Night carried the taste of snow. It slid down the terraces and pooled at the dorm threshold like a cat waiting to be let in.
Rat sat where the wind could find him, back against cold stone, map crinkling between his fingers. Three ink bells dotted the gullies. The third had hummed to his touch. He had not told anyone about that part.
Footsteps stopped at the door. Ruo did not knock. "Up," he said. "Quiet work."
Wei Yun already had his spear. Song Min tucked a little bundle of resin sticks in her sash. Rat folded the map and tapped the copper coin at his belt once, like a promise.
"Quiet work," he said. "My favorite kind. No witnesses to complain."
They took the service stairs cut inside the mountain's rib where the rock sweated and every sound went small. Out past the sky-bridge, the forest swallowed them and returned only the crunch of needles and the hush of their own breath.
"Rooted Stone is hunting," Ruo said, voice low. "Two junior squads. One senior keeper. They have a bell map. They do not know which bell is live."
"And we do?" Song Min asked.
Ruo paused. In darkness, his outline looked like carved wood. "We have a guess."
Rat smiled behind his cloth. "Guess is what the mountain calls permission."
They moved ridge to ridge. Ruo laid a line through the underbrush that avoided the usual animal paths as if he could hear where the ground preferred to be left alone. Twice he stopped them with a hand and let a Rooted patrol pass. The patrols made noise like boys who wanted the forest to think they were a storm.
Rat trailed one for a dozen silent steps, memorizing the weight of their boots. The counting boy from earlier had changed shoes. Narrow heels were gone. Sensible soles, soft, that bit earth without scolding it. Someone had advised him. Someone older.
The Codex stirred.
[Ambient resonance increasing. Harmonic bias: plant growth.]
[Note: Complex lure field probable. Secondary risk: spore saturation.]
Rat breathed through cloth and through habit. "If I start sprouting leaves," he murmured, "cut me down before I get sentimental."
Wei Yun snorted, then choked it into a cough that did not carry.
They dropped into a gully that the map had marked with a bell. The gully's floor was a tangle of ferns the size of men and mushrooms like cracked white bowls. Every branch dripped with tiny green beads that were not rain. Growth had been pushed so hard it squeaked.
Song Min crouched by a mossed log and ran two fingers along a length of vine. It wrapped her knuckle like a tame snake. She frowned. "This is the second valley. The growth is high, but the pulse is wrong. It surges and fades."
Ruo nodded once. "A faded bell. Old ring. Not our goal."
They climbed out, calves burning, and cut across a slope where pine roots made a ladder for people who respected knees. The night got colder. The air felt cleaner, like water poured from a clay jar. It carried a faint metallic sweetness that set Rat's teeth on edge.
"Third bell," he said softly.
At the shoulder of the hill, the trees thinned. Moonlight pooled on a shelf of bedrock, pale as frost. There, tucked under a natural arch of roots and stone, stood a low shrine the size of a small ox. It was simple. Four greenstone posts. A roof of slate tiles the color of river dusk. And hung under that roof, a bell the color of old bronze touched with a bloom of green. Vine motifs had been chased into its lip so fine they looked like living veins.
Something slept behind the shrine, deeper under the root arch. The smell of moss got heavy all at once. The hair on Rat's forearms stood up like grass before a footstep.
"Verdant Stag," Ruo breathed. "Hibernate. Let it dream."
Wei Yun exhaled slow. "We collect herbs and leave."
There were herbs. Gods, there were herbs. Angelroot pushed through leaf litter where only pine needles should be. Star thistle cupped moonlight and tried to drink it. A ribbon of tiny sky-blue flowers edged the bedrock like some priest had thought the stone needed a border.
The bell did indeed feed the valley.
Rat stood in the shrine's shadow and watched the bell rather than the bounty. The old bronze did not shine. It listened. He could feel that. The air here inhaled with you if you timed it right. It exhaled on its own schedule.
The Codex cooled the back of his skull.
[Object: Green Bell of Canopy]
[Grade: Low spiritual treasure. Field effect: accelerates vegetal growth in a radius. Cost: vitality drain and beast attraction proportional to ring amplitude.]
[Ownership condition: shrine bond. Recognizes caretaker who restores, rings, and feeds. Temple alignment possible.]
Rat's lips twitched. "Temple alignment," he whispered. "Now you are speaking my language."
