The mountain did not want to let me go.
Every step down was a grueling negotiation with gravity, ice, and the growing certainty that I was walking toward something far worse than the silence I had left behind.
The Monk's rice was still performing its cold magic. "Order" flowed through Anko's body like a biological recalibration—cells aligning, neural circuits stabilizing, the chaotic mess of my possession slowly becoming something functional. Not comfortable, but functional. In this world, I had quickly learned that "functional" was the highest luxury one could afford.
I stripped the least-ruined robes from the shrine's offering pile. Dark indigo and charcoal grey. They were heavy, insulated for the high-altitude chill, and blissfully anonymous. No insignias. No markings.
Perfect for a man who needed to vanish into a world that was actively hunting him.
As I pulled the silk over my head, the texture felt like a shroud. The weight settled on my shoulders like a responsibility I hadn't asked for, but could no longer refuse. I wasn't Kai anymore. Not quite Anko. Not even fully Light. I was simply the one who had to survive the next 46 hours.
I tied the belt tight with my remaining hand—a skill learned through the painful trial and error of a man refusing to be helpless. I didn't look at my reflection. I had learned from the earlier trauma that the face in the glass was a stranger I wasn't ready to meet.
The descent path was a nightmare of structural instability. Ancient stone bridges, barely a meter wide, spanned chasms where clouds rolled below like ghostly, silent rivers.
Walking with one arm meant every gust of wind was a hand trying to spin me into the void. My center of gravity was skewed. My phantom left arm kept twitching, trying to balance movements that never came. I had to lean into the mountain, my right hand constantly brushing frozen stone for stability.
Step. Breathe. Recalibrate.
"Focus," I hissed through gritted teeth. "One step. That's all. Just one."
Then another. Until the bridge ended and the ledge opened into a natural platform. It should have been a place for travelers to rest.
Instead, it was a graveyard.
The Vanished Vanguard
I smelled them before the visual hit. Not the sweet rot of decay—the cold was too absolute for that.
I smelled metal. Old blood. And something else—a sharp, chemical scent that didn't belong in a world of swords and sorcery. Ozone and synthetic polymers.
My Academy training kicked in. Pattern recognition. Threat assessment. Tactical analysis of an environment that felt fundamentally "wrong."
Behind a jagged outcropping of basalt, I found them.
Four bodies.
They weren't dressed in the saffron robes of monks or the lacquered crimson armor of the Divine Blood. They wore tactical fatigues—Kevlar weaves fused with ceramic impact plates. Helmets with polarized visors lay cracked nearby, revealing bleached skulls that had been picked clean by the mountain wind.
This was Pre-Grace technology. Earth tech.
I knelt beside them, my hand shaking—not from the cold, but from a recognition that sat like lead in my stomach. One soldier's helmet had an inscription etched into the side, almost worn away by time and ice:
"FOR THE FIREKEEPER—WE FOLLOWED YOU TO THE END."
The words hit me with the force of an orbital strike.
My stomach lurched. Vision blurred into golden static. I stumbled away from the corpses and fell to my knees, dry-heaving until my throat burned with bile.
We followed you to the end. Not "we served." Not "we fought."
We followed. It meant I had led them. I had brought them to this frozen hell, and they had died for a cause I couldn't even remember. Every one of those bleached bones was a debt I didn't know I owed.
"I don't remember you," I whispered to the wind. "I'm sorry."
The apology sounded hollow. Pathetic.
I forced myself back to the bodies. I owed them the dignity of a witness.
The first soldier held a carbine rifle, now fused solid with mana-rot. Useless as a firearm, but the alloy was superior to anything I'd seen in this dimension. I left it. The second and third had nothing but corroded sidearms.
But the fourth soldier... his hand was gripped around something white. I pried it loose carefully.
It was a hilt, thirty centimeters long, shaped like a bone. It was too dense, too perfectly balanced.
[Grace]: Analyzing Artifact... [Identity: Plasma Cutter (Model: Mark IV - Bone Pattern)] [Status: Dormant. Power Cell: 4%.] [Note: A weapon designed for orbital boarding actions. In this world? It is a miracle.]
A Bone Saber. A blade of contained plasma that could shear through matter at a molecular level. Even with only 4% charge, it was the most lethal thing in the valley. I tucked it into the inner lining of my robes, right against the golden cubes pulsing in my chest.
I also found a high-carbon steel tantō strapped to one of their thighs. I swapped my broken katana for it, feeling the solid, honest weight at my hip.
Finally, I found a photograph. Faded. Faces blurred by time. But the composition was clear: soldiers in formation, surrounding a central figure with a raised hand.
The Leader. The Firekeeper.
I put the photo in my journal, next to the silver flower. Another piece of a puzzle I was increasingly terrified to solve.
The Blind Seer
I left the soldiers to the ice. I couldn't bury them, and fire would be a beacon for the hunters. I could only walk away, adding four more ghosts to the collection of people I had failed.
Later. I would grieve later. When I wasn't dying.
The path narrowed into the throat of the mountain. Stone bridges suspended over a grey void. Each step was a prayer to physics.
"You're late, Firekeeper."
The voice cut through the wind like a razor. I spun, hand flying to the new tantō.
An old man sat beneath a rocky overhang. He was huddled in layers of heavy fox furs, sharpening a skinning knife on a whetstone.
Rasp. Rasp. Rasp.
His eyes were milky with cataracts—he should have been blind. Yet he "saw" me with a clarity that made my skin crawl.
"I didn't realize there was a schedule," I managed, keeping my grip on the hilt.
"The mountain has its own time," the old man replied, never breaking his rhythm. "The Asura moves with the sun. The Divine Blood moves with the scent of fear. And you... you move with the weight of that curse in your gut."
"How do you know about the Curse of Greed?"
He didn't answer. He just pointed a gnarled finger toward a narrow pass to the south.
"The Path of Weeping Stones. Follow the ice that bleeds. It will lead you to the valley floor, to the gates of the Ashen Temple."
"And the hunters?"
The old man stopped sharpening. He set the knife down with deliberate care.
"They are already in the valley. They have the scent of your greed, Firekeeper. They won't wait for you to reach the gates. They'll meet you in the throat of the pass."
I studied him, looking for deception. I found only ancient, weary indifference. "Why help me?"
"I'm not helping you. I'm just curious to see if the fire stays lit once the blood starts pouring." He paused, his milky eyes fixing on mine. "The Asura isn't hunting you, boy."
"Then what is it doing?"
"It's mourning you."
The words settled into my chest like lead. Mourning? Did I know the Asura? Before the fall? Before the soldiers died?
"Now move," the old man said, returning to his knife. "The sun doesn't wait for the slow, and the dead don't wait for anyone."
I didn't thank him. Gratitude was a currency I had run out of long ago. I walked past his overhang, heading south toward the bleeding ice.
Behind me, I caught a final whisper, too quiet for human ears, but caught by Anko's enhanced senses:
"The fire dies. But the Firekeeper remains. Always remains. Even when he shouldn't."
I didn't turn back. I just kept walking. One step. Then another. Into the throat of the mountain where the hunters waited.
[Grace]: Objective updated: Navigate the Weeping Pass.
[Distance to Ashen Temple: 18 Kilometers.]
[Warning: Local mana density increasing. Atmospheric corruption: 12%.]
[The hunters are closing in, Light. They are Level 10-12.]
I smiled. A dark, cynical expression.
"Let them come, Grace. I'm about to give them a masterclass in survival."