The bronze mask door ground open with a final, cavernous sigh. Dust sloughed off in sheets, curling in the air like smoke. For a heartbeat, the drumbeat that had stalked them through the depths fell quiet. The silence that replaced it was worse—dense, pressing, as though the mountain itself were holding its breath.
Lei raised his hand, signaling them forward. The team stepped into a stairwell that plunged like a black wound into the earth. Each step was carved from stone darker than night, polished so smooth their torchlight slid uselessly across its surface. Their boots struck the marble with sharp echoes that rolled downward, swallowed by the dark. The sound became their only proof they were still moving, not trapped in some eternal loop of descent.
Old Yu spat over the side. The saliva vanished into the pit without a sound. He muttered, voice thick with nerves and greed, "Stairs like this, eh? You don't build a palace down here unless you're guarding something worth dying for." His fingers twitched as if already counting coins.
Lei didn't turn. He marked the wall again with chalk, hand steady though Muye noticed the faint tremor in his wrist when the torchlight brushed it. Even Lei's discipline was being eroded by this silence.
Behind Muye, Zhou scribbled into his notebook with frantic devotion, breathless words spilling out: "Unprecedented… bas-reliefs intact… iconography suggests ritual procession… gods masked, sacrifices flowing… entire dynasties forgotten by history—" His voice cracked with awe. "This is… this is history's missing chapter."
His pen scratched faster, almost manic, as he trailed fingers across the carvings lining the stairwell: figures with faces hidden behind grotesque masks, arms outstretched toward a river chiseled into the stone, the river painted faint red with mineral deposits that shimmered under the light. The tributaries all flowed downward, converging at a point hidden below. Even unfinished, the relief pulsed with a dreadful vitality.
"Stop touching," Lei's voice snapped, sharp enough to slice the air. Zhou jerked his hand back, ashamed but unable to take his eyes from the mural.
Muye gripped his pack straps tighter. His runes burned faintly beneath his shirt, syncing with each hollow echo of his boots. No more drums, but something else had taken its place. He began to hear syllables, fractured words threading through the silence like whispers pressed against his eardrum. Not human, not language, yet… teaching. Each pulse in his chest was accompanied by a shape he almost understood, and with every step the pull grew stronger.
The walls narrowed as they descended. The air thickened, clinging to their skin like oil. The smell hit next—iron tang beneath mold and something acrid, like incense burned too long. Muye gagged once, covering it with a cough. The silence swallowed even that, dragging the sound down the stairwell until it vanished.
At the rear, A-Chuang moved with predatory patience. He kept a full pace behind the others, eyes never straying to the murals or the stone, only to Muye. In the shifting torchlight his gaze was a blade grazing Muye's neck—measuring, waiting. He turned his short knife slowly in his callused palm, metal whispering against scarred skin. No words, no wasted breaths. Just the faintest curl at the corner of his lips when Muye stumbled briefly, the kind of smile a wolf might give before the kill.
Muye quickened his pace unconsciously, pulling closer to Lei. He tried to ignore the pull in his blood, the whispers that grew louder with every footfall. Yet he knew—he could feel—that A-Chuang heard them too, in his own way. And that made the silence more dangerous than any drumbeat.
After what felt like hours of descent, the stairwell widened abruptly, emptying into a landing. The oppressive silence surged, suffocating. Muye looked up and froze.
Before them towered a set of doors. Not like the bronze mask, but stone—two colossal slabs reaching nearly thirty feet high, joined seamlessly at the center. Every inch was carved with runes, not scattered, but arrayed in layered lines that seemed to ripple under the torchlight. From a distance they resembled rivers of knives, flowing downward, converging at a hidden point between the doors.
The symbols pulsed faintly, dim but alive, as though each was a sealed heart beating just slow enough to wait them out.
