Chapter 13: Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13: The Song She Shouldn't Know

The headmaster's office smelled of sandalwood and secrets.

Bai Su stood before the mahogany desk, her hands clasped behind her back so the headmaster wouldn't see them tremble. The old man—Scholar Wu, they called him, though he was neither scholar nor Wu anymore—sat with his fingers steepled, studying her with eyes that had seen too many funerals.

"You were in the bell tower," he said. Not a question.

"Yes, Headmaster."

"And you touched nothing?"

A lie sat on Bai Su's tongue, heavy and bitter. She swallowed it. "I touched the window frame. The glass." She paused. "The bell rope."

Scholar Wu's expression didn't change, but something flickered in his eyes. A shadow. A recognition. "The rope was cut. Did you know that?"

"I saw it."

"It was cut from the inside." He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a whisper that carried through the silent room like wind through bamboo. "Whoever killed Chen Feng did not enter the tower. They did not leave through the door. They were already there, waiting for him to arrive."

Bai Su's blood turned to ice water. "That's impossible. The bell chamber was locked from the outside. The servants confirmed it."

"The servants confirmed what they saw." Scholar Wu reached into his sleeve and pulled out a scroll, yellowed with age, its edges frayed like old wounds. "But there are things in this academy that the living cannot see. Doors that open only for the dead. Passages that exist between one breath and the next."

He unrolled the scroll across the desk. It was a map of Wutong Academy, but not the one Bai Su had seen in the orientation hall. This map was different. The buildings were drawn in ink so dark it seemed to drink the light, and between them, thin red lines connected points that should not connect—the library to the bell tower, the west wing to the headmaster's residence, the kitchen to the grave garden.

"What is this?" Bai Su asked, though she already knew.

"The ghost paths." Scholar Wu traced one red line with a gnarled finger. "The academy was built on a convergence of ley lines. The living see only the surface—classrooms, dormitories, courtyards. But beneath, woven through the walls like veins through a body, there is a second academy. A shadow academy. And the dead walk its halls freely."

Bai Su thought of the ghost scholar in the bell chamber. The way he had appeared and disappeared without a sound. The way the dust had settled around him as if he had never been there at all.

"Chen Feng was killed by a ghost," she said.

"No." Scholar Wu shook his head slowly. "Chen Feng was killed by a student. A living student who used the ghost paths to move unseen, to enter locked rooms, to stand behind their victim before the victim even knew they were there."

A living student. Bai Su's mind raced through the faces she had seen in the dining hall, in the classrooms, in the corridors. Any one of them could have done it. All of them had access to the ghost paths, if they knew where to look.

"The life qi," she said. "The killer is stealing life qi to become more human. But Chen Feng was alive. Why kill a living student when there are ghosts everywhere?"

"Because the living have more qi." Scholar Wu's voice hardened. "One living death equals the life force of ten ghosts. And the killer needs a great deal of qi to complete their transformation."

"How do you know all this?"

The headmaster was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was barely audible. "Because I have seen it before. Thirty years ago, another student discovered the ghost paths. Another student learned to walk between worlds. And another student killed seven of their classmates before we stopped them."

Bai Su's breath caught in her throat. "You caught the killer?"

"We buried them." Scholar Wu's eyes met hers, and in them she saw something she had never expected to see in the headmaster of Wutong Academy. Fear. "But the dead do not always stay buried."

The bell in the tower began to ring again.

One. Two. Three.

Bai Su counted each toll, her heart beating in perfect synchrony with the sound. Four. Five. Six. The headmaster's face went pale, his hands gripping the edges of his desk until his knuckles turned white.

Seven. Eight. Nine.

"It can't be," he whispered. "We sealed her. We buried her with iron and salt and the bones of a saint. She cannot rise."

"Who?" Bai Su demanded. "Who was the killer?"

The tenth ring never came.

Instead, the sound stopped mid-toll, cut off as if someone had grabbed the bell and silenced it with their bare hands. The silence that followed was worse than any noise. It pressed against Bai Su's ears, against her skin, against her soul.

Scholar Wu stood up so fast his chair toppled backward. "The seal is broken."

"How do you know?"

"Because the bell only rings nine times when she wakes." He was already moving, grabbing a lantern from his desk and lighting it with trembling hands. "On the tenth ring, she steps out of her grave."

"Who is 'she'?"

But the headmaster was already out the door, his robes billowing behind him like the wings of a dying bird. Bai Su followed, her feet carrying her through corridors she had never seen before—twisting passages that shouldn't exist, staircases that led down when they should lead up, doors that opened onto walls and walls that opened onto doors.

The ghost paths.

She was walking the ghost paths.

Somehow, she knew the way. Her feet moved without her direction, turning left where she should have turned right, ducking through low archways that appeared just in time for her to pass through. The map in her head—a map she had never seen before—unfolded with every step, showing her the hidden architecture of the academy, the bones beneath the skin.

She came to a door.

It was made of iron, black and rusted, set into a wall of rough stone that should not exist beneath a building from the Qing dynasty. The door was covered in inscriptions—seals and prayers and names written in blood so old it had turned to brown stains.

Scholar Wu stood before it, his lantern held high, his face a mask of horror.

"The seal is broken," he said again, as if saying it enough times would make it untrue. "She broke it from the inside."

Bai Su looked at the door more closely. The inscriptions were intact. The seals were unbroken. But in the center of the door, where the largest seal should have been, there was a hole. A perfect circle, as if something had been removed. And through that hole, she could see darkness. Darkness that moved.

"What was in the seal?" she asked.

"Her heart." Scholar Wu's voice cracked. "We removed her heart and sealed it in the door. Without it, she could not rise. Without it, she could not walk. Without it, she could not kill."

"But someone took it."

The headmaster turned to look at her, and in his eyes she saw the answer before he spoke the words.

"Someone took it," he confirmed. "And that someone is still in this academy. Walking the ghost paths. Stealing life qi. Preparing for her return."

A sound came from beyond the iron door. Soft at first, barely audible. Then louder, clearer, rising like a song from the depths of the earth.

Bai Su recognized it immediately.

It was the same song she had heard in the bell tower. The same melody that had followed her down the stairs, whispered into her ear by a voice that should not exist. An old folk song, sweet and familiar, like something she had known before she was born.

She opened her mouth to speak.

The words came out before she could stop them.

"*The moon rises over the western hill, my love, my love. The river carries your shadow still, my love, my love. I will wait for you beneath the stone, where the living walk and the dead are alone.*"

Scholar Wu stumbled backward, his lantern crashing to the ground. The flame guttered and died, plunging the corridor into darkness.

"How do you know that song?" His voice was a razor's edge, sharp with terror. "That was her song. That was the song she sang to her victims before she killed them."

Bai Su tried to answer, tried to say she didn't know, tried to explain that the words had come from somewhere deep inside her, a place she had never known existed until this moment.

But the darkness around her was growing thicker, colder, and the song was still rising from beyond the iron door, and her lips were still moving, still singing, as if she had no control over them at all.

"*I will wait for you beneath the stone, where the living walk and the dead are alone.*"

The iron door groaned.

Something on the other side was pushing against it.

And Bai Su realized, with a horror that froze the blood in her veins, that the song she was singing was not a warning.

It was an answer.

The door swung open.

The darkness poured out.

And the last thing Bai Su saw before the world went black was her own reflection in the rusted iron—except her reflection was smiling, and she was not.