The Rescue
The basement stairs spiraled downward like a thread pulled too tight. Wei Chen counted each step—twenty-three, twenty-four—and felt the curse coil in his chest like a snake waking from winter sleep. The air grew thick with the smell of dye and something else, something metallic and sweet, like old blood stirred into honey.
He had left Mo Yan standing in the guest room, arms crossed, jaw set like stone. "Too dangerous," the guard had said. "We don't know the layout. We don't know how many guards she keeps. We don't even know if the boy is still alive."
"We know he's alive because I can feel him," Wei Chen had replied, pressing a hand to his own chest. "The silk they're making him weave—I can feel it screaming. Every thread. Every heartbeat trapped in the loom."
Mo Yan had not moved. "Then we plan. We wait until nightfall. We gather information first."
"By then, he'll be dead. Or worse—finished. Once they complete a soul-silk bolt, they don't keep the weaver alive. They recycle them." Wei Chen had pulled on his coat, the one made of rough cotton that didn't trigger his curse. "I'm going. You can follow or stay. I don't care."
That was a lie. He cared. He cared too much, and that was exactly why he had to go alone.
The twenty-fifth step ended in a narrow corridor lined with doors. Each door had a small window at eye level, and through each window, Wei Chen saw the same thing: a loom, a weaver, and silk that pulsed like a living heart. The weavers were children, most of them, their faces blank and their hands moving in mechanical rhythm. Their eyes did not blink. Their mouths did not move.
Wei Chen pressed his palm against the nearest door and felt the curse flare—not just the trapped souls in the silk, but something else. A thread of recognition. His father's voice, faint and distant: *Don't trust the jade token.*
He pulled his hand away and kept walking.
Little Lin was in the last room at the end of the corridor. Wei Chen knew it before he saw the boy's face through the window. The curse pulled him forward like a fish on a line, and when he looked through the glass, he saw the young weaver sitting at a loom twice his size, his fingers dancing across the warp and weft with inhuman speed. His eyes were open but empty. His lips were cracked and bleeding.
The silk on his loom was the color of a bruise—deep purple shot through with threads of black. It shimmered even in the dim light, and Wei Chen felt his skin crawl as if a thousand ants were marching across his bones.
He tried the door. Locked.
He pulled a hairpin from his coat—a trick his father had taught him for opening cargo chests—and worked the lock. The mechanism was simple, almost insultingly so. Lady Feng clearly did not expect anyone to reach this deep into her domain.
The door swung open with a creak that sounded like a scream.
Little Lin did not look up. His hands kept moving, pulling threads, weaving patterns that Wei Chen could not follow. The boy's fingers were raw, the nails worn down to the quick. Blood stained the silk where his hands passed over it, and the fabric drank the blood like a thirsty mouth.
"Lin," Wei Chen said softly. "Little Lin. It's me. The merchant from the garden."
No response. The loom clicked and clacked, a sound like bones rattling in a dry riverbed.
Wei Chen stepped closer. The curse screamed in his chest, and he forced himself to breathe through it. He had to touch the silk. It was the only way to break the trance.
He reached out and pressed his fingers to the bruise-colored fabric.
The vision hit him like a blade between the ribs.
He was standing in a field of white silk, endless and flat, stretching to a horizon that did not exist. The sky above was the color of old paper. There were no clouds, no sun, no shadows. Just the white and the silence.
Then the voices began.
*Weave.*
*Pull the thread.*
*Don't stop.*
*Don't think.*
*Don't feel.*
*Weave.*
They were not speaking to him. They were speaking through him, around him, inside him. He felt the compulsion settle into his bones like a second skeleton, and for a terrible moment, he understood what it meant to be a weaver in Lady Feng's basement. The silk did not just trap souls. It replaced them. It filled the empty spaces in a person's mind with thread, with pattern, with the endless command to *weave.*
Wei Chen wrenched his hand away and stumbled backward, gasping. The curse had never felt like that before. It had always been a warning, a barrier, a wall between him and the silk. But this—this was an invitation. The silk wanted him. It recognized him as kin.
He looked at Little Lin and saw the boy's fingers slowing. The trance was breaking, but slowly, like honey dripping from a spoon.
"Lin," Wei Chen said again, louder this time. "I'm going to take you out of here. But I need you to stop weaving. Can you do that? Can you stop?"
Little Lin's hands twitched. His fingers hovered over the warp threads, trembling. A single tear rolled down his cheek, cutting a clean path through the grime.
"I can't," he whispered. "The silk won't let me."
