The pull was a fishhook in his spirit, set with barbs of desperation. It wasn't the sad, fading sigh of One-Armed Zhao. This was a shriek of pure, unending rage and isolation. It vibrated through Li Ming's newly-tuned awareness like a plucked, fraying wire.
He doubled over on the lakeshore, the anchor stone falling from his hands with a plop into the shallows.
"Li Ming!" Wen's hands were on his shoulders, steadying. "What do you feel?"
"Anger," he gritted out, his teeth clenched. "Metal. Cold. So much… loneliness." The scream in his mind was wordless, but the emotions were a clear, poisonous torrent. "It is the echo of a weapon," Iron Saint Bai's voice cut through, sharper than usual." A style born of imprisonment. It reeks of a forge and a sealed tomb."
"…loud, ain't it? Makes my head ache worse than cheap wine…"
"Its suffering is a blade pointed inward," the Silent Abbot observed, his calmness a frail raft in the psychic storm. "It will cut anyone who comes close, including itself."
Wen's fingers pressed against his temples, her touch cool and focused. "Don't fight the feeling. Trace it. Where does it come from? Give it a direction in your mind."
Gasping, Li Ming focused past the pain. He used Meilin's lessons, sensing the "weather" of this distant ghost. It wasn't a diffuse sorrow. It was a focused, howling gale from a single point. North-west. Beyond the lake's protecting mists, beyond the forest. It came from a place that felt… high. And artificially still. A prison on a mountain.
"The Iron Bastion," Tao's gravelly voice came from behind them. He had approached, drawn by the disturbance. "It has to be. A prison-fortress of the Stone-Serpent Sect. They lock away their failures and their enemies in cells that dampen all qi. They throw away the key."
"This is no mere prisoner," Wen said, her voice tight. "This is a martial legacy, screaming from within those walls. A style utterly cut off, its last master trapped, unable to live or die properly. It is a wound in the world."
The pull intensified, a demand that was also a plea. NOTICE ME. RELEASE ME. END ME.
"It's tearing itself apart," Li Ming whispered, cold sweat on his brow. "If it dies like that, trapped… what will happen?"
"The echo will be one of pure, shattered madness," Lady Silken Death answered, her voice uncharacteristically grim. "It will not be a scroll in your archive, Keeper. It will be a storm of razors. It could lash out blindly. It could taint the other echoes. Or," she added, a hint of her old slyness returning, "it could be a weapon of unimaginable sharpness, for one brave enough to grasp the hilt."
"We cannot ignore this," Li Ming said, pushing himself upright. The peaceful rhythm of Mirror Lake felt like a dream now. The real world, with its cruelties and consequences, had just slammed into their hidden sanctuary.
"It is a Stone-Serpent fortress," Tao warned. "Even if you could get close, you are a blind boy with no combat skill. And they are already looking for you."
"I have to try," Li Ming said. The conviction surprised him. It wasn't bravery. It was the compulsion of the Keeper. This screaming style was a book being burned on a blazing flame. He was a librarian. His whole being rebelled against it.
Wen was silent for a long moment, her hand still on his arm. Finally, she sighed, a sound of reluctant acceptance. "The lake teaches stillness. But it also reflects truth. The truth is you are the Keeper, and this is your duty. We cannot teach you to fight. But we can try to prepare you to walk into a storm."
The next two days were a frantic, focused inversion of his earlier training.
Meilin took him into a patch of poisonous, thorned vines at the forest's edge. "Feel their aggression? Their desire to trap and wound? That is the aura of the Bastion. Breathe it in. Do not let its hostility become your own. Let it flow around your calm center."
Tao gave him a small, carved badger of dense ironwood. "This is not for fighting. It is to ground you. When the screaming becomes too much, hold this. Feel its solid, simple weight. Remember what is real and quiet."
Fen worked tirelessly, humming complex, dissonant chords. "The scream has a frequency. I will attune your spirit to recognize it, so it does not come as a surprise and break your harmony. It will still be awful, but you will not be shocked into panic."
Wen's training was the hardest. She had him sit by the lake while she struck a forged steel knife against a stone, creating a sudden, jarring shriek.
"The scream is an attack," she said, her voice calm over the noise. "Your first instinct will be to flinch, to build a wall. You must not. A wall can be shattered. You must be the deep lake. Let the shriek ripple across your surface and fade. Do not try to hold the sound."
Over and over, the metallic shriek assaulted his peace. At first, he jumped every time. Then, slowly, he learned to receive the sound, let it vibrate through him, and let it go, leaving his core stillness intact.
