The sky was still half-night when Liu stepped onto the deck.

  It wasn’t cold—just crisp, the kind of sea-air that found its way through cloth and thought alike. Salt touched everything. Not sharp. Just present. The kind of presence that told you the world was older than you and would keep turning long after.

  He leaned against the rail, elbows folded, eyes fixed on the horizon where light was just beginning to rise. It wasn’t gold yet—just the ghost of it, stretching fingers into the gray. The water moved slow beneath them, steady as a heartbeat. No land in sight yet. Only promise.

  Behind him, ropes shifted. Footsteps tapped across planks. A familiar rasp of breath.

  “Iron Wu,” Liu said, without turning.

  “Sir cultivator,” came the reply, thick with gravel and grin.

  Liu heard the creak of tightened rigging. A rope pulled taut. Wu moved like the ship spoke to him in murmurs and knots.

  “You always up this early?” Liu asked.

  “Can’t sleep when the sea’s close to making choices,” Wu replied. “And land makes her twitchy.”

  Liu half-smiled. “That’s not a superstition I’ve heard.”

  “That’s ‘cause I made it up just now.” Wu chuckled to himself. “But I stand by it.”

  He pulled at a line and tested the tension, then paused beside Liu. The faintest morning light caught the edge of his sleeve, revealing the smooth polish of the wooden cap where his arm ended. Scars ran up past it like lightning preserved in flesh.

  “You ever sail on a ship like this before?” he asked.

  “No. First time. Only ferries to Chengtan.”

  “She’s called The Drunken Maid,” Wu said, with a fond pat to the rail. “Because she’s stubborn, messy, and curses at you when the wind changes.”

  “That why you like her?”

  “That’s why she still floats.”

  They stood in silence for a breath, watching as the first edge of the sun slipped free from the horizon. The light spilled slow and soft across the waves. Not bright yet—just certain.

  “Sun like that,” Wu muttered, “means one of two things.”

  “Let me guess,” Liu said. “Good luck or bad wind.”

  “Close,” Wu said. “Means something’s waiting. Could be calm. Could be worse. But it’s always something.”

  He scratched his chin, glancing sidelong at Liu.

  “You’ve got the look of someone who thinks too much.”

  “I call it caution.”

  “That’s what I called it too, before it cost me an arm.”

  Liu glanced down at the wooden cap. “You want to tell that story?”

  Wu grinned. “Maybe. But only the half I remember.”

  He pushed off the rail with a groan, moving toward the main mast.

  “You see something strange on that island,” he called back, “don’t try to name it too quick. Names make things real. Sometimes it’s better not to rush.”

  And just like that, he vanished back into the rhythm of rope and sail.

  Liu turned again to the sea. The light was clearer now. Ahead, in the rising haze, the silhouette of Baojing Island began to form—faint, but no longer a rumor.

  It was almost time.

  By the time the rest of the squad had stirred and stepped onto the deck, the first full shape of Baojing Island had emerged from the sea mist.

  It should have looked serene—rolling hills sloping toward a modest coastline, a humble fishing village nestled near the curve of the bay. Instead, it looked… wrong.

  The sunlight faded as they neared. Not like a cloud passing. Not a storm front. It simply dimmed, as though the island drank light from the sky itself. Colors dulled. Shadows stretched longer than they should. And along the tree-lined shore, a slow, low fog clung to the rocks like it belonged there.

  From the center of the island, a thin column of black smoke spiraled upward—too dark to be natural, too slow to be windblown. It didn’t rise with urgency. It rose like something exhaling.

  The dock appeared ahead—empty.

  No boats moored. No figures moving. No sound but the waves.

  Even the gulls were gone.

  Nozomi leaned on the rail, scanning the coast with narrowed eyes. “Too quiet,” she said. Not fear. Just fact.

  Liu nodded beside her. “It’s not just sound. It’s the air.”

  He was right. The moment they passed into the island’s reach, the atmosphere changed. The air thickened—not visibly, but it pressed on the skin, damp and clinging. Heavy like breath caught in the lungs. It didn’t smell of rot or sea. It smelled of silence.

  Xo’s hand rested loosely on the shaft of his guandao. “The kind of quiet that knows your name.”

  Lei didn’t answer. He just adjusted the strap on his bow and watched the village grow clearer through the mist.

  The buildings were intact—mostly. No fires, no wreckage. Just abandonment. Nets hung limp from posts. Doors hung open. A bowl sat in a windowsill, still holding half a fish.

  It looked as if the village had stopped halfway through the act of living.

