The silence in the Azure Archives was the deepest sound Li Ming had ever known.
It wasn't the absence of noise. It was a heavy, velvet quiet, thick with the scent of ancient paper, cedar shelves, and the faint, forever-damp stone of the mountain. Li Ming moved through it like a fish through dark water, his bare feet whispering across cool, smooth flagstones. His fingers trailed along the familiar grooves of the endless bookshelves, shelves he had never seen, but knew in his bones.
He was blind. Had been since the fever took his sight at five winters old. But here, in the Archives, it didn't matter. Here, he listened to the world.
Right now, he listened for the rasp of Master An's breathing.
The old Keeper's usual spot, a worn cushion at the heart of the Scroll Chamber, was empty. No soft sigh of turning pages. No gentle slurp of tea.
"Master?" Li Ming's voice was small, swallowed by the vastness.
A cough echoed from the far western stacks. It was wet, ragged. It was wrong.
Li Ming's heart jumped against his ribs. He navigated quickly, his mind painting a perfect map. Twenty-seven steps forward, turn left at the pillar that always felt colder, thirty steps down the Narrow Way. The air grew thinner, older. This was where the oldest scrolls slept.
He found Master An on the floor.
"Master!" Li Ming dropped to his knees, his hands finding the old man's thin shoulders. The master's robes, always crisp linen, felt damp with sweat.
"Ming… child. Good. You are here." Master An's voice was a threadbare whisper. He gripped Li Ming's wrist. The strength in that grip, like iron bands, shocked him. It was the last strength of a dying fire.
"You're ill. Let me get the medicine, the golden root from the high shelf—"
"No time. Listen." Master An pulled him closer. His breath smelled of blood and cloves. "The Last Door. You feel the draft?"
Li Ming did. From the very back wall, where no shelf stood, a cold, dry breeze sighed across the stone floor. A breeze that had never been there before.
"It is open. It should not be open until I am gone. The balance… is shifting early." Master An coughed again, a terrible sound. "You must go in. Now. Before the silence breaks."
"The Last Door? But that's… that's for the Keeper. That's your chamber." Panic, cold and sharp, climbed Li Ming's throat. He was just an apprentice. A blind boy who sorted scrolls by the texture of their parchment and the smell of their ink.
"You are the Keeper now." Master An pressed something cold and metallic into Li Ming's palm. It was a key, long and complex. "The Archive chooses. It feels my end. It calls to the next vessel. It calls to you."
"I can't! I don't know how!"
"You listen," Master An said, as if it were the simplest truth in the world. "That is all you have ever done. Now, go. And do not be afraid of the voices."
With a final, shuddering breath, Master An's hand fell from Li Ming's wrist. The iron grip was gone. The ragged breathing… stopped.
The silence returned. But it was different. It was waiting.
Li Ming knelt there, the key biting into his palm, the weight of his master's body against his knees. The world had narrowed to the cold metal in his hand and the cold draft on his face.
He didn't know how long he sat. Time in the Archives was its own creature. Finally, he gently laid Master An down. He arranged the old man's hands on his chest, the way he'd seen in his mind's eye from stories. He stood on trembling legs.
The draft pulled at him.
Step by step, he walked toward the back wall. His foot hit not stone, but empty space. The doorway. The cold was intense now, dry as a desert tomb. He lifted the key. He didn't know where the lock was. He simply held it out.
A soft click echoed, not in the air, but inside his skull.
He stepped through.
The air changed. It became charged, thick, humming with a pressure that made his ears pop. It wasn't a room. It was a… cavern of consciousness. He couldn't see it, but he could feel it stretching away in all directions, impossibly vast.
And then he heard them.
…the mountain will not move, but my fist will move the mountain…
…seven steps, turn, a whisper of silk, the kiss of the poisoned needle…
…drink the pain, drink the sorrow, let it make your steps un-follow-able…
…still the heart, still the mind, let the soul's quiet be the final strike…
Whispers. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands. They overlapped, a tidal wave of thoughts, memories, declarations, laments. They weren't in his ears. They were in the center of his brain, a storm of ghosts.
Li Ming cried out, clapping his hands to the sides of his head. He staggered, falling to his knees. The pressure was immense. It was going to crack his skull open.
"Stop!" he screamed into the psychic storm. "Please, stop!"
For a heartbeat, they did.
The whispers pulled back, not gone, but now circling him like curious wolves. The silence that followed was even more terrifying.
Then, one voice separated itself. It was deep, gravelly, weathered by wind and war.
"Hm. A child. And a broken one. The Archive has chosen a blind kitten to tend the tigers."
The voice seemed to come from right in front of him. Li Ming scrambled back, his back hitting something smooth and cool—a pillar?
"Who are you?" Li Ming's voice trembled.
"I am the last echo of the Mountain-Crushing Fist. I am Iron Saint Bai. Or I was." The voice held a bottomless sorrow. "You are the new Keeper?"
