Fog peeled off the cemetery in layers once the first array went off. His [Calamity Radar]’s Deep?Scan pulse, fired from the flash?copper thirty seconds before touchdown, still burned across his HUD like afterimages.
He could see charm frequencies flared in jagged bands, with the brightest around the ornate wrought?iron gate at the cemetery’s center. Little rifts budded around it like barnacles around a ship hull, each one spitting out fog clouds.
And each carried sound.
Accompanying every opened rift was a slow, low note vibrating through the ground, felt more than heard. Every time it swelled, his radar flared red around human signatures.
Eathan sighed.
“A subharmonic insinuation,” he muttered. A voice humming below the range of mortal hearing, shaking their blood into soft jelly.
“And people say I’m dramatic.”
“Less commentary, more cutting,” Chewie said, appearing at his shoulder.
He flicked a glance sideways. The now twelve-year-old looked very at home in a haunted Queens cemetery: tiny, scarf tucked into her jacket, eyes narrowed, boots leaving light dents in the snow. Her breath plumed white, then vanished where it met the charm field.
He tugged his own cap down more firmly, fingers skating over the interface hovering at the edge of his vision.
Li Wei’s voice rang in the back of his head now. Thirty percent of Qi Tokens were strategic reserve, which mean they were untouchable. Another thirty for upgrades, and the last forty he could actually spend.
He mentally peeled six-hundred tokens out of the mental Operational Bucket. Enough for arrays, heals, one Deep?Scan. Not enough to dig into the locked reserve.
No panic?spending, he reminded himself.
The flash?copper’s rotor wash was already a memory behind them. Ahead, rows of headstones rose out of the snow, crooked teeth in a white jaw. The charm song dipped, then slammed into the world around him.
For half a breath, the cemetery melted into something else: warm lamplight, kitchen tiles, a hand ruffling his hair, the smell of instant ramen—
“Eathan,” a voice like Taeril’s said, gentle and tired. “You’ve done enough. Come home.”
Eathan felt something clench his chest. His mortal brain reached for it; his digital one slapped its own face.
“Palette B,” he said sharply.
[Receipt Printer (Lv. 7): Palette Swap – B]
Stored:
- Beckoning Kitten Phone Charm — Anti?Deception
- Volcano Sea Salt 100lb — Banish
- Corrosive Gluestick — Bind
- 2000s Bleach — Purify
- Flamethrower — Ignite
- Koi Stickers Full Pack — Redirect
A talisman snapped out of the scanner with the satisfying crack of thermal paper. He slapped it over his own sternum; a second rode the arc of his throw straight to Chewie’s forehead.
The Beckoning Kitten winked once, tiny paw raised in eternal wave.
Then, reality jolted around him. The warm kitchen snapped away, and the cemetery slammed back in, sharper than before.
“EEEEEEEEEE!”
The charm voice snarled as its illusion broke, pitch sliding up to something angry and off?key.
“Cute,” Chewie said, deadpan, adjusting the sticker with two fingers. “You put a cat on my face.”
“It’s anti?psychic glare,” Eathan said. “Very serious technique.”
Something moved at the edge of his vision. However, he didn’t look with eyes; he watched through the map. Red smeared along the central gate, coiling and uncoiling in a slow figure?eight. Around it, smaller amber nodes jerked in fits and starts.
Jiangshi, his brain supplied now that he’d seen the first hijacked agent.
These “hopping vampires” were a classic in Chinese myth. Cemetery rifts really liked to hit the clichés.
His ear pinged. Eathan glimpsed the ongoing comms channel, with Li Wei leading UR-01.
[ADVANCED FORCE COMM] NOTIFICATION:
Subscriptions: Area 003 Urban Response – Incident Thread 4X
UR?02: “Team 5 eyes on gate. Hypno?band confirmed. Class?A signature building.”
UR?01: “Copy. All civilian teams fall back to outer lines. Advanced Force holds inner zone. Do not let anchor solidify.”
“Anchor?” Eathan muttered.
He flicked a sub?window open.
[Ledger Tap (MAX)]
Incident 4X – Projected Anchor Formation:
? Type: Death?adjacent, cemetery cluster
? Trend: Rising (61% → 64%)
? Time to Hard Lock: ~47 minutes
The nasty rows of intel forced an exhale through his teeth. If they hit Hard Lock, this place wouldn’t just be a bad night; it would be a permanent Class?S sore. Every gust of wind for the next century would smell like jiangshi breath.
No time to waste. Eathan and Chewie exchanged a look, then hit the first row of headstones at once. Snow swirled around their ankles. Somewhere to their left, another team was dropping in—the thunk?thunk of boots on frozen ground, Ortiz’s squad by the ID tags over their heads.
Eathan flicked his wrist.
[Node Imprint (Lv. 4)] has been activated!
