Light swallowed the grove.
Not warm light — not the gentle glow of lanterns or dawn — but a violent, devouring radiance that cracked the world like glass struck by a hammer.
Lauri felt himself lifted off the ground again, but this time there was no weightlessness, no calm drift between worlds. The force yanking him upward was jagged, frantic, as if the heavens themselves had lost patience and decided to tear truth from his bones.
Yanmei blurred into view below, sprinting toward him through the collapsing forest, sword raised, frost spraying off the blade in shimmering arcs. But each step forward sent fractures racing across the ground — thin fault lines that glowed red at the edges.
"LAURI!" Yanmei shouted.
He tried to respond, but air refused to form sound. The world stretched, bending around him like a warped mirror. Aurora threads snapped and reattached, snapping again, each break sending shards of pain along his spine.
Above him, the tear widened into a monstrous wound across the sky.
The creature behind it pushed itself further through the crack — revealing a limb plated in obsidian armor, a foreclaw the size of a cabin roof, and rows of scale‑plates that pulsed like living basalt.
It did not simply emerge.
It descended, as though the sky had become a sea and it was a leviathan rising from its darkest trench.
Its voice resonated through the torn firmament, deep enough to shake his bones:
"NORTHERN CANDIDATE."
The way it said the words felt wrong — like an accusation, a title, and a summons woven together.
Lauri's pulse hammered.
He wanted to run.
He wanted to hide.
But he couldn't escape the truth coiling inside him:
It knows me.
Before I know myself.
The creature twisted its massive head, forcing more of its colossal form through the tear. Its maw opened — slowly, carefully — revealing teeth not meant for flesh, but for worlds.
"THE DEBT IS DUE."
Lauri felt the thread in his chest yank hard, dragging him toward the beast.
"No!"
The cry echoed only inside his skull — his mouth refused to obey.
Yanmei reached him at last.
They slammed both palms into the air below Lauri, flooding the space with a burst of icy qi. Frost exploded upward, solidifying into a crystalline barrier that caught Lauri's falling form just long enough for Yanmei to leap after him.
The world snapped back into focus.
Yanmei caught his arm.
Their eyes — sharp, cold, burning with resolve — locked with his.
"Breathe," they commanded.
"I— I can't—" Lauri choked out.
"Then listen." Yanmei anchored their stance, bracing him against the downward drag of the thread. "Whatever that thing is — whatever it wants — you must not answer it."
The creature roared.
Yanmei's body jolted as the sound physically pushed them backward, sliding across the frost‑covered ground.
Lauri coughed, fighting for air. "Why? What happens if I answer?"
Yanmei's jaw tightened. "Ancient rift-beings bind through acknowledgment. A name. A reply. A flicker of consent is enough."
Lauri's heart seized.
The creature leaned closer.
Its breath extinguished the light around it.
Its presence felt like a glacier collapsing into the ocean — inevitable, ancient, merciless.
"SPEAK," it commanded.
The word shook the grove, threatening to tear apart the protective sigil beneath them.
Yanmei pressed their forearm against Lauri's chest, forcing him backward.
"Do not answer! Do not even think your response!"
"But it's inside my head—!"
"Then anchor yourself to something stronger!"
Something stronger.
Something real.
Something alive.
Mei.
The memory of her voice flared in his mind — trembling, frightened, determined.
Don't let them take you.
He clung to that tiny ember.
The beast's eyes flared cold white, narrowing on him.
It spoke again:
"CHILD OF THE NORTHERN DEBT.
DO NOT MAKE US WAIT."
Yanmei raised their sword, frost spiraling off the blade. "Lauri Kallio, hear me," they hissed. "Your thread reacts to emotion. If you let fear guide your mind, it will tear you open. Focus. Now."
Lauri clenched his fists.
Sweat mixed with frost along his skin.
His muscles trembled from the pull of something far larger than he could comprehend.
But he forced himself to breathe.
One breath in.
One breath out.
One memory.
Mei's hand brushing his sleeve in that Helsinki café.
The faint jasmine scent of her tea.
The way her eyes softened when she spoke about cultivation — not as fantasy, but as faith.
