Shan Wei stood in front of the cracked bell.
It was bigger than the others, but it felt lonelier. Like it had been waiting in the dark for a very long time. The words carved into it—RETURNING PRISMATIC ONE—looked like they had been cut by someone who hated writing them.
The air in the small room was too clean. Not warm. Not cold. Just empty. Even his breath sounded strange, like it did not belong here.
Behind him, the bell door stayed shut. No handle. No gap. Only a soft white glow around its edges, like a seal that did not need to show off.
Then the monk spoke again, close enough that Shan Wei could feel the pressure of the voice.
"Touch it," the monk said gently, the way a trap pretends to be kind.
Shan Wei did not move right away. He looked at the bell's cracks. They ran across its surface like thin lightning lines. Those cracks were not damage from age alone.
They were wounds.
They were made by force.
Shan Wei lifted his hand. His prismatic edge did not appear. He did not cut. He did not attack.
He placed two fingers on the bell.
The moment he touched it, the bell did not ring in the normal way.
It rang inside him.
Dong.
The sound moved through his bones, through his blood, through the sealed Heart in his chest. For a breath, his Overdrive light flickered—seven colors tightening like a fist.
The cracks on the bell glowed.
And a second voice rose from inside the bell.
Not the monk.
Not the Court.
Not the Heart.
His own.
It was his voice, but older. Tired. Still calm, but with something heavy behind it, like a man who had carried too much for too long.
"Don't let them name you," the voice said.
Shan Wei's eyes narrowed.
"You are me," Shan Wei whispered.
The monk's tone changed fast, like a smile dropping.
"Do not speak to echoes," the monk said. "Echoes are bait."
Shan Wei kept his fingers on the bell.
The older voice continued, quiet but steady.
"They can't kill you cleanly," it said. "So they erase you. They make the world forget, and then they decide what you were."
Shan Wei's mind stayed sharp. He had already felt it in the hall of bells. Names were not just labels here.
Names were chains.
The monk lifted a hand. White lines appeared in the air like thin chalk. They floated around Shan Wei's head, then around his chest, then around his wrist where the time chain sat.
"These are not chains," the monk said softly. "These are corrections."
The white lines began to write.
Not on the wall.
On Shan Wei.
Shan Wei felt it like cold ink touching his skin, even though nothing touched him.
The monk spoke in a calm voice, as if reading a prayer.
"Qi Shan Wei," he said, and the name became a bright line above Shan Wei's head.
Then the monk added another line under it.
"CALAMITY."
Shan Wei's eyes went cold.
The older voice inside the cracked bell spoke again, sharp now.
"That is how it starts," it said. "They add a second title. Then they treat it as truth."
The monk's white lines moved again, trying to write deeper. The air pressed down like a hand on his shoulders.
Shan Wei raised his hand slightly, still calm.
His Fate Severance edge formed at his fingers. It was small, neat, like a blade made for surgery instead of war.
He did not cut the monk.
He cut the word.
He crossed his fingers and sliced the line that said CALAMITY.
The word split. The ink scattered into white dust and vanished.
For one breath, the room went very still.
Then the monks' pressure hit harder.
The monk's voice lost its softness.
"Enough," it said.
The white lines swarmed again, faster. They wrote new words.
"UNSTABLE."
"OBSESSION."
"DESTABILIZER."
Shan Wei's Fate Severance moved like a calm hand, cutting one line at a time. The words fell away like dead leaves.
But each cut made the bell room shake.
Each cut made the bell cracks glow brighter, like the bell was waking.
The monk's voice turned cold.
"You resist because you do not understand," it said. "Your consort threads are lost. Your bond lines break worlds. You return again and again."
Shan Wei's fingers stayed on the bell.
"Who lost them?" Shan Wei asked quietly.
The monk did not answer the real question. It only spoke like a judge.
"The Court will label you," it said. "Then the Court will protect reality."
Shan Wei's gaze sharpened.
"By killing love," he said.
The monk's silence lasted one heartbeat.
Then, far away, so faint it almost felt like imagination, a bell rang.
Not this bell.
Another bell.
A cracked bell.
A weak bell.
Dong.
It came through the tunnel walls like a breath slipping under a door.
Shan Wei's eyes lifted slightly.
He knew that sound.
Not because he had heard it before, but because his fate reacted to it. Because something inside him recognized it as real.
The older voice inside the cracked bell whispered, almost relieved.
