The bone-brush didn't just sit in his hand; it hummed against his pulse, a cold, rhythmic vibration that felt like a heartbeat made of ice.
Lu Shen scrambled down the obsidian slopes of the Black Needle Crags.
Every time his palm touched the jagged rock, he expected the bite of stone. Instead, the obsidian seemed to yield. It didn't break; it simply... smoothed over where he touched it, as if the very atoms were bowing out of his way.
He reached a stagnant pool of rainwater at the base of the mountain and stopped.
The moons were bright enough to act as a mirror. Lu Shen leaned over the water, and the breath hitched in his throat.
The amber irises he'd inherited from his mother were gone.
In their place were two twin pits of absolute, matte black. No whites, no pupils, no reflection of the moon. Just a hollow void that seemed to suck the light out of the air.
"I look like a demon," he whispered.
His voice sounded different. It didn't carry. It was flat, as if the air around him was absorbing the sound before it could echo.
BONG.
The Bell of Ancestral Lament shook the valley again.
The sound was frantic now. It wasn't the slow toll of a funeral; it was the alarm of a house on fire.
He had to get back. If he was missing during a lockdown, he wouldn't just be a suspect—he would be a target.
Lu Shen ripped a strip of fabric from his inner tunic. It was rough, cheap silk, but it would have to do.
He tied the cloth around his head, covering his eyes. The world didn't go dark.
That was the terrifying part.
The fabric was opaque, thick enough to blind any normal man. But to Lu Shen, the blindfold didn't exist. He could see right through it, except the world was no longer made of colors and shadows.
The trees were made of thin, spindly strokes of grey ink.
The ground was a messy wash of brown characters.
And in the distance, the Lu Clan estate was a towering fortress of golden calligraphy, glowing so brightly it burned.
He began to run.
He didn't stumble. He didn't trip. He navigated the forest with the grace of a predator, seeing the "Script" of every root and stone before his feet ever touched them.
As he reached the back wall of the estate, he saw a massive, glowing golden aura pacing near the servant's entrance.
It was Iron-Fist Kang.
Kang was a Stage 2 'Cursive Flow' cultivator. To the rest of the world, he was a mountain of muscle. To Lu Shen's new eyes, he was a walking paragraph of violence.
Two words glowed with particular intensity on Kang's chest: [UNYIELDING] and [BRUTE].
"Who's there?" Kang roared, his hand going to the hilt of his broadsword.
The sword flared with a crimson light—a 'Sharpness Verse' activated by his Qi.
Lu Shen froze against the stone wall. He was ten feet away. The wind was blowing toward Kang.
"I said, show yourself!"
Kang stepped forward, his boots crushing the gravel. To Lu Shen, each step looked like a heavy ink-blot hitting a clean page.
Lu Shen's hand instinctively went to the bone-brush hidden in his sleeve.
As his fingers brushed the bone, the world changed.
The golden words on Kang's chest flickered. The word [UNYIELDING] suddenly looked fragile, like a line of wet ink that hadn't dried yet.
I could smudge it, Lu Shen realized.
The thought came with a surge of cold hunger. If he touched that word with the brush, the concept of 'Unyielding' would vanish from Kang's body. His bones would turn to jelly. His heart would forget how to beat.
"It's just me, Captain," Lu Shen said, stepping out of the shadows.
He kept his head down, the blindfold prominent. He slumped his shoulders, forcing himself to look like the frail, useless boy the clan expected.
Kang stopped, the crimson glow of his sword dimming slightly. "Lu Shen? What the hell are you doing out during a lockdown?"
"The bells," Lu Shen stammered, his voice trembling—partly from act, partly from the freezing energy in his blood. "I was in the woods... gathering herbs for my sister. I got lost in the dark. I tripped. My eyes... I hit my head."
He pointed to the blindfold.
Kang let out a disgusted snort. "Gathering herbs? Your sister is being honored by the Temple, and you're out here playing doctor? You're a disgrace to the bloodline."
Kang walked up to him, the heat from his golden aura making Lu Shen's skin crawl.
The guard grabbed Lu Shen by the collar, lifting him off the ground.
"The Ancestral Tablet has been desecrated, boy. Someone or something just wiped out half the clan's history. If I find out you were anywhere near the Hall..."
Kang paused. He leaned in, his face inches from the blindfold.
"Why do you smell like old ink and death?"
Lu Shen's heart hammered against his ribs. The bone-brush was vibrating against his wrist, screaming at him to strike.
Smudge him. Erase him. Make the world quiet.
"I... I fell into the Black Needle Crags," Lu Shen whispered. "The Wild Ink must have stained me."
Kang's eyes widened slightly. He shoved Lu Shen away, wiping his hand on his tunic as if he'd touched a leper.
"The Crags? You're lucky you're too insignificant for the energy to even bother killing you. Get inside. If I see you out here again, I won't wait for the Temple to execute you. I'll do it myself."
Lu Shen didn't wait. He scrambled toward the servant's quarters, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
He didn't stop until he reached his room—a closet-sized space filled with half-finished scrolls.
He locked the door and slumped against it, pulling the blindfold off.
The room was dim, but to his eyes, it was a chaotic mess of grey script. He looked at his desk, at a poem he had written the day before.
The words were dead. They were just ink on paper.
But then he looked at his own hand.
The black ink was spreading. It had reached his elbow now, a web of dark veins that looked like a curse.
A sudden, sharp scream pierced the air from the main courtyard.
It was Lu Bing.
Lu Shen lunged for the window. Across the garden, in the Moon-Glow Pavilion, he saw her.
His sister was strapped to a white jade table. Around her, four Priests of the Temple of Fate were chanting, their voices creating a physical dome of golden light.
They weren't treating her. They were drawing lines on her skin with needles made of star-glass.
They were preparing to harvest her Verse.
Lu Shen gripped the windowsill so hard the wood began to crumble into grey dust.
He didn't have years to cultivate. He didn't have a Sect to back him. He didn't even have a soul that the world recognized.
He looked at the bone-brush, then at the golden dome of the Temple Priests.
"You want to write her ending?" Lu Shen whispered, his black eyes depthless.
"I'll give you a blank page instead."