The Sect’s Treasury
Shen Kui sat in the hollow for three days, carving.
The knife was dull—a chipped flake of obsidian he’d picked up in the volcanic rift—but it cut deep enough. He traced characters into the skin of his left forearm, one line at a time, letting the blood bead and dry before he started the next stroke. *Mother. Mei. Monastery. Bell.* Each word anchored a memory he could feel slipping, like water through a cracked cup.
The stone pulsed against his ribs. *You waste time. The heart calls.*
“The heart can wait,” Shen Kui muttered. He finished the last character—*Bell*—and wiped the blade on his sleeve. The wound stung, but the sting was good. It meant he was still here, still himself.
He’d forgotten the color of his mother’s eyes. He remembered she had eyes, and that they’d looked at him with something soft, but the shade was gone. Brown? Black? He couldn’t picture it. The stone had taken that detail first, like a thief stealing coins from a sleeping man.
He carved another word: *Eyes.*
On the fourth morning, he left the gorge.
The stone guided him now, whether he wanted it to or not. It pulled at his chest like a lodestone, a constant tug toward the northeast, where the peaks grew sharper and the sky pressed lower. He’d seen the constellation of shards after absorbing the bell—dozens of them, scattered across the Shattered Peaks like stars fallen to earth. Most were dim, buried deep in dead rock or sealed in forgotten vaults. But one burned brighter than the rest, a steady beacon that the stone craved with a hunger that made his teeth ache.
*That one,* the stone whispered. *That one will make us strong.*
Shen Kui didn’t answer. He’d learned not to argue with the voice. Arguing gave it purchase, gave it words to twist. Instead, he walked, and he carved, and he fed the stone on the thin qi that seeped from the mountain’s bones.
The journey took six days.
The beacon led him to a city carved into the face of a cliff—a sect fortress called the Jade Gate Repository, where the Heaven-Severing Sect stored its treasures. Shen Kui had heard of the Heaven-Severing Sect. Everyone in the Shattered Peaks had. They were one of the few orthodox sects that still held power, their elders squatting on the last functioning spirit veins like dragons on hoards of gold. They didn’t recruit from the stone-breaker camps. They didn’t recruit from anywhere Shen Kui had ever been.
He watched the fortress from a ridge half a mile away, lying flat on his belly with his chin resting on his folded arms. The stone pulsed eagerly in his chest, and he pressed a hand to his sternum to quiet it.
The Repository was a maze of terraces and pagodas, each level carved into the cliff with precision that spoke of generations of labor. Guards patrolled the outer walls—disciples in blue robes, their steps light and their auras bright. Foundation Establishment, most of them. A few Core Formation elders sat in meditation pavilions, their presence like heat shimmering off stone.
The shard was somewhere inside. Shen Kui could feel it, a cold knot of resonance in the belly of the mountain. It was small, no larger than his thumb, but it burned with a hunger that matched his own.
*We can take it,* the stone said. *We are stronger than them.*
“We’re not,” Shen Kui said. “There are three elders in there. Maybe more. One wrong step and we’re dead.”
*Then we will die together.*
“I’d rather not.”
He spent the next day watching. He learned the guard rotations, the patrol routes, the moments when the disciples’ attention wandered. He noted the weak points in the outer wall—a section of mortar that had crumbled near the base, a drainage grate that led into the lower levels. He memorized the positions of the elders and timed their meditation cycles.
On the second night, he moved.
The grate was rusted and narrow, barely wide enough for his shoulders. He had to wriggle through on his belly, scraping his back against the stone, the taste of iron and old water filling his mouth. The drainage tunnel sloped downward, then leveled out into a dark corridor lined with pipes. The air was damp and cold, and the stone’s pulse was the only sound.
*Left,* it said. *Then down.*
Shen Kui followed. The tunnel opened into a storage chamber—jars of spirit herbs, stacks of beast cores, crates of talismans. The qi in the room was thick enough to taste, sweet and cloying. The stone drank it greedily, and Shen Kui felt a surge of strength that made his vision sharpen.
*More.*
“Focus,” he whispered. “Where’s the shard?”
The stone pulled him toward a door at the far end of the chamber. It was reinforced with iron bands and sealed with a formation—a web of glowing lines that hummed with power. Shen Kui studied it. He’d learned a little about formations from Mei, enough to recognize the pattern. It was a detection ward, keyed to qi signatures. Anyone who passed through without the correct frequency would trigger an alarm.
He pressed his palm to the formation and let the stone resonate. The shard inside the treasury answered, its frequency bleeding through the stone and into the ward. The lines flickered, then stilled.
