Wind worried the stones like a dog with a bone.
The ledge before the broken gully was a thin vein of safety, and everyone clung to it with their eyes. Across the gap, narrow slabs of rock hung in the air on chains and old rope, a zigzag of steps no wider than a foot. Below them lay white, turning emptiness.
A gray-bearded steward raised the same bell from Dusthaven's gate. His voice carried clean as a blade. "Second trial. Sky Steps. One at a time. Reach the far ledge and present before the Horizon Gate."
Rat recognized the set of his shoulders and the way silence obeyed him. So that stiff back had a name after all. Steward Hao.
To Hao's right stood the boy disciple, robes pale blue, token bright, chin sharp. He had mocked Rat in the market and again on the Breath Ledge with a smile like a thin knife. Now he let that smile return as if the wind had asked for it.
"Outer range test," he said with public patience and private pleasure. "Do not worry, mortals. The sky only bites when invited." His gaze cut to Rat. "Jin Tao, Open Sky Sect. I accept thanks later for the lesson you are about to receive."
"Rat," Rat said, because there was no point in pretending he had other names. "I accept donations in bread and decent shoes."
On Hao's left, the girl disciple studied the gap the way a mathematician studies a proof. Her eyes were steady, her braid disheveled by the gale, her presence quiet as a held breath. The codex hum behind Rat's ribs answered when she looked his way, a plucked string finding the same note as before.
She inclined her head the smallest amount. "Lan Yue," she said. "Breathe between the stones." Advice, or a test. Maybe both.
Hao lifted two fingers. The first candidate stepped out.
The wind made a habit of people. It learned their rhythm, then broke it. One boy froze and the chain turned him into a hanging bell until his fingers lost their argument with gravity. A woman made it nine steps, slipped, and vanished without time to scream. A broad-shouldered farmer grunted through half the span, then misjudged a sway and missed by three fingers. The steps creaked and sighed and accepted another name.
Those who fell were not spoken of. The mountain's rule, already promised at Dusthaven's gate.
Rat worked his jaw and tasted old iron. The small sun behind his navel turned, steady and unamused. Horizon in. Pour. Rest. Horizon out. Return. Settle.
"Next," Steward Hao said.
Rat stepped out before fear could do it for him.
The first slab trembled. He put the weight in the middle of his foot and did not linger. The second swung toward him, then away, so he met it when it came close and left before it could decide to be shy. The third wanted him to think about the fog beneath. He did not.
Step. Wind. Rope whine. Breath.
Half the span left. The far ledge with the carved arch loomed through mist, the Horizon Gate shut and patient. The line between cliff and sky ahead of him was the same line he carried inside, the horizon that kept his river calm.
The fourth slab slid under his heel. Rat dropped his center and let Rat's Scramble yank his feet to a place they had not decided to be. He landed crooked and smiling.
Jin Tao's voice carried, pleasant as a sermon. "Luck is a poor teacher."
"Better than you," Rat called without looking back. The wind stole half of it and still the joke won a few strangled breaths from the line.
Three more stones. The chain above him sang a note he did not like.
Rat paused, balanced on a sway, and let his next inhale go all the way down to the small sun. The gale clawed at his ears, at his scalp, at the cheap cloth of his shirt. He imagined the next slab and stepped when the wind was busy arguing with itself.
He landed on nothing.
The slab that should have been there was gone. A rotten rope dangled where it had been, sawing slowly against its bolt.
Rat hung in the second before falling, a creature between choices.
The Codex arrived like a moth pressed to his eye. Silver thread sketched words he did not have time for.
[Fate entangles. Choice manifests.]
[Path One: Clutch back. Tear shoulder. Live small.]
[Path Two: Let go. Trust reversal. Live large or not at all.]
"Stingy book," Rat whispered. "You only bring dice."
He let go.
Air took him with greedy hands. The world turned into white and cold and the far hiss of chains. Gravity called him by his worst names and invited him down.
Then the impossible bent its head.
Wind hit him from below, wrong as a river running uphill. It punched him not down, but sideways, as if a giant lung had exhaled under him at the wrong time on purpose.
Rat's fingers met a trailing rope. It burned his palms open. Pain cracked his shoulder like a cheap bowl. He did not let go.
