The silhouette of Cold Mountain melted into the encroaching twilight, its snow-laden eaves holding the day's last light. A persistent warmth pulsed from the Frostwolf Mark on Chu Hongying's palm, a second heartbeat beneath her skin. When she glanced back, their trail had already vanished beneath wind-scoured snow, leaving only the flickering lights of the trading post ahead, their glow seeming to absorb sound itself in the deepening gloom, defiant sparks in a silent, gathering dread.
"The mark is more than recognition—it is a beacon," Shen Yuzhu's voice cut the silence. A fleeting cascade of data shimmered behind his heterochromatic eyes. "We are now bound to the Northern Frontier's lifeblood. To the Order's Web, we shine like a pyre in the night."
Gu Changfeng grinned, a flash of white in the gloom as he rolled his shoulders. "Good. Saves those metal husks the trouble of tracking us."
Lu Wanning remained silent, her fingers tracing the Dark Heartlock on her arm. The once-curse now thrummed in harmony with the Frostwolf Mark on her palm, radiating a deep, ancient warmth.
As they stepped into the trading post, the air itself seemed to curdle.
Stoves burned, their flames casting long, dancing shadows. The rich smells of roasting meat and spiced liquor hung heavy, and the din of commerce filled the air. Yet every sound felt muted, separated from its meaning by an invisible, frigid pane. A woman selling flatbreads smiled as she handed one to a customer, but the expression was a hollow mask, her eyes vacant. Children wove through the crowd, their movements silent and purposeless.
"Something is wrong," Chu Hongying murmured, her grip tightening on the Lie Feng Spear.
Shen Yuzhu's gaze swept the scene, his voice low. "Emotional resonance is being forcibly suppressed below the perceptible threshold. This is not natural. It is an engineered field effect."
A child's sharp cry sliced through the unnatural calm.
"Papa!"
A small girl in a patched coat clung to her hunter father's leg. Three Mirrorguards encircled them, the lead unit's scanner blazing a violent, accusing red.
"Emotional spike detected," intoned a voice of chilled metal. "Initiating stabilization protocol."
The hunter's face went ashen. He tried to shield his daughter, but his body locked, the fierce protectiveness in his eyes smothered into dull emptiness.
"Hold!"
Chu Hongying was a streak of motion. She did not strike, but planted herself, spear held crosswise, between the guards and the family. The Scarlet Flame Bloodlock on her arm writhed to life, coils of liquid light weaving a shield of warm crimson that deflected the scanning beams.
"The rule of the North," she declared, her voice sharp and clear as ice, "is to protect every soul who wishes to live."
The cold intensified. The stove fires dimmed, their heat siphoned away by an unseen force. The people around them moved slower, their gestures becoming marionette-like, their gazes turning to glass.
Then, a deeper cold descended. Not of wind or snow, but of the void.
Order's Deepfreeze.
It was an absolute zero of the spirit, leaching hope, courage, love—the very warmth of humanity—directly from the soul.
Chu Hongying's breath hitched, her own heart laboring against the oppressive chill. Her head snapped toward the market's edge—
There, within the swirling ice mist, a delicate Imperial Glazed Lantern glowed to life, pushing back the deepfreeze in a small, perfect sphere of false summer. The man holding it stepped forward, his hair dark as a starless night, his features achingly familiar.
Situ Ming.
He ignored the frozen world, his gaze piercing the distance to find her. His eyes were warm, yet depthless, like polished stones at the bottom of a dry well.
"Hongying." His voice was exactly as she remembered, a gentle current meant to pull her under. "I've returned."
Every muscle in her body went rigid. The Bloodlock seared her arm—not with a warning, but with a visceral, tearing resonance from a past she had sealed away.
"This winter was never yours to bear alone." He stepped closer, the lantern's aura an insult to the true cold. "Let me take you home."
That lantern… the one he promised would light my path through the snow. The memory tore through her, a fissure in the ice wall around her heart.
"Don't listen!" Shen Yuzhu's voice was strained, his heterochromatic eyes flickering with frantic light. He pressed a hand to his temple, fighting a silent invasion. "His emotional signature is a perfect replica of your memory! A Mirror Trap, engineered for you!"