*We are the same song,* the stone said. *It knows us.*
Shen Kui pushed the door open.
The treasury was a single room, circular and domed, with shelves carved into the walls. Each shelf held a treasure—a sword that hummed with frost, a jade scroll that glowed with inner light, a vial of liquid that swirled like captured starlight. But Shen Kui’s eyes went straight to the center of the room, where a pedestal of black stone held a single object.
A shard.
It was a fragment of obsidian, no larger than his thumb, but it pulsed with a light that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than the surface. The stone in his chest sang in response, a high, keening note that made his bones vibrate.
*Take it.*
Shen Kui stepped forward. His hand reached for the shard—
The floor dropped.
He fell three feet before his reflexes caught him, slamming his palms against the edge of the pit that had opened beneath his feet. He hung there, legs dangling, heart hammering. The pit was deep—he couldn’t see the bottom—and the walls were lined with spikes, their tips glistening with something wet.
The stone pulsed. *Trap.*
“I noticed,” Shen Kui growled. He pulled himself up, rolling onto solid ground just as a bell began to ring.
Not the monastery’s bell. An alarm bell, sharp and insistent, echoing through the stone. Footsteps pounded in the corridors outside. Voices shouted orders.
The stone had done this.
*You are too slow,* it said. *I made you move.*
“You made me trigger the trap.”
*I made you move. Now fight.*
Shen Kui didn’t have time to argue. He grabbed the shard from the pedestal—it was cold, so cold it burned—and shoved it into his pack. The stone absorbed it instantly, and a new wave of power flooded through him, hot and hungry and wild. His meridians screamed. His vision went white.
Then the door burst open, and a disciple in blue robes stepped through, sword drawn.
“Intruder!” the disciple shouted. “In the treasury!”
Shen Kui moved before he thought. The stone fed him speed, and he crossed the room in two strides, slamming his palm into the disciple’s chest. The stone drank—a single, greedy gulp—and the disciple crumpled, his qi gone, his body shriveled and empty.
Shen Kui stared at the corpse. The stone hummed with satisfaction.
*More.*
“No.”
He ran. The corridor was a blur of blue robes and flashing blades. He dodged, ducked, and let the stone guide his strikes. Each blow drained a little more qi, left a little more death in his wake. He tried to pull his punches, to wound instead of kill, but the stone wouldn’t let him. It wanted to feed.
*More. More. MORE.*
He burst out of a side door onto a terrace, the night air cold against his sweat-soaked skin. Below, the fortress was waking—torches flaring, disciples shouting, formations activating. He had seconds before they cornered him.
The stone pulsed. *Jump.*
“We’re three hundred feet up.”
*Jump. I will catch us.*
Shen Kui looked down. The rocks below were sharp and dark, waiting. He looked back. The disciples were pouring out of the door behind him, their swords gleaming.
He jumped.
The stone caught them halfway down, flaring with a light that turned the night to day. Shen Kui hit the ground hard, rolling, his ankle twisting, his ribs cracking. But he was alive. He was alive, and the stone was laughing inside his chest.
*We are free. We are strong. We will eat the sky.*
Shen Kui pushed himself to his feet, blood dripping from a cut on his forehead. He limped into the darkness, the alarm bells fading behind him.
He didn’t stop running until dawn.
When he finally collapsed, it was in a cave so deep that no light reached its walls. He sat with his back to the stone, his hands shaking, his breath ragged. The new shard had settled into his chest, joining the others, and the stone’s hunger was a constant, gnawing presence.
He pulled out his knife and carved a new word into his thigh: *Jade Gate.*
Then he carved another: *Don’t trust the stone.*
The stone pulsed, amused. *You trust me enough to carry me.*
“I don’t have a choice.”
*You always have a choice. You chose to jump.*
Shen Kui closed his eyes. The stone was right. He had chosen to jump. He had chosen to trust it, even knowing it had betrayed him in the treasury. Because the alternative—staying, fighting, dying—had been worse.
But that trust was a leash, and the stone held the other end.
He carved one more word, pressing the blade deep into the flesh of his forearm, right above the others: *Remember.*
The blood welled up, warm and red, and Shen Kui watched it drip onto the stone floor. The stone hummed softly, content, and he felt the shard inside him pulse in rhythm with his heartbeat.
He was feeding it. He was feeding it, and it was feeding him, and somewhere in the dark, the heart-shard was waiting.
*Soon,* the stone whispered. *Soon we will be whole.*
Shen Kui didn’t answer. He just kept carving.
