The Lantern Grave had fallen silent.

  Ash from forgotten incense drifted like ghost-smoke above the shrine where Zhao Wei stood, her fingers bloodied and calloused from the ancient blade she had just drawn across her palm. The oath had been made not aloud, but in the language that mattered more: blood and memory.

  Feng Ren watched from the shadow of a broken lantern, his mouth parted slightly as if to speak but never daring to. He, for once, had nothing clever to say. No smooth lines. No riddles with half-truths. Only his eyes flicked, watching her hands shake.

  "You shouldn't have done that," he said finally. "The gods here don't barter fairly."

  "They never did," Zhao Wei whispered.

  Three nights ago, the message had arrived.

  A letter folded into the wings of a dead moth, pressed between the pages of the Dust Sutra she kept beneath her pillow. The handwriting was too familiar, penned in the curve of a style no child should ever know.

  Wei Ning's handwriting.

  It was unsigned, of course, but the message was clear:

  You know where to meet me. Come alone. Midnight on the day of the Ashen Bell.

  Zhao Wei hadn't slept since. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the night of fire and betrayal, felt the steel in her spine again, heard the voices call her a traitor, a monster, a ghost dressed in mortal skin.

  And now someone who knew that ghost had come knocking.

  She went alone. Of course she did. Feng Ren followed anyway, the weasel. She'd heard him tripping over vines three steps behind her, and instead of confronting him, she let him tag along like a pesky ghost that wouldn't take a hint.

  The Lantern Grave had once been a holy place, before war twisted it into a mass tomb. Now the spirits slumbered here, under rusted prayer bells and sunken statues of forgotten deities.

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  And now, a voice stirred them.

  "Wei Ning," the figure said as she emerged from the shrine's black mouth.

  A woman in a crimson veil, her voice honeyed with rot. Her face was hidden, but Zhao Wei knew that gait—too proud, too elegant for a common thief or spy.

  "You're not dead enough," the woman said.

  "Neither are you," Zhao Wei replied.

  They circled each other, not as strangers, but as old warriors who had once shared the same battle plans, the same cups of tea, the same grudges. The woman in the veil pulled back her hood, revealing a face half-scorched by spirit fire. One eye was a pit of gold. The other, glass.

  "You were the only one I thought would understand," she murmured.

  "And you're the only one I wish had died sooner," Zhao Wei replied, her voice soft, almost kind.

  Feng Ren made a noise. Zhao Wei waved him off like swatting a fly.

  The woman stepped closer. "You know why I came."

  "To test if I still bleed."

  "To offer you a bargain."

  The word tasted like poison.

  The woman reached into her robes and tossed a small scroll at Zhao Wei's feet. It unfurled in the breeze, revealing a crest she hadn’t seen in years—the banner of the Ember Court. Burned. But not extinguished.

  "There are still remnants," the woman said. "But they need a leader. A ghost. A myth."

  "You want Wei Ning."

  "I want the legend."

  Zhao Wei knelt, picking up the scroll. Her fingers trembled.

  "You came with poison in your tongue and flattery in your sleeve," she said. "What's the cost?"

  The woman leaned in. "Your silence. Until the Flame rises again."

  Zhao Wei laughed. And for the first time in days, it was real. It startled even Feng Ren, who nearly dropped the gourd of spirit-sake he'd been sneaking from.

  "You think I will be your blade, your mask? That I will play the part of the dragon while you whisper behind the veil?"

  "You'll do it," the woman said. "Because I know what he told you before he died."

  Everything froze.

  Zhao Wei's heart became stone. Her hands became fire.

  "You know nothing."

  "I know enough to make your soul burn."

  A silence passed, stretched thin like a string ready to snap.

  And then Zhao Wei smiled.

  "Then bargain, witch. Speak your terms."

  The deal was struck with spirit-silver and wax blood. Names whispered over broken incense. Feng Ren tried to offer jokes to cut the tension, but even he fell silent when the veiled woman left a red mark across Zhao Wei's shoulder, binding the oath to the old laws.

  "What happens if you break it?" he asked once they were alone.

  "Then I burn," Zhao Wei said. "Again."

  Feng Ren blinked. "You have a habit of making bad friends."

  She turned, her expression unreadable.

  "And you're one of them."

  He grinned. "Lucky me."

  But deep down, Zhao Wei felt the bite of the bargain settle into her bones. The fox had entered the serpent’s den.

  And now, the dance began anew.