Three days after chapter 15, they reached a town at the foot of a mountain—one Gao Yang had talked about visiting, once. He'd said there was a carpenter here who could carve staffs that "sang with the wind." Lin Chen had remembered, even if he hadn't said it.
They found the carpenter's shop easily—it had a sign with a staff carved into it, and the wind was making it hum a soft tune. The carpenter was a young woman named Xiao Yu, who looked up as they entered, her eyes falling on the broken pieces of Gao Yang's staff tied to Lin Chen's pack.
"Those look like they have a story," she said, wiping her hands on her apron. "Can I see them?"
Lin Chen untied the pieces and handed them to her. She ran her fingers along the split, the white patch, the dark line that ran through it all. Her eyes widened slightly. "I've never felt wood hold so much light," she said. "Who did this belong to?"
"His name was Gao Yang," Yu Qing said, her voice steady now. "He was a Storyteller. And a friend."
Xiao Yu nodded slowly. "He wanted a staff that sang with the wind, didn't he?" she asked, as if she'd heard it before. "I can feel it in the wood—he poured his whole self into it. Even broken, it still sings, if you listen."
She held the pieces up to the open window, and the wind caught them. Sure enough, a soft, clear note floated through the shop—exactly the tune Gao Yang had hummed so many times. Lin Chen and Yu Qing looked at each other, and for the first time since his death, the ache in their chests felt less like pain and more like warmth.
"Can you fix it?" Lin Chen asked.
Xiao Yu shook her head. "You can't fix something that's already told its ending. But… I can reweave it. Turn the broken pieces into something new—something that carries his light forward."
She spent the rest of the day working, carving the broken staff pieces into two small, smooth wands. One had the white patch from the original handle; the other had the dark line that had split it. She tied them together with a piece of red string, then handed them to Lin Chen.
"One for you, one for her," she said. "When the wind catches them, they'll sing together—like two voices in a song. His story and yours, woven into one."
As they left the shop, the wind picked up, and the two wands hummed in harmony. Gao Yang's tune, but now with a new layer—theirs. Yu Qing held her wand up, smiling as it sang. "He'd like this," she said. "He always said the best stories are the ones that grow."
They climbed the mountain behind the town, following a path that wound through pine trees. At the top, there was a clearing with a view of the entire valley below. Lin Chen pulled out his blank book and flipped to a page filled with the glowing foreshadowing lines from past chapters. He wrote a new line below them, weaving it into the existing thread:
The broken becomes whole in the weaving. The song continues, with new voices.
The words glowed, and suddenly, all the dark lines in the book—from the stone to the staff to the page in Chapter 9—transformed, turning into threads of light that connected every chapter, every moment, every person they'd met. Even the line that had marked Gao Yang's ending was now a bright thread, leading forward into the pages ahead.
As the sun set, they sat in the clearing, the two wands singing in the wind. Lin Chen thought back to Chapter 1, when he'd woken up as zero, with no story at all. Now, his story was filled with light and dark, joy and grief, endings and new beginnings—all the things that made a story worth telling.
"He was right, you know," Yu Qing said, breaking the silence. "About the blank space. It's not just about what you write—it's about what you let other people write in it too. Gao Yang wrote his part, and now we get to write the rest, carrying his light with us."
Lin Chen nodded, looking at the valley below. The future was still unwritten, but now he didn't fear it. He had Yu Qing, the singing wands, and the memory of his friend. The core of his story was still there—potential, choice, the power of the blank—but it was bigger now, deeper, woven with the stories of everyone he'd touched.
The wind picked up again, and the wands sang louder, their tune echoing across the mountain. Gao Yang's song. Their song. The story that goes on.