Whispers spread like ink in water.
By dawn, the sealed Scripture Wing had been cordoned off. What remained of the disciples who entered had been collected in silence—robes with no bodies, charred fingernails scraped from stone, and a single shattered quill lying in a perfect ring of ash.
The elders said nothing publicly.
But the sect was already speaking.
"Ghost fire, some say."
"No. Worse. A forbidden glyph. One of the Thirteen."
"I heard it was the Hollow Sage himself."
"He's dead."
"Then what did they see?"
Lin Khei stood among them.
Hair bound in the simple knot of a new recruit. Black robes fitted poorly to his lean frame. His eyes flicked over the others—not with suspicion, but mimicry. He mirrored how they stood. How they held their hands. How they nodded when someone spoke.
He blended.
Not perfectly—but well enough.
A crow perched on a nearby post tilted its head toward him, then flapped away without a sound.
"Who's that one?" a girl whispered near the edge of the crowd. "I've never seen him before."
"A new scribe-hopeful, I think. Quiet. Keeps to himself."
"Strange ink on his wrist."
"Don't look. He's probably cursed."
He said nothing.
The Scripture inside him remained still. Not silent—never silent—but dormant. Pages no longer flipped without warning. It was waiting.
Testing.
Lin Khei breathed slowly and let the murmurs pass.
At the outer court's gathering stone, the First Scribe Elder arrived. Elder Mo Lin—thin as a reed, spine straight as a calligraphy brush.
He surveyed the disciples in silence. Then, in a voice like dried paper:
"There was a breach. An ancient seal was broken. Three of your peers are dead."
A ripple of unease.
Elder Mo Lin's eyes swept the group.
"No name has been given. No punishment assigned. Not yet."
His gaze lingered, just briefly, on Lin Khei.
Then passed.
"The Verdant Quill Sect is not a place of superstition," he continued. "You will not speak of Hollow Sages. You will not speak of forbidden tomes. You will study, you will train, and you will forget."
The words echoed louder than they should have. Lin felt them stir the ink inside him.
Forget.
The glyph rose faintly in his mind.
He clenched his fist.
Several disciples instinctively rubbed their temples—as if the command left a physical trace.
That evening, Lin returned to the outer disciple dorms—a simple row of shared quarters, scrolls scattered across desks, the air thick with sweat and powdered ink.
He took a corner bunk.
No one questioned it.
They didn't remember he hadn't been there the day before.
Not truly.
The Scripture had made sure of that.
The bunk's wooden frame bore faint grooves where previous occupants had carved their names. Most had been sanded away, but one remained—a single character, half-scratched: "怨". Resentment.
Lin traced the character. The wood was warm. Somewhere, in some forgotten disciple's hand, a knife had pressed deep—not in anger, but warning.
The Scripture rustled in approval.
The disciple beside him blinked, then offered a spare inkstone—the way one might to an old friend. Lin accepted it. The boy's smile faltered—his pupils dilating as if staring into a dark corridor of his own mind. Then, like a page smoothed flat, his expression reset. By the time Lin dipped the brush, the boy was already turning away, humming a tune he'd never learned.
"Hey," someone called as he lay down. A tall boy with ink-stained sleeves leaned over. "You're new, right?"
Lin nodded.
"Got a name?"
He hesitated.
Then shrugged.
The boy grinned. "Right. Who needs one? We're all nobodies until our first glyph manifests anyway. I'm Yu Fan."
Lin nodded again. "Scribe-hopeful," he murmured. His voice was rough from disuse.
"Good luck surviving," Yu Fan said, flopping onto his own bed. "This sect forgets outer disciples like yesterday's drafts."
As Yu Fan stretched, the collar of his robe gaped—just enough to reveal a sliver of red along his spine. Not a scar. Not a tattoo. But a glyph, still healing. Lin knew it at once: "承". To Inherit.
The glyph pulsed once—a heartbeat out of sync with Yu Fan's own. Lin's fingers twitched. He knew that rhythm.
It matched the Scripture's.
Lin stared at the ceiling.
The Scripture shifted once.
Only once.
It was content.
For now.