Mist pooled in the gullies like breath that had fallen out of a giant's mouth. The Verdant Canopy began where the mountain's ribs loosened and the trees decided the rules. Pines thickened, then gave way to broadleaf shade that swallowed sound and made every step feel borrowed.
Steward Ruo moved like a man counting. Wei Yun kept pace, short spear tucked close, eyes watching the edges, face set. Rat walked a half step behind Ruo, staff in hand, coin warm at his sash, pretending this was just an errand that happened to have teeth.
"Cache is at the old boundary stone," Ruo said. "Two valleys down, one stream up. We do not browse. We do not admire. We collect and leave."
Rat nodded. "No sightseeing. No souvenir shop."
Wei Yun snorted under his breath. "If you are taking a souvenir, make it air."
They kept to game trails where the ferns had not memorized feet. Bird calls tangled above them. The canopy turned noon into a polite guess. The ground was soft enough to tell stories. Boar tracks. Deer prints. Claw marks from something that did not bother to hide.
The Codex stirred like silk on the back of Rat's neck.
[Qi Sense: elevated. Ambient vitality dense.]
[Risk band: cautious. Encounter odds rising.]
Rat rolled his shoulder. "You always bring the good news."
Ruo lifted a hand. The line stopped. Ahead, a windfall blocked the trail, trunk mossed and damp. Under the slick bark, thin ropes had been disguised with rot. Someone wanted the first thought to be storm, not snare.
Ruo pointed to the anchor looped low around a young pine. Wei Yun crouched, testing the fiber with his spear butt. It thrummed, eager. Rat eased under the windfall on his belly, staff sliding ahead, and found the weight stone hidden in leaf mold.
"Trap is greedy," he said softly. "Pulls high to flip the first two."
Ruo cut the anchor with a hooked knife and let the rope coil back into the brush like a disappointed snake. "Rooted Stone style," he said. "Lazy and proud."
"Someone is bored," Wei Yun said.
"Someone is hungry," Ruo answered, and moved again.
They crossed a narrow stream that ran like glass over black stone. On the far bank, the trees pulled in closer, and the smell changed. Pine and rich dirt. A layer under that like copper, faint and waiting.
Wei Yun's knuckles whitened on the spear. "Blood," he whispered.
Rat's coin heated against his skin. The path bent around a boulder that had fallen and stuck proud, a tooth in a green jaw. On its face, someone had cut a simple character, almost worn away.
Sky.
Ruo relaxed a hair. "Boundary stone. Cache should be a pace north."
Rat circled the boulder, boots sinking into damp loam. Under a mat of leaves, his staff tip clicked on hollow. He cleared debris and a flat slate lifted from a shallow box. Inside, wrapped in oilcloth, there should have been a small lacquer tube and a folded map.
There was only the smell of old resin and a smear where fingers had taken what they liked.
"Empty," Rat said.
Ruo's mouth became a straight line. He checked the edges. No second compartment. No clever hinge. The theft was simple and recent. The earth still remembered the weight.
Wei Yun scanned the trees. "Who knew the drop?"
Ruo did not answer. He was watching the ground four paces beyond the boulder where loam had been chewed into mud by deep hooves. The prints were wider than a man's hand. The edges glistened. Fresh.
The brush ahead parted with a sound like someone tearing a wet book. A boar pushed out, massive and slab-shouldered, coat the color of old iron. Along its spine, bony plates rose in a ridge that looked like a cracked saw. Silver spines jutted from the plates, quivering. Its eyes caught light like coins. A low growl rolled from its chest and bled into the ground.
Silver-Spined Boar. Low Lord tier. A bully that had earned the right.
It lowered its head. Steam puffed from its snout. Its breath smelled like root and rot.
Ruo's voice did not rise. "Form two. Spear front. Staff mid. I turn the head."
Rat slid to the right, staff angled, pulse picking its own drum. Wei Yun planted his feet, spear leveled at throat height, point steady.
The boar charged.
It came like a boulder taught manners. The ground shivered. Rat did not try to stop it. He guided. Staff kissed tusk, rode along, and gave a gentle nudge that meant a lot at that speed. The boar shaved past Ruo's left hip instead of taking it. Ruo stepped in and slapped the neck with a palm that carried more weight than his body suggested. The strike looked small. The sound did not.
