Chapter 4 - The Past Life Song in White Bone Alley

The signposts made of rotting corpses glowed phosphorescent in the moonlight, and when Arya counted to the ninth skeleton hanging with a snow wolf jade pendant, Ramon suddenly stabbed his bronze sword into his left leg. Blood spattered on the roadside boundary marker, and the stone surfaced with the palm prints from when she was seven years old - a blood curse that her mother dragged her to carve on her escape that year.

"You did come here." Ramon ripped off his blood-stained wrist guard, and bronze beetles drilled out of the wound, with the three years of Yonghe's Frostbite engraved on their backs. Arya's silver hairpin suddenly burned, and the snow wolf flag at the head of the hairpin unfurled, revealing the crooked handwriting she had carved on the flagpole: Amon Run.

Memory pierced her temples like a poisoned arrow. She saw her seven-year-old self lying on her back in the ice cave, carving the words on the bronze pole with her frozen fingers, and behind her came the suppressed cough of a teenager-that frail boy who always had an attack on the night of the lunar eclipse, but actually had the face of Lei Meng!

"Come to think of it?" Lei Meng suddenly pinched the back of her neck, and chain-like red marks surfaced on their palms at the same time. This was the mark left by being handcuffed to the altar twelve years ago, and now it was swimming like a living snake in the moonlight, "We escaped three times on this official road, and each time we were captured back by the Bronze Mirror."

Arya kicked the skull at her feet, and beetles carved with musical notes crawled out of her empty eye sockets. As the seventh beetle lifted its wings, the sound of an ocarina was heard in the distance, and the tune was actually identical to the beeping of the Bronze Box. Lei Meng suddenly tore open her sleeve, the arm of the Shou Gong Sand is seeping blood - this is the night of the escape, the witch Zhu with virgin blood painted confinement spell.

The sound of the ocarina suddenly came closer, and the white bones on both sides of the official road suddenly stood up, with the unique ice silk of Silver Snow City wrapped around their finger bones. Arya's malachite necklace levitated spontaneously, and the twelve jewels projected a labyrinth map under the moonlight-exactly the layout of the Red Flame City dungeon!

"Follow the light." Ramon suddenly picked her up by the waist and leapt onto the dead tree by stepping on the white bones. As the Goldfinch Flower crest on the soles of his boots crushed the icy ice on the branches, Arya heard the loud sound of gears turning from the ground. Twelve bronze golems broke out of the ground, their joints adorned with Silver Snow City palace bells.

When the sharp claws of the first golem attacked, Arya's silver pin automatically stabbed into its brow. Visions floated in the sapphire glow: twelve years ago the Mother Mother knelt at the altar holding her twin sons, while the black-robed man who presided over the ceremony removed his mask - it was actually the face of the Drunken Immortal Pavilion's pimp from her youth!

"Watch out!" Raymond swung his sword to sever the arm of the sneaking golem, and half a volume of the secret dossier fell out of the severed limb. Arya recognized the blood writing by the moonlight: the day the Twins ate their mother, the time when the goldfinch sobbed for blood. She suddenly dry-heaved, the taste of rust welling up in her throat, and what she spat out was actually a bronze beetle wrapped in fetal hair!

The sound of the ocarina was steeply mournful, and all the puppets knelt down facing the east. A blood mist rose in the direction of the Xuan Yue Pass, and a huge bronze door appeared in the mist, and the door ring was a tangle of snow wolves and goldfinches. Arya's guardian sand suddenly burst, and beads of blood condensed into the shape of keys in the air.

"This is the real door to the afterlife." Raymond cut his palm and pressed on the door ring, his wolf eyes suddenly turning, "It requires the blood and tears of the Twins." His voice took on an eerie gentleness, "Are you ready to meet your true mother?"

The moment the doorway opened, Arya saw an image she would never forget: twenty young girls who looked just like her were frozen in amber, each holding Ramon's bronze sword in their arms. And sitting high on a throne of white bone was none other than the long-dead mother she remembered!

"My dear sacrifices." The Mother's skirts flowed with living bronze fluid, "This Exodus game is thirteen days earlier than the last." She flicked her fingertips and Ramon suddenly convulsed on his knees, the skin on his back cracking open and drilling out twelve daggers engraved with birthstones.

Arya's silver hairpin suddenly plunged into her own temple, a torrent of memories rushing through the severe pain - it turned out that every night of the full moon, the old biddy would feed her blood wine mixed with golem worms. Those so-called escapes were nothing more than resurrection plays directed by the Queen Mother!

"Why were we chosen?" She hissed as she tore off the malachite necklace, the gemstone embedded in the armrest of the throne. The mother queen's phantom began to distort, revealing white bones underneath her black robe, "Because only the blood and bones of the closest relatives can warm the eternal life compulsion ah ..."

Lei Meng suddenly stormed up and pierced the throne with his bronze sword. The sword absorbed the white bone powder and gradually revealed the truth of the seal: three years in Yonghe, the real Queen of Silver Snow City was made into a human candle and burned day and night only to suppress the resentful spirits behind the bronze door. The one in front of me is just a witch puppet that stole the Queen's skin!

As the door to the next life began to collapse, Arya grabbed Ramon's hand and pressed it to her heart. Strong light erupted from where the two totems met, turning into a sharp blade to cleave through the puppet queen's shell. In the bronze scales falling from the sky, they saw the final truth - the "escape" at the age of seven was a bloody ritual designed by the Queen Mother to activate the curse!

When the morning mist spreads over the official road, Arya finds half a piece of swaddling cloth in the ruins. Ramon's blood dripped on it, revealing words that made both of them shudder: Experiment 19, Failed Twin Life Swap.