Chapter 27: The Song They Fear
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It began with whispers.
Not wind. Not music.
Whispers.
Jin woke to them—soft and serpentine, threading through the shadows of their shared tent like tendrils of smoke. Mei slept against his chest, breath slow and warm, her leg tangled over his. Yue curled nearby, loosely draped in silks, her hair falling across his thigh like spilled ink.
The sound wasn't threatening. But it wasn't nothing.
He sat up slowly, careful not to disturb them.
A breeze lifted the flap of the tent.
Parchment lay there. Folded. No seal. No footprints. Just a single slip of paper that hadn't been there before.
Yue's eyes flicked open. "What is it?"
Jin held the note up. "A message."
Mei stretched, yawned, and blinked. "From who?"
Jin opened it.
Three characters, inked in blood-red script:
"Come home, Little Chord."
---
The past wasn't a melody Jin wanted to revisit.
Especially not that past.
He folded the note again and tucked it into the pocket of his robe, heart hammering louder than Yue's breathing beside him. He stood and stepped outside, letting the mountain wind bite into his bare skin as he tried to calm the noise within.
Little Chord.
Only one person had ever called him that.
And she'd disappeared seven years ago—dragged away by cultivators cloaked in silence and sin, never to be seen again.
His mentor.
His first love.
Master Caien.
---
He didn't tell them that morning.
Not yet.
Instead, he let Mei pull him into a bath fed by the hot springs near their camp, her laughter echoing through the mist as she splashed water over his shoulders.
"You've been quiet since the fight," she said.
Jin offered a weak smile. "Just tired."
"Liar," Yue called from the edge of the springs, perched on a flat rock with her feet dipped in the steaming water. "You haven't looked at us the same since that message arrived."
Mei narrowed her eyes. "What message?"
Jin sighed.
He pulled the note from his robes and handed it to Mei, who read it once and frowned.
"Little Chord?"
"A name from before," he said. "Before I met either of you."
Yue tilted her head. "A woman?"
Jin nodded. "My master. She taught me how to feel music. Not just play it. She… she saved me."
Mei folded the parchment again. "And now she wants you to come home?"
"I don't have a home," Jin muttered. "Not anymore."
Yue stood, naked but unashamed, and waded into the spring until she was face-to-face with him.
"Do you want to go?" she asked quietly.
He hesitated.
"I don't know."
Mei came behind him, arms slipping around his waist. "Then we'll go with you."
Jin blinked. "You'd follow me there?"
"We're not followers," Mei whispered. "We're yours. That means we face the past—together."
Yue's hand slid over his chest. "We don't fear your ghosts, Jin. We only fear losing you to them."
And in that moment, under the rising sun and the soft scent of mountain steam, they kissed him.
Together.
---
The journey down the southern ridge took two days.
They avoided main roads, traveling by sound and instinct, letting Yue chart the clearest paths using the echoes of the wind. Mei played often—soft melodies designed to confuse would-be pursuers, bending direction and rhythm like weaving a path from thread.
Jin's thoughts remained torn between warmth and dread.
He remembered Caien's voice—low, rich, and cruelly beautiful.
She had called him her precious chord.
Had said he was destined to resonate with the world.
But he also remembered her pain—how she'd bled herself dry to save him from the Hollow Bell once before. And how she vanished without a scream.
"Are you sure it's her?" Mei asked on the third night.
"No one else would use that name," Jin said.
"What if it's a trap?" Yue asked.
"Then we spring it," Jin replied.
---
They reached the ruins by nightfall.
What had once been a training monastery was now overgrown, the music stones half-buried in moss and ash. The air vibrated faintly, like a distant string pulled taut against silence.
Jin stepped forward alone, heart thudding.
"Caien?" he whispered.
A single note echoed from the broken hall.
E minor.
His heart shattered.
She stepped from the shadows.
Tall. Robed in black and crimson. Her hair now silvered at the tips. Her eyes blindfolded—but unmistakably hers.
"Little Chord," she said, voice like a song trapped between grief and hunger. "You've grown."
Mei moved to protect Jin.
Yue raised a hand, forming protective resonance.
But Caien only smiled.
"I didn't call him to fight," she said. "I called him to choose."
Jin stepped forward.
"What do you mean?"
She raised her hand.
And the stones of the monastery sang.
From the broken ground rose specters—flickering forms of other cultivators, all marked by the same symbol burned into their chests.
Caien's voice turned cold.
"The world needs harmony. But harmony must be shaped. You… can help me shape it."
Yue narrowed her eyes. "You mean control it."
Caien turned toward Yue. "You're strong. Beautiful. Devoted. You'll understand, eventually."
She looked to Mei. "You… are fire. And fire burns everything, even the boy you cling to."
And then to Jin.
"You don't belong to them, Little Chord. You belong to me."
Jin stepped between them, breath shaking.
"I'm not yours."
Caien smiled softly.
"Not yet."