I went straight to the garrison.
The guards straightened as I passed, but I didn't look at them. There was no need.
Clerk Deng Yuan was waiting in a dark stone cell, chained to the floor. His robes had been stripped, revealing skin inked from collar to ankle—tattoos written in curling black script, the same phrase repeated like prayer lines etched by a mad priest:
Reckoning is coming. Reckoning is coming. Reckoning is coming…
Across his chest, a spiral—ink-black, jagged—coiled in the center of his ribs like a blooming lotus carved wrong.
He looked up when I entered.
His mouth was blackened at the corners. His eyes, once dull brown, now gleamed spiral-shaped, too wide, unblinking. His face cracked into a smile that didn't fit his skin.
"You've seen it," he whispered.
"I've seen death," I replied. "And you're not far from it."
He chuckled—wet and shallow. "Not death. Return."
He leaned forward on his chains, his voice low and hollow. "The soil remembers. The grain listens. You think you ended it, but you've only opened the gate."
"Gate to what?"
"To what was buried... before there were names."
He began to hum, a slow, broken tune—off-key and unnerving. One of the guards shifted beside me, fingers twitching near the hilt of his spear.
Deng Yuan whispered again.
"They planted it in hunger...
and now it grows in the mouths of men..."
I stepped closer.
"Why did the grain rot?"
He smiled wider. "It didn't. It changed."
Suddenly, he convulsed. His body twisted, jerking unnaturally. Blood oozed from beneath his cuffs, sizzling as it touched the chain.
"Stand back!" I ordered.
The metal snapped.
He surged toward me—barefoot, wrists still shackled, eyes burning with something that had never been human.
I moved first.
My blade slipped through his neck in a single motion.
The body collapsed. Blood fanned across the stone like spilled ink.
Even in death, he smiled.
I emerged from the cell in silence.
The guards said nothing. They didn't ask what happened.
They saw the blood on my sleeve. The curve of my expression.
No anger.
No regret.
Only command.
"Burn the body," I said. "Salt the chamber. Erase his name from the records."
"And if the curse spreads?" one asked, hesitantly.
"Then we kill anyone who speaks it."
That night, I reviewed every shipment manifest from the past six months.
Five cities. Seven convoys. One pattern.
Each tainted grain shipment passed through the Eastern Relay Post, one of Minister Yan Rui's strongholds—Wu Kang's most loyal lapdog.
It was no accident.
Rot had been seeded through symbol, not time. The spiral was not mold. It was intention, burned into cloth and carved into sacks.
This wasn't just political sabotage.
It was ritualistic.
I ordered the excavation of the old granary ruins at Longzhou's edge.
What we found buried confirmed everything.
Clay jars—broken and blackened—filled with ink-soaked rice. Bone fragments wrapped in faded paper charms. A child's sandal, tied with string and ash. Beneath it all: a flat slab of stone etched with three ancient characters:
Reap. Rise. Return.
Old rites. Forgotten prayers.
The grain hadn't spoiled. It had been fed.
I issued decrees at dawn.
All spiral-marked sacks were to be burned in the main square.Every peasant and official who hoarded cursed rice was to be tried immediately.Twelve were executed—openly, by sword and fire. Not just as punishment.
As warning.
Zhou Fen objected. The priests wept.
I did it anyway.
The people watched.
And when they watched, they understood.
Not belief.
Not reverence. Obedience.
Days have passed and the rot halted. The hunger stopped growing. The curse—at least for now—had been severed.
But nothing comes without price.
I had silenced a whisper, not the voice behind it.
That night, I sat alone atop the watchtower, staring down at the dying smoke curling from the plaza.
The city had survived.
But I…
I no longer felt certain I had.
The dreams had changed. Or rather—they no longer came in sleep.
They followed me in wakefulness. In mirrors. In the movement of shadows that bent the wrong way.
And when I looked into the still water,
I saw a spiral turning in the reflection of my eyes.
I blinked. Rubbed my forehead.
Imagination, I told myself. Fatigue. Nothing more.
A flutter at the window broke the silence.
A messenger pigeon. Black-feathered. The ribbon on its leg was torn, as if it had flown through fire.
I removed the scroll from its leg.
The message was short. No title. No seal.
"It's time we spoke face to face. Meet me at the barn"
—Wu Jin
My breath caught.
Wu Jin.
The quiet one.
The most silent of us all.
He had never written to me. Not once. Not even as children.
And now, he was here?
Why now? Why Longzhou? And what game are you playing, brother?