The thing with bark for skin lowered its head, calm as rain.
Its antlers were black branches dipped in old night. Its breath steamed pale in the shadowed path, and the air leaned in to be smelled. Behind Rat, the pit's web tightened with a quiet sound like strings being tuned. The sweet, wrong scent in the leaves kept whispering climb in and rest.
"Masks," Steward Ruo said again, voice low. "Three steps back. Slow."
They obeyed. Wei Yun slid one foot at a time, spear tucked in, eyes wide but steady. Rat eased his staff along the ground so the wood would not drum on root. The webbed mouth yawned at their heels. Eight long legs unfolded below, patient as tax collectors.
The stag took one slow step. It did not scrape hooves or snort for show. It moved like an answer to a question the forest had asked a long time ago.
Rat breathed through cloth and counted heartbeats against the copper at his sash. The coin warmed, then cooled, as if arguing with itself.
"Class," Wei Yun whispered.
"Low Lord," Ruo said. "Fast, quiet, venom at the points. Do not let the antlers kiss you."
The stag's eye flicked from Ruo to the spear to Rat's staff. It tested the ground with a hoof and found the soft spot near the pit's lip. It avoided it. Smart. Rat liked it less for that.
The spider below flexed again, silk singing. It was waiting for the first fool to gift it a falling thing.
"Do we step left," Rat said softly, "and let nature sort the bill?"
Ruo's mouth tightened. "If the stag goes in, it drags the web and the rim. We go with it."
"Then right," Wei Yun breathed.
"Right," Ruo agreed. "Rat, clear a lane."
Rat slid sideways, then crouched and used the staff to gather the sticky drape that had fallen over a root. He rolled it on the wood, let glue meet glue until it balled, then flicked it into the pit. The web shivered, thirsting.
The stag saw the movement and lowered its head further. Its antlers gleamed with a thin gummy sheen. Qi, poison, or both, Rat did not want to taste it to find out.
"Come on," Rat murmured. "Pick the idiot you like least."
It picked him.
It sprang. Not a showy leap. A clean glide, weight held until the last moment, then released like an ambush. The air shoved at Rat's chest a breath before impact. He did what Instructor Zhen had drilled into bone. He did not try to stop the world. He changed its angle.
Staff down, set, elbows soft, wrists alive. He let the first force run through the grain into the ground, then he turned the returning bite up through the wood into the stag's shoulder. Not power. Position. Reversal Instinct clicked like a lock that had been oiled.
The stag's right shoulder dipped. Its head cut across and missed the line of his face by a finger's width. Rat shoved a short, dense pulse down the staff, a Horizon Flow thrust that had learned to stay small and mean. The shock ran into muscle above the leg. The hoof skidded. The angle changed.
"Now," Ruo said.
Wei Yun moved. His spear flicked in a tight arc and touched the seam where bark hide left a lighter strip under the antler base. Metal slid, kissed, bit. Not deep. Enough to make the stag's calm frown.
It landed and slid. It did not fall. It never once looked at its own blood. It looked at the empty space behind Rat, the way a thinker looks at a back door.
The spider surged.
It did not fling itself up. It poured. It brought the web with it, threads rising like wet clothes pulled on wrong. Mandibles opened, patient knives ready to meet a deer that had miscalculated.
Ruo stamped a narrow root with his heel. The ground shifted under the web where it hooked. The silk sagged two handspans. The spider's reach shortened.
The stag chose chaos again. Of course it did. It bounded past Rat toward the new sag, head high to clear the silk, hooves clipping the rim. It planned to step on the web where it was strongest, then use the rebound to vault behind them.
"Left," Ruo snapped. "Cut the line."
Rat jammed the staff between two anchor strands and twisted. The glue fought, then let go all at once. Wei Yun chopped a side strand with his spear butt. The web's tight drum lost tension on that side and slid toward the pit like a sheet being yanked off a sleeping body.
The stag's front hooves hit silk that gave more than it should. The world grabbed at its legs. It wrenched free, antlers slicing threads that stuck and tore with wet sounds, and crashed onto the safe earth in a mess of shadow and string.
The spider came up grinning knives. It overshot the new edge and struck web that was no longer where it had sworn to be. It bit, found nothing, and fell back with a sound like a cough.
The stag took the insult personally. It lunged for the spider in a blur and drove an antler into a soft seam near the mouth. Venom met plate and found a road. The spider convulsed. Rat did not feel sorry.
"Back, back," Ruo commanded. "Use the fight."
They slid along the rim, keeping the pit between themselves and the stag, using the chaos as shield. Rat peeled stray strands with his stick so they would not get a sleeve glued to doom. The stag and the spider saw each other instead of them and agreed to hate.
The spider tried to drag the stag with silk. The stag shredded it with antlers that had cut worse things. Poison glistened on web and fell in bright threads into the dark. The pit smelled like lies.
A flute note drifted through the green.
Thin. High. Two notes, then a third. A pattern that made the leaves tilt the wrong way.
Ruo stopped dead. "Masks tight. Do not breathe deep."
"Hunters," Wei Yun said.
"Or men who want to pretend they are," Ruo answered. He looked up through the lattice of branches, eyes calculating. "We move to the ridge. Better ground."
They edged downslope along a narrow shelf. The stag ripped silk and backed, dragging the spider three steps before abandoning the tug to turn and stare at the sound in the trees. It did not like being called.
