The inn had long since surrendered to silence by the time morning crept in on thin grey mist that clung to windowsills like melancholy ghosts.
Lan Xueyao was first to rise, brushing sleep from her eyes with practiced efficiency and tying her sash in one fluid motion born of years of discipline. Lu Rourou stirred next, then Shen Yao—yawning as he shoved aside heavy curtains and blinked at the clouded light pressing against the glass like something alive and watching.
Soon, everyone had woken to face whatever destiny awaited.
By the time they assembled downstairs, bowls of thin congee and tea had already been arranged by the innkeeper's weathered wife. No one spoke much. The group ate quickly, eyes drifting repeatedly to the mist pressing against windows like a silent omen, patient and inevitable.
They didn't linger. There was no purpose in delaying fate.
The townspeople were already sweeping streets clean when they departed, and Xinyu took the lead in seeking directions from early risers who eyed their group with the wariness reserved for cultivators passing through mortal lands.
---
The mountain path curved along jagged cliffs like a serpent's spine, the stone bridge ahead barely visible through thick veils of fog that moved with unsettling purpose. Mist clung to their robes—cool, damp, invasive as unwelcome touch. Underfoot, loose gravel whispered faintly with each step, as if the mountain itself was speaking in a language just beyond comprehension.
Rourou clung to Lingque's arm with her usual boundless energy, chattering despite the oppressive atmosphere. "Hey, jiejie? Why are you always clutching that toy? What makes it so special?"
Lingque blinked with solemn gravity. "I... this is a gift from His Highness. I treasure it deeply."
"But jiejie, even a five-year-old child wouldn't play with such a thing?"
"Rou Rou," Xinyu called back with fond exasperation, "don't trouble her excessively. She's not from around here—that's why she's so curious about everything."
Rourou pouted with theatrical injury. "But she's fascinating."
"She's not a traveling sideshow."
Lingque gave a solemn nod of agreement. "I am definitively not a sideshow."
Behind them, Qingze and Yan Zheng walked side by side, exchanging quiet words in voices too low to carry. Their conversation drifted occasionally into light laughter—soft, rare, startling as spring rain in winter.
Shen Yao elbowed Xinyu in the ribs with sharp precision. "Hey. Observe Yan Zheng."
Xinyu glanced over his shoulder. "He's conversing."
"I'm aware. That's precisely what's unusual. I've never witnessed him maintain a conversation of such length."
Xinyu raised one skeptical brow. "They're forming friendship. What's strange about that?"
Shen Yao snorted with knowing amusement. "You're deliberately downplaying this. You never understand people properly."
Xinyu gave him a withering look. "You're making mountains from molehills."
Shen Yao folded his arms with satisfaction. "And you're missing the entire landscape."
---
Mochen walked behind them like a shadow detached from its owner, eyes low, steps heavy with burdens unseen.
He hadn't spoken since morning light first broke.
Every glance at Xinyu's back made his throat constrict painfully, made his thoughts turn dark as bottomless wells. He could still feel the ghost-memory of Xinyu's skin beneath his lips, the taste of something sweet and electric that haunted his waking hours. Worse still, he could feel the cursed mark calling to him again like siren song—irresistible, dangerous, consuming.
But it wasn't merely desire that tormented him.
The poison was acting faster now, accelerating beyond his careful calculations. He'd felt it twisting through his veins last night—quiet, cruel, inexorable as winter's approach. It would worsen soon, perhaps catastrophically. He hadn't told a soul, not even Xinyu. And he couldn't risk anyone discovering his condition before he returned to the demon realm for the antidote that might not even exist.
But he wasn't ready to leave Xinyu yet. Perhaps he never would be.
---
Hua Ling brought up the rear like death's patient shadow, wind tugging at his dark robes with invisible fingers. His gaze swept over the group like a cold blade seeking weakness. He didn't speak, didn't smile, didn't soften even fractionally.
Every so often, his eyes would drift toward Xinyu with gravitational inevitability.
And when they did, he would remember—again—the way that soul mark had burned beneath his palm like trapped starfire. The very same mark that shouldn't exist in this world. The mark tied to the person his father once desired with obsessive madness. The mark that tied Xinyu to something he didn't choose, hadn't asked for, didn't deserve.
He ground his teeth until jaw ached.
Why must he carry the consequences of someone else's poisonous obsession?
---
After several hours of walking along winding paths and stone-stepped inclines that seemed to climb toward heaven itself, they came upon a small village nestled in the mountain's protective crook. The houses were sparse and tilted at odd angles, roof tiles green with moss and time, and the air carried the faint scent of something herbal—burned mugwort, perhaps, or medicine brewed for ailments that had no names.