The knife was dull—a chipped flake of obsidian he’d picked up in the volcanic rift—but it cut deep enough. He traced characters into the skin of his left forearm, one line at a time, letting the blood bead and dry before he started the next stroke. *Mother. Mei. Monastery. Bell.* Each word anchored a memory he could feel slipping, like water through a cracked cup.
The stone pulsed against his ribs. *You waste time. The heart calls.*
“The heart can wait,” Shen Kui muttered. He finished the last character—*Bell*—and wiped the blade on his sleeve. The wound stung, but the sting was good. It meant he was still here, still himself.
He’d forgotten the color of his mother’s eyes. He remembered she had eyes, and that they’d looked at him with something soft, but the shade was gone. Brown? Black? He couldn’t picture it. The stone had taken that detail first, like a thief stealing coins from a sleeping man.
He carved another word: *Eyes.*
On the fourth morning, he left the gorge.
The stone guided him now, whether he wanted it to or not. It pulled at his chest like a lodestone, a constant tug toward the northeast, where the peaks grew sharper and the sky pressed lower. He’d seen the constellation of shards after absorbing the bell—dozens of them, scattered across the Shattered Peaks like stars fallen to earth. Most were dim, buried deep in dead rock or sealed in forgotten vaults. But one burned brighter than the rest, a steady beacon that the stone craved with a hunger that made his teeth ache.
*That one,* the stone whispered. *That one will make us strong.*
Shen Kui didn’t answer. He’d learned not to argue with the voice. Arguing gave it purchase, gave it words to twist. Instead, he walked, and he carved, and he fed the stone on the thin qi that seeped from the mountain’s bones.
The journey took six days.
The beacon led him to a city carved into the face of a cliff—a sect fortress called the Jade Gate Repository, where the Heaven-Severing Sect stored its treasures. Shen Kui had heard of the Heaven-Severing Sect. Everyone in the Shattered Peaks had. They were one of the few orthodox sects that still held power, their elders squatting on the last functioning spirit veins like dragons on hoards of gold. They didn’t recruit from the stone-breaker camps. They didn’t recruit from anywhere Shen Kui had ever been.
He watched the fortress from a ridge half a mile away, lying flat on his belly with his chin resting on his folded arms. The stone pulsed eagerly in his chest, and he pressed a hand to his sternum to quiet it.
The Repository was a maze of terraces and pagodas, each level carved into the cliff with precision that spoke of generations of labor. Guards patrolled the outer walls—disciples in blue robes, their steps light and their auras bright. Foundation Establishment, most of them. A few Core Formation elders sat in meditation pavilions, their presence like heat shimmering off stone.
The shard was somewhere inside. Shen Kui could feel it, a cold knot of resonance in the belly of the mountain. It was small, no larger than his thumb, but it burned with a hunger that matched his own.
*We can take it,* the stone said. *We are stronger than them.*
“We’re not,” Shen Kui said. “There are three elders in there. Maybe more. One wrong step and we’re dead.”
*Then we will die together.*
“I’d rather not.”
He spent the next day watching. He learned the guard rotations, the patrol routes, the moments when the disciples’ attention wandered. He noted the weak points in the outer wall—a section of mortar that had crumbled near the base, a drainage grate that led into the lower levels. He memorized the positions of the elders and timed their meditation cycles.
On the second night, he moved.
The grate was rusted and narrow, barely wide enough for his shoulders. He had to wriggle through on his belly, scraping his back against the stone, the taste of iron and old water filling his mouth. The drainage tunnel sloped downward, then leveled out into a dark corridor lined with pipes. The air was damp and cold, and the stone’s pulse was the only sound.
*Left,* it said. *Then down.*
Shen Kui followed. The tunnel opened into a storage chamber—jars of spirit herbs, stacks of beast cores, crates of talismans. The qi in the room was thick enough to taste, sweet and cloying. The stone drank it greedily, and Shen Kui felt a surge of strength that made his vision sharpen.
*More.*
“Focus,” he whispered. “Where’s the shard?”
The stone pulled him toward a door at the far end of the chamber. It was reinforced with iron bands and sealed with a formation—a web of glowing lines that hummed with power. Shen Kui studied it. He’d learned a little about formations from Mei, enough to recognize the pattern. It was a detection ward, keyed to qi signatures. Anyone who passed through without the correct frequency would trigger an alarm.
He pressed his palm to the formation and let the stone resonate. The shard inside the treasury answered, its frequency bleeding through the stone and into the ward. The lines flickered, then stilled.
