Silence is a liar.
It tells you nothing is happening, that the world is still, that you're safe to think. But silence has teeth. It waits until you stop moving—until you start listening—and then it shows you what you've been trying not to hear.
So I talk.
I talk when I'm nervous. I talk when I'm calm. I talk when I'm furious and pretending I'm not. Some people call it preaching. Some call it nagging. The truth is simpler and far less flattering:
Words are the only blade I'm allowed to carry.
A monk with a sword is a scandal. A monk with a sharp tongue is… tradition.
The night we reached Five Elements Mountain, my mouth still worked. My hands still worked. My prayer beads still clicked in the rhythm that kept my pulse from making bad decisions.
The wind, however, had other plans.
It crawled out from behind the mountain like a thing that had been trapped too long. It didn't smell like pine or dust or rain. It smelled like iron—like chains rubbed raw, like old blood that had learned patience.
Behind me, Zhu Bajie sighed loudly enough to make the night flinch.
"Master," he said, stretching the word until it sounded like a complaint, "that mountain looks… cursed. Maybe we go around."
I didn't turn. If I turned, I'd have to look at his face, and if I looked at his face, I'd have to pretend his concern didn't matter.
"Go around destiny?" I asked sweetly. "Yes. Brilliant. We'll take a scenic route to enlightenment. Perhaps stop for tea with the demons while we're at it."
Bajie muttered something that was probably rude and definitely accurate.
I walked closer.
Five Elements Mountain stood like a verdict. Not a mountain, really—more like a hand pressed down on the world, pinning something underneath until it stopped struggling. Moonlight broke across the stone in thin silver shards, as if the sky itself refused to look too closely.
I lifted my sleeve to adjust my robes, and my wrist protested.
It wasn't a fresh pain. It was an old one. The kind that lives under the skin and wakes up when it senses familiar trouble. A small, sharp reminder in the bones—Don't.
I ignored it. That's also tradition.
Prayer beads slipped between my fingers. Click. Click. Click.
"I'm fine," I told the night, because the night was listening and because sometimes the night spreads rumors. "We're fine. This is fine."
"Master," Sha Wujing said quietly from behind us—steady, calm, the sound of someone who could carry a mountain if asked. "Your breathing changed."
I didn't glance back. I didn't give him the satisfaction of being right.
"My breathing is allowed to change," I said. "I am, regrettably, alive."
A pause. Then, very softly, Bajie snorted.
I raised a hand without turning and pointed into the dark. "If you finish that laugh, you'll be sleeping outside the circle tonight."
He stopped laughing.
Good. Order, no matter how petty, is still order.
I placed my palm against the stone.
It was cold in a way stone should not be cold—cold like water drawn from the bottom of a well, cold like a promise made by someone who intended to keep it.
I swallowed once and began to recite.
Not loudly. Loud recitations are for crowds and ceremonies and people who need convincing. This was for whatever lay underneath this mountain, and for myself.
The first line left my lips—
—and something deep inside the stone answered.
A sound. Thin. Metallic. Like a ring struck in the dark.
My breath caught.
Not because I didn't expect a response. Destiny, like most bullies, always responds when it thinks you're paying attention.
But because the sound didn't stay in the mountain.
It tightened around my chest.
A sudden, invisible pressure, like the world had looped a band around my heart and pulled. Not enough to break anything. Just enough to remind me it could.
I lowered my hand.
Bajie shifted uneasily. "Master…"
"I heard it," I said, because if I didn't say it, the fear might get ideas. "I am not deaf. I am not impressed."
I stepped closer and raised my voice—not volume, not heat, but precision. The kind that makes liars sweat.
"Who is in there?" I asked. "If you understand human speech, answer. If you don't… answer anyway."
No reply.
The wind scraped along the mountain's face. Somewhere in the stone, a breath dragged in—ragged, controlled, the sound of something refusing to make a noise it had not been permitted to make.
My wrist prickled again, sharper this time, as if the old pain had found a new reason.
I tilted my head and smiled.
Smiles can be weapons too. People forget that.
"Name," I said.
The word landed like a nail.
Not your title. Not your legend. Not the name other mouths have chewed until it lost meaning. Your name. The one you call yourself when nobody is listening.
"Give me your true name," I continued, calmly, "and I will decide whether to free you. Refuse, and I'll let the mountain keep doing what it's clearly enjoying."
