["A Way Out..."]

They didn’t laugh. They didn’t jeer. They simply stood there, silent as the grave, watching with an unnerving stillness as Nao stumbled in panicked circles, trying to keep distance between herself and her flesh-hungry brother.

It would have been better if they laughed. Twisted, grim humor, however cruel, would at least have been human. But this? This wasn’t even that.

None of them even flinched, unless it was to roughly shove Nao back into the encirclement when she strayed too close to their ranks. They weren’t soldiers; they were something far worse. Perverse scientists, cold and detached, observing their gruesome experiment with morbid curiosity.

Beside me, Mei sank to the ground, her hands gripping her knees like they were the only things keeping her anchored. “I can’t watch this…” she whispered, her voice barely audible. She didn’t suggest charging in, at least. Didn’t try to convince me to do the right thing. She knew as well as I did that we wouldn’t stand a chance.

And so, it was up to me to keep watching. Not because I wanted to—gods, no—but because I had to. Somewhere in this macabre tableau, in the twisting shadow of their cruelty, lay the line. The solution to this grim, grotesque puzzle laid out before me. I just had to find it.

00:14:32…

We couldn’t fight them. That was obvious. We'd die within seconds. And running? That wasn’t much better. Not with the rest of them combing the streets like wolves on the scent of fleeing prey.

Our current hiding spot, tucked between the rubble of what had once been two buildings, felt safe enough for the moment. But it wouldn’t last. Charred logs and cracked shingles, heaped together in a fragile mess. The remnants of walls and rooftops interlaced with what I tried not to think of as someone’s arm. This narrow alleyway had shelter us for now, but the noose was already tightening.

Out in the streets, the Jiangshi had started to move with deliberation, methodically searching through nearby buildings. And each step they took brought them closer, their shuffling gait a grim countdown to discovery.

We had to act. To move. To think. And yet, I stayed frozen, eyes fixed on the scene before me, my thoughts a frantic, tangled mess.

00:14:09…

The bay area wasn’t much to look at. This town had never been a big one, but it was positioned at an important crossroads of the Ganghe River. A lifeline for trade, maybe even a glimmer of prosperity in better times. A crossroads meant to grow into something more. But dreams of prosperity had burned along with its homes. Now, it was nothing but smoldering ruins, a stage for whatever nightmare we’d stumbled into.

A half-built warehouse leaned precariously over the water, its frame charred and skeletal. Crates and barrels were scattered like the toys of an abandoned child, and a wooden crane stretched feebly toward one of two merchant ships still bobbing on the river’s glassy surface. Had they been loading cargo when the black ship slid in through its own sickening mist?

Whatever the answer, escape wasn’t there. Not through the bay, not through the flames. And certainly not through the tightening noose of undead.

00:13:26…

Our window was shrinking. I could feel it, a faint pressure against my temples, the inevitability of a trap slowly springing shut.

More Jiangshi were arriving, stumbling through the smoke like grotesque moths drawn to unseen flames. Their movements were slow but steady, methodical in their search for survivors.

Even if we could run through them, we were doomed to alert the soldiers now. Those hooded silhouettes aboard the black ship had started moving with purpose, their green lanterns swinging wildly, their intent unmistakable. Ever since the notification about the Jiangshi’s sentry mode activating, they had been stirring, as though the mindless dead on their own were no longer enough to ensure our demise.

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I briefly considered the river. Swimming away seemed plausible for the span of a heartbeat. But the thought was extinguished just as quickly—flames still danced across the town, casting flickering light over everything. Our silhouettes would be stark and undeniable against the black surface of the water, a pair of moving targets for whoever held those green lanterns.

I sighed. Guess I'll have to take the tutorial's word for it. Escape is impossible for now…

00:12:54…

My gaze returned to the chanting silhouettes upon the ship. They were the ones controlling the Jiangshi. That much was certain. Even if the undead horde were an effective way of overturning a small town, they weren’t much use if they simply groaned and shambled aimlessly until someone happened upon them. And they would be even worse if they turned on their own masters.

