Wind scraped the canyon raw and did not apologize.
Rat slid along the ledge where the Wind Serpent had torn a groove, staff across his shoulders, palms still buzzing from the strike that had cracked scales and pride. Wei Yun kept two paces behind, breathing steady the way a boy does when he refuses to be small. Jin Tao lingered safely above, trying to look like a commander instead of a witness.
Below, the serpent's body flashed between scrub and shadow. Nine meters of muscle and hate, frilled head, wing-membranes like torn flags. Lord-tier, low stage, wounded enough to be stupid and dangerous.
"Still moving," Wei Yun said, voice thin but calm.
"Same," Rat said. "I complained to management. No response."
His fingers throbbed where Horizon Flow had burned through skin. The small sun behind his navel turned once, stubborn and slow. He could gather one more strong burst without tearing anything he needed for walking. Maybe two, if the mountain decided not to collect interest.
Jin Tao called down from the safer rock. "Protocol says we mark the kill and summon a senior. We do not reengage."
Rat paced the slope, eyes on the serpent. "Protocol also says we do not let a wounded Lord-tier slither downhill and snack on laundry boys."
"You assume it will go downhill," Jin Tao said.
"Everything does," Rat said, and stepped off the ledge.
Gravel whispered. Wind pressed, then released, as if the air itself was deciding whose side it liked. The serpent lifted its head over a thornbush, tongue tasting. Its frill rose. The world tilted toward sharp.
The Codex stirred, neat as an auditor.
[Threat: Wind Serpent, Lord-tier. Condition: impaired.]
[Terrain: crossgusts intermittent. Leverage possible.]
"Noted," Rat muttered. "Bill me later."
He angled for the pinch where the canyon narrowed, a seam of old stone smoothed by generations of trials. Rotten banner poles lay crisscrossed there, their faded blue cloth still clinging in stubborn ribbons. Beside them, half-buried in dust, a stone ring squatted like a forgotten eye. Its surface held runes worn thin by wind and time.
Wei Yun dropped next to him, already tugging cloth free. "Old sky altar," he said, low. "This canyon used to be on the outer trial path."
"Convenient," Rat said.
He looped the stoutest ribbon of cloth around two stunted pines, crossed it low, and tied the ends to a buried post. Simple trip. Ugly knot. Prophetically illegal.
The serpent coiled. Sand jittered. The air tasted of copper and cold tea.
"Jin Tao," Rat called without looking up. "Go left. Throw stones. Look valuable."
"I will do no such–"
"Then stand there and look pretty. The serpent loves a target that talks."
Something in that offended Jin Tao enough to produce action. A rock clattered off to Rat's left, not close, but enough to make the serpent's eyes slide toward the noise. It launched a heartbeat later, body uncoiling in a white blur.
Rat did not retreat. He cut sideways at the last instant, staff skimming the ground to anchor a turn. He drove the butt through the shredded edge of the serpent's frill as it passed. Pain bent its flight. A wing clipped rock.
The banner line snapped tight across the scaled belly. Blue cloth, holy once, did a very profane job. The serpent flipped and slammed into the stone ring with a bell note that was too big for this canyon. The runes woke like old lungs remembering how to fill. Air shoved. For a breath, the altar remembered its work.
"Now," Rat said, and moved.
Horizon rhythm. Breath poured down his spine, gathered in his belly, rose in his shoulders. He did not fling power. He gave it a path. The staff kissed scale, then hammered tendon. Something popped. A wing went limp.
The serpent screamed. Jin Tao finally threw a rock at the right time. It ricocheted off a ridge and clipped the beast's eye. It blinked at the wrong moment.
Wei Yun did something brave and unapproved. He sprinted in and jammed a broken banner pole directly into the torn gash on the serpent's back.
"Stupid," Rat barked.
"Accurate," Wei Yun said between teeth, bracing the pole with his full weight.
The serpent bucked. The ring flared again and died, old power spent by a memory. Wind hit from three angles, as if the mountain could not decide who deserved to be punished.
The beast coiled around Wei Yun's waist.
Rat went too close without thinking. He levered the staff between coil and boy, shoulder grinding against scale. The serpent's head snapped down, jaws wide enough for a leg and a half of regrets.
The Codex marked a sliver of time.
[Reversal Instinct: window available.]
"Sold," Rat said, and fed the beast his weight.
The bite took the staff, not bone. Shock rolled through wood into muscle. He turned with it, a half pivot that taught the serpent where gravity lived. Momentum flipped. Skull met stone. Teeth sparked. Wei Yun yanked free on a gasp.
Rat drove the staff's tip up into the soft hinge under the jaw and pushed with everything Horizon Flow would lend without breaking him in half. Crack. Scream. Blood hissed where it splashed old runes.
The tail whipslashed and swept Rat's legs. He fell, saw sky, saw rock, saw Jin Tao's panic turning into a shape, and then a shadow cut the light.
Instructor Zhen dropped like an answer.
Her staff met the serpent's skull with a sound that closed arguments. Qi gathered around the strike, not flashy, not cruel. Exact. Bone gave. The beast shuddered and collapsed, breath boiling out in a long hiss.
Silence rose like a creature from a pool.
For three heartbeats it held.
Then the canyon exhaled.
A pale shimmer slid from between cracked fangs and hovered over the stone ring. The air around it breathed with the even patience of sleep.
"What is that," Jin Tao said, voice small.
"Wind pearl," Zhen said. "Lord-tier core. Rare. Punishes fingers that grab."
It pulled at Rat's breath the way the horizon pulled at his eyes. Familiar, wrong, expensive.
The Codex went cold.
[Resonance detected. Risk: assimilation.]
[Advisory: do nothing.]
For once, Rat sat on his hands.