The thread inside him pulsed.
The beast paused.
Yanmei's eyes widened. "Good. GOOD. Anchor yourself to that!"
The creature shifted its massive body downward, its maw spreading into what might have been a snarl — or a smile, if such a thing could exist on something so ancient.
"YOU CLING TO A FRAGILE THREAD."
The grove shook.
"WE OFFER YOU THE TRUTH."
Another tendril thrust downward, slicing through the air toward Lauri's chest—
Yanmei intercepted, sword flashing—
The tendril recoiled with a hiss—
But a second one lashed behind it.
It struck.
Not Yanmei.
Not the sigil.
But the thread inside Lauri.
The pain was soundless and absolute — like someone had reached inside him and plucked a taut string that had never been meant to break.
He screamed.
The world blurred.
Yanmei grabbed him before he fell. "Stay with me! LAURI!"
The beast's voice thundered with triumph.
"THE THREAD HAS BEEN MARKED."
Yanmei's expression shattered into something Lauri had never seen on them before:
Fear.
Real fear.
The tendril withdrew, leaving no wound on his skin — but something inside him burned, a twisted ache spiraling from chest to spine.
"What… what did it do?" Lauri gasped.
Yanmei's breath shook. "It marked your fate-path. That means it can follow you — across realms, across qi‑barriers, across sect wards."
Lauri froze. "…It can follow me anywhere?"
"Yes," Yanmei whispered.
"Unless the thread is tempered."
The beast roared, tearing more of its body through the sky.
Yanmei pushed Lauri backward. "Get behind me!"
"I— I can't just run—!"
"Running is survival, not cowardice!"
"But—"
"LAURI. MOVE."
He staggered backward just as the beast's claws broke through the cloud layer, each talon longer than a sauna tree trunk.
The grove collapsed around them.
The qi‑glass forest screamed.
And the tear in the sky expanded like a wound forced open too quickly.
Yanmei stood alone between Lauri and the descending nightmare.
Sword raised.
Qi burning.
A single warrior against a world‑eater.
"Jade Frost Pavilion does not retreat," Yanmei whispered, frost spiraling around them like a cloak. "Not from beasts. Not from fate."
Lauri struggled to stand, fighting the pain stabbing through his chest. "Yanmei—!"
But the creature roared, drowning him out.
Yanmei's blade ignited in a flare of icy qi.
They lunged.
The tendrils coiled.
The tear widened.
And the chapter's first half ended as the sky‑beast dropped its full weight toward them, eclipsing the suns with its shadow.
The sky-beast dropped.
Not like a falling stone —
but like a collapsing constellation,
a weight of centuries bending reality around it,
crushing the air into silence.
Yanmei met its descent with a shout that cracked like frozen iron.
Their sword ignited —
not with fire, not with qi alone —
but with the pure, cutting cold of a winter that refused to yield.
Frost spiraled out in rings, freezing the ground in jagged arcs that radiated outward like a snowflake drawn by a god.
They lunged.
The beast struck.
Claw met sword with a blast that shattered the grove.
Crystal trees broke like glass pillars.
Frost exploded into the air.
A shockwave tore a crater into the valley floor.
Lauri was hurled backward, hitting the ground so hard his vision blurred into white static. He forced himself up, coughing, throat raw.
Yanmei slid across the ruined earth, boots carving deep lines in the frozen soil. Their blade shook under the pressure of the beast's claw — a claw big enough to crush three men in a fist.
Yanmei gritted their teeth, aura flaring.
"Frost‑Bound Stance!"
Ice erupted from the ground, coiling upward like serpents of winter around the beast's limb. The creature growled — low, amused, almost pitying — and flexed.
The ice shattered.
Yanmei was thrown bodily across the grove, hitting a qi‑glass trunk with a crack that echoed like thunder. They fell to one knee, blood painting the frost beneath them.
"Yanmei!" Lauri shouted, scrambling toward them.
"Stay back!" Yanmei snapped, their voice sharp but trembling. "You cannot be taken! Not now!"
The beast landed fully.
The ground folded under its weight.
