The Celestial Crane Pavilion stood at the heart of the Murim Alliance's territory, its nine tiers of jade and gold gleaming under the autumn sun. Today, it was not warriors or heirs who filled its courtyards, but the sect elders—men and women draped in silks of vermilion, azure, and obsidian, their laughter sharp as their hidden daggers. Servants scurried with trays of mooncakes and chrysanthemum wine, while the elders traded barbs veiled as pleasantries.
At the center of it all loomed the Ascendant Tower, a monolithic structure of black stone etched with ancient runes. To the Murim world, it was a crucible—a training ground where heirs proved their worth. To the elders, it was a chessboard.
At the center of it all loomed the Ascendant Tower, a monolithic structure of black stone etched with ancient runes. To the Murim world, it was a crucible—a training ground where heirs proved their worth. To the elders, it was a chessboard.
None noticed the cracks creeping up its base.
Elder Guo of the Flame Phoenix Sect sipped his wine, his beard bristling with false modesty. "My grandson Ling cleared the tower's fourth tier in a single day. The boy has his grandfather's fire, eh?"
Elder Mei of the Silent Moon Sect flicked her fan open, its silk painted with weeping willows. "Fire burns out quickly, Guo. My niece Xue mastered the Veil of Tranquil Shadows technique by twelve. She could walk past your guards and slit your throat before you tasted the next vintage."
The table chuckled, though their eyes stayed cold.
Elder Kang of the Iron Fist Sect snorted. "Techniques? Tricks for cowards. My disciples train their bodies, not their theatrics. The tower's trials are won with strength."
"And yet," murmured Elder Jiao of the Shadowed Lotus Sect, her voice like smoke, "your last heir returned with both arms broken. By a girl from the Frostbloom Valley."
Kang's knuckles whitened around his cup.
The conversation turned, as it always did, to the fallen.
"A pity about the Mu-Ryong," Elder Guo said, swirling his wine. "To lose their entire lineage to greed…"
"Greed?" Elder Mei scoffed. "They challenged the Emperor. Arrogance, not greed."
Elder Jiao's gaze drifted to the tower. "Or perhaps they knew something we did not. The Frozen Mountain's secrets died with them."
A hush fell. The Mu-Ryong's name was a ghost here—a reminder that even the mightiest sects could crumble.
Elder Kang broke the silence with a barked laugh. "Secrets? They were farmers playing at martial arts. Their so-called 'Frozen Serpent Style' couldn't stop a kitchen knife."
"Yet the Emperor feared them enough to slaughter children," said Elder Shen, the youngest and quietest of the group. His Thundering River Sect had lost much in the last purge.
The table stiffened.
"Careful, Shen," Elder Guo warned. "Loyalty to the throne is the first virtue."
"Of course," Shen replied, bowing. "I misspoke."
As servants refilled cups, Elder Jiao tilted her head toward the Ascendant Tower. "Do any of you wonder why we send them there? What the tower truly is?"
Elder Mei waved a dismissive hand. "A relic. A test. Nothing more."
"Is it?" Jiao's smile was knife-thin. "The runes on its walls predate the Murim Alliance. Predate the emperors. My scholars say they speak of 'binding' and 'hunger.'"
Kang rolled his eyes. "More of your shadows and riddles."
But Elder Shen leaned forward. "The lower levels… No heir has ever reached them."
"Because they are sealed," Guo snapped. "By decree of the Emperor."
"Or," Jiao said softly, "because something sealed itself."
A chill swept the pavilion. Somewhere in the tower, a bell tolled.
Beyond the elders' opulent chatter, the tower's current heirs battled horrors they could not name.
Ling Guo (Flame Phoenix Sect) faced phantom flames that burned colder than ice.
Xue Mei (Silent Moon Sect) dueled shadows that wore her own face.
Wei Kang (Iron Fist Sect) fought a creature of living stone, its fists cracking his ribs with every blow.
None of the elders felt their heirs' screams vibrating through the tower's stones.
The Architect's Warning
Elder Jiao produced a scroll, its edges charred. "Found this in the archives. The journal of Master Wu, the tower's architect."
The table leaned in as she read:
"The tower is not a trial. It is a cage. What lies beneath must never wake. Should the seals break, the Murim world will end in frost and teeth."
Elder Guo snatched the scroll. "Superstition. The ravings of a dying man."
"Are they?" Jiao nodded to the tower. "Why else would the Emperor forbid us from the lower levels? Why else does the air here taste of… metal?"
A servant dropped a tray. The clatter echoed like a thunderclap.
As the debate raged, Elder Shen slipped away to the tower's base. His fingers traced the cracks in the stone—deeper than they'd been last season, wider than any natural erosion.
A sound seeped through: a drip, slow and rhythmic, like saliva from a hungry maw.
When he pressed his ear to the stone, something pressed back.
The elders departed at dusk, their palanquins carried into the gilded haze of sunset. Behind them, the Ascendant Tower stood silent, its shadow stretching longer than it should.
That night, the servants swore they heard laughter from its depths.
And far below, in the sealed darkness, a lidless eye opened.
