A fallen general discards a cursed manual. Centuries later, a desperate huntress finds it. The first page reads: "You are already dead. Let's negotiate your return."
On the edge of God's Breath, where the cliff pierced the heavens to steal secrets from the lips of mortals, the Master didn't look at his eyes; her gaze anchored on the ruin carved across his face.
"I should have let the snow take you."
The words severed the wind.
Roeyachi answered not with breath, but with the meteoric impact of a wine jug hurled by the brute force of a mountain's heart. It struck the stone between them, and the cliff screamed, fractures webbed outward beneath the iron-shod wheels of her chair as a tremor traveled up the spine of the world.
It was not technique. It was raw, uncontrolled will.
Laughter followed, grinding like stones crushed together. "Save the eulogy, Old Woman. I'm not in the ground yet."
She didn't flinch, lifting her cup to inhale the steam while ignoring the shattered rock inches from her feet. "The grave is patient. You are not."
"Patience is a luxury for men with time." Roeyachi spat near the fractured edge. "I have only debt."
"And the Heavens?" She sipped slowly, letting the silence stretch. "They have rejected your payment three times now."
The granite groaned beneath his boots as he turned toward the endless green abyss, a valley of unseen teeth. "The Heavens don't want me. And Hell is afraid I'll take over."
A sigh, soft and dismissive. "You mistake survival for blessing."
He moved, collapsing the proud mountain to kneel before her, coarse hands gripping the polished jade of her armrests until his knuckles bleached white. The scent of old blood and iron rose from his robes.
"It is not a blessing. It is fuel."
Her gaze drifted to the cold, indifferent stars. "Thirty years. The memorial tablets rattle on the shelf, Roeyachi. They do not shake from the wind. They shake because you will not let them sleep."
His grip tightened. "Then let them rattle. It will keep them awake for what comes next."
Boots scraped stone, a military rhythm heavy with impatience.
"General."
The guard stood at the trailhead, sweat darkening his collar, hand resting on his hilt. "The Emperor grows impatient."
Roeyachi didn't turn. He drew a battered leather journal from his sash, the scent of dried blood and old campfires drifting from the pages, and held it over the green maw that had tried to swallow him for thirty years.
Fingers opened.
Gravity claimed the debt. The book didn't flutter; it plummeted, vanishing into the canopy below without a sound.
"You plant dangerous seeds," the Master said, watching the guard.
"If the soil is weak, they will rot." Roeyachi adjusted his bracers, leather creaking against bone. "If the soil is strong, they will bleed."
He turned then—not to his Master, but through the guard, past the mountain, toward the capital. "Let's go."
He walked past her, the guard falling in behind, leaving only the fading crunch of boots on gravel as a farewell.
Time didn't drift; it eroded.
Centuries ground the mountain down. Seasons stripped the flesh from the trees and grew it back again, crumbling the cliff face to change the smile of the horizon. But the forest kept its secrets, burying the book beneath rot and needle-fall, wrapping it in silence until a hand calloused enough to claim it arrived.
A twig snapped.
The huntress froze, not hidden, but woven into the stillness. Mud streaked her cheeks; bark guarded her shins. Seventeen years of survival held her breath until the danger passed.
Nothing moved.
She exhaled, stepping forward until her boot struck something hard—too dense for stone, too geometric for bone. She crouched, knife leading the motion, and brushed aside the mulch to uncover leather blackened by age yet stubbornly intact.
She pried it free. It was heavy, dense with intent, her thumb trembling as she wiped the cover clean.
"The Blood Path"
Breath hitched. The wind died.
A legacy artifact.
She shoved the book beneath her tunic, pressing it against her skin as if body heat could prove it real, and slid beneath the cage of a massive root to hide from the sky. Only then did she open it.
The leather groaned.
The first page bore no date, no greeting. It held only a warning, scrawled in ink the color of old iron.
"If you are reading this, you are already dead. Now, let us negotiate your return."