The Night-Antler Stag stepped out of the understory and turned the path into a chapel. Bark for skin. Antlers like burnt branches. Eyes too calm for a beast. The pit beside Rat breathed, web tightened to a harp string. Below, the vault spider waited for clumsy.
"Back to the stone," Ruo said. "Slow. Masks tight."
Sweet rot slid under Rat's cloth. Wei Yun's spear tracked the stag's chest, point steady, hands shaking only where a good spear hides it. Rat set the staff low, felt the ground's lie under his foot, and adjusted.
The stag lowered its head. It did not charge. It listened to their breath like it was choosing a tune.
The Codex pulsed clean.
[Airborne irritant: mild neurotoxin. Source: fungus on bark. Exposure acceptable, duration short.]
"Acceptable for who," Rat muttered.
The stag's chest rose, fell. The air pulled with it. The pit web answered with a quiet creak. Ruo's eyes measured how many steps that creak could afford.
"Left," he said.
They angled away from the pit. The stag mirrored. No rush. It herded by existing.
Wei Yun whispered through cloth, "If we prod, it runs us into the web."
"Then we do not prod," Ruo said. "We invite."
"How do you invite a tree with legs?" Rat said.
"Watch the feet," Ruo said. "Not the head."
The stag's hooves pressed moss, then lifted without sound. When it turned, a rear hoof clipped a root and changed the forest's math. Ruo moved. One palm brushed a low branch. It snapped back with a soft clap like a hand that knew a secret. The stag's ear flicked.
"Now," Ruo said.
Rat stepped. Not at the stag. At the root he had felt under the loam. His staff dug, levered. The thin trunk of a sapling bowed across the pit mouth, an extra line over the harp. Wei Yun understood in one breath. His spear butt pinned the sapling down.
The stag did charge then, but not with panic. With decision. It came in like rain that had already chosen the roof. Rat's staff found tusk, no, antler. He rode the arc, felt the weight, and gave it back to the dirt. Reversal Instinct clicked clean, a hinge in old bone.
The beast's head dipped a hair wider than it wanted. Its forehoof hit the sapling. Weight moved. The web sang wrong.
The vault spider came up on a rope of its own spit, long legs unfolding from soft dark. It was not fast. It did not need to be. The strand it flung snagged splayed antler and stuck with insult.
The stag froze. One calm blink. It pulled. The web held, for a heartbeat. Two. The pitside loam hissed as tension burned it dry. Then the web tore with a sound like silk giving up a lie. The spider slid, legs windmilling, into its own pit. The stag staggered three steps and stopped because trees do not like to show humans they can stumble.
"Go," Ruo said.
They did not run. Running says you like to be chased. They moved in the space between walking and admitting fear.
The stag watched them go. It did not follow. At the boundary stone, Rat dared a look back. Two dim lights in the brush. Not eyes. A thought that had found a body. Then the lights shut like a door whose latch liked itself.
On the climb, Rat tasted iron again. Not blood. Ward. His coin heated through cloth. The reed token on his sash warmed in answer.
[External resonance: reed token attracting unknown binder.]
"Your little charm is flirting," he told Wei Yun.
"It can flirt with you instead," Wei Yun said, voice dry.
They reached the sky-bridge. The wind combed the span. The mountain's ribs held their breath as if eavesdropping. At the far side, Ruo stopped, knelt, and opened a palm. On it, a smear of pine resin glittered under a skin of grit.
"Cache thieves passed back across after we went in," he said. "Not Rooted boys. Boots too narrow. Weight light."
"Moon-reed thief," Wei Yun said.
"Someone who likes doors that other people built," Song Min would say, but she was not here yet. Rat let the coin burn his belly and watched where the resin trail dried and started again.
Back in the outer hall, Ruo reported with hands and few words. Steward ranks made notes like knives. Instructor Zhen listened with the quiet of a woman saving anger in a jar.
"You provoked a pit and did not die," she said to Rat.
"We invited the spider to misbehave," he said. "It was rude enough to agree."
She looked at his mask, at the ash line where the sweet rot had left a whisper. "You smell like a lesson."
"I showered in it," Rat said.
She did not smile. "You will wash and then you will eat. Then you will return to work." To Ruo: "Choose three. You. Rat. Wei Yun. Add Song Min. Many eyes see one thing better."
Ruo inclined his head. Zhen turned away, already spending anger elsewhere.
