The First Trial Gate stood open, an arch of cold stone breathing incense and brass. Glass Oath Lamps hummed along a corridor of moving seal plates. Ropes thrummed, taut as bowstrings. Chalk grit whispered underfoot. Low bells stacked in the rafters, a layered pulse under the hush.
A proctor's voice cut the quiet. "Seal Walk. Traverse on the move. Recite clauses at marked nodes. Parity checks permitted without halt. Three segments. Boundary resets only for breaches."
Qin Ye shifted into Center Pin. His weight settled, an axis beneath breath. Inhale four. Anchor four. Exhale two.
He neither stretched nor rolled his shoulders. He simply stood where the rope hummed true and the plate began to glide.
—
His sleeve brushed the cool jamb.
[Daily Sign-In available.]
[Location: First Gate Jamb.]
[Sign-In? Yes / No]
Yes.
[Ding! Sign-In successful!]
[Reward: Glyph Thread (Lv.1, 20 breaths — surface rune timing & lamp window shifts) + Lamp Witness Tag (1 use — auto-announce & snapshot any touch on Oath Lamps/plates).]
A He-line aide stepped from the shadow of a rope post, eyes polite, angle wrong. "Closed verification alcove is available for safety pre-scan."
Qin Ye's foot landed on the seal plate. "Clause 3.2." The words rode his step by Clause Weave. "Public route persists until final gate."
He walked past. The motion never broke.
The aide's smile stayed on his face while he stepped back.
—
Segment A — Lamp Cadence Walk.
Oath Lamps glowed in a slow heartbeat, palm-plates at hip height. Their fields tugged at breath, trying to pull the count away from four-four-two into something softer, slower.
He lit Oath Thread. He tugged Glyph Thread tight.
Runes on the lamp collars resolved into beats and windows. He matched tone to breath, palm settling into each plate's faint warmth. "Clause four point two—boundary parity—refresh on request." The words were trimmed to bone. His cadence did the rest.
An amber lamp faltered. Its wick collar was dusted with a matte-black bloom that ate light—Null Crest residue. The tug in its field lagged by a hair. His breath did not.
Two fingers slid into view, "steadying" the collar.
He didn't look at the hand. He spent the Lamp Witness Tag.
A hall-voice rang out, flat, without inflection. "Contact on Lamp Seven logged. Snapshot archived."
The aide's knuckles froze. The fingerpads lifted like guilty thoughts.
Qin Ye's master Evidence Seal pulsed once. A thin, clean light ringed the collar, then sank into it, lodging the chain.
[Ding! Micro-Goal: "Keep the Tone Public."]
[Reward: +180,000 Spirit Stones; Declaration Steadiness +2% (situational).]
He moved on. The rope sang in his peripheral hearing. Glyph Thread showed the next lamp's window shifting a fraction earlier in the run. He adjusted by a toe-length, and the world accepted his step.
A live index pane above the lane dulled to grey right as he began the next clause. He didn't tighten his jaw or look up. He let Public Anchor lift quietly from his ring like a second hum.
A hash mismatch flashed on the pane. The grey cleared. His words, bound to footfall, remained where the hall could see them.
One slate-scratch from the gallery. Liu Shan's head was down, stylus working. "Seal Walk: zero halts."
The bell tone under the lamps rose half a note and held.
—
A boundary chalk line near a corner plate had faded to a suggestion. He exhaled on count. "Clause four point two." His palm brushed the plate. "Boundary refresh."
A proctor jogged the line tight with fresh chalk and a twang of rope. The log chime snapped. No one missed a step.
The plate chain ratcheted. He never looked back.
—
Segment B — Triad Palm Sync.
Three palm-nodes waited, staggered across three lanes, each green window sliding differently. Lin Xiu's lane ran parallel on his left, quiet, her breath compact. Yue Hong drifted on his right, a hair late, tracking both the pane and Qin Ye's shoe edge like a hawk watching wind.
He fed Glyph Thread one breath. The windows braided in his vision.
He and Lin Xiu slid into a brief Shadow Duet Step; their heels kissed stone on the same beat. He let a legal sleeve-seam cue brush Yue Hong's timing, a barely-there tilt that pointed at a future he wasn't owed.
Three palms landed on green.
Chimes layered, not quite simultaneous to the ear—but the Device Witness orb saw down to breath.
A marshal's hand jerked up. "Asymmetric confirmation—"
"Clause seven point two." It rode his next step clean. "On-frame replay shows window overlap."
The orb opened its eye. The frames bloomed in slow motion. The marshal's flag lowered like a tired bird.
[Ding! Micro-Goal: "Triad Echo."]
[Reward: +190,000 Spirit Stones; Multi-Node Timing +2% (situational).]
They were already leaving when the approval stamp thudded.
Qin Ye's breath was a line drawn through water. Lin Xiu matched from a lane away. Yue Hong matched because he could.
—
A side holoplate ghosted, a single thin line pulling itself across the index like dry ink: 9.1-β—an attempt to file "walking recitation" under "internal ceremonial."
Hash Sight opened a narrow slit behind the mask. The clause-hook glinted there, brittle, opportunistic.
"Clause nine point one." His toe found the next plate. "Public witness binds oath recitations under audit."
The ghost line snapped back into the pane. It didn't vanish. It withdrew.
The rope along the wall hummed in something close to approval.