  Captain Jiang Hai stood at the helm, one eye narrowed, the other long lost to whatever storm had first taught him caution. His voice, when he spoke, was a low growl over the creak of the sails.

  “I’m not staying.”

  They turned. He didn’t wait for argument.

  “I’ve been through cursed waters and plague shores,” he said. “And this—” he jabbed a finger toward the island, “—this is not an island waiting to be saved. This is a place that’s already chosen what it wants.”

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  Xo frowned. “And what does it want?”

  “Not you.”

  He stepped down from the helm, grunting as he handed Lei a small clay disc. Smooth, dull gray, and cool to the touch. A twin to the one Han Zixin had given him back at the pier.

  “Three days,” Jiang Hai said. “That’s how long I’ll wait. Don’t care if it’s storming, if the sea’s on fire, or if this place starts bleeding shadows—I’ll be back.”

  “And if we’re not?”

  “Then I’ll take your silence as an answer.”

  He paused, glancing at the stone one last time.

  “Use it if you have to. Pride’s a shit excuse to die.”

  Then he turned, barking orders to the crew as the ship drifted to the edge of the dock. No anchor. No ropes. Just enough time for four sets of boots to hit the wood before The Drunken Maid pulled away like she couldn’t leave fast enough.

  They stood there, alone.

  The fog pressed closer. The shoreline didn’t greet them. The forest beyond the village swayed, though no wind blew.

  “Welcome to Baojing,” Nozomi sighed.

  The docks groaned beneath their boots, weathered wood echoing low against the still water. The squad spread out naturally, eyes scanning, weapons at ease but ready. It wasn’t formation. It was habit. Muscle memory honed on training grounds and cemented in a fire-lit arena.

  Liu crouched beside a half-tied fishing boat, frowning. “Oars still in place. Nets, too.” He tugged at the fraying rope. “This wasn’t abandoned on purpose.”

  Nozomi moved past him, her steps silent against the planks. A coil of gutting knives lay scattered near an overturned basket. Fish still glistened faintly, drying and cracked in the morning light. “Someone ran,” she murmured, “but not from a storm.”

  Xo stepped onto one of the larger skiffs. His weight made the hull shift slightly, but he held his balance with practiced ease. “No drag marks,” he said. “No bodies.”

  “Not here, anyway,” Lei added, eyes narrowed toward the mist-blurred village ahead. “It’s too clean.”

  They moved down the length of the harbor, past rows of fishing boats—most still tied, none prepared for departure. At the end of the dock, a ledger lay half-open on a crate. Waterlogged. Smudged. But names and numbers still visible. No entries newer than five days ago.

  Lei flipped a page and exhaled. “They were recording catch weight by the hour. Daily shipments. This place was functioning. Then it wasn’t.”

  Xo pointed toward a squat stone structure further up the slope, half-shrouded by low fog. “There.”

  It sat at the edge of the harbor’s rise—square, thick-walled, built from pale stone pulled from the island’s hills. A bronze plaque on the lintel read:

  Imperial Storehouse — Baojing Division

  “Supply records. Shipment logs. Harvest tracking,” Lei muttered. “Empire doesn’t build in stone unless it matters.”

  The path leading to it was lined with crates and barrels, many still sealed, some broken open. A few long-handled tools—unused—leaned against a stack of drying racks. One cart had tipped on its side, wheel cracked, bags of rice half-spilled and left to rot.

  No signs of looting. No footprints in the dirt.

  The closer they came to the storehouse, the heavier the air felt. Not hotter. Not colder. Just… heavier. Like walking through memory.

  “Doors closed,” Liu said. “But not locked.”

  He stepped forward, waited, then nodded. Xo moved beside him, weapon at a low guard.

  Nozomi looked back toward the sea one last time. The Drunken Maid was a shadow now, fading between the swells and the morning haze.

  The door creaked open under Xo’s hand, hinges moaning in protest. The air inside was cooler, but stale, the kind of stillness that clung to spaces left undisturbed too long. Dust floated in the shafts of pale light breaking through high slits in the walls.

  The scent of paper and old ink hit first—faint, but present.

  Liu stepped in behind Xo, eyes scanning the interior. Rows of wooden shelves lined the walls, stocked with sealed jars, wrapped bundles, old scrolls. In the center stood a heavy desk, its surface strewn with opened ledgers, several fallen to the floor. Ink pooled on one corner of the table, half-dried, as if the writer had dropped the brush mid-stroke.