Wei Yun's spear darted. Not a stab to kill. A probe. It slid under the ridge and bit into meat. The boar screamed, a tearing, metal sound. It reared and shook. Silver spines flared and fired.
"Down," Ruo snapped.
Rat folded and felt quills scissor the air where his ribs liked to live. Three tore into a cedar trunk and stuck quivering. One skimmed his shoulder and left a burn like a forge kiss.
The boar pawed earth and came again, eyes fixed on the brightest pain. Wei Yun.
"Left," Rat said.
Wei Yun rolled. The tusk gouged soil where he had been. Rat stepped at the same time and brought the staff down hard on the base of the spine ridge. The blow stung his palms and rang the wood. The boar barely noticed. It tossed its head, flinging loam, and pivoted with a speed that did not belong to something that thick.
Ruo moved only twice. A hand on Rat's collar that pulled him out of a line that would have been fatal. A heel that stamped a root and changed the boar's traction at the worst moment.
Rat felt his breath find the rhythm the mountain had taught him. In through nose, steady. Out through teeth when the pain came. Horizon behind the belly. Qi gathering and flowing down his arms to the staff like water being convinced into a pipe.
"Horizon Flow Strike," he whispered, and pressed.
The boar feinted right. He did not bite. He set the staff and let the beast make a mistake.
It obliged. Its weight came into the wood. Rat gave just enough. The strike snuck past the spine plates and thunked deep into the muscle above the shoulder. The boar flinched and clipped a sapling, breath chopping. Wei Yun stepped in and jabbed again, point slicing the tender seam between armor and hide.
Blood hissed on the spear. The boar screamed and did the smart thing. It spun low and fired spines.
Ruo's palm snapped up. Qi layered in front of them like a thin shield. The spines hit, slowed, and slid, hissing into the dirt at their feet. He grunted once, a sound that tasted like iron.
"We finish now," he said.
The boar had pulled back, eyes rolling between rage and calculation. It would either flee or commit. Rat did not plan to let it choose the time.
"Hungry," he told it. "I get it."
He stepped straight at the head, staff low. The boar lowered tusks and drove. At the last instant, Rat lifted the staff and tilted, not for power, but for angle. Reversal Instinct clicked inside him, an old door opening onto the same small room. The boar's push came in. He returned some of it the way the mountain had returned wind to his lungs.
The tusk skittered. The head tilted. The throat opened.
Wei Yun took the opening. His spear slid clean, a line drawn by a careful hand. The boar's scream cut to a choke. It sagged, legs kicking. Rat stepped aside so it would not fall on him. Ruo placed a final palm at the base of the skull. The fight ended with a thud.
Silence returned in a rush that rang.
Rat's hands shook. He let them. He wiped the staff on a fern and stood breathing until the world stopped wobbling.
"That was a low Lord," Wei Yun said softly, almost disbelieving.
"Low Lord with bad manners," Rat said, voice hoarse. "And a temper."
Ruo scanned the edges. "Mate nearby. Or a small sounder. We leave before the math changes."
They worked fast. Ruo took two slabs of meat and the heart. Wei Yun trimmed a length of spine plate and a handful of spines with steady hands that only trembled when they were empty again. Rat cut a strip of hide and peeled it with care. Nothing wasted. Patch would eat well tonight if it found them before the elders did.
Rat crouched at the box again and rubbed two fingers on the smear left by the missing lacquer tube. Sticky. Pine resin. And a trace of something like bitter grass.
"Whoever robbed the cache wore the forest," he said. "Rooted Stone, or someone who wants to smell like them."
Ruo's jaw worked once. He lifted his eyes to the trees and found nothing willing to volunteer.
The Codex flickered, lines tight and clean.
[Encounter logged: Silver-Spined Boar, Low Lord.]
[Skill refinement: Horizon Flow Strike improved through stress.]
[Reversal Instinct control increased slightly.]
"Small favors," Rat murmured.
They wrapped the spoils and began the climb home, taking a different line so the blood smell would be harder to follow. The canopy thinned. The mountain's breath ran between the trunks and combed their hair. For a few minutes, even Rat believed the errand might be what the slate had said.
They reached the boundary stone. Ruo slowed, then stopped.
There were new prints beside their old ones. Narrow-heeled boots, three sets. They had not been there on the way in.
