The Inkstone's Thirst

His father's ultimatum was not a choice. It was a cage. A cage with two doors, both leading to a different kind of death. Feigned failure and a life as a clan-approved cripple, or psychic annihilation in the Ancestral Hall.

Wei Yuan sat in the oppressive silence of the Pavilion, the weight of his father's words a physical pressure on his chest. And for the first time since waking in this fractured reality, the fear that had been his constant companion began to burn away, leaving behind the cold, hard ash of resolve.

The Artist had been right. The Waking Self, the cautious investigator, finally saw the truth with a terrifying clarity. The clan was a system. His branch was a quarantine. And his father was the warden.

He would not be contained.

He stood up, his movements no longer hesitant or uncertain. There was a new, cold precision to his actions, an echo of the Artist that was now his own. He walked to the trapdoor, lifted it, and descended once more into the damp, musty chill of the lower archives.

This was no longer a place of research. It was his workshop. His armory.

He found the heretical scrolls and laid them out on a dusty, overturned crate. He lit a single tallow candle, its small, steady flame a defiant pinprick of light in the suffocating darkness. He was no longer just studying the theory. He was preparing for the practice.

He opened the Artist's research journal—the book simply labeled 'Brush'—and turned to the final entries. The handwriting was cold, clinical, the logic impeccable and monstrous.

The resentment of Elder Chen is the ideal catalyst. Eighty years of grievance have given his spirit a unique… texture. It will scream beautifully when ground into the ink.

A wave of nausea washed over Wei Yuan. He pushed it down, replacing it with the cold focus of the task at hand. He could not afford the luxury of moral revulsion. Morality was a privilege of the free. He was a prisoner preparing to break his chains.

The journal detailed the necessary components. A Spirit-Binding Net woven from the silk of a Hundred-Eyed Moth. Soul-Calming Incense made from powdered Ghost-Faced Willow bark. And a vessel—an obsidian inkstone, known for its ability to contain and pacify spiritual energy.

The Artist, meticulous in his madness, had already acquired them. The journal contained a crude map of the Pavilion, an 'X' marked over a section of the archives' far wall.

Wei Yuan took his candle to the spot. Packed earth and stone. He ran his hands over the surface, feeling for an incongruity. A single, loose stone near the floor. He pried at it with his nails, dirt crumbling under the effort. It came free, revealing a dark, hollow space.

He reached inside, his heart pounding a slow, heavy rhythm. His fingers closed around a silk-wrapped bundle.

He unwrapped it, his hands moving with the Artist's steady precision. Inside was a tightly woven net that shimmered with a faint, silvery light. A small block of dark, fragrant incense. And a small, perfectly square inkstone. It was a deep, polished black, and the moment he touched it, a profound cold seeped into his fingertips, a cold that had nothing to do with the cellar's temperature. It felt… hungry.

[The inkstone is thirsty.]

The Loom's crimson text was a stark confirmation. The vessel. The tool his other self had prepared to contain a soul.

He sat on the floor, the components of the monstrous ritual laid out before him. This was the final line. To cross it was to move from investigator to perpetrator. To finish the Artist's work. To commit the same act that had shattered his own mind.

Is this what she feared? The thought of his mother was a sudden, painful shard of glass in his heart. The Arts as a "refuge," not a "path." Was this the path she meant? The path where the pursuit of power led you to treat a soul as just another ingredient to be consumed?

The pain in his meridians chose that moment to flare, a sharp, stabbing reminder of his own cursed state, of his father's ultimatum. The choice was not between good and evil. It was between two different kinds of annihilation. Be erased by the Elders, or erase a part of himself to become the monster he needed to be to survive.

He made his choice.

He reached for the Soul-Calming Incense. He used a broken roof tile as a burner. He lit it with his candle. A thin, fragrant smoke, smelling of old wood and damp earth, began to curl into the air. It didn't soothe his spirit; it focused it, sharpening his will for the work to come.

According to the journal, the ghost of Elder Chen was bound to this place, its resentment tied to the spot where he had taken his own life eighty years ago—the main crossbeam in the center of the upper floor.

Wei Yuan gathered the components. He extinguished the candle, plunging the cellar back into absolute darkness. He ascended the stairs, closing the trapdoor behind him, sealing the heretic's library away once more.

He stood in the center of the Pavilion's main room, staring up at the great, dark crossbeam. The air here felt different. Heavier. A lingering sorrow, a residue of an ancient, potent despair. This was the place.

He laid the obsidian inkstone in the center of the floor, directly beneath the beam. He placed the Spirit-Binding Net beside it. He lit the incense again, its smoke coiling upwards like a grasping hand.

The ritual did not require blood. It required will.

He sat cross-legged before the inkstone. Closed his eyes. He did not fight the Artist this time. He did not navigate it. He invited it. He opened the doors of his consciousness and willingly, deliberately, surrendered.

The cold, detached focus washed over him, a familiar and terrifying tide. The Waking Self receded. The Artist was now in control.

His—its—hands moved, not with a brush, but in the air, weaving intricate, invisible patterns. He began to hum, the same low, resonant vibration from the night of the failed ritual. Not a sound of supplication. A command. He was not praying to the spirit of Elder Chen. He was calling it, using its own resentment as a hook.

The temperature in the Pavilion plummeted. The sweet, cloying smell of ozone and bruised fruit returned, stronger than ever. A low, mournful moan echoed through the room, a sound of pure, undiluted grief that seemed to come from the very wood of the crossbeam itself.

The ghost had answered the call.

Wei Yuan, the passenger in his own body, watched in silent horror as the Artist opened his eyes. They were not the eyes of a frightened boy. They were the cold, calculating eyes of a master craftsman about to begin his work.

The hunt had begun.

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