Massive.
Horrifying.
Ancient.
Its torso was a shifting landscape of obsidian plates and glowing fissures, as if its body was carved from the night sky itself. Each breath it took dimmed the light around it.
It looked at Lauri —
not at Yanmei,
not at the grove,
but directly at him —
with a gaze older than civilizations.
"YOU HAVE BEEN MARKED."
Lauri clutched his chest. The thread burned inside him, twisting, knotting, pulling. His whole body felt like a rope tied between two worlds, stretched to breaking.
"Why?" he gasped. "What do you want from me?!"
The beast leaned closer.
Its breath extinguished the frost around Lauri's feet.
"YOUR SOUL OWES A FORGOTTEN PACT."
"I never made a pact!"
"NO. BUT THE ONE WHO HELD YOU DID."
Lauri's heartbeat stopped.
The world shrank into a single point.
The one who held you…?
His mother?
His father?
A past life?
Something else?
Yanmei staggered upright. "Do not listen to its lies! Rift-beasts speak in half-truths!"
The creature growled — a sound like mountains grinding together.
"THERE IS NOTHING 'HALF' ABOUT WHAT WAS PROMISED."
A pulse rippled across its scales.
The sky dimmed again.
Yanmei limped forward, sword raised. "You want him? You must go through the Jade Frost Pavilion!"
"Yanmei—" Lauri breathed, "you're injured—"
Yanmei didn't look back.
Their voice sharpened like a blade.
"Lauri Kallio. Hear me well."
They planted their feet in the fractured ground.
"You run. Now."
He froze. "I— I can't just leave you—"
"You must," Yanmei hissed. "You are the target. Your survival matters more than mine."
The beast chuckled — a deep vibration that made the qi‑glass shards dance in the air like icy tears.
"FOOLISH CULTIVATOR.
THE THREAD BINDS YOU BOTH NOW."
A tendril shot downward.
Yanmei moved — faster than Lauri had ever seen —
slashing upward with a cry that split the air.
Steel met shadow.
The tendril recoiled.
For a moment, Yanmei stood tall.
Unbroken.
Unyielding.
Then the second tendril hit.
It slammed into Yanmei's side, sending them crashing through three crystalline trunks. Their blade flew from their hand, burying itself in the ground far from reach.
"No!" Lauri screamed.
He crawled toward them, ignoring the tearing pain in his chest.
Yanmei coughed blood, struggling to push themselves up.
The creature's enormous body repositioned, blocking out all three suns. It lowered itself, massive teeth parting.
"COME TO ME, NORTHERN CANDIDATE."
The thread yanked — violently.
Lauri's legs buckled. His body was dragged across the broken ground, sliding toward the beast's open maw.
"No— no, no—!" He clawed at the earth, fingers scraping over frost and crystal shards.
Yanmei forced themselves up on shaking arms. "LAURI! FOCUS ON THE THREAD! BEND IT!"
"I don't know how!"
"THEN LEARN NOW!"
The beast inhaled.
The wind howled.
Lauri felt his very soul pulling free from his body.
His vision blurred.
His heartbeat faltered.
Mei's voice flickered inside him — weak, fading.
"Temper… your… soul…"
The beast roared triumphantly.
"HE IS MINE."
Yanmei screamed his name.
Lauri reached inside himself — searching for anything, anything he could grasp.
A memory flared.
The sauna.
The stones.
The aurora.
The impossible moment when the sky tore.
The warmth of Finland.
The steadiness of silence.
The stubbornness of sisu.
And beneath it all —
the fragile, defiant thread
that refused to break.
He clenched that thread with his mind.
He pulled.
Reality snapped.
The thread inside him recoiled, twisting around him like a whip of light. It anchored him to the ground for a single, precious instant.
The beast's maw closed on empty air.
Yanmei shouted in disbelief. "You— you resisted it!"
The creature's eyes narrowed.
The sky trembled.
"INTERESTING."
It reared back for another strike.
Yanmei forced themselves upright. "Run— LAURI— RUN!"
Lauri staggered to his feet.
The world shook.
The beast lunged.
The grove collapsed.