Chapter 6: The Weight of Another’s Fate

Jin Mu woke before dawn's first glimmer had reached the cracks in the ceiling. The nightmare's poison still lingered in his limbs, an acid ache that refused to fade. He washed his face in cold water until the skin burned and dressed without hurry, assembling each layer of his uniform as if donning armor.

He did not expect the day to offer him any peace.

When he stepped into the refectory hall, the air was sharp with the mingled scents of rice porridge, fried lotus, and the astringent tea brewed by the elder stewards. Disciples were already seated in neat rows, some bleary-eyed with exhaustion, others eager to flaunt the petty triumphs of the previous day.

Jin Mu ignored them all, selecting a bowl from the serving counter and finding a solitary bench near the western windows. He preferred this vantage—far enough from the boisterous clusters that he could pretend, for a moment, to be alone.

He had just set the bowl down when the noise in the hall shifted. The low din of conversation cut off, replaced by a hush tinged with something between admiration and apprehension. Footsteps, light as falling frost, crossed the threshold.

He did not need to look up to know who it was.

Lady Xue Yiran.

One of the prodigies of the Ninefold Concord. The white-haired scion of the Xue bloodline—highborn, unapproachable, her cultivation already rumored to surpass half the elders.

And perhaps the most loathed figure in Jin's private ledger of petty tyrants.

He lifted his gaze despite himself. She was difficult to ignore.

She walked with the unhurried poise of someone who had never known hunger or fear. Her robes were a sweep of silver-stitched black silk, the trailing sleeves decorated with abstract designs that caught the torchlight and scattered it into delicate prisms. Her hair, bound in a loose twist atop her head, gleamed like moonlit snow.

Her eyes were the palest shade of gray, colder than polished steel.

He saw the way lesser disciples dipped their heads or pretended sudden fascination with their bowls. He saw the slight lift at the corner of her mouth, a smirk that never quite became a smile.

And he knew, as everyone here knew, that she delighted in reminding them of exactly where they stood.

The memory of his first week in the sect came back, unbidden. He had been seventeen, newly initiated, still raw with the impossible ambition that had carried him up the mountain. He had stumbled—literally—during a demonstration of basic cultivation forms.

He would never forget the way she had watched him scrape his knees on the slate tiles, her voice soft and dry as drifting ash.

"Pitiful. I suppose they will let anyone in these days, if they grovel hard enough."

She had not even waited for him to rise before she turned away, already bored with the spectacle.

No, he did not like her.

Yet today, he would save her life.

Not out of any fondness. Not from pity.

Because her death—unrecorded, senseless—had led to something far worse.

I have no interest in rescuing you, he thought as she glided past his table. But if I can break the chain that followed, I will.

He ate in silence, measuring the minutes. Every heartbeat brought the hour closer to the moment he remembered too well.

When she passed the doors again, it would be the last time anyone saw her alive.

Unless he stopped her.

She took her meal with her usual retinue—three favored cousins who simpered at her every word and stole nervous glances at anyone she deigned to notice. Jin had no patience for them. He watched only her, studying every shift in her expression, every inflection in her voice.

He searched for any sign that she might remember. Any indication that she suspected her own fate.

But her face remained a mask of cool disdain.

He wondered, in a bleak corner of his mind, whether he would look the same to an observer—someone who had built their entire identity on contempt.

When she rose, he rose. He kept three paces behind, careful not to draw attention. Her guards followed at a discreet distance. The morning air bit his face as they stepped out into the courtyard.

The bell in the western tower began to toll—seven notes, slow and resonant. He remembered the sound. It had tolled exactly like this on the day she died.

Xue Yiran paused, as if savoring the chill, her head tilted back so her hair shivered in the breeze.

He almost turned away.

Let her vanish, a cruel voice in his chest whispered. She has earned no rescue.

But he closed his eyes, exhaled, and followed.

She was heading for the old archives. That, too, he remembered. Her family's ancestral records were stored there, bound in iron and sealed with the Xue sigils. She had gone to consult them—and never returned.

The killer had been one of the Outer Disciples, a boy with nothing but a borrowed blade and a rage he could no longer suppress. His name was recorded nowhere. No one spoke of him afterward. His body was burned before dawn.

