll unbound itself, golden threads unraveling like strands of fate. Wind stirred, though none should exist underground. The jade bell rang once.
Ding.
It was the sound of memory awakening.
---
Li Yun collapsed to his knees, visions crashing through his mind like storm waves:
– A battlefield of shattered instruments and blood-soaked silk
– A towering zither, suspended between heaven and earth, struck by lightning and screaming in tongues
– A girl with a flute of shadows, weeping under a blood-red moon
– And a voice, always the same, whispering:
"When the Seventh String is played, the Veil will break…"
---
When he awoke, the scroll was gone.
In its place, etched into the pedestal, were seven strange glyphs—each pulsing faintly beneath his touch. A melody echoed in his soul: unfinished, broken, yet terribly familiar.
He had not learned it. He had remembered it.
A fragment of a song older than stars.
---
[First-Person – Later that Night, Marsh Campfire]
I thought my power was strange. I was wrong. It's not strange.
It's forgotten.
I carry an echo of something buried deep beneath history—something someone wanted erased.
And now it's waking up.
There is a pattern behind the chaos. A rhythm to the whispers in the fog. The girl was part of it. So was the test. So were the beasts.
This song I hear… it is not mine alone.
But I must play it.
Even if it kills me.
The following morning, the mist lifted.
Not fully, not as it did after common rains, but like a veil reluctantly drawn aside—exposing a world that had been listening all along.
Li Yun walked the forest road north of the marshes, the Divine Zither once more wrapped tightly in black cloth. Yet even sealed, it pulsed gently on his back, like a heartbeat not wholly his own.
By noon, he reached a small trading post called Willow Spire, a crumbling waystation between the inner provinces and the wilder outer lands. Tired merchants and mercenaries nursed cheap wine under crooked awnings. No sects, no Spirit Hall inspectors—just dust, trade, and weariness.
Li Yun entered quietly, hood low.
He did not seek trouble.
But trouble, as ever, sought him.
---
They came that night.
Three men cloaked in gray silk, blades curved like crescent moons. Their eyes were clouded—not with blindness, but the mark of those who had stared too long into forbidden things. They bore no sect insignia. No clan banners. Only silence.
They did not speak as they entered the inn's common room.
But Li Yun felt their intent the moment they crossed the threshold. A dissonance in the air. The kind of silence that hummed just before a string snapped.
One drew his blade.
The second raised a flute carved from bone.
The third… simply pointed at Li Yun.
---
[First-Person – Battle Begins]
They came not for coin or vengeance, but song.
They heard what I played in the marshes.
And now, they want to silence it.
I don't know who sent them. But they fight as one mind—flawless timing, like musicians playing a deadly rhythm.
I don't wait for the first blow.
I play.
---
The zither sang.
A wave of sound burst from the strings, scattering furniture and splitting stone. A wall of illusory chains coiled through the room, binding the feet of the man with the flute. His breath caught, and he choked on a note.
The second charged—only to vanish into a web of mirrored images, each one a reflection of Li Yun playing from a different angle, each illusion striking back with threads of raw sound.
The third assassin's blade reached Li Yun's throat—only to be turned aside by a sudden, discordant burst. Not a shield. Not a wall. A scream, formed entirely of vibration.
Li Yun stood, breathing heavily, hands trembling over the strings.
All three attackers lay unconscious—or dead.
The inn was silent once more.
---
The innkeeper fled. The patrons too. Only one figure remained—a man in dusty leather, leaning against the back wall, arms crossed.
His voice was low. Amused.
"Didn't expect to see a Soundborne Spirit so far from the eastern sects."
Li Yun turned, wary. "I'm not part of a sect."
The man nodded once. "That'll make your death slower, then."
A pause.
And then he smiled.
"Kidding. Name's Shen Jue. Spirit Hunter. Don't worry—I only kill monsters."
He pointed at the unconscious men.
"But they weren't monsters. They were something worse. And if they're after you…"
He stepped closer.
"…you've got something they're afraid of."
---
[First-Person – End of Chapter Reflection]
I played for ghosts, and now I attract hunters. I wield a zither that sings of things long buried. And I met a man who doesn't flinch at death.
The world is shifting. The melody beneath it has begun to rise.
I feel it.
The silence before was not peace.
It was warning.
And now the real song begins.