Chapter 7: Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7: The Song Before Drowning

The headmaster's office smelled of sandalwood and secrets. Bai Su stood before the massive rosewood desk, her hands still tingling from the phantom blood she had scrubbed away three times. The headmaster—a gaunt man named Xu with skin the color of old parchment—studied her over steepled fingers.

"You were in the bell tower."

It wasn't a question.

"I heard the ringing," Bai Su said carefully. "I went to investigate."

"The bell hasn't been rung in forty years. Not since the old ringer died." Headmaster Xu's eyes were black pools, depthless and cold. "And yet you say you heard it."

"I know what I heard."

"And what else did you see?"

Bai Su hesitated. The ghost scholar had warned her not to reveal too much. The living faculty, he had said, were not to be trusted. Some of them had made deals with the dead. Some of them *were* the dead, wearing the skin of the living like borrowed robes.

"I saw a broken window," she said. "And a footprint in the dust."

"A footprint."

"Mine."

Headmaster Xu did not blink. "Impossible. You have never been in that tower before today."

"I know." Bai Su met his gaze steadily. "That's why I'm concerned."

A long silence stretched between them, filled with the ticking of a bronze clock that had stopped at three in the morning. Headmaster Xu reached into his desk drawer and withdrew a scroll. Yellowed. Cracked. Bound with red silk that had faded to pink.

"This was found in the bell tower this morning," he said. "Before you entered."

He unrolled it across the desk. Bai Su leaned forward, her breath catching in her throat.

It was an examination scroll. The kind every student at Wutong Academy received on the first day. But this one was different. The characters were not written in ink.

They were written in blood.

And they told a story.

*"On the third day of the seventh month, I will take what was stolen. On the tenth ring of the bell, I will reclaim my name. On the fifteenth stroke of midnight, the living will weep for the dead they forgot to mourn."*

Bai Su's blood ran cold. "This is a threat."

"This is a confession." Headmaster Xu tapped the scroll with a finger that left no print. "Do you recognize the handwriting?"

She looked closer. The characters were elegant, practiced, the strokes of someone who had spent years mastering the brush. And then she saw it. The way the horizontal stroke in 'seven' curved slightly upward. The way the vertical stroke in 'month' tapered at the bottom like a falling leaf.

Her own handwriting.

"No," she whispered.

"You see it too."

"This isn't mine. I've never written anything in blood. I've never—"

"Miss Bai." Headmaster Xu's voice was gentle now, almost pitying. "Are you certain you remember everything about your arrival at this academy?"

The question hit her like a physical blow. She tried to recall her first day. The carriage ride. The gates. The registration. But the memories were hazy, like looking through fogged glass. She remembered the headmaster's face, but not what he had said. She remembered signing her name, but not on what.

"I arrived three days ago," she said slowly. "I came from—"

She stopped.

Where had she come from?

"I came from..." The words dissolved on her tongue. She couldn't remember her hometown. Her family. The road she had traveled. She knew her name, her age, her purpose for studying at Wutong. But everything before the gates was a blur, as if someone had taken a brush and painted over her past.

"Three days ago," Headmaster Xu repeated. "Do you know what happened three days ago, Miss Bai?"

She shook her head.

"Chen Feng died."

The name struck her like a gong. She saw the body falling past the window. The blood spreading across the courtyard stones. The ghost scholar who had known exactly where to find her.

"I don't understand."

"No," Headmaster Xu agreed. "But I think you will."

He rolled up the scroll and handed it to her. The blood-stained silk was warm against her fingers, pulsing with a faint heat that felt almost like a heartbeat.

"The bell will ring again tonight. At midnight. You have until then to remember what you've forgotten."

"Remember what?"

"Who you were." His eyes flickered, and for just a moment, Bai Su saw something ancient and terrible behind them. "Before you became a ghost."

The words hung in the air like smoke. Bai Su clutched the scroll to her chest, her mind racing.

"I'm not dead."

"Of course not." Headmaster Xu smiled, but there was no warmth in it. "But neither are you entirely alive. Not anymore."

He stood, signaling the end of the audience. Bai Su turned to leave, but his voice stopped her at the door.

"Miss Bai. There's one more thing."

She looked back.

"The ghost who spoke to you in the bell tower. The one who warned you about the killer."

"How did you—"

"His name was Liu Wei. He died in that tower forty years ago. He was your predecessor."

"My predecessor?"

"In more ways than one." Headmaster Xu opened a drawer and withdrew a portrait. It showed a young man in scholar's robes, standing in front of the academy gates. He looked familiar. He looked like the ghost who had warned her.

And he looked exactly like her.

The same eyes. The same jaw. The same slight tilt of the head when listening.

"He was your brother," Headmaster Xu said. "Your twin. And he is the one who wrote that scroll."