Host may now utilise the following active ports:
? Gate Arch
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
? Angel Statue
? Lamppost
? Mausoleum Roof
400 Qi Tokens have been subtracted from your [PROFILE]! (8887 → 8487)
Thin golden circuits unfurled from his fingertips, spiderwebbing into the stone and metal he’d tagged from above.
He’d spent months practicing with COZMART: door as threshold ward, freezer as scrub node, mirror as scanner, staff door as emergency safe room. Li Wei had shoved him into training sims until he could look at any room and see the socket points.
“Home?court advantage,” the man had said. “Stop waiting for the battlefield. Make it.”
So he did.
The lamppost node warmed on his HUD as their aura passed within range. A ripple of qi ran down the metal, through the concrete, out into the snow. Fog hit the edge of the radius and recoiled, hissing like oil in a pan.
Eathan risked a glance back.
An UR squad clustered near the edge of the lamppost’s glow. One agent staggered forward, eyes half?rolled with a bleeding nose; another had two fingers jammed in his own mouth, like he was trying to rip something out of his tongue.
A couple of less-affected agents met his eyes. There was that look he’d started to recognize, lately—something between shock and expectation.
“Ortiz!” Eathan shouted. “Lamppost. Ten o’clock. Inside the circle, now.”
Rafie Ortiz jerked his head up in a daze, then obeyed on reflex, hauling his nearest teammate with him.
“Sit them down,” Eathan barked. “If your hearing goes weird, don’t run toward the music. If you feel your ears ring, sit your ass down and breathe. You do not leave that circle until I say.”
Rafie blinked, then snapped a shaky salute. “Y-yes, sir!”
The “sir” made Eathan wince internally. He wasn’t that old.
Willow’s voice overlapped Li Wei’s in his memory, from some late?night debrief where she’d spent twenty minutes pacing and shaping a rant into lesson.
“Leadership isn’t shouting the loudest,” she’d said, jabbing a stylus at his forehead through the screen during a late?night debrief. “It’s knowing where people should stand so they don’t die. Use their names. People move better when they remember they have one.”
He was trying.
The monster chose that moment to show itself.
“A… snake?” Chewie squinted.
It rose from behind the cemetery gate, unfolding from snow and shadow. At first it was only silhouette—long, thick, head swaying—then the fog thinned enough to show texture.
Its body wasn’t scales but braided strips of grave paper, each inked with names and dates. Candles guttered along its spine instead of spines. Where a head should have been, it had something like a face—no single person’s, but a patchwork of cheekbones, a nose from another corpse, a mouth stitched too wide.
The snake opened its mouth.
The charm song poured out, visible—air warping in a shimmering band that rolled toward them at knee height.
Eathan froze. It was a strange feeling; he heard it and didn’t hear it. It was a note that bypassed ears and sank straight into bone marrow.
The snake flickered.
For a second it wasn’t there at all—just a smear of shadow. Then it re?knit itself a metre to the side, coils passing straight through a row of headstones without disturbing the snow.
“Shadow?body. Just great,” Chewie muttered. “It looks like some kind of Ling She, but uglier.”
The snake’s head tilted, coin?eyes flashing.
“Intruders,” it hissed, voice layered, too many tongues speaking at once. “You tread on paid ground. Leave your beating parts. We will use them better.”
The charm frequency swelled.
Eathan’s radar went from red to crimson almost instantly, flaring so bright it overwhelmed the rest of the map. An agent screamed behind them—and kept screaming silent. Eathan whipped around.
One of the regular Urban Response members had somehow made it out of the lamppost circle without remembering doing it. His eyes were all pupil, irises ringed in sour green. Purple veins clawed up his neck. He turned toward the nearest headstone and started walking, hands reaching out like he meant to strangle it.
“Nope,” Eathan said.
[Major Reconstitution (Lv. 2)] has been activated!
60 Qi Tokens have been subtracted from your [PROFILE] (8487 → 8427)
Chewie caught the agent by the shoulder, slapped a heal?talisman to the back of his neck. Warmth surged from Eathan’s palm, knitting snapped charm threads and forcing breath back into proper rhythm.
The man gasped, knees buckling. Chewie shoved him back into the lamppost zone.
“Name,” Eathan asked.
“V-Vasso,” the agent stammered.
“Vasso, stay put,” Chewie huffed. “You step out of that circle I’m duct?taping you to the lamp.”
Somewhere on comms, Li Wei’s voice cut through static:
UR?01: All non?combat teams fall back to safe nodes. Elite Team, report.
UR?04: Outer grave line holding. Charm pressure rising.”
UR?03: Jiangshi count climbing. Our people are turning on each other, sir.
Eathan watched the map. More yellow blips behind him turned amber, edging toward red. Jiangshi hopped into view at the periphery—a dozen at least, clothed in whatever their graves had gifted them: hospital gowns, suits, a basketball jersey from three seasons ago.
The snake?spirit was driving them like cheap remote?control toys.
“If this rift fully manifests in forty-seven minutes,” Eathan muttered, “we’re going to be playing zombie whack?a?mole until the next audit epoch.”