Zhou staggered forward, hand shaking as he nearly dropped his notebook. His voice trembled with ecstasy: "It's… it's scripture. Not just history—this is a cosmic scripture carved into stone! Entire civilizations would kill for even one line of this. It's—oh, God—it's alive." He fell to his knees, sketching furiously, tears streaking his dusty face.
Old Yu cursed softly, though awe threaded his greed. He glanced at Lei. "No lock, no bar. Just words on a wall. Don't tell me we need the kid again."
Lei's eyes cut to Muye. For once, there was something unreadable in his expression, as if he, too, felt the mountain's silence staring back through the boy.
Muye's runes flared, searing his ribs. He doubled over with a strangled gasp, clutching his chest. The symbols on the door responded—one line, then another, lifting faintly off the stone, rearranging like molten metal cooling into new shapes. The whispers in his skull became a chant, demanding recognition.
He staggered forward despite himself, breath ragged. His fingers hovered in the air, drawn toward the stone.
A-Chuang finally spoke, his voice soft as a knife sliding free of a sheath."He knows it. He can open it."
The words dropped like a pebble into water. The silence swallowed them whole, and in the echo Muye felt the truth of it slam into his bones.
The doors waited.The runes breathed.And the mountain demanded an answer.
The silence grew teeth. Muye could hear it chewing the air as he stepped closer to the colossal stone doors. Each rune carved into the surface seemed to swell, not just with light but with presence, like the gaze of something old enough to have forgotten death.
Zhou half-laughed, half-sobbed behind him. He was on his knees, scribbling until the pencil snapped. "Cosmic… cosmic grammar—every line a law of existence! Do you understand what this means? This door isn't locked with metal. It's locked with thought. It's—" His voice cracked, trembling with hysteria. "It's a scripture no man was meant to read."
"Shut it." Old Yu's voice was sharp, his jaw clenched around greed and fear both. He jammed a crowbar into a seam between slabs and heaved. The metal shrieked, sparks spitting uselessly. Nothing moved. The runes pulsed harder, flaring faint blue in answer to his violence.
Lei yanked Yu back by the collar. "You'll bring the whole mountain down on us." His eyes flicked to Muye. "Let him try."
Muye wanted to protest, to say he didn't know how, that he wasn't ready. But the runes under his skin had no patience for denial. His chest burned, each heartbeat a hammer striking molten iron. The whispers in his skull sharpened into syllables he could almost speak.
He lifted a trembling hand toward the door.
The first line of runes rose from the stone like glowing serpents, curling into the air. They rearranged into a lattice that shimmered before him. His fingers brushed it—heat seared up his arm, then poured through his body. For an instant, he wasn't in the tomb.
He was standing beneath a sky split by lightning, armies clashing across a battlefield of ash. Masked figures in bronze armor roared, blood cascading down trenches, feeding rivers of light that carved symbols in the air. In the distance, a city burned—not from fire, but from collapsing qi, its towers liquefying into streams of silver that vanished into the void.
The vision shredded, dropping him back to the stairwell. Sweat drenched his face. He staggered, gasping. The first line of runes sank into his chest like brands, glowing beneath his ribs.
Behind him, Zhou moaned in rapture. "He's… he's translating! He's the key!"
Yu sneered. "Or he's wasting time. Look at him. He'll fry himself before the door opens." He raised his crowbar again.
Lei caught his wrist, voice cold enough to freeze. "Touch it again, I'll break your arm." The two men locked eyes. Yu spat to the side but lowered the tool, muttering curses under his breath.
Muye forced himself upright. The second line of runes rippled free. They circled him, tightening like a crown of thorns. His vision blurred again. This time he saw mountains torn apart by hands larger than the sky, rivers reversed, corpses of gods nailed into the earth by chains of starlight. Voices thundered in a language too vast for his mind, cracking through his skull until blood beaded at his ears.
He screamed. His knees buckled. But his hand never dropped.
The runes slammed into him, scorching paths across his back. His breath came ragged, like sucking glass. Still, he pushed forward.
