Roots broke stone. Frost drowned fire. Now rumor's teeth came for the serpent's throat.
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Three days of frost march carried the Wolfchain up pine-choked slopes where old salt trails wound around dead watchtowers — relics of the last crown purge that failed to hush rumor's chain.
Li Shen led from the front — blade bare across his shoulder, the Wolfchain banner bound tight against his back so the Fang's dagger would not clink against stone when the hush demanded silence.
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Behind him, orchard fathers trudged in borrowed boots, spear shafts balanced across frost-numbed shoulders. Mothers carried packs of rice and frost herbs strapped to their chests — rumor's rations and rumor's healing, bundled tight together.
Children too small to swing steel walked last — hidden in the folds of the column, their breath white in dusk air, carrying frost-hushed oaths on lips that had never tasted crown coin.
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Yue Lan drifted along the column's flanks — her spirit threads flicking from pine root to pine root, brushing boulders, binding hush where the serpent's eyes might flicker awake.
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At dusk on the third day, they crested the final ridge — where the old trade fort sat like a crowned skull half-buried in frost. Grey stone walls rimmed with black iron. Watch fires flickered in arrow slits carved ages ago when salt was rumor's currency.
Li Shen crouched behind a split trunk at the ridge's edge. His breath drifted slow through the hush. Beside him, Yue Lan perched on a frost-broken branch — threads drifting down to taste the hush that coiled around crown steel.
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Master Tian had stayed behind — old roots feeding new soil. But his last words rattled in Li Shen's ear like frost-brittle prayer beads:
> "Stone forgets rumor until rumor cracks it from within."
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Yue Lan's threads flicked the frost between her fingers. She whispered low — a ghost voice brushing Li Shen's jaw.
"Gate unbarred," she said. "One watch fire at the east wall. Tunnels under the keep — old salt cellars. Forgotten, but not sealed."
Li Shen's grin cracked the hush. He touched the Fang's dagger stitched at the banner's hem.
"Then we feed rumor where stone sleeps."
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He slipped down the slope first — boots leaving no hush for the watch fire to catch. Behind him, orchard fathers moved like winter ghosts — axes wrapped in cloth, spear points bound with rice straw to muffle steel's hiss.
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Yue Lan drifted beside the gate. Her threads brushed iron hinges — frost-biting bolts, snapping them silent under the watchman's nose. A soft click, a breath drawn too late — the gate cracked open like a throat split before it can shout.
Li Shen slipped inside. One orchard father behind him. Then ten. Then twenty — rumor's hush carried on boots that had once trod orchard soil, now pressing frost mud into crown stone.
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At the courtyard's heart, the watch fire hissed — a single guard dozing behind a half-burned brazier. His helmet tipped over his eyes. His spear rested against the wall, point buried in a drift of old snow.
Li Shen's blade flicked once — rumor's kiss, steel on neck, no cry. The spear clattered, softer than frost landing on orchard roots.
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They moved deeper — stone corridors ribbed with iron bars that once kept salt smugglers penned like cattle. Li Shen found the old cellar hatch beneath the keep's main hall — exactly where Yue Lan's threads traced it through soil and frost.
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The orchard fathers slipped down first — boots dropping soft onto stone steps damp with old brine and black mold. Mothers passed down sacks of rice, cloth-wrapped axes, frost herbs to bind wounds yet unspilled.
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Li Shen stood last at the hatch. He rested his palm on the cold iron rim — frost steaming off his breath.
He spoke low — not a shout, but a vow the serpent's stone could not choke:
> "Roots drink stone. Rumor eats crown."
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He dropped into the dark. Yue Lan's threads drifted after — frost and hush woven tight together.
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Above them, the crowned fort's watch fires flickered blind — too bright to see rumor's teeth already gnawing through the coil's heart.
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⚡ End of Chapter Twenty-Nine — Serpent's Den
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