At the same time, far away at the ends of the plains,
The ruins of the Mu-Ryong's ancestral fortress loomed like a shattered crown atop the Frozen Mountain. Snow swirled through gaping holes in the glacial walls, hissing as it met the residual heat of smoldering qi-forges. The air reeked of burnt cedar and iron, the remnants of a clan erased.
The Black Viper Sect—a demonic faction exiled to the northern wastes—picked through the carnage like vultures. Clad in furs and jagged bone armor, they laughed as they toppled charred statues of the Mu-Ryong patriarchs, their voices echoing through the hollowed halls.
"Look at this," sneered Kuro, a hulking brute with serrated knives strapped to his wrists. He kicked a half-melted Frostblade across the ice. "The mighty 'White Dragons' couldn't even keep their toys intact."
Xia, the sect's sharp-tongued strategist, crouched to examine a scorched mural. "Their arrogance killed them. They thought their bloodline made them untouchable. Just like the orthodox fools."
Jin, the youngest and most volatile, spat on the Mu-Ryong crest embedded in the floor. "Orthodox, unorthodox—they're all the same. Preaching honor while they stab you in the back."
Only Lianhua, the sect's silent enforcer, lingered apart. Her fingers brushed a child's frozen corpse, its face preserved in a scream. "They were butchered," she said softly. "Not defeated."
The sect gathered in the fortress's central hall, lighting a fire in the shattered remains of the Mu-Ryong's Frostblade Throne. Kuro tossed scrolls from the archives into the flames, grinning as the ink hissed.
"Why are we here, exactly?" Jin demanded, pacing. "To freeze our asses off in a dead clan's tomb?"
Xia unfurled a half-burned map, her eyes glinting. "The Mu-Ryong hid something. Something the Emperor didn't burn." She tapped a glyph near the mountain's heart: a black sun. "The Event Horizon. The orthodox sects fear it. The Emperor erased it from his records. But the Mu-Ryong… they worshipped it."
Kuro snorted. "So we're grave-robbing for a fairy tale?"
"We're claiming what the weak can't hold," Xia snapped. "The orthodox sects hoard power while their precious heirs prance through training towers. The Emperor butchers anyone who dares rise too high. But this"—she crushed the map in her fist—"this could break their stranglehold."
Lianhua stared into the fire. "Or unleash something worse."
As night deepened, the sect swapped tales of betrayal—a ritual as old as their exile.
Kuro recounted the Flame Phoenix Sect's massacre of a village that dared refuse their "protection." "They burned children for disrespect," he growled. "Then wrote poems about their 'purity.'"
Jin spat. "The Silent Moon Sect sells their poisons to warlords, then hires themselves to 'solve' the chaos. All while preaching balance."
Xia's smile was venomous. "The Iron Fist Sect's elder once begged us to assassinate his rival. When we did, he cried to the Murim Alliance about 'demonic corruption.'"
Lianhua remained silent until Kuro nudged her. "What's your gripe, Ice Queen?"
She lifted her sleeve, revealing a brand beneath: the crest of the Thundering River Sect, an orthodox clan. "I was eight when they sold me to slavers to cover their debts. My 'crime'? Being born a servant's daughter."
The fire crackled, the cold gnawing at their rage.
By dawn, they'd scoured the fortress:
The Archives: Reduced to ash, save for fragments hinting at a "gateway" and a "Watcher."
The Training Grounds: Weapons shattered, dummies slashed in frenzied patterns—not practice, but desperation.
The Patriarch's Vault: Empty, its floor scarred by claw marks deeper than any blade.
Xia cursed. "The Emperor's hounds were thorough."
Then Jin found the cellar—a hidden hatch beneath a corpse, its hinges stiff with frost.
Below lay a chamber untouched by fire. Walls of black ice pulsed faintly, veins of crimson threading toward a central dais. Atop it sat a stone tablet, its surface carved with the same black sun glyph.
Lianhua traced the runes. "It's a poem. Or a warning."
Xia read aloud:
"Beneath the frost, the Devourer sleeps,
Its dreams a storm, its breath a curse.
The key of blood, the lock of bones,
The Watcher waits—to drown the world."
Kuro shrugged. "More cultist nonsense."
But the ice trembled.
Jin pried the tablet loose, revealing a hollow filled with scrolls—Mu-Ryong secrets preserved in resin and silk. Xia unfurled one, her breath catching.
"Qi circulation methods… to channel black ice. Not defend against it. To merge with it."
Lianhua stepped back. "This isn't martial arts. It's madness."
Xia's eyes blazed. "It's power. The kind that doesn't bow to emperors or alliances."
A sound echoed above—a howl, warped and guttural. The Frostfang.
They fled as the chamber collapsed, black ice devouring the ruins behind them. Jin clutched the scrolls like a lifeline. "Where now?"
Xia grinned. "Where else? The Ascendant Tower. Let's give the orthodox fools a show."
As they vanished into the blizzard, the tablet's final line glowed in the ruins' heart:
"The Watcher sees. The Devourer wakes."
Far south, in the Ascendant Tower, the heirs of the orthodox sects faltered mid-trial. The walls shuddered, runes flaring blood-red.
Ling Guo screamed as phantom flames turned to black ice.
Xue Mei's shadows grinned with too many teeth.
And deep below, the sealed door groaned open—just a crack.