The seven bronze bells of the Scripture Pavilion rang not with music, but with iron weight.
Each stroke rolled down the mountain slopes like a blast wave. It shook through the dark rock foundations of the Seventh Ward until soot drifted from the rafters of the forge. The sound was flat, heavy, and ringing with an unnatural, artificial stillness that silenced every bird and cicada within ten miles.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Apothecary He froze in the middle of pestling dried bitter-rhizome. The pestle slipped from his fingers, clattering into the bronze mortar with a sharp ring.
“The Severance Chimes,” He whispered, his yellowed eyes fixing on the ceiling. “Thirty years since they rang those. Not since the purge of the Water-Gourd Valley.”
Lin Ke stepped out into the courtyard, the chill mountain air biting against the fresh bandages bound around his right arm.
Above them, the sky was not blue. A vast, semi-clear sheet of pale amber light had unfurled across the clouds, inscribed with millions of tiny, linked script runes that writhed like golden maggots. It was the central formation of the Azure Cloud Sect—the Great Array of Canonical Truth—running at maximum sky output.
Then came the voice.
