The lantern went dark like it had remembered it owed the night. Rain ticked on the old yard roof, slow and careful. The well exhaled again, harder. Air dragged over Rat's hands and tried to steal the lacquer tube.
Across the yard, the reed-masked man took one step forward. Two shadows bracketed him, light on their feet, knives kissed by rain.
"Careful," Song Min said.
"Always," Rat lied.
Ruo did not move. Wei Yun's spear point hovered over the well mouth like a threat to a throat. Rat let the pull build until it sang in his wrists, then eased his stance. Horizon behind the belly. Knees unlocked. Staff ready to play rude instrument.
The masked man tilted his head. "Put the tube down," he said, voice clear through the reed. "The well will forgive you if you do not pretend to own its breath."
Rat smiled with no teeth. "Forgiveness is above my pay grade. Theft is not."
A pause. The two shadows began to slide wide, one left toward the shrine stone, one right toward the door. Song Min's arrow tracked the left. Ruo watched the right without looking like he did.
The pull from below sharpened, a thread becoming a rope. The lacquer cap clicked in Rat's grip.
[Oath echo rising. Counter-rite required to neutralize pull.]
"Suggestions?" Rat whispered inside his teeth.
[Offer weight. Redirect cadence. Interrupt memory.]
"I will mail it flowers," Rat muttered.
He shifted the tube to one hand and opened his other palm over the well. Rain collected and fell in a slow drip. He matched the rhythm with breath. In. Two. Three. Out. Two. Three. He let the well's tug find a pattern and then stepped half a beat off it, like arguing with a song until the musician started listening to him.
The pull softened by a hair.
Song Min's voice cut the quiet. "Face only a mother could love. That you under there, Rooted boys? Or are we wasting good arrows on scenery?"
"Not Rooted," the masked man said, amused. "They come noisy. We prefer old doors."
His gaze flicked once to Wei Yun's reed token. "And old keys."
Wei Yun did not answer. His hands were steady, but the token's pulse tapped against his sash, a small heartbeat that wanted to be noticed.
The shadow near the shrine stone moved. Song Min's arrow hummed, and the shadow hissed and held its place. The other shadow drifted toward the door, rain blurring edges. Ruo breathed once and the space around the door got heavy. The shadow reconsidered its life choices.
The masked man did not waste allies on bad math. He lifted a hand instead, palm up, fingers lazy. A sound slid out of him that was not a whistle and not words. The reed mask turned it into something thin and sweet.
The well pulled like someone remembering a name.
The lacquer tube jerked. It wanted to leave. Rat's fingers bit its spine. Reversal Instinct clicked awake like an old lock. He did not fight the pull. He fed it. He let the tube slide half a fingernail, then snapped his wrist and sent that stolen inch back with interest.
The tube slapped into his other palm. The well miscounted. The pull hit empty air and stumbled.
Song Min snorted. "Cute."
The masked man laughed softly. "Who taught you to argue with ghosts, Basin boy?"
"Heaven," Rat said. "Terrible teacher. Great motivation."
The man took another step. "You think I want the tube. I want what it leads to. The tube is a bell rope. The door is the bell. You are ringing it."
More rain. More pull. The lacquer quivered. The reed token on Wei Yun's sash heated until the thin skin along his jaw gleamed with sweat.
Ruo's voice stayed calm. "If you came for a door, open one. We will see if it likes you."
"Doors like what belongs," the masked man said. "They open for blood first."
He turned his head toward Wei Yun. "Return your father's key, little branch."
Wei Yun's knuckles went white on his spear. The courtyard turned small.
Rat did not look away from the well. "Bold guess."
"No guess," the man said. "Wei Jinhai wrote his breath into the reeds of Autumn Maple. Everyone in the old network knows the scent. The well knows it best of all."
The name hit Rat's ears like he had swallowed ice. Wei Yun did not blink. "Say another word about him and the next word you spit will be your last."
"Spit is free," the man said. "Like breath. Until it is not."
He lifted his hand again. The sound he made shifted. Lower, rounder, an old lullaby turned wrong. The well answered with a low hum from dark stone. The lacquer cap began to unscrew itself, very gently, under Rat's thumb.
"Do not open it," Song Min said, softer than the rain.
"Working on that," Rat said.
He set the tube's base against the well lip and leaned into the pull, body one long line from heel to wrist. Horizon Flow coiled down his arms. Qi gathered like a fist being patient. He did not push. He waited for the count to hit the beat he wanted.
At the corner of his sight, the left shadow tested Song Min's attention with a flicker of cloth. She answered with another arrow that shaved rain off a mask and made a wall think. The right shadow found a loose tile and made the mistake of thinking Ruo could not be in two places at once. He was not. He made the door heavy enough to offend gravity until a man could not pass air through it, let alone a knife.
Rat felt the beat. One. Two. Three. He released the coil and shoved the tube forward an inch and down, not to open, but to slide air into the threads under the cap. The well's pull gulped on emptiness and went wide. He twisted on the miscount and snapped the cap tight again with a bark of lacquer.
The masked man's head tilted, just a degree. "You are rude to old songs."
"Old songs started it," Rat said.
The man sighed, almost regretful. "Then blood."
He flicked his fingers. A thin blade of reed, sharp from so much oil, whispered out from his sleeve and kissed Rat's forearm. Not a cut to sever. A cut to mark.
Warmth slid down Rat's wrist. A single drop fell into the well. The breath below took it with joy and tried to take the rest.
