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Lan Jingyi startled awake in the hour before sunrise, heart racing, a cold sweat lacing his brow. The inn around him groaned in the quiet, restive way of old buildings with their aches and memories of times past, perhaps even so long ago when the wooden planks of walls and floor stood tall and reaching, part of some once breathing forest. Now, the wood only exhaled as the wind pushed past, teasing at shutters and pushing against walls, seeking entrance thus far denied.
The brazier had burned to coals and embers, more ash than heat, and visible to his eyes when he turned his head to hunt after any source for the sour adrenaline lingering on his tongue, the staccato beating of his heart. The chill air of the room embraced his shoulders, greedily invading the blankets where they pooled around his lap.
What had possibly woken him? The shadows of the unfamiliar room were simple shadows, no weight to them, spiritual or otherwise. The quiet sounds of breathing around him, both at his side and on the other two platform beds tucked into the alcoves nearby, indicated no others close to waking, not before the sun blushed into the skies, shepherding the dark away.
He swallowed against a dry throat, wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of one hand. His forehead ribbon sat slantwise at his brow, and years of practise and familiarity meant both hands worked to set it right while his mind flashed through other concerns, and he frowned, awake too early, heart unsettled.
Why?
Dreams, perhaps, or nightmares. What little he remembered as he woke lingered in that fear not of the unknown, but the unchangeable. Nothing sensible in the lead-in to another night hunt, their group of disciples from various clans great and small quiescent in the pre-dawn morning; nothing that he'd heard of for where they were going.
He frowned, shifting until he extracted himself from the blankets in full, hands braced so his climb over his best friend's sleeping form left him undisturbed. Lan Sizhui's forehead furrowed, fingers twitching where they lay against his chest, but he didn't wake, and Jingyi sighed internally with relief.
For a moment, he wanted to be alone to shake off whatever had woken him.
Then he turned and froze. Two red eyes glowed like coals from the wall by where he'd been sleeping, centred in a deeper darkness, fuzzy at its edges. Malevolent, the eyes narrowed, a voice in off key melody murmuring, "Kah ay-ay u-nye."
Lan Jingyi, in his early twenties and a member of one of the most well regarded cultivation sects within their regions, a laudable fighter in his own right, stumbled back and shrieked.
"We weren't supposed to reach the base of the mountain until this afternoon."
"Is it a bad thing to arrive earlier than expected?" Lan Sizhui implied the quirk of his brow more than anything, sending the young sect leader to his side a polite smile.
Jin Rulan, more used to being called by Jin Ling than his courtesy name, frowned and barely managed to not roll his eyes. The young sect leader did not as a general rule come out as often on night hunts as he had prior to his unanticipated early inheritance of the position; that he did now, in the company of a number of his clan's best juniors, those who listened to him without turning it into a fight for authority, was an indication of location and general belief that the issue they were to address wasn't deadly serious.
Or at least wasn't about to have everyone potentially hit with corpse poison the moment they walked into the village proper, wherever it lay up the mountain.
"No," Jin Rulan said, arms crossed over his chest. "But it didn't mean we all needed to wake up early for nothing."
Lan Jingyi, who'd been largely ignoring Jin Rulan after the last time they had this argument in the early hours of the morning, did roll his eyes.
"It wasn't nothing. Nothing means you figure out what it is, and it wasn't worth being startled by. Nothing doesn't disappear without a trace, unless what you really want to accuse me of is being startled by something that never existed at all." A pointed look sent Jin Rulan's way, as Jingyi frowned further. "Jin Ling, you'd have shrieked if you saw it too."
The younger man's response was immediate, his shoulders hiking up as he opened his mouth to snipe back, "I would not!" Before he forced his shoulders to lower and sent Lan Jingyi a narrowed eyed look, one familiar to anyone who knew his maternal uncle. "Cultivators don't shriek at things that don't exist. Sect Leaders especially."
Jingyi snorted, eyes flicking over Jin Rulan, before he turned his head away, dismissive. Whatever Sizhui was saying to smooth things over was tuned out, Jingyi lifting his compass and peering down at its face.