For a heartbeat he swore he saw a hand woven from thin silver strands, palm up, lift him the last finger-width to reach that rope. Then the threads frayed back into mist and the world remembered itself.
Above, a chain clanked. A slab swung toward his face with speed.
"Move," Rat hissed at himself, because the body listened better than the soul when addressed properly. He kicked with both feet and swung, letting momentum carry him to meet the next step at the moment it wanted to be met. He sprawled across it like a sack of something valuable, then pulled himself upright with a stupid laugh.
Lan Yue's voice, calm and close. "He caught it."
Jin Tao's voice, polite and not. "Luck."
Steward Hao said nothing, which was its own kind of saying.
The Codex chimed softly, as if embarrassed.
[Skill refined: Thread Dodge (Lesser).]
[Instinct aligns with strain. Reliability increases under mortal pressure.]
Rat barked air that might have been a laugh or a cough. "Lesser? I donate blood and get 'lesser.' You really are cheap, Codex."
Two steps remained.
He timed the sway, met the next slab when it wanted to be met, then planted the edge of his foot on the last stone and pushed despite the tremor in his legs. The far ledge came to meet him like a friend who had taken too long to decide he was worth greeting. He landed on stone that did not move and let his knees tell him a few truths about fatigue.
For a moment he stared at his hands. Skin torn. Blood slick. Tremor arguing with pride. He flexed his fingers and the pain sat where he put it.
He turned.
Only three others had made it across. One sat with his head between his knees and whispered the same sentence over and over, teaching it to himself again. A woman with a scar at her throat stared at the fog with dry eyes as if memorizing its shape. The third was a boy who had almost fallen on the Breath Ledge and now looked at Rat as if he had stolen a trick from a better world.
Rat held the stare a heartbeat, then let it go. He had no tricks to give, only lungs and jokes and the habit of not dying.
Jin Tao stepped lightly onto the far ledge a little later, immaculate again, as if dust had learned not to love him. He did not look tired. He looked offended that effort existed.
He stopped close enough that Rat could smell incense and oil. "You made it," Jin Tao said. "By accident."
Rat smiled with too many teeth. "I am made of accidents."
Lan Yue joined them, braid unraveled by the gale. Her gaze flicked to Rat's torn palms, then to the rope burn kiss around his wrist, then to his eyes. Not pity. Not admiration. Not nothing. Something like verification, as if a part of a sum she had carried in her head had resolved to an integer.
"Between the stones," she said, the same quiet tone from before. "You listened."
"I am very obedient," Rat said. "Just not to rules."
Steward Hao crossed last with the calm of a man greeting a familiar staircase. He looked over the four survivors and made no ceremony of it.
"You have crossed the Sky Steps," he said. "Present to the Horizon Gate."
The arch carved into the mountain was taller than any house in Dusthaven. Its doors were slabs of stone etched with clouds, wings, and a line that might have been road or river or horizon. Rat could not decide which he preferred.
Hao struck the bell once. The sound went into the doors and found a lock older than the names weathered from the arch. The stone shuddered.
A breath came through the seam.
It was not the wind through a crack. It was a body breathing in a different size of time. It smelled of old rain and cold iron and something like pine sap cut with salt. The hair on Rat's neck paid attention.
"The Gate of Wind and Bone," Hao said. "At dawn."
Jin Tao's mouth curved like a hook. "Bring a spine, rat."
Rat looked at the narrow line of light opening between the doors and laughed because laughing belonged to him even here. "I have wind and bone both," he said. "Let us see which one the mountain prefers to borrow."
The seam widened by a finger. The breath on the far side grew louder, like the sea pretending to be a lung.
The mountain was breathing back.
The Codex drifted down, tidy as a clerk closing a ledger.
[Codex of Strands of Fate – Status Update]
Vitality: 4
Qi Sense: 3
Comprehension: 3
Fate Entanglement: 10
Realm: Foundation Establishment
Skill Refined: Thread Dodge (Lesser). Movements bias along favorable strain lines. Reliability improves under danger.
System Note: Horizon motif reinforced. Candidate aligns breath with terrain.
Rat flexed his torn hands and smiled at the gate the way he used to smile at locked pantry doors. The wind tasted him and did not spit.
Dawn would come. The gate would open wider. The next joke would be more expensive.
He would pay in bruises.
