"Run!"
A Jin's shout cracked through the cramped cavern, leaving no room for argument. She shoved Lin Yan toward the deeper dark and whirled to meet the killer bursting out of the shadows.
The hardwood staff in her hands became a blur. Her moves weren't the neat schools of the rivers and lakes—they were hunter's tricks: angles meant to break bones, feints that cut close and mean. For a breath or two she held the knife-man at bay, steel flashing and sparks spitting across stone.
"Go! Don't look back!" she gritted, knocking aside a stroke aimed at her throat. The blow numbed her forearm; she didn't turn.
Lin Yan's eyes burned hot. He hated the weakness in his body, the trap tightening step by step, the helplessness of watching someone else bleed for him. He couldn't leave her to die. Not again. Not after Zhong-bo.
His gaze snagged on a faint carving on the far wall—the same worn symbol he'd glimpsed a heartbeat before. A shape within it matched a line on the iron token against his chest exactly.
A thunderclap split his skull.
He lunged—not away, but toward the mark—racing for the carved stone.
The killer saw him bolting deeper and hesitated, then bared his teeth and drove harder. One hard chop batted A Jin's staff aside; the next thrust lunged straight for her heart—
"Krrk—ROOOM!"
A deep, grinding roar rolled out from the tunnel's end. The floor shuddered; dust hissed down like rain.
The killer faltered.
Lin Yan had jammed the cold iron token into the shallow recess beneath the symbol—edges and grooves meshing as if they had been born together.
He'd guessed right. The token wasn't just a key for a lock—it woke a machine buried in the mine's bones.
The carved stone pivoted inward on a hidden axle, revealing a black throat just wide enough for a single person. A breath of colder air blew out, stale with iron and age.
"This way!" Lin Yan rasped.
A Jin needed no second bidding. In the instant of the killer's surprise, she rolled, slipped past the killing thrust by the width of a finger, and sprinted for the opening.
The killer recovered with a snarl and leapt.
"Inside!" Lin Yan dragged A Jin through and spun back. His hand closed on a length of rusted iron prybar on the floor; he hurled it with everything he had. The blade flicked it aside, but it stole a beat.
A single beat was enough.
Lin Yan dove after A Jin, seized a frozen-cold lever set just inside the frame, and yanked with every shred of strength left in him.
"ROOOM!"
The stone slab ground shut—fast.
"Think you can run?!" the killer spat, driving his knife for the narrowing seam.
"Sstch!"
The point punched through the closing gap—and through Lin Yan's left shoulder blade behind it.
White-hot pain tore him open. The world went black around the edges. He held on anyway, teeth buried in his lip, a raw animal sound rattling in his throat as he braced the door with his body and wrenched the lever down.
"Lin Yan!" A Jin cried, lunging back.
"Don't—come!" His voice was a shredded whisper. Steel twisted in bone; blood poured hot and fast.
Outside, the killer heaved, trying to wrench the blade free or force the door back—but the ancient mechanism was stronger than muscle and rage. The slab kept coming.
"KRAK!"
The knife trapped in the seam sheared in two with a tooth-aching snap.
A howl—rage and pain—echoed from the far side. Then the last inch slid home with a heavy, final thud. Stone met stone. The killer's pounding and curses dulled, then faded. He'd live—but he was shut out.
Inside, there was nothing but dark and the wet rasp of breathing.
Lin Yan slid down the door, fingers slipping from the iron. The pain roared; a spreading heat soaked through his back, tacky and relentless.
"Lin Yan! Lin Yan!" A Jin groped through the dark until her hands found him—cold, shaking, and drenched in blood.
"Still… not dead," he breathed, thin as a gnat's wing. "Fire… striker…"
She fumbled out a fire-fold and coaxed a trembling flame to life.
The tiny light sketched a bare stone chamber no bigger than a stall: four cut walls, nothing else. In its glow, Lin Yan's wound was brutal—a ragged hole punched through the shoulder, the broken knife tip lodged inside. His face had gone paper-white.
Tears sprang hot to A Jin's eyes. She tore a strip from her inner garment and pressed hard, but the blood pumped on. Her hands shook.
"What do I do… what do I do…"
Lin Yan drifted, his consciousness ebbing. He raised his right hand a finger's breadth and tapped feebly at his chest.
A Jin understood. She searched his tunic: first a warm jade pendant—set aside. Then the cold black key. Then a small porcelain vial—the last of the medicine Wang the innkeeper had pressed on him.
She dusted the remaining powder over the wound. It slowed the bleeding, but the lodged blade made true healing impossible.
"The knife… has to come out…" Lin Yan whispered.
Her stomach turned to ice. No tools. No narcotic. In a damp stone box with a guttering flame. If she cut now, he might bleed out—or die from the pain alone.
The tiny flame flickered, throwing jittering light across a bare stretch of wall. Scratches there caught her eye—not symbols this time, but hurried lines as if someone had knifed letters into stone. An arrow pointed to a corner.
She leaned in to read. The words punched through her like thunder:
"To those who come after: If there is blood, beneath the third stone in the corner lies aid. — Left by the Mute Servant."
The mute smith.
He'd known someone would bleed here.
A Jin didn't waste a heartbeat. She dropped to the corner, pried at the third stone. It shifted—then lifted free.
Beneath lay a small oilskin bundle, sealed tight.
Inside: three tiny porcelain bottles, their labels yellowed—trauma salve, hemostatic powder. And a wafer-thin, willow-leaf knife that gleamed cold as water.
Hope slammed through her so fierce it hurt.
"Hold on!" she whispered at Lin Yan's ear. "There's medicine. From the Mute Uncle. You'll live."
At the name, a flicker passed through his eyes.
Then, in that silent stone box, they began.
Guided by a hunter's rough fieldcraft and the trembling light of a fire-fold, A Jin set the willow blade to flesh. Breath by breath, she worked the broken steel from bone and muscle.
Lin Yan convulsed, sweat pouring, jaw locked so hard blood ran from his bitten lip. He didn't scream. Only a strangled, low sound escaped—a sound that might have been a growl, or a prayer.
At last the shard slid free with a wet, metallic scrape.
A Jin drowned the wound in the best powders, pressed salve, and bound it tight with clean cloth until the bleeding eased and the angry flesh settled.
By then, Lin Yan had slipped under—spent, cold, and ghost-pale.
A Jin sagged to the floor, breath shaking. She looked from his still face to the lifeline of medicines in her hand, then back to the scratched message on the wall.
The Mute Servant. Who—truly—was he? Why had he left this cache? How long ago had he carved those words, and for whom? He had expected danger here. Expected blood.
Outside the stone door, had the danger really passed?
Inside, would Lin Yan survive the night?
And beyond this black little room—what road could they possibly take next?