Steel clashed with frost and spirit flame as the shrine clearing burned with hidden sigils. Warden Blades slipped through the mist like silver ghosts — but every blade found Li Shen waiting.
He moved like wind off the cliffs, each step a promise of ruin. The Codex's runes bled red along his arms, coiling around his throat like a serpent's kiss. Talismans cracked under his fingers, binding spells shredded by the raw pulse of the demon sealed inside his marrow.
Yue Lan stood at the shrine's broken steps — breath misting in the night, hands trembling at her sides. She wanted to scream at the Warden Blades to stop, to fall back — but their eyes were bright with zeal and fear. And her voice was lost inside the mask that had once protected her and now strangled her.
Li Shen broke a young disciple's sword at the guard, reversed his grip, and slammed the boy down without killing him. He did not need more death tonight. He needed only enough blood to prove the Moon Sect's chains would never fit his neck.
Behind him, Ruo Han lunged. Silver runes snaked up his blade as he swung at Li Shen's blind side — clean, practiced, precise.
Yue Lan's mouth moved before she could stop it. "No—!"
Li Shen heard her. And turned too late.
Steel bit his ribs — not deep, but deep enough. The Codex hissed like boiling oil in his blood, the pain fueling its hungry roar.
Ruo Han's eyes gleamed with triumph. He drew back for the killing thrust.
Yue Lan's feet moved before her mind did. Her spirit threads burst from her palms — silver silk lashing the cold air. They wrapped Ruo Han's wrist in a coil of light and slammed him back into the shrine's cracked pillar. His blade missed Li Shen's throat by a hair.
Silence hit the clearing like a blow. The Warden Blades froze — their Saintess, striking her own captain.
Ruo Han snarled, pinned against cold marble. "Traitor!"
Yue Lan didn't hear him. She couldn't hear anything but her own heart — pounding like a drum inside a cage of silk and vows.
Li Shen turned — blood dripping down his side, red eyes locked on hers. For a heartbeat, the Codex's burn softened. Just a boy again, for one stolen breath.
"You should have let him," Li Shen rasped.
Yue Lan's voice cracked open. "I can't."
Her spirit threads flicked outward, pushing the other disciples back. "All of you — stand down!"
The Warden Blades hesitated. Loyalty warred with terror. But the Saintess's word was still law, however thinly it hung by her bleeding will.
Ruo Han spat at her feet. "You shame your blood—"
She bound his mouth shut with a flick of her fingers. His spirit sputtered against hers but could not break free.
Li Shen stepped toward her. For a moment they were alone inside the ring of frozen blades and drifting mist.
His hand brushed hers — careful, as if afraid he might burn her with what he carried inside.
"You know what this means," he said.
Yue Lan's throat tightened. She did. There would be no path home now — not for her. The Moon Sect would hunt her as they hunted him. She would not be Saintess. She would be fugitive, oath-breaker, apostate.
And yet her hand didn't pull away.
She looked up at him — at the Codex's glow, at the raw, stubborn boy who refused to drown.
"Run with me," she whispered.
Li Shen's laugh was soft and broken, but it carried more hope than any vow in marble halls.
He tightened his grip on her fingers. "Then run."
The mist swallowed them as one — two shadows vanishing into the wilds while the shrine behind them burned with silver fire and the echoes of chains left broken in the frost.
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⚡ End of Chapter Fourteen
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