*We are the same song,* the stone said. *It knows us.*
Shen Kui pushed the door open.
The treasury was a single room, circular and domed, with shelves carved into the walls. Each shelf held a treasure—a sword that hummed with frost, a jade scroll that glowed with inner light, a vial of liquid that swirled like captured starlight. But Shen Kui’s eyes went straight to the center of the room, where a pedestal of black stone held a single object.
A shard.
It was a fragment of obsidian, no larger than his thumb, but it pulsed with a light that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than the surface. The stone in his chest sang in response, a high, keening note that made his bones vibrate.
*Take it.*
Shen Kui stepped forward. His hand reached for the shard—
The floor dropped.
He fell three feet before his reflexes caught him, slamming his palms against the edge of the pit that had opened beneath his feet. He hung there, legs dangling, heart hammering. The pit was deep—he couldn’t see the bottom—and the walls were lined with spikes, their tips glistening with something wet.
The stone pulsed. *Trap.*
“I noticed,” Shen Kui growled. He pulled himself up, rolling onto solid ground just as a bell began to ring.
Not the monastery’s bell. An alarm bell, sharp and insistent, echoing through the stone. Footsteps pounded in the corridors outside. Voices shouted orders.
The stone had done this.
*You are too slow,* it said. *I made you move.*
“You made me trigger the trap.”
*I made you move. Now fight.*
Shen Kui didn’t have time to argue. He grabbed the shard from the pedestal—it was cold, so cold it burned—and shoved it into his pack. The stone absorbed it instantly, and a new wave of power flooded through him, hot and hungry and wild. His meridians screamed. His vision went white.
Then the door burst open, and a disciple in blue robes stepped through, sword drawn.
“Intruder!” the disciple shouted. “In the treasury!”
Shen Kui moved before he thought. The stone fed him speed, and he crossed the room in two strides, slamming his palm into the disciple’s chest. The stone drank—a single, greedy gulp—and the disciple crumpled, his qi gone, his body shriveled and empty.
Shen Kui stared at the corpse. The stone hummed with satisfaction.
*More.*
“No.”
He ran. The corridor was a blur of blue robes and flashing blades. He dodged, ducked, and let the stone guide his strikes. Each blow drained a little more qi, left a little more death in his wake. He tried to pull his punches, to wound instead of kill, but the stone wouldn’t let him. It wanted to feed.
*More. More. MORE.*
He burst out of a side door onto a terrace, the night air cold against his sweat-soaked skin. Below, the fortress was waking—torches flaring, disciples shouting, formations activating. He had seconds before they cornered him.
The stone pulsed. *Jump.*
“We’re three hundred feet up.”
*Jump. I will catch us.*
Shen Kui looked down. The rocks below were sharp and dark, waiting. He looked back. The disciples were pouring out of the door behind him, their swords gleaming.
He jumped.
The stone caught them halfway down, flaring with a light that turned the night to day. Shen Kui hit the ground hard, rolling, his ankle twisting, his ribs cracking. But he was alive. He was alive, and the stone was laughing inside his chest.
*We are free. We are strong. We will eat the sky.*
Shen Kui pushed himself to his feet, blood dripping from a cut on his forehead. He limped into the darkness, the alarm bells fading behind him.
He didn’t stop running until dawn.
When he finally collapsed, it was in a cave so deep that no light reached its walls. He sat with his back to the stone, his hands shaking, his breath ragged. The new shard had settled into his chest, joining the others, and the stone’s hunger was a constant, gnawing presence.
He pulled out his knife and carved a new word into his thigh: *Jade Gate.*
Then he carved another: *Don’t trust the stone.*
The stone pulsed, amused. *You trust me enough to carry me.*
“I don’t have a choice.”
*You always have a choice. You chose to jump.*
Shen Kui closed his eyes. The stone was right. He had chosen to jump. He had chosen to trust it, even knowing it had betrayed him in the treasury. Because the alternative—staying, fighting, dying—had been worse.
But that trust was a leash, and the stone held the other end.
He carved one more word, pressing the blade deep into the flesh of his forearm, right above the others: *Remember.*
The blood welled up, warm and red, and Shen Kui watched it drip onto the stone floor. The stone hummed softly, content, and he felt the shard inside him pulse in rhythm with his heartbeat.
He was feeding it. He was feeding it, and it was feeding him, and somewhere in the dark, the heart-shard was waiting.
*Soon,* the stone whispered. *Soon we will be whole.*
Shen Kui didn’t answer. He just kept carving.