An old man sat on a weathered stool outside one house, skin like cracked bark left too long in sun, long white brows drooping almost to his chin. He was shelling nuts with a small knife and humming something tuneless that might have been a funeral dirge.
Shen Yao raised a hand in respectful greeting. "Grandfather, we're heading toward the Spirit Echo Cave. Is the path ahead safe for travelers?"
The old man didn't look up from his task. He spat a shell into a wooden bowl with practiced aim, then said slowly, voice like dried leaves rustling, "You'll find the path easily enough. Mountain takes all who seek it with hunger. But beware the bridge with no name."
Xinyu tilted his head with genuine confusion. "Bridge with no name?"
"Fog hides what sky dares not show its face." The old man wiped gnarled hands on his robe and waved vaguely toward the east. "Step carefully, young ones. Some things look perfectly human. But they cast no shadow upon this earth."
Lingque blinked with innocent perplexity. "Huh? Grandpa, what if someone's simply standing in shade?"
"Even the moon casts shadows when it walks among us," the old man muttered, eyes cloudy as milk. "But some faces walk this realm twice—once in flesh, once in memory. Learn to tell the difference, or join them in between."
Rourou stepped behind Qingze's protective presence. "...I don't like that at all."
"Old people say peculiar things constantly," Shen Yao said lightly, though his smile didn't quite reach his eyes. "He's merely being atmospheric."
No one paid the warning much serious mind. They thanked the man with polite bows, left him to his nuts and cryptic wisdom, and continued onward.
---
The fog thickened with each step forward, as if the world itself was closing its eyes.
By the time they reached the bridge, silence had grown profound enough to hear individual heartbeats.
The path narrowed into jagged stone steps worn smooth by countless forgotten feet. Mist hung low in the valleys below, crawling along earth like breath held too long in dying lungs. The trees were bare here, as if burned clean by wind that never stopped howling. And then the bridge emerged from fog like a ghost materializing—an old stone crossing arching between two cliffs, suspended above a chasm whose bottom remained invisible.
No name carved into its weathered railings. No prayer flags. No warning signs.
The mist clung to everything—air, skin, sleeves, thoughts—muffling footsteps until each person felt isolated despite walking together.
Xinyu reached out and touched the railing with tentative fingers. Stone was cold as winter corpse. "Strange... I don't see anyone here."
Shen Yao said with forced levity, "Obviously. It's a bridge, not a tea stall for weary travelers."
"No, I mean—" But he stopped mid-sentence, words dying in his throat.
There was a man kneeling in the bridge's exact center.
He was dressed like a common traveler. Face down toward stone. Utterly motionless.
The group froze as one, muscles tensing with primal recognition of wrongness.
"...That's not right," Qingze said softly, hand drifting toward his blade.
Yan Zheng stepped forward cautiously, hand already gripping his sword's hilt. "Everyone stay behind me."
"I'll go," Hua Ling said with cold authority, walking ahead before anyone could object or protest.
He approached the figure with measured steps, bent down gracefully—and touched the body's shoulder with careful fingers.
The man fell over like a puppet whose strings had been severed.
His eyes were open. Mouth too. But frozen stiff and dry as ancient parchment. Not fresh death—but not fully decomposed either. Trapped in some state between existence and absence.
Mochen's brows furrowed with dark recognition. "There's no scent of decay. No blood pooling. Not even residual spirit energy lingering."
Shen Yao swallowed audibly. "...Did he die from pure fright?"
"No." Qingze's voice was quiet as falling snow. "Look carefully."
He gestured toward the fog-shrouded ground where the body's shadow should have been cast.
There was none.
Nothing.
Everyone looked down at their own feet instinctively. Light or not, mist or not, their forms cast some faint shadow against the bridge's ancient stone.
But the dead man had none whatsoever.
Not even the slightest trace.
Xinyu's voice emerged low and uncertain. "He doesn't have a shadow..."
The wind shifted directions with ominous purpose. Something in the fog stirred—deliberate, watching, hungry.
Hua Ling stood up straight, hand flexing near his blade's hilt with practiced readiness.
The bridge creaked beneath their feet like old bones settling.
Mochen's gaze sharpened to killing focus. "Everyone. Prepare yourselves."
A soft laugh echoed from the mist—too close, too low, too impossibly human.
It came from the bridge's other end, where fog was thickest.
Where something waited in patient hunger.