The logic clicked into place.

Weak point detected!

Take out the sorcerers to break their control over the Jiangshi.

It was the kind of reckless idea that bordered on brilliance. Or idiocy. The two were often indistinguishable.

“Say,” I whispered, my voice low and deliberate, my eyes still fixed on the faint glow of the notification before me, “How much of their arts do the Emei Sect teach outsiders? Have you learned Shadow-meld yet?”

“Say,” I whispered, my words as quiet as the crackling of embers, my eyes fixed on the screen ahead, “How much of their arts do the Emei Sect teach outsiders? Have you learned Shadow-meld yet?”

Beside me, Mei stiffened. I could feel the tension radiating off her like heat from the smoldering ruins around us. I expected a sharp reply, a thousand questions spilling out of her at once—accusations, protests, disbelief. But maybe she understood the gravity of our situation just as well as I did, the narrowing noose we were caught in.

Quietly, she nodded.

Mei Faolang’s Trust: Threshold reached.

Ability unlocked:

Shadow-meld.

As long as it is sufficiently dark and the character remains more than fifteen feet away, they will be impossible to detect by normal senses. Moving during Shadow-meld will continuously drain the character's Qi.

“Good,” I said, barely sparing the notification a glance. It wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. My focus remained on the figures aboard the black ship, their chants thickening the air, their lanterns swaying with sinister intent. “Then I’m going to have to make a request of Miss Ghostbane.”

If Mei had tensed earlier, she froze at that, the stiffness in her body shifting from wary readiness to something sharper. I didn’t need to look at her to feel the ice in her stare.

I understood her. Too well, perhaps. I knew her story better than any person had the right to know.

Before Mei Faolang became the shadowy mistress of a brothel outside the Central Plains, she wasn’t some promising disciple of the Emei Sect. She was an urchin, scraping by on Zhuoyang’s less hospitable streets. A girl who had stolen her meals and traded secrets for scraps and lives for shelter, doing whatever she could to survive. Now, the first place she’d ever truly called home was burning around us, the smoke curling into the night like a cruel memory.

A character so pitiful you couldn’t help but root for her.

But Mei had never enjoyed pity, and her past was a tightly guarded one.

“The figures on the ship,” I continued, my voice low and deliberate, cutting through the fragile silence before she could interject. A quiet reminder that we were still crouched in the ruins of a burning town, surrounded by restless dead and murderous soldiers. “I need them dead.”

I could sense the moment she made her decision. Later. If she was going to slice my throat for what I knew, she would do it later.

“You want me to,” she instead began, her eyes flickering to the ship, its green-glowing lanterns painting the mist with sickly light, “sneak onto that?”

I nodded. “You’ll only need to take out one of them. The rest should unravel after that. And then we might—might—have a chance to get out of here alive.”

Her silence was long enough to be its own rebuke. When she finally spoke, her words were as sharp as shattered glass. “And what will you be doing while I risk my neck?”

I allowed myself a small, crooked smile. “Distracting the Jiangshi. Keeping the soldiers busy. Making sure you’re not the only target in this suicidal plan.”

She didn’t look reassured. If anything, her expression darkened. “You’re insane.”

“Quite possibly,” I admitted. “But we don’t have time to debate my mental state. The clock is ticking, Mei.”

00:12:03…

She closed her eyes, her breath slow and deliberate. When she opened them again, there was steel behind her gaze.

“If I die,” she said, “I’m haunting you.”

“Fair enough,” I replied, though my gaze had already shifted, drawn back to the wooden crane near the docks.

Whoever had been operating it really must have been interrupted mid-task. A heavy crate still dangled precariously at the end of its fraying ropes, swaying gently in the ashen air, above one of the merchant ships like the pendulum of a particularly spiteful clock.

Maybe I was suicidal. Maybe I was insane.

It seemed, once again, I was to play the bait, and not just for a horde of undead this time.