The gates did not close in silence.
Each slab's folding groaned like a glacier calving into the sea, echoing off the basin walls. Qin Mo watched them slot together until the seam vanished, leaving only the faint glimmer of sigils beneath a new skin of frost.
The cold lingered, a ghost of the Frostmane's presence. His fingers itched to pull the core from his pouch and feel its weight again, but the Bellkeeper's warning rang as clear as the bells she carried—heat and frost could not be left to wrestle inside him without cost.
"Move," Lian said quietly. She wasn't looking at the gate. Her eyes were on the ridgeline.
The ledger's overlay confirmed it: faint traces of heat, small but numerous, cresting the ridge above them. Not soldiers. Not wolves. Something lighter, quicker.
[Entities detected: avian-class, swarm behavior. Bloodline unknown.]
[Threat: moderate. Risk escalates in confined terrain.]
They skirted the basin's edge toward a narrow defile that split the rock like a wound. From there, the wall could be followed without entering the kill pocket in front of the gate.
The path tightened until they walked single file, rock pressing close enough to scrape shoulders. Wind whispered overhead, bringing with it the faint chime of bone bells. Not the Bellkeeper's.
"Scouts," she murmured. "Winged."
Yi glanced up. "Winged what?"
She didn't answer.
The defile widened abruptly into a shelf overlooking the inner valley. Below, terraces of ice and water stepped down toward a frozen lake. On the far shore rose a city walled in jade and brass, roofs pitched steep to shed snow, every ridge carved with lines of script that gleamed faintly even in shadow.
The First Gate was only one mouth. There were others, smaller, hidden in the folds of the terrain.
"Why show us this?" Yi asked.
"Because," the Bellkeeper said, "you can't enter the city without being seen. And there's more than one way to be seen."
The chime came again, closer. Shapes detached from the ridgeline—tall, narrow-winged, their feathers patterned like frost fractals. Faces sharp, almost human, almost avian. Each carried a spear tipped with obsidian.
[Frostwing Sentinels — Lesser Ascendant.]
[Advisory: aerial maneuverability advantage. Optimal counter: grounded snare or ranged pressure.]
The lead sentinel banked, voice cutting the air in a language Qin Mo didn't know. The tone needed no translation.
"Outsiders. Identify."
The Bellkeeper stepped forward, bells still. "We seek audience," she called. Her voice didn't carry submission; it carried inevitability.
The sentinel's head tilted. "Audience is earned."
Its spear angled toward Qin Mo. "Prove worth."
The fight came as a test, not an ambush. Two dropped to the shelf, wings folding tight, spears flicking for precision strikes. Qin Mo caught the first on his guard, feeling the frost bite through steel. He let Flame Step push him inside the second's reach, cutting along the haft to spill the weapon from frozen fingers.
The ledger pulsed:
[Opposition detected — Frost Aspect.]
[Synergy available: Heat Vein + Frost Core (Stored) → Controlled Thermal Fracture. Efficiency: 42%.]
Not yet. He wanted control, not spectacle.
He pressed the advantage with low, tight cuts, never overextending. When the first sentinel faltered, he drove the pommel into its temple and used its collapse to unbalance the second.
The leader dropped to land between them. It looked once at its fallen kin, then at Qin Mo, and inclined its head—not in defeat, but in acknowledgment.
"You may enter," it said. "But the bell will ring when you do. All will know."
As they followed the sentinels along the ice terraces, the Bellkeeper murmured, "That's the point. In this city, surviving isn't enough. You have to be seen surviving."
Qin Mo didn't answer. His thoughts were on the Frost Core in his pack, the balance it promised and the risk it carried, and on the fact that beyond the jade walls waited more than tests.
Somewhere inside, the chain from hireling to patron was waiting to be broken.