The compass oriented toward the strongest sources of resentful energies in an area; lacking that, it looked for other energies focussed on darker emotions, the sorts of things that spirits and creatures both dead and alive generated and feasted on when they were dangers to the living. Right now it spun gently, the point of the needle wavering until the arc it completed indicated upward of the path they were on. At the foot of the mountain in question.
He shifted, eyes looking between the point of the compass and the pathway they've reached. Overhead, the clouds gathering since the day before swelled and loomed, a promise of rain that might yet deliver, or might wait another day still.
"What's the compass saying?"
Jingyi glanced toward the young man who'd stepped up to his side, Ouyang Zizhen in his dark blue robes instead of the reds. Jingyi didn't comment, tilting his hand so the face of the compass was easier for Zizhen to read, and then both of them looked at the path.
Zizhen sighed, shaking his head.
"Didn't have to be ominous."
Jingyi snorted, tilting his compass back toward himself.
"Why wouldn't it be? If we're being asked to investigate people going missing, it's not usually for bandits or because there's a logical reason for anyone to abandon the place." His frown deepened, an echo of the morning's unease flickering in his chest. He pushed it away. "Anyway, we're heading up, aren't we?"
Sizhui joined him at his other side, leaning in to peer down at the compass as well. "We are," he said, agreeing with a further cant of his head. "Has it been like this for long?"
Jingyi shook his head, looking up the path once more.
"No. Not until about here."
It wasn't much, just an indication of what was already suspected. He'd keep an eye on it as they went.
Sizhui bumped shoulders with him, a hint of a smile before his expression was as solemn and serious as could be expected out of the leading junior in their generation. It was enough to prompt Jingyi into something of a smile back, and Zizhen into a more obvious grin, while Jin Rulan skulked up and crossed his arms and glared at the road before them.
"Why are we waiting, anyway?" So said, he picked up and started walking, the disciples of his sect falling into formation behind him.
Jingyi and Sizhui exchanged a glance, stepping forward so the esteemed sect leader didn't march himself head first into whatever trouble was or wasn't waiting, further up the road. They could understand Jin Rulan's need to prove himself, even taking on the courtesy name he had a complicated relationship with as a means of stepping up and proving he wasn't as young as he was in truth.
Still, if this wasn't within Lanling, Jingyi didn't think he'd be trying quite so hard.
"Jin Rulan! Wait for the rest of us!"
Quick steps, and Sizhui, Jingyi, and Zizhen were on his trail, the rest of the Lan and Ouyang disciples likewise jogging to catch up with where the Jins were leading.
From what information they had, the village went quiet a month before, with the usual foot traffic down the mountain drying up overnight. Two of the regular traders that dealt with the carvers in the village made the trek up the mountain, only to find the village empty, as if people had disappeared overnight. Cookfires had burned down to ashes in hearths, bowls left on tables with thin soups dried to grime or rice gone hard and dry. The few chickens owned by the villagers left to scratch at grains or insects, and whatever scant livestock in similar straights. The one ox that belonged to the village was still penned, but frightened, shying away from the visitors.
No human tracks left the village. Clothing, packs, supplies, all were accounted for in the village homes, and while there were signs of upset, even violence, there was little to no blood, and no bodies.
Seemingly overnight, the village had disappeared.
While the two men had gone searching, finding little other than how much of everything but the people were present, they'd felt watched. The eeriness of the village's human quietude and their own growing unease drove them from the village and back down the mountain.
No one was found. When others made the short trip, they found the same scene, and too eerie to even take any of what was left behind.
The report of the disappearance had eventually made its way up to the attention of a subsidiary clan of Lanling Jin, and from there, to Jinlin Tai itself.
There was no known shrine or historical disturbance on this particular mountain; likewise, no word from any of the surrounding villages or towns of increased curse activity, or indications of any such trouble in the region.
All in all, something had happened, but until they were in the village, it didn't seem they'd have any better clues.
