The image was a brand on the inside of his eyelids: Old Man Ji, a heap of loose robes and brittle bones, a thin wisp of black smoke coiling from his nostrils like a departing soul.
Wei Yuan had fled. He didn't remember the journey back to the Pavilion, only the frantic, hammering drum of his heart against his ribs and the sudden, jarring feeling of the heavy door thudding shut behind him. He'd half-carried, half-dragged the old man to the servants' quarters, laid him on a cot, and left a bowl of water beside him—a useless offering, a silent prayer to gods he didn't believe in. Please just be unconscious. Please.
Now, back in the suffocating silence of his room, the full weight of the revelation came crashing down.
It wasn't just your blood.
The words weren't a thought; they were a haunting. His investigation had taken a sickening lurch off a cliff and into a territory of unimaginable darkness. He wasn't just a boy who had attempted a forbidden ritual. He was a boy who had committed a monstrous, unknown sacrifice. The sweet, cloying smell that clung to the Pavilion's air no longer seemed like ozone. It felt like the ghost-scent of something that had been rendered down, its essence stolen, its soul boiled into his ink.
He sank down at his desk, burying his head in his hands. The pain in his meridians, a constant, grinding static since he'd woken, flared into a vicious, screaming fire. A backlash. The price for willfully summoning the Artist, even for a moment. Power for agony. A terrible transaction.
What now? What do I do? His mind was a frantic scramble, a mouse in a cage. Can't ask Father. Not now. He'll know. He'll see the amnesia, see me digging where he buried the bodies. Old Man Ji, his only witness, was broken, maybe for good. He was alone. Utterly, terrifyingly alone in a room full of his own crimes.
He stared at his own hands. The neat white scar on his left palm was a stranger's mark. This was the hand of a monster. A butcher. A sorcerer who dealt in sacrifice. And yet, it was his own. The two truths warred in his head, a madness he was struggling to contain.
He needed to understand the weapons at his disposal. Think. Not as a victim. As an investigator. He had clues: the box, the note, the smell. He had the fragmented mind: the cautious, terrified Waking Self and the cold, ruthless Artist.
And he had the Loom.
That third, cryptic element. The Loom of a Hundred Arts. A phantom panel that flickered at the edge of his vision, its messages both a lifeline and a source of profound paranoia.
He closed his eyes, forcing a breath into his constricted lungs. The Loom had appeared after he'd channeled the Artist to write 'Remorse.' A thread was woven. The pain had lessened. A system. A cause and effect he didn't understand.
He had to test it. Deliberately.
He pushed the scrolls and inkstones aside, clearing a space. The fire in his body was a screaming voice telling him to stop, to rest, to curl into a ball and let the world fall away. But the Branch Purge was a guillotine, and he could hear it being sharpened. He had to know what he was capable of. He had to know if he could control the monster.
He chose a different art, something clean. Not calligraphy. That was a tainted, bloody ground. He picked up a small, smooth river stone he used for practicing stone stacking, a meditative exercise in finding impossible balance.
He placed the stone on the desk. He took a deep, shuddering breath. He didn't try to force the Artist out this time. He tried to lure him. He tried to replicate the state of mind from before—that utter, selfless focus. He emptied his thoughts of fear, of the sickening knowledge of the ink, of the old man's face. He focused only on the stone. Its cool weight. The faint grain of its texture. The subtle imperfections on its surface. He sought the point of perfect, impossible balance.
For a long moment, nothing. Just the grinding pain in his body, a distracting static.
Then, the shift.
It was like a switch being flipped deep in his soul. The pain didn't vanish, but it receded, becoming a distant, unimportant hum at the edge of his awareness. The Waking Self was a passenger again, watching his own hands move with an alien certainty. His fingers didn't fumble or test. They knew. They brushed the stone, tilted it a millimeter at a time, feeling for a center of gravity that was both physical and something more. The world dissolved. There was only the stone.
His hand found the impossible point. He let go.
The stone stood perfectly on its very tip, defying gravity, defying reason. A tiny, silent monument to perfect harmony.
The moment it settled, the Loom shimmered into existence before him.
[Harmony achieved.]
A single, luminescent thread, the color of a pale, calming sky, spooled out from the balanced stone. It drifted through the air like a strand of spider silk and sank into his chest.
The relief was instantaneous. It was an exhale he didn't know he'd been holding. The grinding fire in his meridians wasn't extinguished, but it was soothed, as if a cool, menthol balm had been poured over a raw wound. It was a fleeting bliss, lasting only a few seconds, but it was real.
[A THREAD IS WOVEN]
The text burned brightly, then faded.
Wei Yuan gasped, slumping back into his chair as the Artist's focus shattered. He was back. Back in control, back in the pain, back in the fear. But it was different now. The agony had returned, but its sharpest edges had been dulled.
He stared at the impossibly balanced stone, his mind reeling. It works.
The Arts. Calligraphy, stone balancing, maybe others. They were the key. Achieve a state of profound, inhuman focus—let the Artist out—and complete an act. The Loom would respond. It would weave a thread of Insight that could soothe the torment of his cursed body.
This wasn't a cultivation technique. This was heresy. It bypassed his blocked meridians entirely, feeding his soul directly. A personal, secret path to power.
But the price was a piece of his own soul. Every single time he wanted to weave a thread, he would have to willingly surrender control to the stranger in his mind. He had to let the monster out to heal from the monster's crimes.
He sat there for a long time, the balanced stone a silent testament to his terrible discovery. The path forward was horrifyingly clear now. His investigation couldn't stop at finding clues. He had to master the Arts his other self knew. He had to walk the Artist's path, not just to understand his past, but to survive his future.
The Branch Purge was no longer just a threat; it was a testing ground. A stage where he would be forced to use this dangerous, fractured power.
He reached into his sleeve and pulled out the cryptic note. Its words held a new, sinister weight. The ink is not enough. The blood is too thin.
His other self had been seeking a source of power beyond his own body, beyond his own Arts. A different kind of thread to weave, one potent enough to "break the scroll" and pay an "ancestor's debt."
Wei Yuan carefully folded the note and tucked it away. The horror hadn't faded, but now, mixed in with the fear, was a single, cold spark of determination. He was still an imposter in his own skin. He was still terrified. But he was no longer just a victim.
He was an investigator with a theory. And his own fractured soul was the laboratory. He would find out what was in the ink, no matter what it cost him.