They ate in quick bites that lied about being a meal. Patch, who had found them first, chewed boar fat like rope and grinned with blood on his teeth. "The forest kept you," he said.
"It tried to, unsuccessfully," Rat said, and took a second bowl because dignity could starve later.
Song Min met them by the armory. She wore that look she used when she was already right and wanted new facts only to polish them.
"You triggered a pit on purpose?" she asked while checking the bow for cracks.
"On accident, with intent," Rat said.
Wei Yun snorted. "That is his specialty."
Ruo brought out a lacquer tube from archive. Not the one stolen. Smaller. Red cap. "A decoy," he said. "Old enough to smell interesting. If our friend likes old wells and reed tokens, we set a table he cannot ignore."
"Which well?" Song Min asked.
"The oldest," Ruo said. "Maintenance yard C. Where the ledgers forget to walk."
Rat rolled the reed token between fingers. The lines etched in it felt like fish scales. It pulsed once, twice, in sync with his coin.
"Map?" he asked.
Ruo unrolled the torn copy and laid it over a lantern. Ink moons glowed faint. Each also had a small cut. Someone had used the paper as a stencil.
Song Min took the reed token and set it on a moon. It warmed the page. A whisper rose from the paper like steam.
Wei Yun leaned close. "Listen."
The whisper was not language. It was a hum. A rhythm. Rat closed his eyes and found the place in his belly where breath learned to be polite. He matched the hum and let the Codex take notes.
[Pattern match: reed token and mark set keyed to breath tempo. Result: door alignment.]
The moons on the copy brightened, then dimmed to leave only one clear. The mark for the old well.
Song Min breathed out. "Ruo's table it is."
Ruo wrapped the decoy tube in oilcloth and then unwrapped it again. He sniffed the cap, frowned, and used a rag to polish a filth no one else saw. "Do not open it," he said, as if they were the sort who opened glowing things when told not to.
"We are learning," Rat said.
Night rolled over the terraces clean. Rain came back in a thin sheet that softened footsteps. They took the maintenance stairs, the ones that ducked behind gutters and stayed out of the pretty places. The old yard greeted them with broken buckets and a shrine stone that had forgotten what it wanted to be.
The well waited. The water down there made the sound of a throat trying not to cough.
Rat let the reed token hang from his sash. The coin beat slow against his skin. He held the decoy tube, palms dry. He did not need to pretend to be nervous.
Ruo took a place by the door they had used to enter. Wei Yun set his spear where the well did not love it. Song Min crouched on the shrine stone, arrow nocked, eyes half-lidded like a cat that knew both naps and murder.
"Time?" Wei Yun whispered.
"Doors prefer late," Ruo said. "They think it is romantic."
The reed token warmed. The ground under Rat's feet vibrated like a stubborn instrument. The well's breath deepened. The lantern flame bent toward it and then stood straight again, undecided.
The Codex stirred.
[Warning: Oath echo detected beneath. Pull will increase if pledged object exposed.]
Rat tilted the decoy tube so the red cap caught lantern light. The well exhaled. Air rushed past his knees and tugged at the tube like a polite thief with gentle fingers.
"Careful," Song Min said softly.
"I am," Rat said, as a lie told to his own hands.
Movement on the far side of the yard. A shadow with a hood and a half-smile on its feet. The reed mask watched them without eyes. Two smaller shapes behind like commas where the sentence had already decided how it would end.
Ruo did not move. Wei Yun did not flinch. Song Min's string tightened until it sang, but the arrow tip did not waver.
The masked man lifted one hand, empty. His voice came through reed and rain, calm as a choice made a long time ago.
"No charm this time."
The well pulled hard enough to bend Rat's wrists. The decoy tube shivered in his palms and wanted to leave.
He did not let it.
The mountain held its breath.
[Codex of Strands of Fate - Status Update]
Vitality: 5
Qi Sense: 6
Comprehension: 4
Fate Entanglement: 19
Realm: Foundation Establishment
New Appendix: Oath Echoes
Definition: Old sites remember pledges. Bound objects curve toward their owners. Counter-rite required to break pull.
Skill Progress: Sky-Bridge Guard → timing against sustained pull improved.
The reed token burned once like a coin catching sunlight. The masked man took one step closer.
"Careful," Song Min repeated.
Rat smiled without enjoying it. "Always."
The tube jerked like a fish taking line. The reed mask dipped as if bowing to a host.
The well inhaled. The lantern flame went out…