Song Min had moved to the herbs with the hungry gentleness of a thief who knows stealing food is holy work. She cut wide leaves and left roots. She wrapped stems in damp cloth like babies. Wei Yun watched the glade's edges with eyes that did not trust quiet.
Ruo lifted the bell with two fingers on the rim. It was heavier than it looked and it did not want to go anywhere. The rope was grown into it, vine threaded through bronze. He touched the braided pull once. The bell breathed back, too soft to be sound.
"Leave it," Ruo said. "We take what it grows, not what it is."
Rat nodded. He meant to leave it. He really did. Then the forest gave a small cough.
Boot scuff. Light. Clever. Coming from the trail with the safe soles.
The counting boy stepped into the edge of the shelf, eyes bright with finding. Behind him, the mule-armed idiot and the former sling genius tried to appear important. In the trees farther back, two older Rooted disciples watched without hurry. The senior keeper had good posture and a face that made patience look like a hobby.
The boy smiled, and the smile landed wrong. "Gardeners. We appreciate your work."
Ruo did not look at him. "This is Open Sky collection."
The boy glanced at the bell. "Public land, steward. Border shifts with rain. Law says we can share."
Rat put his staff butt on stone and leaned. "By law, you can also trip into a pit. It is popular this season."
The boy's gaze flicked over Rat's sash and rested on the slight bulge where the map slept. "You run your mouth. The bell runs a valley."
He lifted two fingers. The mule arm lifted a short iron hook attached to a chain like a fisherman eager to try a larger pond. The older keepers did not move. They did not need to. Song Min's hands slowed on the herbs, then stopped.
Ruo shifted to put his shoulder between the keeper and the bell. "You do not pull that here."
The boy let his smile slip. "Then you pull it for us."
"Be reasonable," the keeper called, finally bored enough to speak. His voice was smooth and brittle. "You cannot guard a bell. We cannot either. The forest guards the bell. We take a ring for the season and leave it to its work. Share, steward. Or fight and feed the ground."
Rat kept his tone mild. "Question. If I ring it and it feeds everything, does it feed me too, or does it just charge a tax?"
The keeper tilted his head. "It grows what grows. If you can root, it will oblige."
"Good to know," Rat said.
The Codex added its own cold opinion.
[Warning: Ring amplitude above whisper will increase Beast attraction. Guardian will rouse at moderate ring. Hibernation recovery incomplete.]
[Note: Temple bond ritual requires three actions: mend, clean, and a ring while offering.]
Rat looked up at the bell. It had a hairline crack running under one of the chased vines, thin as a strand of hair. Close to the pull rope, the fibers were worn where hands not trained to care had tugged. There were scraps of resin sap stuck where someone had tried to seal that crack with chewing instead of craft.
"Share," the keeper said again, tone going thin. "Or we teach you a kindness."
Wei Yun's spear point made a tiny sound where it kissed stone. Song Min's thumb found the top of a resin stick in her sash. Ruo did not move at all. Rat reached into his robe and pulled out a small clay vial, the color of bad tea.
It was Patch's mountain glue, cooked down from pine sap and a secret spice he would not share. Patch swore it held roofs to storms.
Rat brushed a bead of it under the hairline crack with the side of his thumb. The bell drank it in as if he had pressed a cool cloth to a fever. He wiped the rope clean with a strip of cloth torn from his own sleeve and took a step back.
Mend. Clean.
He put a thin herb wreath around the lip. Angelroot leaves. Star thistle stalks. He did not know if it mattered, but it felt like an offering that could pass inspection in a place that gave plants more rights than men.
The keeper's patience cracked. "Enough."
The mule arm swung the hook, chain snaking low. The hook sang in the cold air and would have taken the bell's lip if it had been allowed to.
Rat twisted his staff and tapped the ground twice. Rhythm Tap pulsed through stone. Not much. Just enough to upset balance where the chain's first link wanted to catch. The hook's kiss missed the lip by a thumb's width and scratched harmlessly along the bell's shoulder.
"Careful," Rat said. "You will dent the garden."
The keeper's eyes cooled. He raised his hand a fraction. The mule arm planted his feet.
Rat wrapped two fingers over the rope and pressed his thumb pad to the bronze. A whisper ring only. A breath against the mouth of a jar.