The third line lifted, slower, heavier, as though testing him. The runes unraveled into shapes like broken ladders. He touched one, and agony blazed—skin tearing, veins boiling, consciousness fracturing into shards of someone else's memory. He saw a throne crumbling under a figure whose mask split in two, revealing not a face but a yawning black void.
When he staggered back to himself, his body shook like paper in the wind. His shirt clung to him, soaked through.
And then—crack.
The door groaned. The runes cascaded like falling water, surging back into the stone with a thunderous rumble. Blue light blazed across every symbol, each line igniting as if the mountain itself was catching fire.
The slabs split down the middle with a sound like a continent tearing apart. Dust and stale wind poured through the widening seam, carrying the smell of incense and rot so strong it coated their tongues with bitterness.
Zhou collapsed onto his elbows, laughing through tears. "It opened! Heaven help me—it actually opened!"
Yu's eyes gleamed like an addict's. "What's inside—what's inside is ours."
Lei stayed silent, sword angled toward the widening gap. But Muye saw his knuckles bone-white around the hilt.
A-Chuang moved last. His face gave nothing away, but when the blue fire lit his features, his gaze flicked to Muye—hungry, assessing, as if measuring how long before the boy broke.
The doors yawned fully open.
Torchlight spilled into a cavernous chamber beyond. At its center rose a coffin so massive it dwarfed the group, forged of bronze blackened by centuries, its surface engraved with snarling beasts. Chains thicker than a man's torso coiled around it, hammered into the stone floor. Ghostly fire burned in braziers encircling the coffin, casting shadows that bent in unnatural ways.
Around the coffin knelt statues—dozens of them—hooded and masked, their bodies carved from stone so lifelike it seemed they might stand at any moment. Each clasped a weapon in both hands, heads bowed toward the chained sarcophagus.
The silence was no longer empty. It throbbed like a heartbeat, slow and steady, coming from the coffin itself.
Muye's knees weakened. His runes pulsed violently in answer, glowing through his sweat-drenched shirt. The whispers in his head crescendoed into one echoing command: "Break the chains."
He staggered back, terror and awe twisting inside him. For the first time, he realized that opening the door wasn't victory. It was invitation.
Lei whispered, voice taut as drawn steel:"Stay sharp. This isn't a tomb."
He raised his blade toward the coffin."This is a prison."
No one spoke. The vast chamber listened to itself: the slow pulse within the coffin, the uneven rasp of five intruders trying not to breathe. Ghost-flames guttered in their bronze bowls, casting thin tongues of light that licked the chains and made black metal gleam like wet skin.
Captain Lei broke the paralysis first. "Spread. Eyes on corners. Nothing leaves your sight-line."
They moved as ordered, careful circles around the chained sarcophagus. The closer Li Muye came, the louder the pulse became—not in the air but in his ribs, as if his rune were a tuning fork struck by an unseen hand. The Suppression bell in his chest thrummed back in reflex, trying to impose order on a rhythm that would not be ordered.
Zhou Zhan drifted toward a ring of ritual vessels before the coffin—bronze basins, plates, and ladles, all engraved with sigils. He crouched, sketching with shaking hands, whispering as he traced a line of script along a ladle's handle. "A libation system… the offerings fed into channels… oh gods, it was all redirected to the coffin—"
"Hands off," Lei barked without looking. "You touch, you die."
Zhou froze, pen hovering, then resumed drawing instead of touching, gulping air like a swimmer trying not to drown.
Old Yu prowled the perimeter with the restless energy of a wolf that has scented a carcass. Every surface became a sum to be totaled, every engraving an excuse for a payday. He paused at a squat bronze jar whose lid was tied by a corroded ribbon. His tongue clicked against his teeth. "Just the lid," he told himself. "Just a peek."
"Yu." Lei's voice was a low growl.
Yu's hand stopped. His jaw worked, a dozen retorts dying behind clenched teeth. He forced a grin that didn't reach his eyes and backed away—two steps, then three—then swiveled to another offering stand as if the last temptation had never happened.