Wei Chen looked at the loom. The bruise-colored fabric had stopped shimmering. It was watching him. He could feel its attention like a weight on his chest, a pressure behind his eyes. The silk was alive, and it knew he was trying to steal its weaver.
"Then I'll break the loom," Wei Chen said.
He reached for the main beam, the thick wooden bar that held the warp threads taut. His curse flared as his fingers brushed the silk wrapped around the beam, and he gritted his teeth and pushed through the pain. The wood was old, dry, cracked in places. If he could find the right angle, he could snap it.
A hand grabbed his wrist.
Wei Chen spun around, ready to fight, and found himself staring into Mo Yan's eyes.
The guard's face was unreadable, but his grip was iron. He had followed after all. Of course he had.
"I told you to wait," Mo Yan said.
"I told you I didn't care."
"You're going to kill yourself trying to break that loom. The silk is reinforced. It's not just wood—it's woven through with soul-thread. If you break it, the backlash will hit you first."
Wei Chen pulled his wrist free. "Then what do you suggest? We leave him here?"
Mo Yan looked at Little Lin, at the boy's bloody fingers and empty eyes. Something flickered in his gaze—not pity, exactly, but recognition. He had seen that look before. In soldiers who had been broken by war. In men who had lost everything and kept fighting because they didn't know how to stop.
"No," Mo Yan said. "We take the weaver. But we take the silk too."
He drew his knife—a curved blade with a jade handle, the same jade as the token he carried. He knelt beside the loom and began cutting the warp threads, one by one, with surgical precision. Each thread snapped with a sound like a plucked harp string, and each snap sent a shudder through the room.
The bruise-colored silk writhed. It twisted and curled, trying to reattach itself, but Mo Yan was faster. His hands moved with the practiced ease of a man who had spent years cutting through things that did not want to be cut.
Wei Chen watched, transfixed. The curse was still screaming, but it was a different kind of scream now—not a warning, but a lament. The silk was dying, and it knew it.
When the last thread was cut, the fabric went limp. The color drained from it, leaving behind a dull gray cloth that smelled of dust and old flowers. Little Lin collapsed forward, and Wei Chen caught him before he hit the floor.
The boy was light, too light, his bones sharp beneath his skin. He was shivering, his teeth chattering, his eyes wide and wet.
"Thank you," he whispered. "Thank you thank you thank you—"
"Save your strength," Wei Chen said, lifting him onto his shoulder. "We're not out yet."
Mo Yan stood, wiping his blade on his sleeve. "We have maybe three minutes before Lady Feng realizes one of her looms has gone silent. The stairs are the only exit, and they'll be guarded by the time we reach the top."
"Then we don't use the stairs."
Wei Chen looked around the room. The walls were silk, of course—everything in Kumtag was silk—but the floor was stone. And stone could be broken.
He set Little Lin down and pressed his palm to the floor. The curse flared, but not as strongly as before. The stone was clean. No silk, no trapped souls, no memories. Just rock.
"Help me lift this," he said, pointing to a loose flagstone near the wall.
Mo Yan crouched beside him, and together they pried the stone free. Beneath it was dirt—packed, dry, but dirt nonetheless. Wei Chen began digging with his bare hands, his nails scraping against the earth, his curse humming a low, steady note in his chest.
"What are you doing?" Mo Yan asked.
"There's a tunnel. I felt it when we first arrived. The city is built on top of an older city, and that city had sewers. If we can reach them, we can get out without going through the garden."
Mo Yan stared at him for a long moment. Then he knelt and began digging too.
They worked in silence, side by side, their hands moving in tandem. Little Lin sat against the wall, watching them with dazed eyes, his lips moving in a silent prayer.
The dirt gave way to rubble, and the rubble gave way to darkness. A hole opened beneath them, wide enough for a man to squeeze through, and the air that rose from it was cool and damp and smelled of rot.
Wei Chen lowered himself first, his feet finding purchase on a crumbling ledge. He reached up and took Little Lin from Mo Yan, setting the boy down gently. Then Mo Yan dropped down beside him, landing with a soft thud.
Above them, they heard footsteps. Heavy, measured, deliberate. Lady Feng's voice drifted down, sweet as poisoned honey.
"My guests have left the party early. How rude."
Mo Yan grabbed Wei Chen's arm and pulled him into the darkness. They ran through the tunnels, stumbling over debris, splashing through stagnant water, following the pull of Wei Chen's curse toward the edge of the city, toward the desert, toward anywhere that was not here.
