They descended the mountain at dawn, the singing wands still humming in their packs. The valley below was covered in a thin layer of mist, and the air smelled of rain and pine. Yu Qing had her notebook open, writing down the tune the wands had sung—adding new notes, making it their own.
As they walked, Lin Chen noticed something strange: the moss growing on the tree trunks was glowing with a soft, blue light. It wasn't the same as the starlight from the Starfall Archive—this was darker, deeper, like light from something buried underground.
"Look at that," he said, pointing to a tree where the moss had grown in a pattern—twisted lines that looked almost like writing.
Yu Qing walked over and traced the pattern with her finger. "It's not any language I've seen," she said, flipping through her notebook. "Not from the academy, not from the reversed town, not from any archive record."
They followed the glowing moss along the path, and soon, every tree was marked with the same twisted pattern. The patterns grew more complex as they walked, eventually merging into a single, large design on the side of a cliff face—like a map, but with no roads, no towns, no landmarks. Just a web of lines leading to a single point at the center of the valley.
Lin Chen pulled out his blank book, and the glowing lines from the past chapters—now threads of light—started to pulse in time with the moss. He held the book up to the cliff, and the threads from the book reached out, weaving into the map on the stone.
The map shifted. The web of lines rearranged themselves into a path, and the central point glowed brighter, pulsing like a heartbeat. Below it, a single word appeared—written in the same twisted language, but now clear enough to read: "The Weave."
A low rumble echoed through the valley. The ground beneath their feet shook slightly, and a small opening appeared at the base of the cliff—hidden behind a curtain of glowing moss. It looked like the entrance to a cave.
Yu Qing looked at Lin Chen, her eyes wide. "We shouldn't go in there," she said, but her voice was filled with curiosity. "We don't know what's inside."
Lin Chen looked at the map on the cliff, then at his blank book. The threads of light were now fully woven into the map, leading straight into the cave. He could feel the crystal from Master Lian—still warm in his pocket—pulsing in time with the central point.
"The path's there," he said, walking toward the cave entrance. "It's been there all along, hidden in the moss. We just couldn't see it until now."
Inside the cave, the glowing moss lined the walls, lighting the way down a narrow tunnel. The air grew colder, but not unpleasant—just ancient, like stepping into a story that had been waiting to be told for thousands of years. As they walked deeper, they heard a sound: a soft, rhythmic humming that matched the tune of their wands.
The tunnel opened into a large chamber, and they stopped short. The walls were covered in the same twisted patterns, and in the center of the room, a pool of water glowed with the same blue light as the moss. Floating on the surface of the water was a single, small object—a needle, made of what looked like solid starlight.
Lin Chen walked over and picked up the needle. It was light, but it felt heavy with power. As his fingers touched it, the patterns on the walls began to glow brighter, and images flashed across them—fragments of a story he'd never seen: a world before the written narrative, a great Weave that held everything together, a darkness that had tried to unravel it, and a promise that one day, someone would come to mend what was broken.
The images faded, and the cave grew quiet. Lin Chen looked at the needle in his hand, then at Yu Qing. The wands in their packs were now singing in harmony with the cave's humming—a tune that felt both new and ancient, like the start of something big.
They walked back out of the cave as the sun rose higher, the needle safe in Lin Chen's pocket. The glowing moss on the trees was now dimmer, but the map on the cliff was still visible—its path clear, its central point still pulsing.
No one said a word as they walked away from the valley. They both felt it: the story was shifting again, moving from one chapter to something bigger—something that had been hidden in the moss, in the threads of their book, in the very fabric of the world itself.
The first part of their journey was over. The next was just beginning.