A-Chuang did not prowl. He circled, slow and patient, like a shadow testing the light for weakness. He kept just behind Muye's shoulder, never close enough to be counted as protection, never far enough to be safely ignored. His blade rode loosely along his leg, point forward, as if every footfall marked a cut he was choosing not to make.
Muye forced his gaze away from the others and up, to the murals crowning the chamber. They wrapped the circular wall in a single, unbroken story: masked figures raising towers of sigils; beasts with too many eyes driven into pits; rivers the color of old blood pouring into a star-shaped basin. In the final band, a figure—taller than the rest, face hidden behind a mask split vertically—knelt before a coffin wrapped in chains. Not buried, not laid out. Kneeling.
"Captain," Muye said, voice thin. "They chained it from the inside. Whoever's in there… they volunteered."
Lei's reply was flint. "Or lost and pretended it was a choice."
A tremor rolled through the floor, subtle as a muscle twitch. The chains rasped against themselves, links grinding, tightening, then loosening in a slow breath. The sound scoured Muye's nerves raw. The rune in his chest flared—not pain now, but answer—and a vision stabbed his eyes: a courtyard under a sick sky, a line of kneeling men and women, their faces hidden. A hammer fell. A chain locked. Each time the latch dropped, a light inside the kneeling body went out.
"Don't look too long," A-Chuang murmured beside him, voice so soft Muye wasn't sure it had been spoken. "It looks back."
Muye blinked the vision away, nausea breaking over him in a hot wave. The pulse in the coffin sped up—only a fraction, but enough for his rune to hitch. Sweat beaded his temple. "Captain," he managed, "it knows we're here."
"Then we finish what we came to do and walk out breathing." Lei pointed his blade at the nearest chain-anchor sunk into the floor. "If any anchor moves, we back out. Do not—"
Metal screamed.
It was a fast sound turned slow by echo: a high, tearing shriek that peeled flakes from the ceiling. One of the chain links—thick as a man's wrist—warped, stretched, and snapped. The recoil flung the broken end across the chamber, where it slammed a kneeling statue square in the chest. Stone crumpled like rotten wood. Dust exploded in a ring.
Zhou screamed. Old Yu cursed and raised his rifle by instinct. Muye staggered, the flare in his chest blinding for a heartbeat. The ghost-flames in the bowls whipped taller, blue-white tongues tasting the air.
The fallen statue moved.
Not a trick of dust. Its hands closed around the broken chain with deliberate slowness. Head bowed, it rose from its knee. Where the strike had caved its chest, an emptiness yawned—a hollow that drank the torchlight and returned nothing.
Lei was already moving. "Form up!"
Old Yu fired. The bullet smashed into the statue's head in a burst of grit. The head shattered—and kept turning. The body advanced without a stutter, dragging the chain like a leash.
"It's the fire!" Zhou sobbed. "The vessel doesn't matter—the force does!"
Muye's bell rune surged. He thrust his palm out. The Suppression tone rolled—silent, crushing—like a wave shoved across stone. It hit the statue mid-step and bit. The hollow in the statue's chest quivered; the blue-white flames in the bowls guttered as if wind had crossed them.
For a heartbeat, it worked.
Then the coffin exhaled.
Air rushed through the chamber in a cold, wet gust that smelled like the underside of graves. The ghost-flames leapt higher, fed by the breath. The statue's hollow drank, steadied, and kept coming.
Muye's knees buckled. "I can't pin the breath," he wheezed.
Lei intercepted the statue, blade arcing and driving down into the hollow. Steel met nothing—and screamed. The sword juddered in Lei's hands as if sawing a live wire. He wrenched it free with a snarl, slashed the statue's knee, and dropped it to one stone palm. "Find the tether!" he barked. "Break it!"
A-Chuang was already there—how had he crossed so fast?—his knife a flicker. He didn't cut stone. He cut air, thin and exact, along a line Muye's eyes could barely find. Something twanged, invisible and real. The hollow emptied. The statue collapsed into an obedient pile.