The flute answered from the east. Another came from the north, lower and old. The ground hummed through Rat's soles, and the coin at his sash gave a single hot beat.
"We are being bracketed," Ruo said. "This is a pull."
"Rooted Stone?" Wei Yun asked.
"Might be," Ruo said. "Or something older."
The stag raised its head and answered the flutes with silence and stillness. Then it stepped after the sound as if it owed debt.
"Good," Rat said softly. "Go pay elsewhere."
The stag took two steps toward the eastern call. It stopped, turned its head back, and looked at Rat again. Not long. Enough to say I will remember the feel of your stick.
"Add me to the list," Rat said.
They made the ridge. The air moved better here. The sweet rot thinned. Ruo pointed them toward a narrow deer gap where the ferns were pressed like bed sheets. "Through and right. We outpace the signals, then angle north to the sky-bridge."
"Spider?" Wei Yun asked.
"Too hurt to climb soon," Ruo said. "It will wait for a new fool."
They slipped through the gap. The forest changed color shade by shade. Less moss, more dry leaf. Rat let his breath settle and found that his hands were shaking again. He liked that. It meant he was not lying to himself.
The flutes changed tune. Closer. Calling not a beast now, but men. The rhythm became a pattern Rat had heard in Dusthaven when a gang wanted to tighten a net without scaring the fish.
"Left," Ruo said, "now."
They broke into a shallow gully. Fresh tracks ran along its bed. Narrow-heeled boots. Three sets. The same as at the boundary stone. Resin smears on the tread. Rat's mouth pulled sideways.
"Fees," he muttered. "Right."
Two figures stepped onto the gully lip ahead. Rooted Stone colors. Juniors. The counting boy from the boundary with an easy smile and a new bruise under one eye. The sling idiot with a better stone already seated. Behind them, on the other lip, the mule-armed boy with his forearm in a fresh wrap. He scowled at Rat like the past had been very educational.
No elders in sight. That did not mean none in range.
The counting boy spread his hands like they had wandered into his kitchen. "There you are. We were worried the forest ate you. Bad manners, this border."
Ruo said nothing. He had a talent for silence that turned into weight.
"We heard a boar," the boy continued. "Fellows said it was impressive. And a stag's tread. Busy morning. On Rooted ground." His smile gave up its pretense of kindness. "So, Open Sky, about that tithe."
Rat rested the staff tip in the gully dust. "Your tithe looks like lacquer and a missing tube."
The boy's eyes cooled. "Careful, broom."
Wei Yun's spear touched the dirt in front of his foot. It was not threatening. It was a reminder that his hands were not empty.
Ruo's gaze shifted once, small. "We are leaving."
"You are paying," the sling idiot said, rock rotating in its cradle.
Ruo's head turned. His eyes met the boy's for one slow count. "No."
The counting boy sighed like he'd been forced to be rude. He lifted two fingers. The sling came up. The mule-armed boy bent his knees.
Rat did not think. He stepped into the gully's shallow bed and scraped his staff tip along stone. It made a clean ringing note. Then another. Then a third. The flutes in the trees answered without meaning to.
The forest went quiet in a way that said stranger.
Something large moved downslope behind the Rooted juniors. Brush bowed, then bowed again. The boy's smile twitched, then froze.
"Behind," Wei Yun said, voice almost gentle.
The mule-armed boy turned first. He saw what Rat saw. Antlers. Bark skin. Calm eyes. It had circled to the call. It had chosen a different debt to collect.
"Down," Ruo said.
They flattened. The stag came into the gully in one beautiful terrible step. The sling idiot flung his stone by accident. It pinged off an antler without changing anything that mattered.
The stag did not charge them. It flowed past on the gully bed, hooves finding the same stones Rat's staff had sung. It brushed the counting boy with a branch of antler and left a thin line of venom on his sleeve. He stared, white as peeled bark.
The stag stopped in the middle of them and listened to the far flute, then to the near silence, then to the small pulse of a coin at a rat's sash. It made its choice and leapt the far bank like mist learns to be rain. It vanished uphill.
The counting boy gulped air and found his voice too late. "After it," he rasped at his friends, eyes on their elders who still did not show. "Now."
They ran. It looked like retreat. It was.
Ruo waited five breaths more, then straightened. "We go."
They went. They did not hurry. They did not dawdle. They let the forest close behind them like water. When the sky-bridge stones showed through the trees, Rat finally let the grip loosen on his staff and laughed once, quiet.
Wei Yun looked at him. "What is funny."
"Nothing," Rat said. "Everything. I think the mountain enjoys tips."
Ruo's mouth might have almost smiled. "It always has."
The Codex slid its cold page across Rat's mind.
[Codex of Strands of Fate - Status Update]
Vitality: 5
Qi Sense: 5
Comprehension: 3
Fate Entanglement: 18
Realm: Foundation Establishment
Skill Refinement: Horizon Flow Strike, close-range stability improved
Passive: Reversal Instinct, minor control gained under layered threats
Appendix Unlock: Border Etiquette, Field Note
Predator calls will be used by clans and beasts. Do not answer without payment prepared.
At the bridge's lip, a new sound waited. Not a flute. A bell. One thin note, iron and final, drifting down from the terraces.
Wei Yun swallowed. "Summons."
Ruo nodded once. "We will argue later. The mountain collects first."
Rat looked back at the green, then up toward the stone. "Fine," he said. "Send your bill."