Little Lin clung to Wei Chen's coat, his breath ragged, his heart pounding against Wei Chen's back.
Behind them, the footsteps grew fainter.
But they did not stop.
He had left Mo Yan standing in the guest room, arms crossed, jaw set like stone. "Too dangerous," the guard had said. "We don't know the layout. We don't know how many guards she keeps. We don't even know if the boy is still alive."
"We know he's alive because I can feel him," Wei Chen had replied, pressing a hand to his own chest. "The silk they're making him weave—I can feel it screaming. Every thread. Every heartbeat trapped in the loom."
Mo Yan had not moved. "Then we plan. We wait until nightfall. We gather information first."
"By then, he'll be dead. Or worse—finished. Once they complete a soul-silk bolt, they don't keep the weaver alive. They recycle them." Wei Chen had pulled on his coat, the one made of rough cotton that didn't trigger his curse. "I'm going. You can follow or stay. I don't care."
That was a lie. He cared. He cared too much, and that was exactly why he had to go alone.
The twenty-fifth step ended in a narrow corridor lined with doors. Each door had a small window at eye level, and through each window, Wei Chen saw the same thing: a loom, a weaver, and silk that pulsed like a living heart. The weavers were children, most of them, their faces blank and their hands moving in mechanical rhythm. Their eyes did not blink. Their mouths did not move.
Wei Chen pressed his palm against the nearest door and felt the curse flare—not just the trapped souls in the silk, but something else. A thread of recognition. His father's voice, faint and distant: *Don't trust the jade token.*
He pulled his hand away and kept walking.
Little Lin was in the last room at the end of the corridor. Wei Chen knew it before he saw the boy's face through the window. The curse pulled him forward like a fish on a line, and when he looked through the glass, he saw the young weaver sitting at a loom twice his size, his fingers dancing across the warp and weft with inhuman speed. His eyes were open but empty. His lips were cracked and bleeding.
The silk on his loom was the color of a bruise—deep purple shot through with threads of black. It shimmered even in the dim light, and Wei Chen felt his skin crawl as if a thousand ants were marching across his bones.
He tried the door. Locked.
He pulled a hairpin from his coat—a trick his father had taught him for opening cargo chests—and worked the lock. The mechanism was simple, almost insultingly so. Lady Feng clearly did not expect anyone to reach this deep into her domain.
The door swung open with a creak that sounded like a scream.
Little Lin did not look up. His hands kept moving, pulling threads, weaving patterns that Wei Chen could not follow. The boy's fingers were raw, the nails worn down to the quick. Blood stained the silk where his hands passed over it, and the fabric drank the blood like a thirsty mouth.
"Lin," Wei Chen said softly. "Little Lin. It's me. The merchant from the garden."
No response. The loom clicked and clacked, a sound like bones rattling in a dry riverbed.
Wei Chen stepped closer. The curse screamed in his chest, and he forced himself to breathe through it. He had to touch the silk. It was the only way to break the trance.
He reached out and pressed his fingers to the bruise-colored fabric.
The vision hit him like a blade between the ribs.
He was standing in a field of white silk, endless and flat, stretching to a horizon that did not exist. The sky above was the color of old paper. There were no clouds, no sun, no shadows. Just the white and the silence.
Then the voices began.
*Weave.*
*Pull the thread.*
*Don't stop.*
*Don't think.*
*Don't feel.*
*Weave.*
They were not speaking to him. They were speaking through him, around him, inside him. He felt the compulsion settle into his bones like a second skeleton, and for a terrible moment, he understood what it meant to be a weaver in Lady Feng's basement. The silk did not just trap souls. It replaced them. It filled the empty spaces in a person's mind with thread, with pattern, with the endless command to *weave.*
Wei Chen wrenched his hand away and stumbled backward, gasping. The curse had never felt like that before. It had always been a warning, a barrier, a wall between him and the silk. But this—this was an invitation. The silk wanted him. It recognized him as kin.
He looked at Little Lin and saw the boy's fingers slowing. The trance was breaking, but slowly, like honey dripping from a spoon.
"Lin," Wei Chen said again, louder this time. "I'm going to take you out of here. But I need you to stop weaving. Can you do that? Can you stop?"
Little Lin's hands twitched. His fingers hovered over the warp threads, trembling. A single tear rolled down his cheek, cutting a clean path through the grime.
"I can't," he whispered. "The silk won't let me."
Wei Chen looked at the loom. The bruise-colored fabric had stopped shimmering. It was watching him. He could feel its attention like a weight on his chest, a pressure behind his eyes. The silk was alive, and it knew he was trying to steal its weaver.