But the consequences of his act had rippled through the Concord like poison in a cistern.

Xue Yiran's younger sister—Mei—had ridden out alone to avenge her. She had died in the pass, cut down by the same mercenaries who later slaughtered her entire escort. The Xue family had retaliated indiscriminately, ordering a purge of every township suspected of harboring the outlaws.

Three hundred innocents dead.

And Shen Yan's mother among them.

Jin's hands curled into fists as he walked. The past was a straight corridor, lined with closed doors. All it took was one to remain shut—and the rest could stay unopened.

One life to save a hundred, he thought. I can live with that.

She reached the archive gate. The guards offered her identical bows—fear and reverence mingled in their eyes. She acknowledged them with a nod and stepped toward the iron-banded doors.

He had seconds to intervene.

He closed the space in three strides.

"Lady Xue."

She turned, one brow arched. Even here, in the cold, her voice was smooth as flowing glass.

"Ah. The stray dog learns to speak."

He ignored the heat in his chest. "You must not enter."

Her lashes lowered fractionally. "I beg your pardon?"

"You cannot go inside. Not today."

A laugh—light, brittle. "I see. Is this your notion of a jest? Have you decided to embarrass yourself more thoroughly?"

"I am serious."

The guards shifted uncomfortably. One opened his mouth as if to protest, then thought better of it.

Her gaze sharpened to a scalpel edge. "You presume much. Do you think your petty grievances matter to me? Move aside."

"If you step through that door," he said quietly, "you will not leave alive."

A beat of silence.

Then her lips curved into a cruel little smile. "Such drama. Have you taken up fortune-telling?"

Say whatever you wish, he thought. Hate me if you must. But you will stay alive.

She moved to brush past him. He did not step aside.

Something flickered in her eyes—a flash of genuine surprise. Perhaps no one had ever stood in her way before.

"Do not test me," she said, her voice low.

"Today I will."

They stood like that, the dawn wind whipping their robes.

Behind her, the guards watched with the unease of men unsure whose favor they dared risk losing.

And in that moment, he saw the loneliness in her posture—the brittle armor of pride that had never once been breached.

It did not move him to pity. But it made her human.

"If you will not leave," she said finally, "then you force my hand."

He inclined his head. "Then force it."

Her palm lifted, fingers splayed. A shimmer of cold light bloomed around her knuckles—the first hint of the Glacial Lotus Art her family had cultivated for generations.

He did not flinch.

I will hold you here until the hour passes. You will hate me. But your sister will live.

They faced each other until the bell tolled again—eight slow beats.

She lowered her hand at last. "You are mad," she murmured.

"Perhaps."

She turned away. Not toward the door, but back the way they had come.

The guards stared, aghast. One dared to speak: "My lady—?"

"Silence."

She walked past Jin without another word.

When she was gone, he let out a breath he had not known he was holding.

It was done. The door remained shut.

And with it, the long corridor of deaths that had followed.

He was seventeen when he heard the news.

The soldiers had struck at dusk. Shen Yan's mother, Lady Fei, had been traveling with her household when the riders came—dirty men with patched armor and hungry eyes.

They dragged her from the litter and beat her before they slit her throat.

It took days for the bodies to be returned.

Jin had stood with Shen Yan in the snow, watching as the wagons creaked up the pass. Neither of them spoke. What words were left when the world had already ended?

In the weeks that followed, Shen Yan had grown strange. Quieter, then angrier, then so cold he seemed a stranger. Jin tried to reach him. To comfort. To promise that the world would not always be so cruel.

But some doors, once closed, never opened again.

And in the end, Shen Yan had been the one to kill him.

Jin wiped a hand across his eyes. The cold had seeped through his sleeves, numbing his skin.

It was almost comical—how little satisfaction there was in preventing catastrophe. No applause. No relief.

Only the certainty that he had traded one burden for another.

He turned and walked away.

That evening, he did not light the brazier. He lay awake in the dark, listening to the wind scouring the eaves.

Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the blood on the snow. Shen Yan's face—empty and blank.

He did not sleep.

And when dawn finally came, he rose with the knowledge that this was only the beginning.