"The envoy," it said. "He held."
Outside the tunnel, in a place where time rings were tearing a man apart, the Silent Bell envoy lifted his cracked bell with shaking hands. His name was fading from the white record above his head. Letters were being scratched away like someone erasing chalk.
The monk over him spoke with no anger at all.
"Your name is nearly gone," the monk said. "Last chance."
The envoy's lips were bloodless. His eyes were wet. His bell was split.
But he did not bow.
He forced the bell to ring once more.
Dong.
The sound was small.
But it was honest.
It slipped through the rules like a needle.
In the Name Hall, Shan Wei felt it hit his chest. The sealed Heart slammed once, not with hatred this time, but with a fierce, ugly kind of hope.
Shan Wei's Overdrive steadied.
His shoulders felt lighter for a breath.
The monk in the Name Hall stiffened.
"You have outside help," it said.
Shan Wei's voice stayed calm.
"I have people," he replied.
The monk's white lines changed shape. They stopped trying to write titles and instead formed a circle around Shan Wei's feet.
A time nail symbol appeared, just like the one on the door.
The monk whispered a new order.
"PIN."
The circle flashed.
Shan Wei's body froze from the ankles up. Not ice. Not stone. Time.
For a breath, he could not move.
The monk stepped closer.
"This is what we used on the Six Consort Threads," it said quietly, like it was proud. "Time nails. Bond nails. Love that cannot move forward."
Shan Wei's eyes turned colder than the bell metal.
The older voice inside the cracked bell spoke with a hard edge.
"Now you know," it said. "They don't cut the thread. They nail it in place until it rots."
Shan Wei's fingers twitched. His Fate Severance edge formed again, but the pin held his hands too.
The monk lifted a finger and pointed at Shan Wei's forehead.
A thin white line appeared, aiming to write a final word.
"FORGET."
Shan Wei felt it coming like a knife to his mind.
He could not move.
So he did the only thing he could.
He pushed inward.
He pushed his Overdrive tighter, deeper, until the seven colors became one heavy point inside his chest. He pressed that point against the time pin, not like fire, but like pressure.
The pin trembled.
A hairline crack formed in the circle at his feet.
The monk's eyes narrowed.
"You will break your own foundation," it warned.
Shan Wei's voice was quiet, steady.
"I will break your nail first," he said.
The older voice inside the cracked bell whispered something Shan Wei had not heard before.
"Use the bell," it said. "It is cracked for a reason."
Shan Wei's gaze flicked to the cracks.
He understood.
The bell was not only a tool of the Monastery.
It was also a wound in their law.
A weak point.
A door.
Shan Wei breathed once, slow, and pushed his intent through his two fingers still touching the bell.
The bell's cracks flared.
The room shook.
Dong.
This time, the sound did not crush him.
It crushed the writing.
The word "FORGET" flickered and blurred like ink in water.
The monk stepped back half a step, surprised.
The time pin at Shan Wei's feet weakened for one breath.
Shan Wei used Heavenstep Flash.
Not a full escape.
Just one micro-step.
He shifted his heel out of the circle by a hair.
The pin broke.
Shan Wei moved again.
The monk's voice turned sharp, real anger now.
"Stop!"
Shan Wei's Fate Severance formed fully at his fingers.
He crossed his fingers once and cut straight through the white line trying to write on his forehead.
The line snapped.
The room went silent again.
Shan Wei stood free for one breath.
The monk did not waste time speaking anymore.
The bell door behind Shan Wei began to open—into deeper white.
Into more time.
Into more erasing.
The monk pointed.
"Drag him," it ordered.
The cracked bell under Shan Wei's fingers pulsed.
And the older voice inside it spoke one last warning, urgent and low.
"They are about to show you a fake truth," it said. "They will make you watch a scene where you 'choose' to lose the consorts. Don't believe it."
Shan Wei's eyes hardened.
He stepped away from the bell.
The bell door opened fully.
White tunnel wind rushed in.
The time chain on his wrist yanked.
And Shan Wei was pulled forward again—into the next room, into the next trap, into the next lie.
But his mind stayed cold and clear.
He had heard the envoy's bell.
He had heard his own echo.
And now he knew the Monastery's weapon.
Time nails.
A love pinned until it dies.
Shan Wei's fingers tightened.
Quietly.
Like a promise.
To be Continued
© Kishtika., 2025
All rights reserved.