Shan Wei's fingers closed around the bell nail.
It felt cold, but not like ice. It felt cold like a rule. Like something that was never meant to be moved by a mortal hand. The name carved into it—XUAN CHI—glowed softly, as if the nail was breathing with her fate.
The Silent Bell tunnel trembled at once.
The bells above him did not ring loud. They rang inside the walls, inside the floor, inside the air. A warning without words.
The monk's voice slid out of the pale light, calm and cruel.
"Cut it," the monk said. "Cut it and be free. Or keep it, and be chained."
Shan Wei did not cut.
He turned his wrist slightly, testing the nail like a key in a lock.
The nail did not turn.
A time ring snapped around his forearm, biting into his skin with invisible pressure. The air grew heavier. The tunnel wanted him to stop touching it.
Shan Wei's eyes stayed steady. He looked at the runes on the nail again. Not the big runes—the small ones hiding between the cracks. They were placed like a pattern.
Not a weapon pattern.
A rhythm pattern.
A bell rhythm.
He remembered the envoy's last sound. That weak, honest ring that came through the tunnel like a dying heartbeat.
Dong.
Pause.
Dong-dong.
It was not random. It was a signal.
A release rhythm.
Shan Wei breathed once, slow and controlled, and formed a tiny formation at his fingertips. It was not a battle array. It was a listening array—made to feel vibrations and read how a law responds.
He tapped the nail once.
Dong.
He waited one breath.
Then he tapped twice.
Dong-dong.
The tunnel froze.
For a heartbeat, everything went silent.
Then the nail's cracks flashed, and a thin halo of pale frost appeared around Shan Wei's hand—like moonlight turning into ice.
Pain hit him through the bond.
Not his pain.
Hers.
Shan Wei's body did not shake, but his eyes narrowed.
In that same moment, far outside the tunnel, Xuan Chi's knees buckled.
Her half-moon behind her had been holding the sky's "eye" shut. The eye was huge, like a cold god staring down. Her frost had sealed it in place, but every second was tearing her apart.
Her breath came out in short, broken pulls.
"I'm fine," she tried to say, but the words came weak.
Then the Moon Lock reacted.
The moment Shan Wei used the release rhythm, the lock pulled on her. It tried to keep her pinned. It tried to punish movement.
A sharp frost scar crawled across the ground under her feet, glowing like frozen glass.
Xuan Chi gasped and almost fell fully.
Yuerin caught her again, hard and fast.
"Don't talk," Yuerin said. Her voice was cold, but her hand was steady. "Just breathe."
Xuan Chi's eyes were unfocused.
"It… pulled…" she whispered.
Yuerin's jaw tightened.
"So it's true," she muttered.
The Pavilion leader, still chained in Yuerin's shadow grip, gave a soft laugh through their mask.
"You feel it now," the leader whispered. "The Moon Lock doesn't just hold Shan Wei. It holds her too."
Yuerin yanked the leader forward.
"Show me the real entrance," she said.
The leader's mask shifted like smoke.
"You want the Conclave vault road?" the leader asked. "Then keep running. The entrance moves."
Yuerin's eyes flashed, but she did not stop. The moving fortress-lane kept pushing forward, because stopping meant dying.
Zhen's voice cut through the chaos like a clear iron bell.
"IMPERIAL SHIELD MATRIX: THIRD LAYER. DEPLOY."
A new layer of light formed around the Refuge Tunnel. It was not just a dome now. It became a rolling wall, a moving fortress, with shield plates sliding like gears. The road itself felt thicker, safer, harder to break.
An assassin squad dropped from the shadows ahead.
They did not shout.
They did not hesitate.
Their masks were blank, and black writing crawled across their arms like living ink.
KILL WITHOUT KARMA.
The Pavilion's brutal clause.
A way to murder without the normal punishment of cause and effect.
They rushed the wall.
They struck it.
And the wall held.
But the clause words tried to slip through the barrier like worms.
Yuerin's eyes narrowed.
"Ugly trick," she said.