A-Chuang glanced over the ruin at Muye, the smallest tilt of chin: See?Muye hated the shiver of gratitude that answer evoked.
"Contact left!" Old Yu shouted. Two more statues had risen, ghost-flames licking along the cuts in their stone. He fired again; one bucked, a hand flying free, but it lumbered forward regardless. The other swung a stone glaive that shrieked against the floor and carved a furrow in the flagstones where Yu's shin would have been a heartbeat later.
Zhou had flattened himself behind a bronze bowl, pencil still moving even as he sobbed. "They're conduits—each statue a node—breath flows from the coffin through the chains into the bowls and into the statues—break any link, the circuit collapses!"
"Plain speech!" Lei roared.
"Cut chain—snuff bowl—slice tether!" Zhou hiccuped, eyes wide behind fogged lenses.
"Move!" Lei and A-Chuang split like mirrored blades—Lei to the chains, striking at anchor points, A-Chuang to the bowls, his knife shaving the blue from fire without touching flame. Muye staggered to a third vector, feeling for tethers the way fingers grope for a pulse. Each time he found one, he let the bell sing a No that smashed the invisible string. Statues fell, one by one.
Old Yu, breathing like a saw, covered them with bursts of fire. "Come on, you sacks of gravel—drop already!"
The chamber fought back. The coffin's pulse quickened, breath cycling faster. Hairline cracks raced the floor toward the team's feet. A second chain snapped, whipping past Muye's shoulder close enough to slice a thread from his collar. He smelled his own blood.
"Captain!" he gasped. "More chains will go!"
"Then we leave," Lei snapped. He smashed an anchor loose with a savage blow that made the pillar groan. "Back to the threshold—now—"
A voice bled into Muye's bones. Not the one from the trials. Older. Closer. It spoke not words but desire, the way a storm speaks of rain.
Open, it said. Inherit.
Muye's bell rune thrummed a refusal—and faltered. A second voice, thin and human, wove through the first.
"Captain!" Zhou cried. He was pointing—not at the statues or the chains, but at Old Yu, who was no longer covering anyone. Yu had shouldered past them toward a low altar where a narrow casket rested—a miniature, worked in gold and onyx, its lid inlaid with a spiral mask. His hands shook as he reached.
Lei's blade was up in an instant. "Yu. Don't."
Yu's laugh was a scraped thing. "We came for treasure. I'm taking treasure."
"It's a seal," Zhou choked. "It's part of the circuit—don't—"
Yu lifted the lid.
Every flame in the bowls flared. The chain ends reared like snakes tasting air. The coffin's breath deepened into a hungry draw.
Something moved inside the bronze.
Muye's heart stopped trying to keep up. It simply stopped.
Across the chamber, A-Chuang's eyes shone like a predator's in firelight. For the first time, his smile reached both corners of his mouth.
"Now," he said—and it wasn't clear whether he meant the prison, or the inheritance, or the kill.
The coffin's pulse quickened until it was no longer a heartbeat but a drumline beneath the floor, rattling teeth, vibrating ribs. Ghost-flames twisted into long spires, braziers belching blue-white fire that clawed the murals and made painted figures writhe as if alive.
Old Yu had the miniature coffin in both hands, gold-and-onyx gleaming like a stolen sun. His grin was manic, spit flying from his lips. "It's mine. You hear me? All this—mine!"
"Put it down!" Lei's command was steel, but Yu only laughed louder, the sound cracking under strain.
Zhou shrieked: "You don't understand—it's a seal! That casket's a plug in the circuit! Take it out and the whole array collapses!"
Too late. The moment Yu lifted the lid fully, every brazier in the chamber flared like a mouth screaming open. The statues lining the coffin didn't just stir—they snapped upright, dozens at once, stone weapons raised. Their hollows drank the fire until blue infernos burned where hearts should have been.