Jingyi watched the compass as they climbed, the needle shifting position to keep pointing in its first established direction, the shivering of its needle slowly growing in intensity. No real indication of some great, unfathomable evil, but it did mean there was more than a mundane explanation for the disappearances.
He swallowed, flicking his eyes between the thick trees to either side of the path. Brush was sparse further under the trees, but thick where the light penetrated better, here at the road. This part of the year, the leaves were thick and plentiful overhead, and each turn of the road under their reaching branches sunk the cultivators into shadow.
"Do you hear that?"
Jingyi looked up from the compass, lips twitching into a frown as he glanced toward Sizhui.
"Hear what?"
Sizhui's hand on his sword tightened, his lips pressing into a thinned line.
"Nothing."
For a moment, Jingyi stared at his best friend, because offhand, the comment made no sense. "You hear nothing?"
Then it clicked. He lifted his head, jerking his chin around to stare into the branches of the trees, listening and squinting. Wind wove through the higher branches, tugging and rustling leaves, but aside from the whine of the wind and the creak of branches, there was nothing. No birdsong, no chitter of squirrels, no droning insects, no snapped twigs or sounds of any moving creatures within the forest.
"... Nothing."
His eyes met Sizhui's, holding for a moment before they both nodded, feeling more grim than before.
The skies darkened as the clouds grew taller, a distant boom of thunder sending a shiver down his spine. An incoming rainstorm in addition to whatever was waiting for them in the village meant a cold, unpleasant hike back down, unless they decided camping within the village was the better plan.
Stomach sinking, Jingyi knew that'd be the worst plan. Then again, that was often his feeling whenever it came to events too ghostly aligned. He might handle them, it was part of his training, but he hated it. Spirits of particular kinds were frightening in a way he didn't articulate, even if fine, yes, whatever, he'd deal with them!
Just let him freak out over it a little first.
He bit down on his tongue, holding back that particular complaint. The rest he'd allowed out as they came, from the deepening shadows and increasing wind, to the eeriness of the continued silence of the birds, to noting the compass was growing more active again as they grew close.
The path curved sharply around an outcropping of rock that stood barefaced and driving back the trees, and beyond it, the village spread out across what once had been a narrow meadow on the other side. Wind whispered through the streets, stirring dust and leaves and twigs, but the silence from the forest earlier on was even more stark before the signs of what should have been humanity.
Nothing, and no one, lurked within the village. Doors were improperly closed, and windows half shuttered, some open for the world to intrude at its leisure. Whatever chickens had first been present when the villagers disappeared were no longer present, and the ox had long been led down the mountain, held in wait for the villager's return at one of the farms in its foothills.
"This whole place is giving me a bad feeling." He grimaced, eyes back on the compass and its shuddering point, while the discussions for how to proceed now that they were present continued.
"We should check each of the houses, moving in groups. Look for any signs of lingering resentment, or what might be marks of a curse." Sizhui nodded to the combined group of junior cultivators, and when Jin Rulan indicated his agreement, the Jin juniors likewise split from the main group.
The sensation of eyes on him left Jingyi twitchy as he fell in step with Sizhui, Jin Rulan joining them too. Their target was the house furthest down the lane, leaving them to pass by the other groups as they investigated home after home. Jin Rulan's dog, Celestial Fatty that it was, only wagged its tail the once, when it paused long enough for them to reach the dog's side, and Jin Rulan held out his hand. Shoving its head up under the young man's palm, the dog had continued on, ears perked forward and alert.
None of them were easy. He practically felt like crawling out of his skin as they reached the closed door of the house in question.
"People don't just disappear. Could it be a curse?"
Jin Rulan frowned, clutching his father's sword and using his toe to nudge open the door.
"There's a chance it is," Sizhui said, "Though we'd find either some evidence of its backblow here, or some other sign. Anything this large would leave traces."
Jin Rulan and Lan Sizhui made their cautious entrance, Lan Jingyi following close behind. The dog paused at the threshold, hackles raising, issuing a low growl.
"I know the feeling," he said, glancing down at the beast, "But if it's that bad, shouldn't you be in there with him, Celestial Fatty?"