—
A cart squealed into his path with a lurch meant to seem accidental. Body on instinct, hand on law. He took a Silent Step across the squeal's angle and the cart was already behind him, harmless as old chalk.
He didn't turn his head. He saved breath. He saved words.
—
Segment C — Vow Corridor.
The air cooled as crystal frames rolled in around the walking circle. Their draw tugged gently on every meridian like a tide nosing a moored boat.
He called his check on an inhale. "Clause three point one. Coil seven calibration." The breath behind the 'seven' made the tone land; the clerk stamped on the exhale.
Hinges squeaked. Instruments adjusted. The draw evened. He let Oath Cadence do the work and his cadence did not falter.
A ripple from a stumble two lanes over blew through the frames. Quiet Pivot bled it sideways into stone. The hum returned to center.
Public Anchor was already out of its scabbard when a registrar proxy flicked a "memo cascade" against the pane. The cascade hit the Anchor and turned to droplets of nothing.
[Ding! Micro-Goal: "Hold the Walk Under Draw."]
[Reward: +200,000 Spirit Stones; Examiner Impression +1 (situational).]
The corridor's bell tone lifted again, felt more than heard, a hair below the breath count. He didn't chase it.
He planted on plate. He spoke the chain short enough to ride the next stride. "Null Crest under audit links seven-four history binds device parity eight-one."
A marshal raised a flag out of habit more than hope. "Safety—"
"Clause eight point one." The word 'reset' never left his mouth. "Requires logged cause."
The orb's eye stayed open, bored. No breach. The flag fell.
He touched the last plate and let the lamp tone refill his lungs.
—
Backwash from the plate chain lifted a whiff of solvent from somewhere beneath the floor. He ignored it. The Evidence Seal on Lamp Seven's collar pulsed once, reporting quietly to the log. The hall's mind stored it away with the rest of the small, heavy truths.
[Ding! Micro-Goal: "Catch the Wick."]
[Reward: +180,000 Spirit Stones; Evidence Handling +1 (situational).]
The gate indicators went from amber to a clean white audit. Ropes dropped a key and settled there, content.
[Ding! First Trial Gate — Seal Walk: Completed.]
[Rewards: Proctors: Reputation +1; +300,000 Spirit Stones.]
[Ding! Main Quest updated — Hall of Rites: Second Trial Gate (Mirror Seal) — 1 day.]
He didn't bow. He didn't look up for approval. He looked at the next door.
—
He Rulong stood on the gallery with the stillness of stone teaching water not to move. "Keep your breath on the angle," he said, too quiet to be for anyone who didn't already know how to listen.
All it did was confirm what Qin Ye's foot was about to do.
Liu Shan's stylus whispered across slate. "Seal Walk chain intact; 9.1-β observed, withdrawn." His handwriting made the note look casual. It wasn't.
—
Clerks began performing their own little rituals—straightening stamp trays, re-inking nibs, aligning tally rods with soft ticks. A rope post creaked as if it too wanted to speak.
A He-line aide drifted a step too close to the lamps again and then remembered the hall still had a memory. He withdrew his hand like a child leaving a brazier alone.
Qin Ye slowed nowhere. He crossed the seam where floor changed grain under the next arch and felt the plate beyond breathe different.
—
Between gates, a small console blinked awake for a breath. Proc-Hub Δ surfaced like something suspicious pretending to be a stone on a riverbed. Hash Sight caught a crisp tail on the mask, a new tag etched thin as a hair: 9.1-γ (draft).
The console masked itself before the hall could make a noise.
The draft didn't vanish. It folded, waiting for pressure.
He kept his count. Four. Four. Two.
—
The Mirror Seal vestibule opened like the throat of a bell. The mirror-plate sat on a gimbal, its silvered surface dark, the frame marked with runes he didn't know and didn't need to. Rope lines stood around it like silent judges. The breath in the room was cooler here, as if the plate drank heat the way Silent River drank light.
A ritual clerk stood ready with a slate. He began to open his mouth.
Qin Ye put his boot on the stone where rope hum matched his pulse. He set Center Pin in his bones. He let the hall's hum overlap his breath until they were not two sounds.
Behind him, the completed Gate ticked once as seals closed. Ahead, the mirror's edge picked up a thread of bell tone from somewhere he couldn't see.
The plate shivered. The first rune lit. A tiny, legal wedge ticked somewhere. He didn't bite.
—
He allowed himself one blink-long scan. The chalk at the base of the mirror frame was fresh, bright, recently refreshed to avoid a 4.2 objection. Good. The clerk was learning.
Beyond the frame, a narrow panel showed three lines of text in a font designed to look like law: "Verification lane east—faster queue." It even had a border. It had no log icon. Not law.
He passed it as one passes dust.
—
From another lane, Lin Xiu moved like the second hand to his minute. She neither nodded nor spoke. She did not need to. The way her foot pressed chalk said everything.
Farther out, Yue Hong watched the mirror surface as if it might commit a crime. He measured not the plate but the people near it and he measured wrong only because he was not yet permitted to measure right.
—
He tasted hot brass in the air. The mirror shed a smell like rain on stone.
Behind the pane of the index wall, something scratched faintly and stopped. The hall let the scratch be recorded. It did not need to be told it mattered.
—
A rope post creaked as the gimbal took first weight. The glass tone under the mirror rose a quarter-step.
He let breath leave on two.
He felt the hinge in his hip become a law against the floor.
The plate began to rotate.
The mirror turned; his breath did not.