Before she could cut them, a weak prismatic flame line flickered across the barrier's edge.
Drakonix's breath.
It was not big. It was not loud.
But it was real.
One of the clause words touched the flame.
It burned like dry paper.
The ink screamed without sound and turned into ash.
Yuerin's gaze flicked to Drakonix. He was still half asleep, his wing trembling, his breathing shallow.
But his flames were learning something new.
They were not just burning contracts.
They were burning law.
Zhen spoke again, blunt as always.
"DRAKONIX IS WEAK."
Then he added, as if this was the most important part:
"BUT HIS FIRE IS STRONG."
Yuerin did not reply. She just tightened her grip on Xuan Chi and kept running.
Above them, the sky's eye cracked at the edge. It was trying to open.
Xuan Chi's moon flickered weakly.
"Hold," Xuan Chi whispered, forcing herself up again. "Just… a little…"
Yuerin's voice turned sharp.
"You don't get to die," she said. "Not today."
Xuan Chi swallowed and nodded, tears freezing at the corners of her eyes.
Back in the Silent Bell tunnel, Shan Wei kept one hand on the nail.
He did not pull hard. He did not force it like a fool.
He matched the rhythm again.
Dong.
Pause.
Dong-dong.
The nail trembled.
A thin twist finally happened—small, but real.
The tunnel reacted like an animal being cut open.
Time rings screamed around Shan Wei's arm and tried to clamp down, but Shan Wei used Heavenstep Flash—one clean micro-step—to shift his elbow out of the tightest pressure.
The nail turned a little more.
Shan Wei's listening formation flared, showing him a hidden structure behind the nail.
A lock system.
Not one lock.
Many locks stacked together like layers of cages.
MOON LOCK: FROST NODE.
THREAD LOCK: CONSORT BONDS.
TIME LOCK: RETURN CYCLE.
Shan Wei's eyes stayed calm, but his mind moved fast.
So this was how they did it.
They didn't cut love.
They pinned it.
They froze it in one place so it could not grow, could not heal, could not return.
And they used Xuan Chi as a frost node to stabilize the pin.
The monk's voice returned, colder now.
"You are clever," it said. "But clever does not win against time."
Shan Wei spoke quietly.
"Time is also a formation," he said.
He turned the nail again.
A pulse of frost ripped through his fingers.
He felt Xuan Chi's breath hitch through the connection.
Shan Wei stopped turning at once.
He did not push past her pain.
His face remained controlled, but his voice dropped lower, like a vow spoken in a storm.
"I will not break you," he said, not to the monk—through the lock, to Xuan Chi.
Then he changed his method.
Instead of turning harder, he drew a prismatic ring around the nail—an adjusting array. It did not force the lock open.
It shifted the pressure away from the frost node.
Like moving weight off a wounded leg.
The tunnel shook as if angry.
The monk's voice sharpened.
"Compassion makes you slow."
Shan Wei's eyes burned like forged gold.
"Compassion makes me emperor," he said.
He matched the envoy's release rhythm again, but now his prismatic ring guided the force outward, spreading it into the lock layers instead of dumping it into Xuan Chi's thread.
The nail turned.
A clean click echoed in the tunnel.
Dong.
The bells above him went still.
For one breath, the time blades did not rise.
For one breath, the tunnel looked… afraid.
Then a vision hit Shan Wei like a flash of frozen moonlight.
A woman standing in white.
A crown made of bell metal and pale moon frost.
A mask shaped like a crescent moon.
The Moon-Masked Girl.
But the face under the mask—
Shan Wei's chest tightened.
It was Xuan Chi.
Her eyes were calm, empty, and obedient, like someone whose name had been rewritten.
The vision was gone in a blink.
But the meaning stayed.
Shan Wei's fingers tightened on the nail.
The monk's voice whispered, pleased.
"Now you remember what she is," it said.
Shan Wei did not answer.
He only turned the nail one more time.
And the tunnel screamed.
To be Continued
© Kishtika., 2025
All rights reserved.