The dog gave him a look, then snorted, shaking its head and stepping inside, stiff legged. The dog looked more like it was stalking into enemy territory than anything else.
Jingyi felt he should be doing the same.
He stepped over the threshold, pressing against the thin membrane of shadow that delineated within and without. With the gasp of an errant child found, he stilled, grip on his sword tightening as he took in the two-room home's expanse. No paper art here, only the artistry of survival and careful use of what's culled from the mountain and whatever garden doubtlessly lay out back, or nearby. Strings of dried plants, Jin Rulan stirring them with his passage. Sizhui stood within the area serving as both kitchen and hearth, fingers dragging down the sides of the black pot hung near the long-cold fire.
Much as the rumours said, the tableau inside was of a life interrupted. Here, there was some indication of violence, where Jin Rulan paused to read the signs in a toppled chair, the scratch of nails against a hardpack floor, a chipped cup fallen from hands that held it. The dog stood, hackles raised, looking beyond where Jin Rulan crouched, reaching for the cup.
"None of this feels right," he said, and Jingyi almost scoffed. What was going to feel right? It was an absurd statement, but as Jin Rulan frowned and hurried after his own words with further ones, Jingyi glanced down to the sudden spinning whir of the compass. "Not that it was going to, but at least one person here was taken against their will. What were they fighting?"
The overall energy of the abandoned village was too steeped in whispering unknowns and ill-portent for one emotional surge or resentful energy to stand out easily above the rest. They were curiously blind, this far into it, and the certainty that the mystery would drag them down had his heart beating harder.
The compass spun, and spun, and spun. Sizhui noticed, of course he noticed, looking toward Jingyi, brows quirked and expression solemn. He didn't have to ask what was wrong for Jingyi to already be in the process of telling him, but he stopped, compass raised, as the point locked down with a sudden click.
The dog growled, low in its throat, tail held stiff. Jingyi's eyes widened, the normal darkness of shadow beyond Jin Rulan, in the corner of the building between where he crouched and where Lan Sizhui stood in the kitchen, pulsing, deepening. A presence coalescing with the skin-crawling fear that Jingyi struggled with when it came to ghosts, but it wasn't human, not even in memory, and something about that made it easier to act.
As red eyes formed, as the shadows thickened as a mantle around whatever it was that stretched forth tendrils of smoke-like dark along the floor toward Jin Rulan, Jingyi moved. Not wisely, drawing sword to fight whatever it was that could not possibly stand before the might of his clan's teachings, his refined qi, that which would cleanse and demand truth from the world, dead or living. Especially the dead.
"Jin Ling! Watch out!"
No, he moved with the certainty of a panicked understanding of what would happen if he held still. He and Jin Rulan's Lady, his Goddess of Fur, his Celestial Faerie, bolted forward to intercept those ink-dark tendrils reaching for Jin Rulan, a sheathed sword and snapping jaws acting as shield. The barking of the dog a background cacophony for the cold that struck up his hand, his sword shrieking in its sheath as it made contact with the shadows, and Jin Rulan rose from his crouch, but too slow, drawing sword as he called to the dog.
Sizhui must have witnessed the shadow, then, even as Jingyi twisted his body around in the memory of footwork he'd trained in since childhood. A turn, a spin, and he was the body placed between the Jin Sect Leader and the maw of darkness that lurked malevolent in the quiet corners, growing larger at his back. Jingyi shoved Jin Rulan back, toward his best friend.
Shadow struck across his back like fire, burning colder than the Cold Spring in the heartbeat it took for Jingyi to realise his biggest mistake.
"Jingyi! Jingyi!"
Some things grew stronger for fighting, like mud, like marshes swallowing passengers whole as they strode forward, sucking at the legs of horses and humans alike, driving the despair deeper with the cold, filthy water. Cloying with decay, as was the manner of all living things.
This shadow, this darkness, was as a marsh. One that flowed over Jingyi's hands as he struggled to unsheathe his blade, as he heard the dog bark to frenzy, as in periphery he witnessed Sizhui's catch and support of Jin Rulan, as two cultivators sought to draw swords, as the dog bit his robes and worried them as a bone. To help, some part of him guessed, but the odd paralysis that suffused him left his fingers curled in claws, vision fading as abrupt as having the light of the world suffocated.