A voice came from behind the rock, smooth and pleasant, with a grin attached.
"Open Sky keeps busy. We were just about to check on your garden."
Three Rooted Stone juniors stepped out. The mule-armed boy from the well nursed a bandage under his sash. The sling idiot had found a better rock. The third wore a face that enjoyed counting.
Behind them, two older disciples watched with the stillness of men who had the right to be bored. Their sashes carried jade tokens. Their gaze said they would prefer not to move and would be offended if they had to.
"Boundary stones are public," the counting boy said lightly. "And this is Rooted borderland. We collect fees for disturbances."
Ruo did not change expression. "You can collect fees from the boar if you catch its ghost."
"Or we can collect from you," the boy said. "Tithe for hunting on our side."
Rat looked at the prints again. The narrow-heeled boot had stepped into the cache pit after he had opened it. A smear of pine resin stained the heel.
He smiled, thin and mean. "Funny. Your tithe looks like lacquer and theft."
The counting boy's eyes cooled. "Big words for someone dressed like a broom."
Wei Yun shifted his spear a fraction. "Senior."
Ruo's hand moved once, barely, and the air got heavy. "We leave," he said without looking at the Rooted boys. "We do not pay. We do not stay."
The older Rooted disciples did not move to block. They just watched, measuring the future.
Rat could have let it pass. He should have. He did not. He flicked his staff and knocked the sling stone out of its loop with a clean click. It arced into the stream with a plop.
The mule-armed boy flushed until he found rage. The counting boy laughed once. It sounded like someone dropping a plate on purpose.
"Open Sky," he said, voice polite. "We will speak again."
"Bring better stones," Rat said.
They climbed. The forest swallowed the well boys' faces and left only the smell of resin and the itch of being watched.
Halfway to the sky-bridge, the ground under Rat's foot felt wrong. Not soft. Not stone. Hollow.
He froze. "Ruo."
Ruo knelt and brushed away leaf litter delicately with a twig. A narrow mouth opened into black. A pit. Fresh-dug. Left exactly where tired bodies would cut corners.
In the dark, something breathed. Wet. Patient.
"Vault spiders," Ruo said, very soft. "We step back together."
Eight long legs unfolded in careful joints. A pale body like a swollen egg shifted, then stilled, waiting for clumsy.
Feet scuffed up the trail behind them. The Rooted juniors were not following. Something else was.
The trees tilted. The wind dropped. The canopy went strangely quiet.
The Codex pulsed hard enough to make Rat's teeth ache.
[Warning: Secondary predator approaching. Class unknown. Toxin in air rising.]
Ruo's eyes narrowed. "Masks on. Now."
They pulled cloth over mouths. A sweet rot crept under the scent of pine, not strong, but clever. Wei Yun swayed and caught himself. Rat's coin went hot, then hotter.
From the left, something big shouldered through the understory and stopped just beyond sight. The brush bowed, then straightened slowly. A soft grumble rolled once and ended in a rattling click.
Not boar. Not deer. Not anything Rat wanted to meet in a corridor where the ground lied and the air smiled.
"Back to the stone," Ruo said. "Three steps. Slow."
They gave the pit a careful width. The brush to the left quivered like an animal thinking.
Lan Yue's warning from the hall ran through Rat's head. Bring your breath. And your coin.
He touched the copper through cloth. It beat back against his finger like a small heart in a small room and then went still.
The brush parted.
Something with bark for skin and antlers like blackened branches stepped out onto the path, eyes full of old night. It turned its head once, slow. It smelled the air, and the air leaned in to be smelled.
Rat swallowed. "That is a very polite problem."
It lowered its head, calm as rain.
The mountain exhaled, and the pit's web tightened with a sound like strings being tuned.
[Codex of Strands of Fate - Status Update]
Vitality: 5
Qi Sense: 5
Comprehension: 3
Fate Entanglement: 17
Realm: Foundation Establishment
Skill Refinement: Horizon Flow Strike → more efficient channeling under pressure.
Passive Upgrade: Reversal Instinct → marginal control gained.
Appendix: Beast Ladder, Field Note
Low Lord beasts display learned counters. Expect feints, projectile traits, and territorial traps.
Rat squared the staff and grinned into the mask. "No sightseeing," he told himself. "No souvenirs. Just not dying."