The iron door did not swing. It exhaled.
The moment the chains fell slack and the last talisman crumbled to ash against Lin Yue's palm, the door groaned inward on some hinge older than sound itself, and a breath of stale, incense-heavy air rolled out of the dark beyond it—air that had not moved in decades, air that smelled faintly of dust and dried flowers and something underneath both, something sweet in the way spoiled fruit was sweet.
Nobody moved for a long moment.
"That's not air," Zhou Ke said, pressing the back of his hand to his nose. "That's a tomb exhaling. I want that on record. I want it known that I said that before whatever's about to happen, happens."
"Noted," Luo Ming said flatly. "For your gravestone."
"Don't joke about gravestones," Wang Heyan snapped, sharper than he meant to, and everyone went quiet, because they were all still thinking of the blank stone in the Burial Forest and the woman who was no longer standing among them.
