The first pulse came from below.Not a sound — a vibration, deep and wide, spreading like a second heartbeat beneath the tomb.
Li Muye opened his eyes.The air had changed.
Dust no longer drifted down from the ceiling but sideways, as if gravity itself had tilted.The torches flickered without wind.Every chain hanging from the bronze ceiling began to hum — faint, metallic, like a throat clearing before a scream.
He could feel it in his chest again — that hidden sigil beneath his ribs, glowing softly through skin and bone.The rhythm matched the tomb's.No — the tomb matched his.
"Captain," Zhou Zhan's voice trembled, his notebook forgotten on the ground. "The spatial axis is rotating. Look at the— the light vectors!"
No one looked.They were too busy staying upright.
The floor, the walls, the very air — all tilted, a colossal wheel turning slowly underfoot.One of the fire basins slid half an inch, then stopped.The next moment, it was as if the world had fallen sideways.
Old Yu slammed into a column with a grunt. "Hell's breaking loose again!""Form the circle!" Li队 barked. His voice cut through the chaos like iron splitting cloth. "Eyes up, rifles ready— don't fire unless you see the target."
"Define target!" Old Yu snapped, raising his gun at shadows that bent wrong in the new gravity.
Something blinked inside the drum.
They all saw it — a flash of wet light, deep under the bronze sarcophagus, like an eye reflecting torchlight from below water.
It was open.
The sound that followed wasn't thunder.It was the tomb exhaling — centuries of sealed breath escaping in a hiss that grew and grew until it was almost a voice.
Zhou Zhan stumbled backward, whispering, "The inscriptions— they're changing sequence again. They're reading."
Indeed, the runes crawling across the sarcophagus had begun to rearrange, shifting letters and lines like living script.Each new symbol pulsed once, then dimmed, leaving faint afterimages on the stone floor.
Li Muye felt one flare inside his head, an echo not spoken aloud:"The Eye beneath the Drum remembers its Keeper."
He froze. "Captain— it's speaking."Li队 didn't blink. "And what's it saying?"Li Muye swallowed. "It remembers us."
A sound rose — faint, rhythmic, wet.Drip. Drip.
A line of dark liquid seeped from beneath the sarcophagus lid.It wasn't blood. It wasn't oil.It shimmered — like liquid shadow catching light, neither solid nor vapor.
Then the chains moved.
Not pulled — lifted.Each massive bronze link rose an inch off the ground, trembling in air like they were strings on an invisible instrument.
A low tone filled the chamber, too low for hearing, yet their bones felt it.One by one, the torches dimmed to embers.
A'Chuang gritted his teeth, blade drawn. "We have to cut the link before—""Before what?" Old Yu barked.
Before the Eye turned.
The sarcophagus shifted.A perfect circle appeared at its base — iris-like, rotating open in smooth, mechanical silence.Within it, an endless black spiral stared back at them, as if the world had grown a pupil.
Zhou Zhan screamed first.Not from pain — from recognition. "It's a dimensional reflection! A mirror tuned to consciousness!"
Li Muye took a step forward.Something inside him called to it — a whisper beneath the drumbeat.
"See."
He didn't realize he had spoken aloud.When he blinked, his vision split in two — one eye seeing the tomb, the other seeing its mirror: upside-down corridors, men moving backward, shadows that breathed.
He could see himself.Standing, watching.And in the reflection, his other self smiled.
"Li Muye!" Li队's shout cracked like thunder. "Step back!"He didn't hear it.The Eye had taken hold.
For an instant, he stood inside the reflection.The world there was quieter, colder, the sound of the drum no longer external but inside every heartbeat.
A thousand faces turned toward him — old, forgotten, carved from memory.The dead of the tomb.Their mouths moved in unison:"Return what was kept."
He looked down.His hands were glowing — gold lines crawling beneath his skin, pulsing like veins of molten metal.The sigil on his chest burned brighter, expanding outward, connecting to the web of runes that now laced across the mirrored floor.
Outside, the others saw him lift from the ground.No wind, no force — just rising, weightless, drawn toward the Eye.
A'Chuang lunged forward, slashing through the invisible tether, sparks flaring where his blade met the unseen current. "We're losing him!"
"Cut the resonance!" Zhou Zhan yelled. "Break the sequence on the third ring— now!"
Li队 didn't hesitate.He drove his knife into the floor's carved symbol, twisting until it cracked.The air snapped — a burst of pressure, a ringing silence.
The Eye blinked.Its spiral collapsed inward, folding light like a closing flower.