"Then I'll break the loom," Wei Chen said.
He reached for the main beam, the thick wooden bar that held the warp threads taut. His curse flared as his fingers brushed the silk wrapped around the beam, and he gritted his teeth and pushed through the pain. The wood was old, dry, cracked in places. If he could find the right angle, he could snap it.
A hand grabbed his wrist.
Wei Chen spun around, ready to fight, and found himself staring into Mo Yan's eyes.
The guard's face was unreadable, but his grip was iron. He had followed after all. Of course he had.
"I told you to wait," Mo Yan said.
"I told you I didn't care."
"You're going to kill yourself trying to break that loom. The silk is reinforced. It's not just wood—it's woven through with soul-thread. If you break it, the backlash will hit you first."
Wei Chen pulled his wrist free. "Then what do you suggest? We leave him here?"
Mo Yan looked at Little Lin, at the boy's bloody fingers and empty eyes. Something flickered in his gaze—not pity, exactly, but recognition. He had seen that look before. In soldiers who had been broken by war. In men who had lost everything and kept fighting because they didn't know how to stop.
"No," Mo Yan said. "We take the weaver. But we take the silk too."
He drew his knife—a curved blade with a jade handle, the same jade as the token he carried. He knelt beside the loom and began cutting the warp threads, one by one, with surgical precision. Each thread snapped with a sound like a plucked harp string, and each snap sent a shudder through the room.
The bruise-colored silk writhed. It twisted and curled, trying to reattach itself, but Mo Yan was faster. His hands moved with the practiced ease of a man who had spent years cutting through things that did not want to be cut.
Wei Chen watched, transfixed. The curse was still screaming, but it was a different kind of scream now—not a warning, but a lament. The silk was dying, and it knew it.
When the last thread was cut, the fabric went limp. The color drained from it, leaving behind a dull gray cloth that smelled of dust and old flowers. Little Lin collapsed forward, and Wei Chen caught him before he hit the floor.
The boy was light, too light, his bones sharp beneath his skin. He was shivering, his teeth chattering, his eyes wide and wet.
"Thank you," he whispered. "Thank you thank you thank you—"
"Save your strength," Wei Chen said, lifting him onto his shoulder. "We're not out yet."
Mo Yan stood, wiping his blade on his sleeve. "We have maybe three minutes before Lady Feng realizes one of her looms has gone silent. The stairs are the only exit, and they'll be guarded by the time we reach the top."
"Then we don't use the stairs."
Wei Chen looked around the room. The walls were silk, of course—everything in Kumtag was silk—but the floor was stone. And stone could be broken.
He set Little Lin down and pressed his palm to the floor. The curse flared, but not as strongly as before. The stone was clean. No silk, no trapped souls, no memories. Just rock.
"Help me lift this," he said, pointing to a loose flagstone near the wall.
Mo Yan crouched beside him, and together they pried the stone free. Beneath it was dirt—packed, dry, but dirt nonetheless. Wei Chen began digging with his bare hands, his nails scraping against the earth, his curse humming a low, steady note in his chest.
"What are you doing?" Mo Yan asked.
"There's a tunnel. I felt it when we first arrived. The city is built on top of an older city, and that city had sewers. If we can reach them, we can get out without going through the garden."
Mo Yan stared at him for a long moment. Then he knelt and began digging too.
They worked in silence, side by side, their hands moving in tandem. Little Lin sat against the wall, watching them with dazed eyes, his lips moving in a silent prayer.
The dirt gave way to rubble, and the rubble gave way to darkness. A hole opened beneath them, wide enough for a man to squeeze through, and the air that rose from it was cool and damp and smelled of rot.
Wei Chen lowered himself first, his feet finding purchase on a crumbling ledge. He reached up and took Little Lin from Mo Yan, setting the boy down gently. Then Mo Yan dropped down beside him, landing with a soft thud.
Above them, they heard footsteps. Heavy, measured, deliberate. Lady Feng's voice drifted down, sweet as poisoned honey.
"My guests have left the party early. How rude."
Mo Yan grabbed Wei Chen's arm and pulled him into the darkness. They ran through the tunnels, stumbling over debris, splashing through stagnant water, following the pull of Wei Chen's curse toward the edge of the city, toward the desert, toward anywhere that was not here.
Little Lin clung to Wei Chen's coat, his breath ragged, his heart pounding against Wei Chen's back.
Behind them, the footsteps grew fainter.
But they did not stop.