The morning sun cast golden streaks across the Bai estate, but Lin Wuyin's mood was far from bright.
Sleep had eluded her. Even with Bai Yujin curled beside her, her head pillowed against Wuyin's shoulder, breathing slow and even — Wuyin's thoughts remained tangled in the memory of the cloaked woman's words.
"The place where no birds sing."
That wasn't poetry. That was direction. A clue.
But where?
She dressed in silence while Yujin slept, letting her fingers move automatically as she wrapped her waist sash and adjusted her scabbard. She glanced once more at the sleeping woman in bed before stepping out, her movements light as mist.
Down the steps of the quiet estate, into the courtyard still damp with dew, and further — past the eastern gate.
The road beyond the city curved toward an old merchant trail. She had passed through it months ago during her initial wandering. It wasn't well-used anymore, but it led to smaller villages nestled between valleys and forgotten hills. Perhaps there, rumors clung to walls and drifted in cups of wine.
She needed information. Not from sect libraries or titled masters, but from the overlooked places. Where words moved like wind, carried by those who never wrote their names in history.
She arrived by dusk at a roadside tea house built near a broken stone shrine.
The signboard above the door was worn, but the tea was warm and the patrons quiet. Exactly the kind of place she preferred.
She sat alone at a corner table and ordered chrysanthemum tea.
An old man across from her coughed, rubbing his knees. His robes were travel-worn, stained with herbs and ash. A wandering apothecary, she guessed, or a retired healer.
Wuyin waited until his second cup before speaking. "Old sir," she began quietly, "do you know anything about the mountain forest two valleys west of here? Near where the birds stop flying?"
The old man blinked, surprised at the sudden question. He squinted at her, then chuckled faintly.
"That's a cursed place, that is," he muttered. "Folk don't like talking about it. Even the wild dogs avoid it. Something unnatural about that silence."
"Has it always been like that?" she asked.
He tapped the side of his cup. "No. Long ago, I remember… there was a girl who lived nearby. Odd thing, she was. Some said she had a ghost's shadow. Always walked alone. No family. Then one day—just gone. No one found her. Just her footprints leading into the trees."
Wuyin's fingers tightened slightly around her cup. "Do you remember her name?"
The old man paused. "Mm… I don't. Sorry. Just bits and pieces. But her disappearance… That was nearly fifteen, sixteen years ago, I think."
A silence settled between them.
She bowed politely. "Thank you, elder."
He nodded, eyes narrowing a little. "You're not… planning to go there, are you?"
"I already have."
She left before he could ask more.
—
Back in the city, the Bai estate glowed softly beneath lantern light. Yujin was waiting in the garden when she returned, her gaze gentle but curious.
"You didn't tell me you were going out," she said.
"I needed to follow a thought."
Yujin didn't press, just walked beside her through the moonlit path. "And did your thought lead you to anything interesting?"
"A place where no birds sing."
Yujin stopped walking.
Wuyin looked at her. "You've heard of it?"
Yujin hesitated, then nodded slowly. "My family once warned us never to travel through that valley. They said it was a place where death lingered."
"Did they ever say why?"
"No. Only that the air there made people forget themselves. Wander in circles. Some said it was the resting place of a cursed legacy."
Wuyin stared into the shadows of the trees. A cursed legacy… or a murdered child.
She turned her face toward the moon. The wind had stilled, and even the usual rustle of leaves had gone quiet.
Something was calling her back to that place.
Not for vengeance.
But for truth.