His words were a shard of ice, piercing her wavering resolve. She turned on him, a hot flush of shame and anger at being so completely laid bare. "Have you never faltered? Is your heart just more data?!"
The moment the words left her lips, she felt it—a discordant shudder through the Heart-Oath Covenant that bound them.
Shen Yuzhu flinched as if struck, his lips sealing into a bloodless line.
"Damn you! What have you done to them?!" Gu Changfeng's roar shattered the moment.
The Northerners were changing. A mother fed her child with robotic precision. A merchant made change without a word of haggling. A child's roughly carved wooden wolf lay forgotten in the snow, its owner staring through it with empty eyes.
Lu Wanning darted to a villager's side, her fingers on his neck, her silver needle humming. She looked up, her face pale.
"This is not death. It is 'functional stasis.' The body lives, but the emotional pulse… it's fading. They are testing a world run only on logic." Her healer's composure cracked with a quiet horror. "They are being robbed of the capacity to feel pain."
Gu Changfeng grabbed a Mirrorguard, shaking its metallic frame. It was like shaking a stone. He released it, his rage a solitary beacon in the consuming void. "Face me! Give them back what you've stolen!"
Situ Ming moved as if the chaos did not exist. He took the final step, the lantern's glow licking at the hem of her robe. He looked at her, and with flawless, devastating tenderness, spoke the keyword crafted to break her:
"You see? No pain. No loss. This is peace." He tilted his head, a gesture so perfectly recalled it stole her breath. As he did, the fingers of his free hand twitched once, twice, in a minute, rhythmically identical motion against his thigh. "Come back to me. Just like before."
Just like before.
The last of her defenses crumbled to dust.
CRACK.
The Heart-Oath Covenant screamed. The visible tether of light between the four—crimson, azure, jet, and gold—writhed and twisted, its colors clashing in a screech of psychic feedback.
Shen Yuzhu cried out, clawing at his temples as if to physically tear the invading emotional static from his mind, and dropped to one knee.
Gu Changfeng's blade cleared its scabbard with a shriek of steel, his fury a physical force.
Lu Wanning's Dark Heartlock spun wild, drinking the ambient despair, her silver needles blackening with miasmic energy.
The Heartfire guttered, dying.
Torn apart, Chu Hongying stood at the center. The phantom's call, her comrades' agony—
Her eyes found Shen Yuzhu, fighting for control through the pain.
Gu Changfeng, placing his body between her and the threat.
Lu Wanning, steadfastly wrestling the storm.
And the little wooden wolf in the snow, a token of faith from a child who believed her "as reliable as the mountains."
Silence. A perfect, crystalline moment of clarity.
All doubt burned away, leaving only a core of unyielding certainty.
"I…"
Her whisper silenced the chaos.
Situ Ming's perfect smile faltered.
In one fluid, decisive motion, Chu Hongying raised the Lie Feng Spear and drove it into the heart of the frozen earth.
BOOM.
A pillar of pure crimson fire erupted around her. Not an explosion, but a declaration. It was warmth and shelter, a phoenix-wing of light that swept through the faltering oath-network. It seized Shen Yuzhu's reason, Gu Changfeng's valor, and Lu Wanning's compassion, pulling them back from the brink, reforging their bond in the crucible of her will.
"I do not believe your ghost!" Her voice rang, clear and absolute. "I believe in the ones who stand with me now!"
The dying Heartfire did not extinguish. From the depths of despair, it drew a deeper, purer strength, and blazed forth with a radiance that shamed the false lantern's glow.
The Heartfire was reborn in the abyss.
Above, the vast, spectral form of the Order's Web ignited across the sky, cold and immense.
The Emperor's voice descended, a cosmic edict etched into every soul:
"Observation concluded. The spectrum of humanity is cataloged."
"The eternal Constant requires no fleeting flame."
"Let the Ritual of Heart-Cleansing begin. By Heaven's Will, humanity shall be scoured from this land, and perfect order written upon the void."
Situ Ming looked at Chu Hongying, his smile restored, more chilling than any winter.
"Hongying, you see? This is true peace."
The North fell into a silence deeper than death, where even heartbeats were swallowed.
But between the four, the reforged Heart-Oath Chain pulsed—a steady, synchronized rhythm.
The spark in the deep ice, unquenched.