Bajie made a small choking noise behind me, equal parts horror and amusement.
The stone shuddered.
A crack of light split the wall—thin as a paper cut—then widened. Gravel rained down. The mountain's skin peeled apart.
A hand emerged first.
Long fingers. Callused knuckles. Dried blood under the nails, as if the mountain hadn't just pinned him—it had asked him to pay for every second.
The hand dug into the stone and pulled.
The crack tore wider.
He came out like someone clawing his way out of a grave.
He fell to one knee and stayed there, shoulders bunched, breathing through his teeth. Hair in wild tangles. A body built for motion forced into stillness for far too long.
Then he lifted his head.
His eyes caught mine like hooks.
Not pleading. Not grateful. Not even angry in the way most prisoners are angry.
This was older than anger.
This was the fury of something that had been reduced.
I should have taken a step back. Sensible people would have. Sensible people do not volunteer to stand within striking distance of storms.
I didn't move.
He stared at me for a long moment, then—absurdly—smirked, like he'd found something amusing in the moonlight.
"So," he said, voice rough, "you're Tang Sanzang."
Hearing my name from his mouth felt… wrong.
Not insulting. Not threatening.
Familiar.
My wrist flared with pain, and my stomach tightened with a kind of unease I hated because it didn't have a logical shape.
"Who are you?" I asked.
His gaze flicked over my robes, my beads, my calm posture carefully constructed like a wall. Then he looked back at my face, as if he'd decided the wall was optional.
"I'm—"
A glow sparked at his forehead.
A thin golden pattern surfaced on his skin, like the ghost of a circlet. For a heartbeat it looked decorative.
Then it tightened.
His jaw clenched hard enough I heard his teeth grind. One hand flew up to his brow. He didn't scream. He didn't beg.
He just stared at me through the pain like it was my fault and he was waiting to see whether I would enjoy that.
I didn't. Unfortunately.
"That," I said, and made my tone as dry as scripture, "is an impressive way to greet someone. Are you always this dramatic, or is the mountain bringing out your personality?"
His lips twitched. "You talk too much."
"I've been told," I replied. "Usually by men who don't like being questioned."
He took one step forward.
The invisible band around my chest loosened.
Just… loosened.
So sharply, so clearly, that my body noticed before my mind did. Relief washed through me like warmth after cold water.
I froze.
He saw it.
Of course he saw it.
His expression changed—not softer, not kinder, but intent, predatory in a way that wasn't entirely hostile. Like a starving creature realizing where the heat comes from.
"Interesting," he murmured. "So that's how it works."
I lifted my chin. "What works?"
He didn't answer my question. He leaned in slightly, eyes locked on mine, and spoke with the familiarity of someone finishing a sentence we'd started long ago.
"Recite it," he said.
My pulse jumped. "Recite what?"
"The restraint." His voice dropped, almost a growl. "The spell. You know it."
I didn't.
I shouldn't.
Nobody had taught me any spell meant for him. Nobody had told me there would be a man under this mountain who could look at my face and tell me what words I was supposed to say.
And yet—
My tongue felt heavy, as if it remembered a shape my mind refused to acknowledge.
Behind me, Bajie whispered, scandalized, "Master… what is he talking about?"
I didn't take my eyes off the man.
"Step back," I ordered, because ordering is easier than admitting you're rattled.
He didn't step back.
He stepped closer.
The golden pattern on his forehead flared brighter. Pain pulsed through him—and with it, a faint echo in my own chest, like my heart was imitating his suffering out of stubbornness.
My stomach turned cold.
I could feel it now. The connection. A line drawn between us that I hadn't agreed to.
Or worse—
A line I had agreed to, once, and forgotten.
The man's smile was razor-thin.
"Say it," he repeated, quieter now. "You always say it."
My breath stuttered.
I didn't want to speak. Words can bind. Words can cut. Words can become vows whether you intend them to or not.
And the worst part—
The most humiliating part—
Was that some part of me wanted to.
Not for power. Not for control.
For relief. For him.
I bit down on the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood.
His eyes tracked the movement, as if he could read my desperation like ink on paper.
"Tell me," he said, almost gently. Almost.
"What did you used to call me?"
The night held its breath.
My prayer beads went still in my fingers.
And somewhere behind my ribs, a name—too short, too intimate, too known—rose to the edge of my mouth, ready to ruin my life with a single syllable.