On the morning of the third day, he stood at the edge of Mirror Lake's hidden cave, where a narrow, camouflaged boat was tied. He wore simple, dark clothes provided by the villagers. The ironwood badger was in his pocket. His spirit felt both calmer and more alert, like a well-tuned instrument waiting for a difficult song.
The entire village had gathered to see him off, a quiet semicircle of warmth and worry.
"The boat will carry you to the northern reed bank," Wen said, her hand on his arm. "From there, you follow the pull. Trust it. It is the only map you have."
"Remember," Tao rumbled, "you are not going to conquer. You are going to listen. To witness. That is your power."
Meilin pressed a small pouch into his hand. "Herbs. Chew one if the spiritual pain is too great. It will blur the edges, but do not rely on it."
Fen simply hummed a single, steady, grounding note that vibrated in Li Ming's chest.
"Thank you," Li Ming said, his throat tight. "For the stillness. I'll try to bring it back."
He stepped into the boat. An old villager named Bo, who knew the hidden waterways, manned the pole. With a gentle push, they slid away from the shore, the mists closing behind them like a sigh.
The journey out was a reversal of his arrival. The peaceful channels gave way to the heavier sorrow of the Reflection waters, then to the louder rush of the main river. Bo guided the skiff to a desolate, muddy bank choked with reeds.
"The pull is that way," Bo said, his voice a dry whisper. "West and north. The land rises. Go with care, Keeper. The earth feels… watchful."
Li Ming climbed ashore. The pull was a constant, painful throb now, a compass needle lodged in his heart. He turned and offered a bow toward the skiff. Then he began to walk.
He moved through dense, old-growth forest. Using Tao's lessons, he felt the "grain" of the land, the fearful hush of prey animals, the patient, predatory stillness of rocks where snakes might bask. He was a strange, quiet thing moving through their world.
As the land sloped upward, the forest began to thin. The air grew colder, sharper. And then, he felt it.
A wall.
Not a physical one, but a spiritual barrier. A zone of deadened energy. The life here was stunted, suppressed. The birdsong ceased. The insect hum died away. It was the antithesis of Mirror Lake's vibrant quiet, this was the silence of a tomb.
The Iron Bastion.
He crouched behind a gnarled, half-dead tree at the treeline. His earth-sense, faint without Bai's borrowed power, could still feel the immense, blocky shape of the fortress carved into the mountainside ahead. It was a place of squared, harsh angles, devoid of the mountain's natural flow. And from its heart, the Screaming Blade's call was a physical pressure, making the air itself feel jagged.
He also felt the living presences. Guards. Their auras were muted by the fortress's dampening field, but they were there, patrolling the high, sheer walls, standing at the single, massive gate. They moved with the disciplined, monotonous rhythm of men performing a eternal, pointless duty.
There was no way in. The walls were fifty feet high of seamless, qi-resistant blackstone. The gate was iron-bound and guarded.
"…well, this is a fine pickle… even I couldn't stumble my way in there…"
"A direct approach is suicide," Bai confirmed. "But the scream… it comes from deep within. There must be another way. A weakness."
Li Ming closed his eyes, blocking out the terrifying immensity of the fortress. He focused solely on the scream. He didn't just feel its direction; he felt its quality.
Fen's training took over. He listened to its frequency, its texture. It wasn't emanating from the main towers or the central keep. It was lower. Deeper. It had a damp, cold, subterranean resonance.
"It's underground," he whispered. "The deepest cells."
He began to inch along the treeline, keeping the fortress's oppressive wall to his left, following the downward slope of the land. The mountain fell away more steeply here, into a rocky, mist-choked ravine.
And there, near the base of the fortress wall, almost hidden by scree and thorny bushes, he felt it, a slight draft. A whisper of air flowing out from a crack in the foundations. It carried the faint, metallic stench of rust and stagnant water, and the unmistakable, concentrated essence of the scream.
An ancient drain. Or an air vent for the deepest dungeon.
It was a narrow, horizontal slit in the blackstone, no more than two feet high. The edges were slimy and rotten. It was a tight, disgusting, terrifying squeeze.
It was also his only way in.
"You cannot be serious," Lady Silken Death hissed. "Crawl into the bowels of your enemy's fortress? Like a rat?"
"The scream is in there," Li Ming said aloud, his voice steadier than he felt. "The Keeper goes to the echo. No matter where it is."
He chewed one of Meilin's herbs. A bitter, numbing coolness spread through his mind, taking the sharpest edges off the scream and his own fear. He took the ironwood badger from his pocket, clutched it in one hand, and got down on his stomach.
With a final breath of the cold, free air, he pushed himself headfirst into the dark, stinking crack, into the heart of the Iron Bastion.