The wind sharpened as if the mountain itself listened for Li Shen's answer. Frost crusted Red Sigil's staff where it touched the stone — the runes gleaming red in the pale sun.
Li Shen's breath clouded in the thin air. The Codex's pulse crawled up his spine like molten ice. Ku Mo's voice coiled around his ribs — part promise, part threat.
Say no, it hissed. Say no and we will burn this world together.
Beside him, Yue Lan's fingers pressed tighter around his hand — the only warmth left that wasn't borrowed from rage or ruin.
Red Sigil's grin showed too many teeth. "Decide quickly, boy. The Nine Heavens do not wait for second thoughts."
Li Shen looked at Yue Lan. The weight in her eyes said more than a thousand sect scrolls ever could.
"You trust him?" she asked — quiet, raw.
Li Shen snorted — a sound halfway between a laugh and a growl. "No."
She searched his face — searching for the boy she'd found bleeding on the river path years ago. Maybe for the boy he still was beneath Ku Mo's crown of thorns.
Then she nodded. "So trust yourself."
---
Li Shen stepped forward. The Codex's runes burned bright along his throat, each mark flaring like an open wound. He planted his blade in the stone between them — iron teeth in cold granite.
"If I bind him," Li Shen said, voice calm as falling snow, "I keep my will. I keep my soul. If you twist that—"
Red Sigil cackled. "Then you break my bones and scatter them to the wind, Bloodbound. My oath to yours — old style."
The old monk pricked his palm with a sliver of his staff's crystal tip. Thin blood — black and bright — dripped onto the stone. The runes drank it in a single hiss.
Li Shen matched him — slicing his palm along the Codex's pulsing mark. His blood hissed against the crimson sigils — steam curling into the dawn wind.
Ku Mo roared. The demon's fury slammed through his bones, rattling his teeth, searing behind his eyes.
Betrayer. Worm. You dare muzzle the wolf—
Li Shen grinned through clenched teeth. "Bite harder, then."
Red Sigil's staff slammed down — the runes cracked open. A circle flared under Li Shen's boots, old binding script wrapping his ankles, wrists, throat in flickering red.
Yue Lan flinched back — threads alive but stilled, her trust hanging by a thread of breath.
Li Shen closed his eyes. He dove inward.
---
Inside the Codex, there was only endless red — a drowning sea of claw and tooth, the echo of Ku Mo's laugh behind every pulse of blood.
Li Shen stood on an invisible shore, knee-deep in crimson tide. Ku Mo rose before him — a thing of shadows and teeth, a crown of broken spirit chains coiling through its horns.
You are MINE, Ku Mo hissed. You opened the door. You begged for power — now drown in it.
Li Shen's grin was bright in the dark. "Then choke on me."
He felt Red Sigil's runes tighten — threads of old pact binding the Codex's swirl. The demon lunged — fangs bared, claws raking Li Shen's mind.
But Li Shen did not flinch. He lunged back — through the jaws, hands finding the Codex's core: a knot of hatred, fear, hunger older than the first temple stone.
He slammed his will down — not a Saintess's prayer, not an elder's seal. Just raw defiance, fed on frost, ruin, and the memory of a girl's hand that would not let go.
Ku Mo howled — shadows shredding under the red sky.
Mine—
"No," Li Shen whispered. "Mine."
---
Outside, Yue Lan watched as the binding circle flared bright enough to blind. Wind slammed the peak — tearing frost from the shrine's black stones.
She saw Li Shen's eyes open — red as always, but burning with something new.
Not just the Codex's hunger. Not just Ku Mo's spite.
His.
Red Sigil leaned on his staff, old bones shaking with laughter. "You did it, boy. May every heaven curse you for it."
Li Shen stepped from the circle — the runes flickering, then sinking under his skin like embers under snow. The Codex's glow still lived in his eyes — but the roar was quiet now. Leashed from within.
He turned to Yue Lan. For a heartbeat, he looked like the boy on the river path — half-dead, half-alive, but his own.
She touched his cheek — spirit threads drifting between them like the hush of new snow.
"Still you?" she asked.
Li Shen's breath shivered. His grin cut through the cold.
"For now."
---
⚡ End of Chapter Nineteen
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