The bell answered. The tone never rose to sound. It rolled through bone and root and riverbed. The herbs lifted their faces like children called in from rain.
The ground quivered.
Deep under the root arch, moss shifted. A slow breath filled a lung the size of a cart. The Verdant Stag did not wake all at once. It became aware of its antlers first, because antlers always know when the wind changes. The tips budded with small leaves in the space of a heartbeat.
"Not loud," Rat said to himself, pulse too fast for calm. "Just polite."
The Codex spilled letters like stones.
[Temple bond: tentative.]
[Guardian rousing. Cycle: nine breaths to standing.]
[Field effect increasing. Secondary beasts converging at low probability. Toxins uptick minimal.]
The keeper had the expression of a man whose numbers had just begun misbehaving. He waved his hand. The mule arm swung the hook again, high, then low. The chain whistled. Rat stepped in and gave the staff that small tilt that had saved his ribs a dozen times. The hook carried its own weight past him and spun, chain snarling around the keeper's boot as if embarrassed.
Wei Yun's spear spoke next. A neat bite on the chain to make it ring like a gong in small shame. Song Min flicked a resin stick and tossed smoke to the left, low, to itch the Rooted juniors' eyes without waking the forest's temper.
"Enough," Ruo said, and finally moved. His palm met the mule arm's chest with a touch that looked like a greeting and felt like a wall. The boy stumbled back two paces and found ground that did not forgive clumsy. He sat down with surprise and wheezed.
The keeper was better than his juniors. He slipped the chain from his boot without looking and flicked two fingers. The narrow-heeled boy we had met in soft soles dashed in like a needle hoping to be thread. He went for the rope. He was quick. He was almost clever.
Rat did not hit his hand. He tapped the rope where the boy's weight would twist it wrong and said, very softly, "No."
The bell shivered under Rat's fingers and answered him like a cat pressed under a palm. The rope turned under the boy's grip and did not ring. He stared at it the way a river fish stares at a hook it wanted to be dinner, then at Rat.
"How," he whispered, almost respectful.
"Ask the world nicely," Rat said.
Moss sloughed from the thing in the hollow like wet blankets being shrugged off. The Verdant Stag stood. It was larger than the Barkhorn, slender where that brute had been slabbed. Its hide was living bark with veins of green glowing under it, as if it had learned to bleed in spring.
It opened its eyes. They were the color of old cedar, calm and very, very awake.
Everyone went still. Even the wind remembered manners.
The stag turned its head and looked at the bell first. It touched the lip with the side of its face, almost tender. Then it looked at the people. It looked at the Roots boys, and their confidence went slack like twine left in rain. It looked at Ruo and let him exist by choice. It looked at Rat last and did not blink.
The Codex said a thing Rat would have preferred not to see.
[Guardian recognizes caretaker candidates: one.]
Wei Yun breathed the way you do when you have watched a god blink.
The keeper found his tongue. "Back," he said, quiet now, not bored. He kept his juniors behind his sleeve like children spying on thunder.
Rat kept his hand on bronze. The bell was warm. His coin was hot. His heart was a hammer in a barrel.
He lifted the rope half a finger and let it fall. Not sound. Not quite. The bell breathed again, and the herbs around their boots surged. Little flowers opened in the dark.
The Verdant Stag's antlers sprouted another inch of green tips. It did not seem angry. It felt like a deep river waiting for a fool to step in.
Rat swallowed. "All right," he said. "Now what do you want?"
The stag lowered its head. It did not charge. It placed the tip of an antler under the bell and lifted it a fraction, as if to say, This is mine.
It was a statement. It was also a question.
The wind exhaled, and something else exhaled back.
[Codex of Strands of Fate - Status Update]
Vitality: 5
Qi Sense: 6
Comprehension: 3
Fate Entanglement: 19
Realm: Foundation Establishment
New Passive: Rhythm Tap stabilized.
Effect: Two-step ground pulse disrupts delicate footing and web structures in a two to three pace radius. Amplifies with terrain familiarity.
Appendix Update: Green Bell of Canopy
Field Note: Low ring feeds herbs, lures mild fauna. Moderate ring accelerates guardian rouse. Ownership test in progress.
Rat kept his palm on the bronze and did not smile.
"Temple alignment," he murmured. "I am listening."