The chains convulsed. Two snapped outright, links ricocheting into the walls with blasts like cannonfire. Stone rained from the ceiling. A crack raced through the floor toward the party's boots, splintering into jagged black lines.
Muye doubled over, clutching his chest. His runes seared him from inside, each flare demanding he obey. Break them. Free me. The command was not words—it was need. His bell rune fought back, but it was like pressing a lone palm against a floodgate. Blood flecked his lips.
Lei grabbed Yu by the collar, ripping him away from the seal-casket. Yu screamed, clinging, but Lei wrenched it free and slammed it back onto the altar. For a heartbeat, the fire guttered. The statues hesitated. The chains slackened.
But the damage was done. The coffin itself had woken.
It moved—not with a lurch, but with the subtle flex of something breathing. The bronze lid bowed upward, then fell back. The chains tightened in panicked resistance, every link squealing. Ghost-fire swirled toward the sarcophagus in a spiral, feeding its hunger.
"Captain!" Muye gasped, voice raw. "It's not sleeping anymore—it's listening."
Lei's jaw locked. He shoved Yu aside, blade up, stance wide. "Then we leave. Now."
They pivoted toward the stair, but the statues moved to bar the way. A phalanx of stone and fire, shields up, glaives lowered. Their steps were thunder.
Old Yu fired wildly, bullets sparking off stone. Zhou cowered behind a brazier, screaming notes that made no sense. Lei cut through the nearest statue, sparks shrieking from his blade. The hollow in its chest flared, and the wound sealed with fire.
"They're endless," Lei growled, teeth clenched. "Chuang—flank right!"
But A-Chuang wasn't moving to flank. He was standing still, knife in hand, watching Muye. His face was calm, lips curved in that thin smile that showed no joy.
Muye met his eyes and understood. The statues, the coffin, the inheritance—it wasn't what Chuang was waiting for. It was Muye.
The bell rune surged again, desperate. Muye screamed, thrusting out both hands. The sigil burst across his skin in burning lines, unleashing a wave that cracked stone. Five statues froze mid-step, hollow flames stuttering. For a blink, the chamber belonged to silence again.
Then the coffin exhaled.
It wasn't air but presence—a gust of nothing that stripped warmth from bone. The murals blackened where it touched. Lei staggered. Zhou collapsed, weeping. Yu scrambled, swearing, clawing for the miniature coffin again.
And Muye's rune buckled. His vision went white. The breath pressed through his skin, seeking, probing, trying to hollow him like the statues. He felt it coiling in his veins, whispering in syllables only he could hear: Inherit. Open. Free.
"No!" he roared, voice ragged. He slammed his palm into the flagstones. The bell rune detonated, rippling outward. Stone cracked, braziers tipped, ghost-flames scattered. Statues reeled, their hollows imploding into dark silence. For a moment, the coffin sagged, its breath stolen.
The chamber groaned. A fissure ripped across the floor, splitting the altar. The miniature casket tumbled, spinning, then shattered on the stone. Blue fire hissed out like a punctured lung. The statues froze mid-stride, bodies cracking.
The silence that followed was worse than the roar.
Then—thud.
The coffin pulsed once. Another chain split. A second thud, stronger, like a hand striking from within. Dust avalanched from the ceiling.
Lei's voice cut through the chaos. "Move! Stairs, now!"
They bolted, boots hammering the fractured floor. Zhou clutched his notebook to his chest like scripture. Yu cursed every breath, eyes still darting for salvage even as the chamber collapsed.
Muye stumbled, rune-fire still crawling his skin. A-Chuang caught his elbow—not to save him, but to keep him upright, like a farmer supporting a horse too valuable to waste. His grip was iron. His whisper colder than the breath still filling the tomb.
"You're not running from it. You're running to it."
Muye tore free, gasping, but the words stuck in his blood.
Behind them, the coffin boomed again. This time it wasn't a pulse. It was a knock.
A knock from inside.
And the echo followed them up the stairs like a promise.