Zhen lifted her staff and drew a circle in the dust. Thin lines rose from the ground, wrapped the pearl in a ring of stillness, and guided it into a clay jar. She sealed it with lacquer and a stamped strip of paper. The whole act felt like writing an equation you did not yet understand.
"Claim credit?" Jin Tao said too fast. "As senior-"
"Harvest protocol," Zhen said. "We share by contribution."
Her gaze moved across the trap, the broken ring, the blood. It paused on Rat. "You set a trip line across a holy site."
"We borrowed it," Rat said, bowing just enough to be rude if she wanted it to be.
Wei Yun held his breath like a boy expecting a slap.
Zhen's mouth almost smiled. Not kind. Satisfied. "The mountain remembers clever theft. Submit your report. Then clean the altar. Do not feed anything bigger."
As if called, black shapes detached from the far wall and circled, wings rattling. Sky carrion. Ravens fat on mistakes.
Jin Tao paled. "We should retreat."
"We should wash," Zhen said. "Ravens love rules. They follow the one that tastes like blood."
She left with the jar and two stewards who appeared with a carrying pole, because of course they had been watching. She did not hurry, because she did not need to.
Rat grabbed a bucket from the side of the trail. Wei Yun dumped water over the stone ring. Blood ran pink, then paler. He scrubbed with both hands, breath rasping. Rat joined, staff balanced across his back like a yoke between work and pride.
Ravens circled wider, then drifted off when the altar looked like a memory instead of a promise.
Wei Yun sagged on his heels and laughed once, the tired sound a man makes when his body chooses life for him. "First mission," he said. "First criminal success."
"That is the house style," Rat said. "We should print it on flags."
Jin Tao stalked down the slope, looking like someone who had not expected to be left out of glory. "You will not ignore orders again."
Rat wiped his staff, neutral. "I did not hear any. Only a squeak."
Wei Yun coughed. "Senior Jin Tao did throw a rock."
Rat nodded solemnly. "We will include the rock in the report. With a ribbon."
Color rose along Jin Tao's throat. He swallowed whatever else he wanted to say and turned uphill.
Zhen returned to the ledge with the sealed jar already hanging from the pole. She set her staff on stone and studied the canyon as if reading an account book. "Escort this to the lower hall," she told the stewards. To Rat and Wei Yun, she said, "With me."
They climbed to the terrace in a quiet that made wind seem loud. Dusthaven showed as a smear of roofs far below, river like dull wire, Verdant Canopy like a sea that had forgotten water. The mountain rested its weight on their lungs without malice.
"Rat," Zhen said. "Explain what you did with your breath."
"I hit it," Rat said. "Hard."
"A technique without a name," she said. "Risky. Names collect rent."
"I am getting good at rent."
Zhen's eyes thinned. "If you name it, the sky will listen. It will ask to be paid correctly."
"I will negotiate a discount," Rat said.
"At dusk," she said, "you will file and then present your movement at the inner yard. If it is real, we will shape it. If it is a flinch with manners, we will take it apart."
She started to leave, then paused. "You chose to stay engaged after the first wound. Why."
"Because it would go down if we let it," Rat said. He looked at Wei Yun. "And it would find softer throats."
Zhen accepted the answer without praise. "Clean your hands. Blood teaches, then it teaches again." She went with the jar toward rules and reward.
Rat and Wei Yun leaned on the low wall, letting their bones notice they were still invited to stay.
"We broke six protocols," Wei Yun said after a while.
"Seven," Rat said. "I am certain the banner knot counts as its own crime."
Wei Yun smiled tired. "Worth it."
"Usually is," Rat said. His arms began to complain properly. His leg throbbed where the tail had kissed. He breathed and let the small sun polish the ache into something he could stack on a shelf.
The Codex finished adding its numbers and unfolded a clean page.
[Codex of Strands of Fate - Status Update]
Vitality: 5
Qi Sense: 4
Comprehension: 3
Fate Entanglement: 14
Realm: Foundation Establishment
New Technique Progress: Horizon Flow Strike (Stability +1)
Effect: Compressed Qi channels more cleanly through palms or staff. Reduced recoil. Greater cost on misfire.
New Passive: Staff Affinity (Minor)
Effect: Improved leverage, balance, and recovery when using pole weapons. Growth accelerates under pressure.
System Note: Wind pearl resonance logged. Integration denied. Custody external.
Rat squinted at the last line. "Denied. Story of my life."
Wei Yun shaded his eyes, watching a straggler raven pick at nothing. "What now."
"Now we write reports that make us sound less lucky and more brilliant," Rat said. "Then we go to the old temple tonight and plant something that grows."
Wei Yun blinked. "Plant what."
"Beans if we have them," Rat said. "Plans if we do not."
They turned from the ledge.
The wind changed.
It rolled up from the lower gullies in a slow inhale that did not belong to weather. It smelled like wet rock and old ink. Far below, beyond the cleaned altar, something shifted where no trial path ran. Not serpent, not carrion. Heavier. Patient.
A voice like gravel teaching a song brushed the inside of Rat's ear.
Little horizon. Pay attention when the mountain breathes.
He froze. He knew that voice. Beggar beard. Pebble rolling in a palm. Eyes like quiet storms. No one stood on the stairs.
Wei Yun felt it too. "Did you hear…"
"Hush," Rat said.
The canyon exhaled.
Far below, shadow pooled where shadow should not. The stone ring they had cleaned trembled, almost shy, and answered with a thin ripple that only someone listening for debt would notice.
The Codex wrote one small, expensive line.
[Advisory: Secondary presence approaching. Classification unknown.]
Rat smiled because smiles were cheaper than fear. He set the staff across his shoulders and looked down into the throat of the mountain.
"New tax," he said softly, and started toward the inner yard to pay what he could before someone else came to collect.