Li Muye dropped.
He hit the floor hard, coughing blood, his veins still faintly luminous.The drumbeat faded, replaced by a long, thin echo that seemed to sigh through the bronze chains before dying away.
Silence.Then, only the steady drip again.
Old Yu exhaled, wiping his mouth with a trembling hand. "That… counts as closed, right?"
Zhou Zhan didn't answer.He stared at the sarcophagus, pale. "It's not closing. It's watching."
Sure enough, the circle beneath the bronze lid hadn't vanished.It had only narrowed — a slit of light remaining, like an eyelid refusing to shut completely.
Li Muye forced himself upright. "It's not done with us."Li队 met his gaze. "Then we don't give it a second round. Fall back to the first chamber. Rebuild formation."
A'Chuang sheathed his blade with a hiss. "What about the Eye?"Li Muye looked toward the still-glowing slit, his reflection flickering faintly within."It's open," he said quietly. "And now it knows my name."
The slit did not blink.
A thin shimmer crept out from it instead, a hair-fine thread of light tracing along the floor like a vein searching for skin. It stopped at the first bronze nail and nested there, pulsing once… twice… learning the distance.
"Move," Li队 ordered, voice barely above breath. "First chamber. Slow. No noise."
They peeled back from the sarcophagus.Boot soles kissed stone.Even the torches seemed to dim themselves.
Halfway to the corridor, Old Yu stiffened. "Footsteps—"
"Not footsteps," Zhou Zhan whispered. "Sampling. It's sending a ping through the floor."
The light thread divided, spidering toward the walls. Carvings answered with a faint glow, like fireflies inside rock. For a heartbeat the whole tomb became a lung again, inhaling through a thousand invisible mouths.
Li Muye felt the pull in his ribs.A wordless query.
Name received. Measure pending.
He tasted iron. "It's mapping our pulse intervals," he said, swallowing blood. "It wants to synchronize. If it does, we won't get a second chance."
"How do we stop a drum from finding a rhythm?" Old Yu muttered.
"Steal the beat," Li Muye said.
They reached the corridor mouth. The statues around the ring had turned to face them, but none advanced. They were waiting for the next downstroke, the command that would snap them forward.
Li队 pressed a finger to his lips. Three short taps on the wall—his old signal for breath control.
"On my mark," he mouthed. "Hold."
The next ripple rolled through the chamber, a pressure wave like a hand passing over the surface of water. On Li队's cut, they all locked their lungs. The wave met bodies with no breath to read, missed, slid on.
The slit dimmed. Only slightly—like an eye squinting against glare.
Zhou Zhan's pupils blew wide. "It worked."
"For one beat," A'Chuang said. His knife's edge drew a clean line down the side of a fire basin, shaving a curl of bronze without touching the flame. "It won't miss twice."
"Then we don't give it twice." Li队 pointed down the passage. "Go."
They slipped into the corridor. Stone swallowed sound. Behind them, the sarcophagus exhaled again—longer, lower, irritated. Threads of light retreated, then surged, striking the floor in a staggered pattern.
Double-beat.
Torches popped.Dust burst from the seams like smoke.
The second hit arrived crooked, chasing their spines. Li Muye stumbled; the sigil under his sternum flared hot and cold at once, a coin left too long in fire. The beat tried to catch his heart and failed, as if grabbing at a step that wasn't there.
He forced his breath off-tempo—two short, one long—breaking the human instinct to match. Pain spiked behind his eyes, but the pressure slid past.
Borrowed heart. Borrowed time, the whisper said.
At the bend, Li队 jammed his knife into a fissure and levered a slab loose, dropping it across the floor to break line-of-sight. The echo changed pitch, confused by the new edge.
"Zhou," Li队 said. "Mark this point. If we have to come back, we use the slab as a baffle."
Zhou Zhan chalked a symbol with shaking hands. "Captain… if it learns our offsets—"
"It will," A'Chuang said, eyes on Li Muye. "But it learned his name first."
The corridor opened into the first chamber. Cooler air. Less hum. On the far wall, their earlier chalk marks waited like small, stubborn stars.
Li Muye leaned against stone, breathing the wrong way on purpose, keeping the sigil from settling. The tomb listened, confused, the rhythm it wanted to catch forever half a step away.
From the main hall came one last stroke—heavy, patient, not angry.
Not yet.
The slit did not widen.It only brightened, as if smiling with half a mouth.
Next time, the beat promised.Next time, we won't miss.