The lacquer tube yanked hard. Rat's shoulder lit with pain like a small sun. Reversal Instinct flared. His heels dug, and he fed the pull an inch of himself that he did not need and then took two inches back.
"Mine," he told the well, teeth bare. "You can rent it."
The Codex woke up cold.
[Oath engaged by blood. Safest counter: pay tithe. Options: breath, iron, name.]
"Name is expensive," Rat said, cheeks chalk. "Iron it is."
He kicked his staff so the iron cap at one end clanged the well lip. The sound was thin and honest. He followed with his own breath, two short exhale bursts that landed on the iron and sank.
The pull loosened. Not much. Enough.
Behind the reed mask, something like patience cracked. The man's voice lost its sweet edge. "You do not know how to end this dance, Basin boy. You only know how to stall."
"Stalling is survival," Rat said. "Ask any rat."
He needed one more insult to make the door hesitate. He had the coin that had warmed since the forest. He had the reed token that hummed for Wei Yun. He had the lacquer tube trying to run home.
He pressed the bronze coin to the tube's cap. Coin heat met lacquer cold. The reed token jumped like it had been slapped. Wei Yun sucked a breath through his teeth.
The yard changed pitch. The shrine stone woke like it had been insulted and remembered being a god. The well's breath hiccuped, then deepened into a whole chest.
Song Min's voice came flat. "Whatever you did, do more or stop now."
The masked man breathed, then answered himself. "Enough."
He moved without warning. The two shadows moved with him. One went for Song Min, the other feinted at Ruo and then slid for Wei Yun's legs. The masked man streaked for Rat, reed blade leading for the throat.
Rat dropped the tube low and turned so the blade found the iron cap of his staff rather than skin. The impact ran up his arms. He let it run and spent it back at the masked man's wrist. The reed knife spun, caught, did not fall. The man was good.
They traded three short insults in wood and reed and breath. The yard rang like a bowl. A spark snapped in Rat's shoulder where the cut had kissed him. He smelled wet stone and iron and old things pretending not to be hungry.
Wei Yun blocked and flipped the leg strike with a neat scoop, then countered with a jab that said he had learned to fight before he learned to belong. Song Min stepped inside the shadow's knife and clicked the bow across his wrist like a stick. Bone cracked. She used the string as if it were a garrote, then let go before it became confession.
Ruo did something with a tile that made the short knife think it had hit a wall and then decide it had not. He did not swing. He set the world in place and let men run into it.
Rat took one more step into the masked man, close enough to smell reed oil and rain. "Enough with the door," he said, low. "We talk or we bleed."
"Both," the man said simply.
He blew one long note through the mask. The well answered.
The lacquer tube tore out of Rat's grip. He grabbed and missed skin by a hair. The tube flew like it had remembered wings and arrowed for the dark. Wei Yun swore and lunged. His spear scraped lacquer and bought half a heartbeat.
Rat threw his staff like he was poor and had never owned it. Wood slammed the tube with a crack and bounced it just wide of the well mouth. It clattered on the stone rim, rolled in a perfect circle like it was thinking about its life, then stuck against the iron cap of the well lip.
Rat dove. His fingers closed around lacquer.
Something else closed around his wrist.
Wet. Cold. Many-jointed. The vault spider had found the under-stone tunnel between pits and decided dinner could be delivered to the table.
The leg squeezed. Another leg found cloth and tugged. The well breathed in.
Ruo's hand clamped Rat's belt. "Hold."
Song Min's arrow grew fangs and punched the spider joint. Black fluid hissed and smoked where it touched rain. The leg loosened by a breath. Wei Yun slammed his spear butt into the stone and levered against another limb like he was prying open fate's mouth.
The masked man did not press the advantage. He watched. And then he looked at Wei Yun not like an enemy but like a balance he intended to tip later.
"Return your father's key," he said again, soft enough that only the four of them could hear. "Or the door will start taking his son's breath to pay."
From the well, something spoke. Not words first. Weight. Then a voice, old and tired and precise, the way men talk when they decide they must be believed.
"Yun."
Wei Yun went still as a tree.
"Yun'er," the well said again in a voice that did not belong to any of them and belonged to one of them completely.
The lacquer tube shivered in Rat's hand like a living thing trying to climb home.
The mask turned toward the dark and bowed.
The voice waited, patient, as if it had waited through stone for years and could wait longer.
The reed token on Wei Yun's sash burned bright enough to show its lines through cloth.
"Do not," Song Min said.
Wei Yun swallowed. "Father."
The well sighed, all the way from the old bones of the mountain.
The lantern that had gone out flared back to life on its own, blue at the edge like cold copper.
The reed mask smiled where a mouth would be.
Rat tightened his grip on the tube until lacquer squeaked.
The well spoke one more time, almost gentle. "Pay."
The Codex slid into the room like a tax collector.
[Codex of Strands of Fate - Status Update]
Vitality: 5
Qi Sense: 6
Comprehension: 4
Fate Entanglement: 20
Realm: Foundation Establishment
New Appendix: Counter-Rites of Breath
Summary: Oaths bind through memory, breath, and blood. To neutralize, pay equal weight or invert cadence at the moment of demand.
Skill Progress: Horizon Flow Strike → timing improved under contested pull.
System Warning: Oath Anchor identified. Name: Wei Jinhai. Status: Deceased. Echo potency: high.
Rat let out a thin breath that felt like he was spending money. "Incomplete again," he whispered to the dark. "Story of my life."