It came with the fog.
Not the morning kind, not the gentle mist that curled between tea leaves and pond lilies. This fog was thick, cold, and wrong — a wall of white that rolled over the eastern forest like a living thing.
By dawn, it had swallowed the village below the palace.
By noon, it reached the palace gates.
The guards vanished first.
Then came the bells — three rings, shrill and urgent — the sound used only for invasions or curses.
---
The twins were pulled from their studies and locked in the jade chamber by their attendants. But the shadows in the corners twitched unnaturally. The palace was groaning, like something old and frightened was trying to wake up and flee.
Mò Yáo pressed her ear to the floor.
"The fog isn't fog," she whispered.
"What do you mean?" Yín Shū asked.
"It's not moving with the wind. It's crawling."
Then they heard it.
A footstep.
Just one.
Soft. Slow. Wet.
And then a second.
And then… a scream. From inside the palace halls.
Mò Yáo rose to her feet, her shadow sharpening behind her like a blade.
"We need to get out of this room."
Yín Shū didn't argue.
---
The great hall
The fog had seeped inside like smoke.
The air was heavy with a coppery scent — burnt paper and blood.
And then they saw it.
A figure stood at the end of the hall. Cloaked in white threads that hung like spider silk. Its face... was a blank mask.
No eyes. No mouth. No voice.
It moved by sound. By breath. By sensing memory itself.
"...That's not human," Yín Shū whispered.
The creature turned.
Its head tilted, not as if it saw them — but as if it knew them.
"You're not supposed to be real," Mò Yáo whispered.
It raised its arm — long, slender fingers tipped with ink-like claws.
"RUN!"
The twins sprinted as the air behind them shattered — glass windows exploded inward, and a wave of cold and silence roared through the corridor like a living scream.
They reached the garden gate just as the shadows beneath Mò Yáo surged on their own, pulling upward to form a black wall between them and the creature.
Yín Shū spun around, lifting her hands instinctively.
A burst of silver light exploded from her palms, like moonfire made soft.
The eyeless thing paused.
It cocked its head.
And then it smiled.
Without a mouth. Without teeth.
Somehow… it smiled.
And it whispered with no voice:
"Found you."
Then it vanished — burst into threads of ink, melting into the mist, gone.
---
Later, Queen Lian stood before the palace ruins. Guards were gone. Walls cracked.
And on the garden stones… was left a black mark shaped like an eye with no pupil.
"He's begun sending his vessels," the seer said.
"Why now?" the queen asked.
"Because the twins are no longer asleep."