Chapter 10: Whispers in the Wind
Daojin was silent most days.
He spoke when spoken to, followed when led, and sat apart from the fire when it blazed too high. Sometimes, Yan caught him staring into reflections , pools, blades, polished stones like he expected something else to look back. Something he didn't want to see.
But the wind was louder now.
Not the natural kind , not storms or breezes but something beneath it. A hush with meaning. A whisper that formed words too quickly forgotten.
And when it reached the edge of Yan's thoughts, it brought with it a familiar cold.
[Side Quest Reactivated: "The Swamp Witch Must Fall"]
Status: Incomplete
Time Remaining: Irrelevant
Reward: Nullified
Penalty: Residual Fragmentation]
Yan rubbed his temple.
He remembered this quest.
Vaguely. It had appeared once, months before the Whispering Blade, when he was still fumbling through System prompts and wondering whether poison resistance was worth three hours of stinging nettle tea. He never took it seriously.
And now it was back.
"Problem?" Bai asked, perched on a boulder, tail twitching.
"Old quest," Yan said. "The Swamp Witch. I ignored it."
"That's probably why it's still here."
Daojin, nearby, tilted his head. "What's a Swamp Witch?"
Yan didn't answer right away. The wind whispered again, and this time the forest tilted slightly, like reality didn't quite hold steady.
A new message flickered across his vision:
[Critical Branching Detected: Side Quest Interference May Trigger System Layer Resurgence]
[Engage or Permanently Fragment Local Narrative Space]
Yan frowned. "It's not just an old mission. It's... stuck. Like a skipped step in a ritual. And it's bleeding into now."
Bai hopped down. "Where's the swamp?"
Yan turned south. "It wasn't a real swamp. It was hollow where the trees never grew right. Just fog and water. We passed it last season. Locals called it cursed."
"Wonderful," Bai muttered. "I love cursed wetlands."
They found it by dusk.
The Hollow hadn't changed.
It smelled of rotting wood and broken memories. The trees leaned away from it like they wanted to forget their roots ever touched it. Fog clung to the ground in coils.
And in the center of it all stood a hut made from bones, feathers, and fractured mirror-glass.
"She's still here," Yan said quietly.
Daojin shivered. "I feel… her eyes. And something else. Something behind her."
As if on cue, the hut's door opened not with creaks, but with a sigh.
A voice slithered out: "Late, late, late... Hero come crawling back with no prize, no quest, no purpose."
Yan stepped forward. "Witch. You were a broken thread left hanging. I've come to tie it off."
A figure emerged. Not grotesque, not terrifying , just wrong. A woman with too-long limbs, eyes like clockwork gears, and a smile that peeled open in segments.
"I was paused, boy. You walked away, and left me hanging in the between."
She raised one finger impossibly long and the fog surged like breath from a buried corpse.
"I remember the System. It gave me life. You abandoned me. You."
The Hollow trembled.
Daojin stumbled back, clutching his head. "She's—she's pulling at the lines. I can see them—"
Yan unsheathed the Whispering Blade.
It didn't glow. It burned.
The Witch shrieked. "You brought the memory of power! You dare—"
He dashed forward, cutting not flesh but code. Her form split, rewound, reshaped lines of corrupted logic unraveling.
Each slash deleted another ghost of the System.
Each breath of his burned cleaner.
In the end, she collapsed into mist, whispering her last line like a curse and a blessing:
"Stories that aren't ended... always return."
The Hollow fell silent.
The fog rolled away.
And the wind?
It stopped whispering.
That night, Yan sat beside the fire while Daojin slept in uneasy silence. Bai curled close.
"She wasn't real," Yan said. "Not completely."
"No," Bai agreed. "But she was real enough. The System didn't just die, Yan. It fragmented. And now its ghosts are crawling back through every crack you left."
Yan looked at his blade. At the stars above. At the quiet.
Then he whispered, "Maybe I should've finished more of the story."
Bai's tail flicked. "Too late for regrets. But maybe not too late for endings."