“To establish a network, we need to place a relay station there. We need to secure the High Crag of Xialong.” Wei Jingzhe’s gaze followed hers to the distant, perpetually veiled peak. “The High Crag is known as the ‘Stone Sentinel’ for a reason. Shen Zhaoying’s personal corps, the Obsidian Wardens, hold it. They are his most fanatical adherents, trained in the mountain’s deceptive mists. Their outposts are invisible until you are upon them.” “Invisible means visual blind spots,” Lanyin countered, sketching angles in the air with a finger. “Their perception is limited by line-of-sight. We can exploit that.” She turned to the Tribunal’s master craftsman. “I need dried river reeds, polished obsidian shards, and glass discs. Quickly.” Two hours later, under a moonless sky, Lanyin knelt beside Wei Jingzhe at the base of the treacherous ascent path, two crude instruments in her hands. Each was a hollow stalk of thick river reed, roughly two spans in length, with narrow slits cut near the top and bottom. Set into these slits, at precise 45-degree angles, were small, square reflectors crafted from the obsidian shards and carefully ground glass. “An offset sight,” she explained, offering one to him. “Light enters the upper aperture, reflects down to the bottom, then into your eye. It allows you to see over ridges without exposing your head.” Wei Jingzhe accepted it, turning the reed tube over in his gloved hands. “A curious device. Like the eye of a burrowing serpent.” “Exactly. We will be the serpents tonight.” Lanyin pointed to a barely discernible track climbing into the gloom. “Their patrols are rhythmic, but their surveillance points are fixed, assuming a direct assault. We won’t give them one. I will map their vision cones from a distance, then guide you through the gaps.” Their ascent was a silent, agonizing crawl. Lanyin moved with a deceptive nimbleness, her modern athletic training adapting quickly to the uneven terrain. She carried her own optic tube and a slate, constantly charting the terrain and the subtle movements of the sentries. With each pause, she pressed the tube to her eye, scanning the ridges, the wind-sculpted rock formations, and the faint glow of distant, shielded brazier fires marking the enemy. “Three paces left, Commander,” she whispered, her voice a low murmur against the wind’s hiss. “Behind the twin pinnacle. A sentry is at the overlook, facing north-east. His peripheral vision will be obstructed by the rock face at your twelve o’clock. Proceed through the trough, staying low.” Wei Jingzhe moved like a wraith, his heavy boots making no sound on the shale. He was a creature of precision and lethal efficiency, every movement economical, every breath controlled. Lanyin, tracking him through her angled sight, saw him as a perfectly optimized system responding to every data point without question. At one point, a patrol torch flickered unnervingly close. Lanyin pressed herself against the granite, stone bite cutting through her thin tunic. Wei Jingzhe, a mere arm’s length away, shifted to block her completely from the line of sight. The heat radiating from his cloak was a sudden, unexpected comfort in the biting mountain air. He did not speak, did not even glance at her, yet the protective gesture was undeniable. She found herself categorizing it, not as a variable in a physics problem, but as an emergent property of their shared objective, one that defied her usual frameworks. They reached the summit’s outer perimeter just before dawn, finding a narrow, sheltered ledge overlooking the primary communications spire. Two sentinels stood motionless, their backs to a makeshift shelter, gazing east toward the coming sunrise. “Two targets,” Lanyin breathed, adjusting her sightline. “One at three o’clock, facing away. The other at nine. Their spacing is too tight for a direct approach without sound.” Wei Jingzhe drew a slender, wickedly curved dagger from his sleeve. He did not ask for instructions. He simply melted into the pre-dawn gloom, a predator in his natural element. There was a faint whisper of movement, a brief, muffled exhalation, then silence. When he reappeared, he simply gestured for her to follow. They found the original reflector frame for the empire’s archaic signal system. Crude, tarnished bronze plates, misaligned and weather-beaten, designed for the slow, predictable flashes of an era Lanyin was determined to render obsolete. Her own primary transmission plate, a massive sheet of silvered glass, lay carefully packed in her expedition’s supplies, brought up by a separate route Wei Jingzhe had arranged. The sunrise was an hour away. “This requires exact alignment,” Lanyin stated, her voice taut with focused intensity. “The pivot must be perfectly level, the azimuth and elevation locked with sub-degree precision for the pulse to carry to Xianyun Citadel.” Wei Jingzhe nodded, his lenses reflecting the faint starlight. He began to dismantle the ancient bronze plates with quiet efficiency. As he worked, Lanyin unwrapped her precision-ground optic, its surface gleaming under the starlight. Its size, nearly two spans across, meant they had to work in close proximity on the narrow, windswept platform. The cold air bit at her knuckles, but her mind ran through calculations. “The primary gimbals are rusted,” she observed, her hand brushing his as they both reached for a corroded locking pin. Her fingers were slender, cool, precise. His were calloused, strong, emanating a surprising warmth. The fleeting contact sent a strange tremor through her, an anomaly she couldn't account for in any equation. Wei Jingzhe paused, his dark eyes, magnified by the lenses, fixing on hers. The air between them thickened, charged not with static friction, but something far more volatile. The faint scent of pine resin and cold iron clung to his cloak. “You are… an enigma, Shen Lanyin,” he murmured, his voice a low rumble. “You speak of light and angles, of pure logic, yet you navigate this brutal realm with a ferocity that defies mere calculation. Tell me, researcher, can your equations quantify the instinct that makes one turn into a hail of blades for another?” Lanyin felt a flush creep up her neck, a physiological response she had no data to process. Her rigid adherence to logic suddenly felt like a brittle shield. “No,” she admitted, her voice uncharacteristically soft, a rare vulnerability in her tone. “My calculations… they account for forces, for trajectories, for expected outcomes. But this… this variable cannot be quantified.” She looked away, her gaze sweeping over the nascent glow on the eastern horizon. “It is… anomalous.” He held her gaze for a long moment, the corner of his mouth ticking upward, before returning to the frame. They worked in tandem, matching movement to movement. As the first rim of the sun pierced the horizon, the polished glass caught the dawn with dazzling brilliance. Lanyin made final, minute adjustments to the calibration, using the first true light of day. She stepped back, nodding with satisfaction. “It’s ready.” She moved to the attached optical telegraph, its shutters gleaming, and began to flash the initial test sequence, a series of rapid, coded bursts directed towards Xianyun Citadel. The light sliced through the clean mountain air, a beacon of engineered progress. Wei Jingzhe stood beside her, his presence a silent anchor. Then, abruptly, the air shimmered with an answering flash. Not a measured response, not a confirmation. It was a blinding, frantic, continuous staccato pulse, so rapid it seemed to tear at the edges of the visible spectrum. An SOS, in a code Lanyin had taught the Tribunal’s limited operators. A frantic, desperate signal from the capital, its intensity alarming. The accompanying message, as the shutters cycled with frantic speed, formed a single warning word repeated without pause: ‘Darkness. Darkness. Darkness.’ Shen Zhaoying had deployed his ‘cursed eclipse’ smoke-screen early. The Nightfall Decree had begun.

The Summit's Prism