Chapter 9: Sky Steps
Wind worried the stones like a dog with a bone.
The ledge before the broken gully was a thin vein of safety, and everyone clung to it with their eyes. Across the gap, narrow slabs of rock hung in the air on chains and old rope, a zigzag of steps no wider than a foot. Below them lay white, turning emptiness.
A gray-bearded steward raised the same bell from Dusthaven's gate. His voice carried clean as a blade. "Second trial. Sky Steps. One at a time. Reach the far ledge and present before the Horizon Gate."
Rat recognized the set of his shoulders and the way silence obeyed him. So that stiff back had a name after all. Steward Hao.
To Hao's right stood the boy disciple, robes pale blue, token bright, chin sharp. He had mocked Rat in the market and again on the Breath Ledge with a smile like a thin knife. Now he let that smile return as if the wind had asked for it.
"Outer range test," he said with public patience and private pleasure. "Do not worry, mortals. The sky only bites when invited." His gaze cut to Rat. "Jin Tao, Open Sky Sect. I accept thanks later for the lesson you are about to receive."
"Rat," Rat said, because there was no point in pretending he had other names. "I accept donations in bread and decent shoes."
On Hao's left, the girl disciple studied the gap the way a mathematician studies a proof. Her eyes were steady, her braid disheveled by the gale, her presence quiet as a held breath. The codex hum behind Rat's ribs answered when she looked his way, a plucked string finding the same note as before.
She inclined her head the smallest amount. "Lan Yue," she said. "Breathe between the stones." Advice, or a test. Maybe both.
Hao lifted two fingers. The first candidate stepped out.
The wind made a habit of people. It learned their rhythm, then broke it. One boy froze and the chain turned him into a hanging bell until his fingers lost their argument with gravity. A woman made it nine steps, slipped, and vanished without time to scream. A broad-shouldered farmer grunted through half the span, then misjudged a sway and missed by three fingers. The steps creaked and sighed and accepted another name.
Those who fell were not spoken of. The mountain's rule, already promised at Dusthaven's gate.
Rat worked his jaw and tasted old iron. The small sun behind his navel turned, steady and unamused. Horizon in. Pour. Rest. Horizon out. Return. Settle.
"Next," Steward Hao said.
Rat stepped out before fear could do it for him.
The first slab trembled. He put the weight in the middle of his foot and did not linger. The second swung toward him, then away, so he met it when it came close and left before it could decide to be shy. The third wanted him to think about the fog beneath. He did not.
Step. Wind. Rope whine. Breath.
Half the span left. The far ledge with the carved arch loomed through mist, the Horizon Gate shut and patient. The line between cliff and sky ahead of him was the same line he carried inside, the horizon that kept his river calm.
The fourth slab slid under his heel. Rat dropped his center and let Rat's Scramble yank his feet to a place they had not decided to be. He landed crooked and smiling.
Jin Tao's voice carried, pleasant as a sermon. "Luck is a poor teacher."
"Better than you," Rat called without looking back. The wind stole half of it and still the joke won a few strangled breaths from the line.
Three more stones. The chain above him sang a note he did not like.
Rat paused, balanced on a sway, and let his next inhale go all the way down to the small sun. The gale clawed at his ears, at his scalp, at the cheap cloth of his shirt. He imagined the next slab and stepped when the wind was busy arguing with itself.
He landed on nothing.
The slab that should have been there was gone. A rotten rope dangled where it had been, sawing slowly against its bolt.
Rat hung in the second before falling, a creature between choices.
The Codex arrived like a moth pressed to his eye. Silver thread sketched words he did not have time for.
[Fate entangles. Choice manifests.]
[Path One: Clutch back. Tear shoulder. Live small.]
[Path Two: Let go. Trust reversal. Live large or not at all.]
"Stingy book," Rat whispered. "You only bring dice."
He let go.
Air took him with greedy hands. The world turned into white and cold and the far hiss of chains. Gravity called him by his worst names and invited him down.
Then the impossible bent its head.
Wind hit him from below, wrong as a river running uphill. It punched him not down, but sideways, as if a giant lung had exhaled under him at the wrong time on purpose.
Rat's fingers met a trailing rope. It burned his palms open. Pain cracked his shoulder like a cheap bowl. He did not let go.