"I… Master An gave me the key. He's… gone."
A rumble, like distant rockfall. "Gone. So another living thread is cut. And we dead remain." The voice focused on him, a weight of attention. "You hear us. Clearly. Most Keepers only hear the murmur of the crowd until they train for decades. You hear me as I am."
"It's too loud," Li Ming whispered.
"It will break you if you let it be noise", Iron Saint Bai said, not unkindly. "You must listen to one. Focus. Pick a whisper. Just one."
Li Ming tried to breathe. He let the ocean of whispers become a background hiss. He reached out with his mind, the way he reached with his hands in the dark library.
…the dance is never done, the vengeance is never won…
He touched that thread. Gently.
Suddenly, he wasn't on the floor anymore. He stood in a moonlit courtyard. A woman in silken robes spun, her movements a lethal poetry. He felt her grace, her bitter rage, the cold weight of hairpin needles in her hair. The vision was not sight, it was a perfect, senseless knowing.
It snapped.
"You touched the Phantom Veil Dance." Iron Saint Bai's voice was wary. Lady Silken Death. "She is… sharp. Do not wander too deep into her memories, boy. Some ghosts bite."
"What is this place?" Li Ming asked, still reeling.
"This is the True Archive. What is outside is just the shadow. Here lie the Dragon-Eyed Scrolls, the final, perfect imprint of every martial style that has died in the Riverflow Realm. When the last master of a style dies without passing it on, its essence crystallizes here. We are the endings." The ghost's voice grew heavy. "Master An was our bridge. Our interpreter. Our warden. Now… it is you."
Another voice cut in, this one sly and melodic, tinged with laughter. "A blind bridge! How wonderfully ironic. Can he even find his way to the tea?" It was Lady Silken Death.
"Quiet, witch", Bai rumbled. "The boy is drowning. He needs a lifeline, not your needles."
"Every man needs a needle or two", she purred. "It reminds him he is flesh."
Li Ming forced himself to stand. "What do you want from me?"
"Want?" Iron Saint Bai's surprise was a wave of warm air. "We are echoes. We have unfinished symphonies. Last wishes. Regrets. Some of us wish to be learned, so the style is not truly dead. Some seek vengeance. Some seek peace. The Keeper helps. Or guards. Or ignores. It has always been the way."
"And some of us, a new voice, somber and deep as a still pond, interjected, seek only to understand why we must persist in this half-life. I am the Silent Abbot. Welcome, child of silence."
The voices were individuals now. Not a wave, but a crowd. Li Ming could feel them, the gruff solidity of Bai, the swirling sharpness of Lady Silken Death, the profound quiet of the Silent Abbot, and dozens, hundreds more, pressing at the edges of his awareness.
A realization dawned on him, colder than the draft. Master An had been old, wise, powerful in his own way. He had managed this.
Li Ming was just a blind librarian.
"I can't do this," he said, despair rising.
"You have no choice." Iron Saint Bai's voice was final. "The door is sealed behind you with your key and your blood. You are bonded. If you go mad, the Archive becomes a storm that will leak into your world. Styles will manifest as wild ghosts. Techniques will run amok with no master to control them. You hold the dam, Keeper."
Li Ming's blood ran cold. "What do I do? Right now, what do I DO?"
"First," the Silent Abbot's calm voice washed over him, you must establish order. "You are the center. We are the wheel. You must make your first decree as Keeper."
Li Ming swallowed. His mouth was dust. He thought of Master An's last words. Do not be afraid of the voices.
He took a deep, shaking breath. He stood straight, facing the vast, unseen chamber.
"Silence," he commanded.
The murmuring ceased instantly. The attention of ten thousand dead styles focused on him, a weight that nearly drove him back to his knees.
"I am Li Ming. I am… the Keeper." The words felt foreign on his tongue. "I don't know your ways. I am blind. I am weak. But I am here."
He paused, feeling the spectral pressure.
"My first decree is this: you will not speak to me all at once. You will… you will take turns. Iron Saint Bai, you will be my guide for now. The rest… you must be quiet. Or I will break."
He didn't know if he could enforce it. It was a bluff whispered into a hurricane.
For a long moment, nothing.
Then, Iron Saint Bai's voice, alone and clear in the psychic space. "A fair and wise first ruling, Keeper Li Ming. A show of strength through limitation. Perhaps there is hope."
The other presences didn't vanish, but they receded, becoming a soft, distant hum. The crushing pressure lifted, just a little.
Now, Bai said, his tone practical, "we must deal with the immediate problem. The door opened early because the Archive sensed Master An's impending death. But it also sensed something else. An imbalance. A living style is approaching true extinction in the valley below this mountain. Its potential echo is… pulling. It creates a current."
"What does that mean?" Li Ming asked, exhausted.
"It means," Lady Silken Death's voice slipped through, "a single sharp thread he couldn't block, that the world outside is not waiting for you to learn, little Keeper. Death is coming to claim a style. And we will all feel it die."