Chapter 10: The Teeth of Exile
(Wyrmfreeze Perspective)
They say the Iron Monastery changes you.
Not just your strength, your cultivation, or your scars—though it does that too. It grinds your spirit down to bone and makes you rebuild it with frost and flame. On my third day, I watched a man carve a rune into his own ribcage to remember a technique he was too afraid to forget.
The Monastery didn't allow weakness.
It gave you two choices: evolve—or become part of the foundation stones.
The Iron Monastery's inner sanctum was called the Maw.
Because of course it was.
Carved into the living mountain like the gullet of a sleeping god, the Maw was a labyrinth of training pits, broken prayer halls, and dueling arenas lit by flickering soul-lanterns. The air smelled like ash, iron, and sweat. And underneath it all—a thrum. A heartbeat not mine.
"Every corridor was built atop an ancient battlefield," Liu Feng explained as we passed cracked murals of forgotten wars. "The dead still whisper through the stone. Listen closely and you might learn something—or lose your sanity trying."
He said that like it was a casual tip, like 'don't forget your water bottle' or 'try the soup' Seriously.
The Monastery didn't assign mentors. It assigned enemies.
That's how you learned here—not by guidance, but by surviving someone better than you. Brutal, effective, and poetic in a "knife-to-the-throat" kind of way.
On the third morning, a masked elder in rusted ceremonial armor approached. He moved like rust flaking from a blade—quiet, inevitable. He didn't speak. Just dropped a curled scroll at my feet.
Blood was still wet on the seal.
I unrolled it.
"Haishi – Class: Phantom. Last seen: Chamber of Echoes."
"Is this a bounty?" I asked, half-expecting a challenge. Or a trap.
The elder's eyes gleamed through beneath his slitted mask of steel.
"No. It's breakfast."
Helpful. Much.
The Monastery's so-called "classes" weren't about knowledge. They were castes carved from pain and skill. You didn't choose your class—you earned it through what you survived.
Phantoms were silent killers, trained in stealth arts, illusion Qi, and anti-spirit techniques. They thrived in darkness—unseen, unfelt, unread.
Ashwalkers were fire-touched berserkers who burned their own life force to fuel destruction.
Wyrmforged were former weapon cultivators who fused with spiritual arms—part monk, part living armory.
And so on.
Your class determined your trials, your enemies, and, occasionally, your cellmates.
Me? I was still unclassified. Which made me fair game.
So Phantom-class exiles weren't students. They were predators the Monastery threw at newcomers. Ghosts in human skin. Assassins who bled shadow and vanished between blinks. If you survived them, you learned. If you didn't? You probably screamed first.
I asked around—quietly. Got fragments.
> "Moves like smoke over ice."
"Carries venom in her breath."
"Eyes like burnt-out lanterns. She doesn't speak unless she's sure you're already dead."
One guy tried to warn me off.
> "You won't beat her. She's not real. She's what the Monastery uses to test how long a soul can scream before it forgets language."
Comforting.
The name wasn't metaphor.
The Chamber was halfway between a tomb and a theatre designed by lunatics
The Chamber was halfway between a tomb and a theatre designed by lunatics.
So Imagine a coliseum that forgot it was a place and remembered it was a haunted memory.
The Chamber was a concave ruin layered in whispering Qi. The walls weren't stone—they were soulglass: fragments of broken cultivator minds fused into panels that shimmered with memory. Every step echoed wrong. Too loud. Too fast. Like your past was screaming at your future.
Charming place.
My breath came back in different tones—sometimes deeper, sometimes younger. Once, I heard myself scream even though I hadn't opened my mouth.
That's when I knew Haishi was near.
I tracked her presence the way predators feel the shift before prey bolts. Not qi. Not steps. Just… wrongness. Like a shadow smiling without a face.
She dropped from the ceiling like a spider in freefall.
She didn't arrive. She unfolded.
From the ceiling shadows, Haishi dropped in perfect silence. Thin, almost fragile. She wore layered black silks threaded with shimmering ghostmetal, and her face was veiled by a smooth white mask etched with crying eyes.
Her blade—a single-edged fang of curved obsidian—dripped with venom Qi. Not the kind that kills. The kind that remembers.
She didn't introduce herself. Phantoms didn't need names.
Her first strike wasn't an attack. It was a sentence.
Sss-thunk.
I dodged left—too slow. Her blade bit me, just under the arm. Cold fire exploded in my side, locking muscle and freezing the breath in my throat.
The blade caught me in the ribs. I felt my nerves lock, Qi knotting like tangled thread.
Venom Qi: Paralysis – Mild.
I stumbled. The soulglass around us screamed with my pain.
She vanished. Flickered like a mirage. My ears strained. Too late.
A second slash nearly caught my throat—but I turned, caught it on my bracer. Sparks and frost.
I stopped chasing with eyes. Let instincts bleed through.
Frostbear memory combat pattern 17-Delta:
"Don't fight what you see. Fight what's about to kill you."
I smelled her venom before she struck. Metallic frost with a hint of lotus oil.
I ducked before she landed—caught her mid-air by the wrist and slammed her through a brittle wall of soulglass.
The whole room shrieked with refracted sound. The wall shattered into a thousand mirrors, all of them showing her broken stance from a hundred angles.
She staggered. Her mask cracked. Beneath it: silver eyes, black sclera, and a grin full of needle teeth.
Haishi coughed blood. Her mask cracked. A single eye glared through it, golden and wild.
"Why did they send you after me?" I asked, still gripping her collar
She spat. "Because you're interesting. And they're afraid."
The masked elder entered the chamber, slow clap echoing like a drum of judgment.
"Good," he said. "You didn't die."
"Wasn't on the agenda," I muttered, my side still frozen from venom Qi.
"You've been tested by Phantom class. That was one of the easier trials.
"That was easy?"
"You're still breathing. That counts."
He stepped forward, removing his mask.
Beneath it was a face like dried leather stitched with scars. His left eye was sewn shut with silver thread. The right glowed faintly red—Qi-forged, artificial.
"My name is Instructor Vo. I lead the Trials of Conflict. You don't pass because you win. You pass because you understand why you almost didn't."
I gritted my teeth. "And if I don't?"
"Then your body joins the soulglass walls."
Helpful.