  “Someone left in a hurry,” Lei murmured. He knelt, gently lifting one of the fallen scrolls. The calligraphy was rushed, strokes sharp and crooked.

  Nozomi picked her way through the mess, fingers brushing past a crate of inventory seals. She crouched by the desk and carefully pulled a worn leather-bound journal from beneath a cracked ledger. Its spine was cracked, the cover marked with the imperial stamp—Baojing’s administrative log.

  Xo stepped closer. “That it?”

  She nodded, already flipping through.

  The early pages were methodical. Neat entries, routine logs.

  "Total inhabitants: 343. Births this year: 4. Deaths: 1 (elderly, natural causes). Grain stores stable. Salted fish shipment delayed three days due to tides."

  Then, the handwriting changed—still the same hand, but less precise. More pressured. Nozomi read aloud, quietly.

  "The cultivator Wu Lang left for a meditation retreat and hunting deep in the jungle three days ago. He has not returned. This is unlike him. The villagers whisper that he has forsaken us."

  Lei leaned in. “Wu Lang?”

  “Sounds like he was their guardian,” Nozomi said. “Not official, but probably trained. Most rural villages have one.”

  Xo’s brow creased. “They trusted him.”

  She turned another page.

  "The hunters report fewer animals in the forest. Some have gone missing, leaving behind only their weapons. The others refuse to go near the deep woods."

  "A fisherman swears he saw Wu Lang standing near the cliffs, but when he called out, the figure did not respond and simply vanished."

  The ink on that line trailed off sharply, the next blot thicker, darker.

  "The hunters are gone. The gatherers are gone. One by one, people vanish during the night. The remaining villagers gather in their homes, too afraid to venture outside. They plan to seek refuge somewhere. I have barred the doors of the storehouse."

  A pause.

  No one spoke.

  Then Nozomi turned to the final page.

  It wasn’t written.

  It was smeared—black ink dragged across the parchment like a hand had slipped while writing.

  And near the bottom, where the ink trailed away into blot, a shape lingered.

  A handprint.

  Lei exhaled through his nose. “I hate it when the stories are right.”

  Liu didn’t joke this time. He moved to the single high window, peering out toward the empty village path. “Whatever happened here,” he said, “it started quiet.”

  Xo’s voice was low. “Then we’re already late.”

  Nozomi closed the book, slowly, as if putting a weight back into the dark.

  “We find what’s left,” she said. “And we find out why.”

  The stone door of the storehouse creaked as it shut behind them, the sound too loud in the suffocating silence that swallowed Baojing’s harbor. The squad moved as one—no barked orders, no need for them. Boots on old cobble, armor whispering against cloth. Each step drew them deeper inland, away from the cold edge of sea and into the unnerving hush of the village.

  The path wound between homes that had once been lived in. Now, they leaned like forgotten things, some with entire walls collapsed inward, others scorched in strange patterns—black spirals and twisted streaks that spoke more of heat than flame. The wooden beams that remained seemed swollen, almost warped, as if something had passed through them and left the shape of violence behind.

  No bodies. No bones. Just absence.

  Even the crows had stopped calling.

  Nozomi’s fingers hovered near the hilt at her side. Liu’s eyes swept each rooftop. Lei’s head tilted every few steps, as if listening for something that refused to arrive. Xo brought up the rear, his guandao gripped loosely in one hand, the other grazing the edge of a fallen doorframe as they passed.

  They turned a corner and found themselves at what could only have been the village center.

  The marketplace.

  The stalls were still there, at least in form—wooden frames and faded awnings sagging under the weight of time and neglect. A broken crate spilled dried fish bones across the stones. A string of prayer tags fluttered in the wind, their edges scorched. The scent of rot mingled with the salt air, faint but present.

  No one spoke.

  A lone cart sat overturned beside the old well, one wheel still spinning slowly in the wind. Around it, the cobblestones were cracked—not with age, but with force. Something heavy had struck here. Hard.

  Nozomi crouched near a fallen stall. Her hand brushed over the surface—no fresh blood. No footprints. Just ash. Thin, grey, caught in the seams of the wood.

  Lei’s voice came quiet. “If anyone’s still alive, they’re not here.”

  Liu moved closer to the well. “It’s not just silence. It’s like the place was emptied out, but no one got the chance to run.”

  Xo pointed to a roof beam above. “Scorch mark. Same as the others. Centered.”

  “From inside,” Lei said, frowning. “But no fire spread. No collapse. Just... impact.”

  The marketplace held its breath. Somewhere between the crumbled stalls and broken stone, the silence was cut by a howl.