Bai Su's legs gave out. She caught herself against the doorframe, the scroll slipping from her fingers and unrolling across the floor.

*"On the third day of the seventh month..."*

"Today is the third day of the seventh month," she whispered.

"Yes."

"And I've been here for three days."

"Precisely."

The bell above the academy began to ring. Not the frantic toll of the bell tower, but the steady chime of the main hall clock. Four in the afternoon. Four hours until midnight.

"The scroll says the bell will ring ten times," Bai Su said, her voice barely audible. "Chen Feng died when I arrived. Who dies tonight?"

Headmaster Xu did not answer. He was staring at something behind her, his face gone pale as bone.

Bai Su turned.

The ghost was standing in the doorway. Not the scholar from the bell tower. A different ghost. A girl in a blood-soaked examination robe, her neck bent at an impossible angle, her eyes white and pupil-less.

She was singing the folk song. The one Bai Su had heard in the bell tower. The sweet, familiar melody that tugged at something deep in her chest.

*"The moon is round, the water deep,*
*The scholar's promises are sweet,*
*But promises made to the dead are cheap,*
*And the river takes what it can keep."*

The girl held out her hand. In her palm was a jade pendant, cracked and stained with something dark. It was identical to the one Bai Su wore around her own neck.

"You dropped this," the ghost said. Her voice was the sound of water over stones. "Forty years ago. When you drowned."

Bai Su looked down at her pendant. It was warm against her chest. She had worn it as long as she could remember.

But she couldn't remember where she had gotten it.

"Your brother placed it around your neck," Headmaster Xu said quietly. "Before he pushed you into the river."

The world tilted. Bai Su grabbed the doorframe, her fingers digging into the wood.

"No."

"You don't remember. You never remember." The ghost girl laughed, a sound like breaking glass. "That's the curse of the drowned. They forget the water. They forget the hands that held them under. They wake up on the shore, gasping for air that still tastes like the grave."

"I'm not drowned. I'm not dead."

"You're both." Headmaster Xu stepped closer, his eyes gleaming with something that might have been sympathy. "You died forty years ago, Miss Bai. You drowned in the river behind the academy. Your brother pushed you, and then he hanged himself from the bell tower bell. He has been ringing that bell every night for four decades, trying to wake you up."

"This makes no sense. If I died forty years ago, why am I here now? Why am I studying? Why does everyone think I'm alive?"

"Because every forty years, on the anniversary of your death, you rise from the river and walk back to the academy. You register as a new student. You study. You take the exams. And then, on the third day of the seventh month, you remember."

"Remember what?"

"Everything."

The ghost girl held out the jade pendant again. Bai Su reached for it, her hand trembling.

As her fingers touched the cold stone, the world shattered.

She saw the river. The dark water closing over her head. Her brother's face above the surface, tears streaming down his cheeks. She heard his voice, choked with grief, whispering an apology she had never understood.

She saw herself sinking. The reeds wrapping around her ankles. The mud filling her mouth. The last breath leaving her lungs in a trail of silver bubbles.

And then she saw nothing at all.

"You're lying," she gasped, pulling her hand back. "You're all lying."

"Am I?" The ghost girl tilted her head, her broken neck cracking with the movement. "Then why don't you remember your home? Your parents? Your childhood? You remember nothing before this academy. Because you have no life before this academy. This is where you were born. This is where you died. This is where you will always return."

The bell rang again. Five. Six. Seven.

"Six hours until midnight," Headmaster Xu said. "Six hours until the bell rings ten times. Six hours until you must decide."

"Decide what?"

"Whether to repeat the cycle." He gestured to the scroll on the floor. "Or to break it."

"How do I break it?"

"You find out who really killed your brother."

The words hit her like a blade.

"What?"

"Liu Wei did not hang himself. He was murdered. By the same person who drowned you. By the same person who is now killing living students to steal their qi."

Bai Su's mind raced. The ghost scholar's warning. The falling body. The blood on her hands.

"You know who it is."

"I know many things." Headmaster Xu's smile was ancient and sad. "But I cannot tell you. Because if I tell you, the cycle will only repeat. You must remember on your own. You must see the truth with your own eyes."

"And if I don't?"

"Then at midnight, the bell will ring ten times. And you will walk back to the river. You will sink beneath the water. And forty years from now, another girl will wake on the shore, wearing your face and carrying your curse."

The ghost girl began to sing again, her voice rising above the chiming of the bell.

*"The river takes and the river gives,*
*The ghost of the drowned forever lives,*
*But the one who kills will never rest,*
*With a murdered heart in a borrowed chest."*

Bai Su looked down at her hands. They were covered in blood again. Not old blood. Fresh. Dripping from her fingers in crimson streams.

She had not killed anyone today. She was certain of it.

But as she stared at the blood, she remembered something she had not remembered before.

She remembered standing over her brother's body. She remembered the rope in her hands