For a heartbeat he swore he saw a hand woven from thin silver strands, palm up, lift him the last finger-width to reach that rope. Then the threads frayed back into mist and the world remembered itself.
Above, a chain clanked. A slab swung toward his face with speed.
"Move," Rat hissed at himself, because the body listened better than the soul when addressed properly. He kicked with both feet and swung, letting momentum carry him to meet the next step at the moment it wanted to be met. He sprawled across it like a sack of something valuable, then pulled himself upright with a stupid laugh.
Lan Yue's voice, calm and close. "He caught it."
Jin Tao's voice, polite and not. "Luck."
Steward Hao said nothing, which was its own kind of saying.
The Codex chimed softly, as if embarrassed.
[Skill refined: Thread Dodge (Lesser).]
[Instinct aligns with strain. Reliability increases under mortal pressure.]
Rat barked air that might have been a laugh or a cough. "Lesser? I donate blood and get 'lesser.' You really are cheap, Codex."
Two steps remained.
He timed the sway, met the next slab when it wanted to be met, then planted the edge of his foot on the last stone and pushed despite the tremor in his legs. The far ledge came to meet him like a friend who had taken too long to decide he was worth greeting. He landed on stone that did not move and let his knees tell him a few truths about fatigue.
For a moment he stared at his hands. Skin torn. Blood slick. Tremor arguing with pride. He flexed his fingers and the pain sat where he put it.
He turned.
Only three others had made it across. One sat with his head between his knees and whispered the same sentence over and over, teaching it to himself again. A woman with a scar at her throat stared at the fog with dry eyes as if memorizing its shape. The third was a boy who had almost fallen on the Breath Ledge and now looked at Rat as if he had stolen a trick from a better world.
Rat held the stare a heartbeat, then let it go. He had no tricks to give, only lungs and jokes and the habit of not dying.
Jin Tao stepped lightly onto the far ledge a little later, immaculate again, as if dust had learned not to love him. He did not look tired. He looked offended that effort existed.
He stopped close enough that Rat could smell incense and oil. "You made it," Jin Tao said. "By accident."
Rat smiled with too many teeth. "I am made of accidents."
Lan Yue joined them, braid unraveled by the gale. Her gaze flicked to Rat's torn palms, then to the rope burn kiss around his wrist, then to his eyes. Not pity. Not admiration. Not nothing. Something like verification, as if a part of a sum she had carried in her head had resolved to an integer.
"Between the stones," she said, the same quiet tone from before. "You listened."
"I am very obedient," Rat said. "Just not to rules."
Steward Hao crossed last with the calm of a man greeting a familiar staircase. He looked over the four survivors and made no ceremony of it.
"You have crossed the Sky Steps," he said. "Present to the Horizon Gate."
The arch carved into the mountain was taller than any house in Dusthaven. Its doors were slabs of stone etched with clouds, wings, and a line that might have been road or river or horizon. Rat could not decide which he preferred.
Hao struck the bell once. The sound went into the doors and found a lock older than the names weathered from the arch. The stone shuddered.
A breath came through the seam.
It was not the wind through a crack. It was a body breathing in a different size of time. It smelled of old rain and cold iron and something like pine sap cut with salt. The hair on Rat's neck paid attention.
"The Gate of Wind and Bone," Hao said. "At dawn."
Jin Tao's mouth curved like a hook. "Bring a spine, rat."
Rat looked at the narrow line of light opening between the doors and laughed because laughing belonged to him even here. "I have wind and bone both," he said. "Let us see which one the mountain prefers to borrow."
The seam widened by a finger. The breath on the far side grew louder, like the sea pretending to be a lung.
The mountain was breathing back.
The Codex drifted down, tidy as a clerk closing a ledger.
[Codex of Strands of Fate – Status Update]
Vitality: 4
Qi Sense: 3
Comprehension: 3
Fate Entanglement: 10
Realm: Foundation Establishment
Skill Refined: Thread Dodge (Lesser). Movements bias along favorable strain lines. Reliability improves under danger.
System Note: Horizon motif reinforced. Candidate aligns breath with terrain.
Rat flexed his torn hands and smiled at the gate the way he used to smile at locked pantry doors. The wind tasted him and did not spit.
Dawn would come. The gate would open wider. The next joke would be more expensive.
He would pay in bruises.