Chewie followed his gaze. “We don’t have forty?seven minutes.”
“I know.”
[Receipt Printer (Lv. 5)] has been activated!
18 Qi Tokens have been subtracted from your [PROFILE] (8427 → 8409)
His interface bloomed clean, like a code editor after a refactor. Each sigil from his talisman reserve slid into place in the construct, snapped to its neighbours with a satisfying mental click.
Li Wei’s voice ghosted through his head again from some training sim two months ago: Power is easy. Order is hard. Arrays are about order. Get the order right, and you can do more with five seals than a UR junior does with a hundred.
Eathan had hated the Captain a little during that lecture.
He appreciated it now.
He lifted his barcode scanner, narrowed his eyes, and fired. The talismans flew from the scanner in rapid succession; they fanned out from the angel statue to the gate, edges touching, forming a luminous seam across the cemetery.
The charm band hit the line and snapped. The Beckoning Kitten sigil at the centre flared. The snake’s song ricocheted, slapping straight back at it.
For a second, it choked on its own voice.
“Now!” Eathan exclaimed.
Chewie moved.
The twelve-year-old exploded forward, blade a black arc against the snow. The Chi?You weapon howled as it smashed through the snake’s neck. The body immediately detonated into shadow and grave paper, hundreds of scraps spinning glittering in the air. For three heartbeats, the shape came apart—
—and then re?coalesced three grave rows away, the head knitting itself back together out of mist.
Chewie slid back to his side, breathing a little harder. “Annoying.”
“Projection,” Eathan said. “We’re just decluttering its screen?saver. The real processor’s somewhere else.”
The snake hissed, glitching. This time the charm band didn’t search the field—it locked directly onto him.
[Ledger Tap (MAX)]
Incident 4X – Projected Anchor Formation:
? Type: Death?adjacent, cemetery cluster
? Trend: Rising (64% → 68%)
? Time to Hard Lock: ~31 minutes
“Lin.” Li Wei’s voice cut in, sharper. “Status.”
Eathan’s answer came out thinner than he liked. “Holding inner line. Danger climbing. Current safeties are only buying time, not solving the problem.”
The fog around his ankles thickened, trying to rise and bind onto his entirety. He felt his own blood try to answer that note.
Another jiangshi broke away from a cluster and sprint?hopped toward a screaming junior agent. The kid’s rifle was swinging toward himself.
Chewie lunged, but Eathan was closer. He body?checked the kid into the lamppost circle and slapped a Beckoning Kitten talisman to his helmet. The charm gusset blew; the kid gagged and vomited on his boots.
“…”
Fine. Washable.
Eathan grimaced. He could keep doing this—patching, herding, cutting illusions, burning moths. They might hold for half an hour, an hour if no one messed up.
But the graph was still climbing.
The snake was literally eating grief and names, coiling around a whole cemetery’s worth of regret. Every minute they danced with projections, it drank deeper. Once that node hit Hard Lock, even if they dispatch the entire Area 003 HQ, they would only be able to manage it, not erase it.
The charm sounded again, this time pressing at his skull, a soft, insistent whisper: you’re tired, aren’t you? You could let go. Qilin could take the wheel; it would be easier.
Eathan glanced at his HUD.
[Humanity]: 45%
Eathan grounded his heels.
Qilin had taught him, brutally, what it felt like to slip past the point of no return. To let [Humanity] dip low enough that the void started to look like a vacation package.
He wasn’t planning on taking that trip again.
Still, he adjusted his gaze to a certain subfolder of his [SYSTEM] skill tree, where [Auspice Ignition] sat like a loaded switch.
[AUSPICE IGNITION (Lv. 1)]
? EFFECTS: All base stats x5; 50% damage taken is redirected as negative karma debt to the attacker; ‘Cleansing Pulse” every 20s: purges demon arrays, snaps bindings, nullifies low-grade curses.
? COST: 700 Karma, 70 Qi Tokens, 7% Humanity
? DURATION: 360 seconds.
? COOLDOWN: 72 hours.
? SIDE-FX: After-burn — [Calamity Radar] offline and critical-fail luck for 24 hours.
Proceed with [SKILL] activation?
Seven percent [Humanity] was a number. Half of New York’s dead walking by dawn was not.
“Lin?” It was Li Wei again, voice now at the edge of alarm. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Eathan’s thumb hovered over the confirmation.
Fear should have spiked. Once, it would have. Now fear was in a box on a shelf. He’d already looked into the void once and decided he preferred being afraid and alive to the alternative.
Proceed with [SKILL] activation?
He thought of Bai Hu’s core shattering into light so everyone else could wake up. Of the anonymous message in his RealmNet inbox: White Tiger’s last move is unfinished. Open the door. Of the past nine month’s worth of relentless training.
I’m trying, Eathan thought.
At the same time, he allowed his eyes to land back at the [Auspice Ignition] prompt on his [SYSTEM] interface.
Proceed with [SKILL] activation?