The Seal Cracks

The seal on the shrine door had held for seven hundred years, and it chose the coldest night of winter to fail.

Mei Lian felt it before she heard it — a hairline shiver through the floorboards, like the whole mountain had exhaled. She set down her writing brush and listened. Somewhere below the shrine, stone was grinding against stone.

By the time she reached the lower hall, dust was still falling from the beams. The seal, an unbroken circle of characters carved into the door for as long as anyone in the village could remember, now had a single crack running through its center — thin as a hair, but enough.

"You're early," she said to the dark behind the door, because someone had to say something, and it seemed rude to scream.

A voice answered, low and amused, like it had been waiting for exactly this kind of company. "So are you, little candle. Nobody comes down here anymore."

[Placeholder chapter — replace with your own translated content.]