CHAPTER 154: CH-154: KNOTS

The clouds had thickened overnight, turning the morning into a dim, gray wash. The river, so sharp and restless in daylight, now moved under a dull surface that reflected nothing but the sky’s uncertainty.

Tian Shen stood at the edge of the dock again, spear balanced upright in his palm. He watched the current’s pull and imagined the pale figure drifting somewhere beneath, suspended in the cold, mouth closed against the silt.

Feng Yin’s voice broke through his thoughts.

"Ji Luan’s already spoken to the fisherman again. No one’s missing from the village since last night. Whoever that was... he wasn’t from here."

Tian Shen turned from the water. "No. He was from upstream."

He didn’t say from before the orchard, though the words sat heavy behind his teeth.

By the time the Scouts gathered, the day had settled into that stillness that always preceded rain. Tian Shen set them into motion without ceremony. Ji Luan took point on the right bank, scanning the mud for fresh prints. Feng Yin kept to the left with Little Mei, Drowsy shadowing the group from above in slow, measured arcs.

The path was rougher than the southern roads. Jagged shelves of stone jutted out toward the river, forcing them to walk in single file. Every few steps, Tian Shen glanced up at the ridges — the mist still clung there like a second skin.

The first sign came just before midday. A gap in the trees opened onto a narrow gravel bar, slick from the river’s reach. Ji Luan crouched, fingers tracing over a shallow indentation in the grit.

"Barefoot again," he said. "Same spacing as before. Deliberate."

Tian Shen studied the print. The depth told him enough — whoever made it wasn’t just passing through. They had stood here for a moment, weight shifting as if in contemplation. Facing the river.

"Mark it," Tian Shen said. "We’ll track from here."

They followed the prints along the water’s edge for nearly two hundred paces before they vanished into an outcrop of reddish stone. The rock was scored in places, faint grooves like fingernail marks cut into its surface.

Feng Yin knelt, brushing her fingers over one of the marks. "These aren’t random. They’re part of something larger."

Tian Shen could see it too, now — the grooves formed curling lines that spiraled inward. A fragment of a sigil, though incomplete. It reminded him, unpleasantly, of the orchard’s unseen roots.

"Whoever’s carving these isn’t just wandering," he said. "They’re laying something down."

The rain began not long after — a fine mist at first, then a steadier fall that blurred the ridges and turned the stone slick.

By mid-afternoon, they reached a narrow bend where the river split briefly into two channels around a rock spine. The right fork was choked with fallen logs, the left running deep and black under overhanging branches.

"This is a bottleneck," Ji Luan said, echoing his words from the day before.

Tian Shen didn’t reply. His attention was fixed on a figure standing knee-deep in the left channel, head bowed, hands submerged in the current.

The man didn’t look up until the Scouts were ten paces from the bank. When he did, the movement was slow, unhurried, as though he’d been expecting them for some time.

"You follow," the man said. His voice was softer than the river’s rush, yet Tian Shen heard it clearly. "That’s good."

"Who are you?" Tian Shen asked.

The man tilted his head slightly, as if considering whether to answer. "A keeper. For now."

Feng Yin stepped forward, but Tian Shen lifted a hand to stop her.

"A keeper of what?" he asked.

"The bindings," the man said simply. "And soon, the unbinding. One cannot exist without the other."

Tian Shen felt the words settle into him like a weight. "And the vanishings? The people taken?"

The man smiled — not unkindly, but without warmth. "They are part of it. Some go willing, some not. The river decides who it will carry."

Before Tian Shen could move, the man’s hands came out of the water. They dripped not with silt or weed, but with thin threads of red that clung to his skin like liquid iron. He pressed his palms together, and the threads vanished, drawn inward.

"You can follow further," the man said. "But you won’t like where it leads."

Then he stepped backward, and the river took him without a splash.

For a long moment, the only sound was the rain on the leaves.

Ji Luan’s hand hovered near his sword. "We’re letting him go?"

"We couldn’t stop him here," Tian Shen said. "Not without knowing what we’re cutting into."

Feng Yin’s eyes narrowed. "You think this ties to the orchard."

"I think the orchard was only the start," Tian Shen replied. "Whatever’s moving in this river — it’s connected. We’ve just been following its surface ripples. We need to see the current underneath."

They made camp that evening on a narrow ledge above the waterline. The rain eased after sunset, leaving the air thick with the scent of wet stone. Drowsy roosted on a low ridge, head tucked under one wing but one eye open toward the river.

Tian Shen sat apart from the others, sharpening the edge of his spear. The rhythm of the whetstone against metal steadied him, but his thoughts didn’t settle.

The man’s words had been too precise, too knowing. A "keeper" was not a wanderer. That meant purpose. And if there were keepers, there were others — watchers, perhaps, or makers of the thing being bound.

When Feng Yin joined him, she carried no lantern. She sat cross-legged opposite him, her gaze steady in the low firelight.

"You’re holding something back," she said.

Tian Shen didn’t stop his work. "I’m holding back guesses. Until I have more, they’re only noise."

"Sometimes guesses are the first step to finding proof," she said.

He met her eyes. "And sometimes they’re the first step to walking into the wrong fight."

They left it there, but Tian Shen knew she would keep pressing when the time came.

...

By dawn, the mist was so thick it beaded on their lashes. The river was a muted presence beside them, its rush muffled.

They moved upstream again, the path narrowing until they were walking almost at the water’s edge. Twice, they passed sections of stone marked with more of the curling grooves, each set larger and more complete than the last.

Just before midday, the ridges fell away, opening into a basin where the river pooled wide and still. At its center stood a half-submerged stone structure — not a bridge, not a dock, but something older, its surface worn smooth by centuries of water.

Tian Shen felt the hair on his arms rise. The structure was ringed with carvings like those they’d seen on the stones — only here, they formed a complete circle.

And within that circle, something moved.

It was not a person, not entirely. The shape was human in outline but blurred at the edges, as though the water itself were trying to form a body and failing.

It turned toward them without eyes. The current around it shifted, and Tian Shen realized too late that the movement was pulling them closer.

"Back!" he snapped, but the pull was already under their boots, dragging at them with the strength of the whole river.

Drowsy dropped from above, wings flaring, letting out a roar that made the basin shiver. The thing in the circle did not flinch — it simply raised one indistinct hand, and the pull deepened.

Tian Shen drove his spearpoint into the ground, anchoring himself and grabbing Ji Luan’s arm to keep him from sliding forward. Feng Yin had one hand on Little Mei’s shoulder, her other arm braced against a rock.

The pull lasted only heartbeats, but it left them all winded, boots soaked, and the image of the water-shape burned into their minds.

When the current eased, the basin was empty again. The circle of carvings shone faintly beneath the surface, then dimmed.

Tian Shen straightened, water dripping from his tunic. His voice was steady when he spoke.

"We’ve found the knot," he said. "Now we have to find the knife."

...

Tian Shen didn’t look back as they left the basin. The river’s roar had returned to its usual voice, but he could still feel the pull in his bones, like a phantom weight.

Feng Yin walked at his side, silent for once, eyes narrowed in thought. Ji Luan and Little Mei trailed behind, their steps subdued, Drowsy’s shadow crossing over them at intervals.

The air felt charged, each breath tasting faintly of iron.

Tian Shen’s grip on his spear tightened. Whatever that thing in the circle had been, it wasn’t finished. The sigils upstream, the barefoot man, the threads of red — all of it was leading here, to a center they’d only glimpsed.

He let the others believe they had time. But in his mind, he was already counting the days.

Knots could hold for years.

Or they could unravel overnight.