The sun over the city had dimmed to a sepia haze, weighed down by thick clouds that muffled sound and distorted light. Li Wei stood before a cracked stone stairwell, half-swallowed by a crooked herbalist shop in the southern quarter. The walls around it were warped, blistered with age and spirit erosion. He glanced back.
Zhu Zhuqing and Meng Yiran nodded.
"Did the spirit traces end here?" Zhu Zhuqing murmured. Her voice was low, her tone sharp with tension.
Li Wei held out his Diendriver, the muzzle flickering with scanning pulses.
[Residual soul particles confirmed]
[Depth unknown]
Li Wei then shake his head toward her. And gesture toward the depth.
"Let's go," he said.
Xiao Wu was left to take care of Ning Rongrong outside. Afraid that something might happen to her when leaving her alone. Also, someone need to secure the escape route to prevent the possibility of the person call serpent eye setting up trap.
The three then descended into the darkness.
The stairwell twisted down far deeper than any building had a right to go. Cold air licked at their skin. At the base, the corridor opened into a stone chamber inscribed with faded murals: a three-eyed serpent curled around a glowing loom. Below it, talismans lay scattered like withered leaves, their inscriptions still faintly alive.
Meng Yiran crouched by one. Her eyes narrowed. "Look like these are from the Serpent-Eyed."
Zhu Zhuqing looked over her shoulder. "I've never heard of them."
"Few have. They're a splinter cult from an old spirit clan. They believed harmonization was divine inheritance, not skill. They'd sacrifice pieces of their soul to tune themselves into the 'Greater Pattern.'"
Li Wei picked up a talisman. Its runes flickered silver, then died.
"Do you think they're connected to the Axis that we are looking for?"
Meng Yiran didn't answer. Her expression was unreadable as she also unsure about it. The thing that she know mostly from her own grandparent sometimes telling her stories about the old.
________________
Meanwhile, aboveground, the Harmonization Crystal pulsed.
Xiao Wu and Ning Rongrong sat cross-legged before the crook shop that seem that it might fall down at any moment. The crystal flared without warning. Light streamed outward and bathed them both.
Then—
A vision.
Not sight, not memory. A texture. Heat against snow. The scent of juniper. A name whispered in a language they'd never known: "Seressa."
When it ended, Xiao Wu stumbled upright, heart racing.
"What… was that?"
Rongrong exhaled shakily. "I think… I remembered someone I've never met."
They checked the crystal. It now showed faint glowing rings around them both. They will remember seeing that a third, sharper halo flared when Zhu Zhuqing walked near moments later, returning from inside to check on them before going down.
For Li Wei—a flicker. Not a ring. Not a glow. Just a ripple.
______________
Back in the hidden chamber, the group regrouped. Li Wei stared at the ceiling mural.
"What if the Axis isn't just a voice? Not a command?"
Zhu Zhuqing tilted her head. "Then what?"
"A loom."
Meng Yiran turned. "A threads. Affecting us. So that we be pulled into a patterns."
"Exactly," Li Wei said. "It's weaving something. And we're inside it."
For a moment, none of them spoke. The silence stretched.
______________
Two days passed.
Then it appeared.
A second black-wax letter. No messenger. It simply was, hovering above the Harmonization Crystal before drifting down.
The wax bore a different emblem: a stylized loom with five threads, only three intact.
Li Wei cracked the seal.
Inside write something.
A location: Fog Cliffs, northeast range.
A time: Midnight, three nights from now.
A message: "Come with the ones touched by the Loom. The others will only fray. — V"
They met in private.
Li Wei, Zhu Zhuqing, Xiao Wu, Ning Rongrong, and Meng Yiran.
"We can't tell everyone," Xiao Wu said. "This is for us."
Meng Yiran crossed her arms. "We're letting a myth pull us over. Are we sure this isn't a trap?"
Rongrong glanced at the Harmonization Crystal. "Maybe it is. But we don't have to be victims. We can choose how we respond."
Zhu Zhuqing looked at Li Wei. "Threads are pulled tighter for a reason. It's the trust that important to us."
He nodded slowly. "Then we'll go. Just us."
_______________
That night, Li Wei dreamed.
A cosmic space. Threads glowed like rivers of light. At the center, a loom. Each thread hummed.
A voice. Female. Gentle.
"Second convergence acknowledged. Serpent-Eyed have remembered their vow. Do not shatter the thread of Fang-born flame."
He woke up, heart pounding.
A silver sigil glowed faintly on his wrist. It matched the ones once on Meng Yiran.
________________
Far away, on the cliffs under fog, a masked figure watched the night sky.
Behind them, a subordinate can be seen to be knelling.
"They've touched the second knot. Do we proceed?"
The masked figure turned.
"Let the fifth thread weave itself. The Loom has chosen its vessel."
______________
Elsewhere, Tang San opened his eyes. A tear slipped down his cheek.
He did not know why.
Oscar, in a separate room, woke in the same moment. He too was crying.
But neither remembered the dream.
Only silence.