Sharp, beaked, something drove into his shoulder. Claws scraped down his outer thighs, turns to press inward, sinking through robes charmed against damage and yet still finding purchase in protected flesh. He bled, and he heard that voice, sing-song and offkey, like a child learning a familiar melody but following each note wrong, scales shifted.
"Kah ay-ay u-nye," it said, and he had no air in his lungs to cry out when the beak pierced skin, when he knew he bled in the darkness he could not see within, as cold consumed him, "Kah mee-mee a-tay."
Then Lan Jingyi knew no more, lost to cold and dark and suffocation, drowning surrounded by air.
Later, he woke in a less consuming darkness, the chill radiating from his marrow. He could make little out of the space around him, a cavern of some kind, the scent of water and wet growth in the air. Light limed surfaces around, glow worms nesting on a ceiling that spun in the gentle, chill breeze that wafted past like a sleeping behemoth's breath. In, out, in, out, in, out.
He shook his head, or tried, reaching up to brush at the protrusion his eyes saw before his face. Only nothing shifted, arms receptive to nothing, and he frowned, only to find he couldn't frown at all. A dull clack, and he furrowed his brow, concern quick to follow.
"What the hell is going on?"
His tongue lay strange in his mouth, his teeth too smooth, as if one unified surface. He struggled, trying to move arms that failed to respond, before he moved feet, found he could balance himself forward. Thankful for that much as he tried to twist around, twitching an ear to track the sound of whatever was approaching from behind.
"Who the hell's there!"
Only, how had he twitched an ear? Why did his arms fail to respond, but his feet, not even his legs, seemed fine? Why couldn't he turn his neck? Panic clawed at his ribcage, but he forced himself to keep turning, to confront whoever, whatever was there.
Shrieking still when he came face to face to large, crimson eyes with their own phosphorescent glow. A beak like no bird's beak he knew, splashed with dried brown that might have been his blood, once. Set into a furred face with ears proportionately giant on the creature's head, as its two feet, scaled and taloned, scraped at the ground as it waddled.
"What are you?!" He planned on sounding more outraged. In the end, he sounded more desperately confused.
The creature loomed, larger than life, of indeterminate size. That same tone from earlier, the one from his waking nightmare, only the words now were more than nonsense.
"I see you," the creature said, blinking with the assured laze of an apex predator, unconcerned with what it addressed. "I'm very hungry."
"You're going to eat me?!"
The creature paused, ears canting to provide an implication of amusement and a touch of confusion.
"No," it said, patient. "You are mine. I see you. I take you. I'm hungry. I eat a little. I eat more later. You, with me. With all of mine."
"All of… what?" His incredulity rose, the headshake he couldn't quite make a powerful body-shaking motion instead. "With all of your what? You, you, crazy devouring demon, what did you do!"
Humming to itself, the creature blinked slow and waddled itself in a turn with surprising, frightening grace.
"I take you. I was lonely. Lonely, lonely, left in the dark." Its ears twitched as it continued singing, and Jingyi's attention moved beyond the massive, furry bulk of the creature, seeing beyond it. Seeing to the assortment of many more creatures of a similar kind, dressed in tunics and robes and peasant garb, eyes wide and frightened, hair on furry heads pulled back into rough, falling apart familiarity. There was a top knot, and there was braided hair, and there, but no.
No.
No.
Lan Jingyi stood on his two clawed feet, realising with alarming clarity he had found the village's missing people. Changed, and horrifically so, the lot of them ranging from glossy eyed to weeping to despondent. Forced into another form, with no arms, only those taloned feet, and the beaks, and the wide, hauntingly expressive eyes, and those ears…
A twitch. Jingyi's heart stilled as the final realisation sunk in.
He couldn't move arms he didn't have.
He, Lan Jingyi, was as transformed as the villagers, and just as caught.
"Oh for ah-loh's sake—"