The bell's note didn't fade. It hung in the trees like a thread of iron, vibrating in bone.
Qin Mo had heard war gongs, hunting horns, and sect chimes. This was none of them. This was older—made to carry through mountains, across snowfields, even through fog dense enough to choke a torch.
Bellkeeper's head was tilted toward the sound, her pupils narrowing in the shard-lamp glow. "They've found one of mine."
"One of yours?" Qin Mo asked.
"My list," she said, as if that explained everything. "We ring when a runner's been taken—or killed. That note means they're holding on, barely. Two rings means dead."
The bell sounded again.
Not two rings.
But close.
She moved, fast and sure, stowing the lamp, checking the straps on the bells along her staff. "If you're staying in this pass, you're coming."
Qin Mo followed. Not because of debt, not because of trust, but because her list and his ledger now overlapped. Whoever could take her runner could hire hunters like the ones he'd just cut down.
They ran in silence, winding through root-tunnels and over slick ridges. The forest here had a gravity to it—trunks older than some sects, bark scarred with weather and claw. Even the system's overlay seemed muted, as if the map knew better than to shout in this place.
A flicker of movement caught Qin Mo's eye—pale shapes in the mist, not quite human.
[New presence detected: Iceborn Wraiths — hostility conditional.]
They didn't block the path, just watched. Their faces were like half-carved masks, ice crystal bearding their jaws. The Bellkeeper gave a small nod as she passed, and they inclined their heads in return.
"Not allies," she murmured once they were out of earshot, "but they hate the same people. For now, that's enough."
The bell rang a third time. The note cracked halfway through.
They reached a break in the trees—a frozen tarn, black under the moon, fringed with reeds like spears. On the far side, torchlight flared around a squat stone outpost. It looked abandoned until you saw the movement on the roof: two crossbows set on swivels, their operators scanning the tree line.
Between the outpost and the tarn, a figure was on his knees, hands bound, head bent under the weight of a chain looped through a ring in the frozen ground.
"That's your runner?" Qin Mo asked.
Bellkeeper's jaw flexed. "Was. Now he's bait."
A shout from the outpost carried across the ice: "You've got one chance, Bellkeeper. Come out and leave the staff. We'll even let him live long enough to see you walk away."
She stepped into view, just far enough for the torchlight to catch the bells on her staff. "You'll have to come take it."
The crossbows whined as they pivoted toward her.
Qin Mo was already moving. The frozen reeds muffled his steps; the tarn's crust groaned under his weight but didn't give. The system flagged weak points in the ice in faint red—he used them, hopping from plate to plate, keeping low.
The first quarrel thudded into a reed clump where his head had been. The second went wide, following a false shadow the Bellkeeper's staff cast as she circled.
He reached the base of the outpost. Two breaths. Three. Then Flame Step—straight up the frost-slick wall, boots striking the stone in quick bursts, heat flash-melting the thin ice and giving just enough grip.
The nearest crossbowman had time to shout before Qin Mo took his throat. The other spun, too slow. Steel through ribs, twist, gone.
Below, the Bellkeeper was already across the ice, her staff a blur. The chain anchoring the runner snapped under a bell strike. She hauled him to his feet with one hand while the other warded off a lunging guard.
The runner coughed blood but stayed upright. "Trap—"
The tarn exploded.
Ice heaved upward in a jagged ring as something massive broke the surface. Water sheeted into the air, freezing mid-spray into shards that fell like glass. The system screamed warnings:
[Uncatalogued presence detected.]
[Threat class: High.]
[Environmental hazard: hypothermic shock on contact.]
The thing was pale, plated, its head a spade of bone fringed with trailing tendrils that snapped like whips. Its mouth was vertical, splitting the face from chin to crown.
The Bellkeeper shoved the runner toward Qin Mo. "Get him to the trees!"
She didn't wait to see if he obeyed—she was already on the move, bells ringing in a pattern that made the creature's tendrils hesitate, stutter in mid-snap.
Qin Mo half-dragged, half-carried the runner to the reeds. The man was shivering violently, skin mottled from whatever had been done to him. Behind them, the creature's roar cracked the ice in concentric rings.
"Tell me you've killed one of those before," Qin Mo said when she reached them.
"Not sober," she said.
The roar came again, closer.
Qin Mo felt the wolf king's core pulse hot against the sudden drop in air temperature. Fire and frost, the system whispered. Balance.
He stepped forward, drawing steel.