Chapter 17: Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17: The Song Before Dying

The headmaster's study smelled of burning paper and old secrets.

Bai Su stood before the massive rosewood desk, her hands clasped behind her back so the headmaster wouldn't see them tremble. She could still feel the phantom blood on her palms, could still hear that sweet folk song echoing in her skull like a lullaby from a nightmare.

Headmaster Zhao was not alone.

Three other teachers occupied the room—Old Xu from the archives, whose milky eyes seemed to look through rather than at her; Madam Lin, the calligraphy instructor, whose brush strokes were said to bleed when she wrote the names of dead students; and a man Bai Su had never seen before, tall and gaunt, with a scar that ran from his temple to his jaw like a second mouth.

"The bell," Headmaster Zhao said without preamble. "You heard it ring nine times."

It wasn't a question.

"Yes, Headmaster."

"And you went to investigate."

"I did."

"Alone."

The last word hung in the air like an accusation. Bai Su felt her throat tighten.

"There was no one else nearby. The tower was locked. I thought—"

"You thought wrong." The scarred man's voice was gravel and broken glass. "The bell tower has been sealed for forty years. No student is permitted entry. No teacher is permitted entry. The only person authorized to enter that chamber is the headmaster himself."

Bai Su's heart stumbled. "I didn't know."

"Ignorance is not innocence." The scarred man stood, his height casting a shadow that seemed to swallow the room. "What did you see?"

She considered lying. The instinct was there, sharp and survival-born. But something in the man's eyes told her he would know. That he always knew.

"A broken window. A footprint. Blood on my hands that wasn't there before."

Madam Lin's brush paused mid-stroke. Old Xu's milky eyes widened, if that was possible.

"And the song?" the scarred man pressed. "Did you hear the song?"

Bai Su's blood turned to ice.

"How did you know about the song?"

No one answered. The four teachers exchanged glances that spoke entire conversations without words. Finally, Headmaster Zhao sighed—a sound like wind through a tomb.

"Sit down, Miss Bai. There are things you need to understand about this academy. Things we had hoped to keep hidden until the end of the term."

---

The story they told her was worse than any ghost tale.

Wutong Academy had not always been a school for the living and the dead. Once, it had been a prison. Not for criminals—for poets, scholars, and dreamers. The Emperor's personal collection of inconvenient geniuses, locked away so their ideas could not spread.

In the third year of the academy's existence, a young woman was brought in. Her name was Wei Ling. She was eighteen years old, the daughter of a disgraced minister, and she had written a poem that made the Emperor weep with rage and recognition.

She died in the bell tower.

Not by execution. Not by suicide. By something far worse. According to the records, Wei Ling simply... stopped being. Her body remained, but the thing that made her Wei Ling—her soul, her essence, her *qi*—vanished as if it had never existed.

"The official report called it a wasting disease," Headmaster Zhao said, his voice heavy with old grief. "But we who were there knew better. She was taken. Consumed. By something that had been waiting in the bell tower since before the academy was built."

"What was it?" Bai Su asked, though she wasn't sure she wanted to know.

"We don't have a name for it. But it feeds on life qi. And it learned from Wei Ling how to imitate humanity. How to walk among us. How to choose its victims."

The scarred man leaned forward. "When the academy became a school, we thought the seal would hold. We thought the living students' presence would keep it dormant. But something has changed in the past month. The ghost students have become restless. The bell has begun to ring on its own. And you, Miss Bai, have been having dreams."

It wasn't a question.

"How did you—"

"The shadow that follows you. The song you heard. The blood that appears and disappears on your hands." The scarred man's voice dropped to a whisper. "Wei Ling has chosen you."

Bai Su's vision Tunneled. She gripped the arms of her chair, her knuckles white.

"I don't understand. Chosen me for what?"

"To be her vessel," Madam Lin said softly. "To carry the last piece of her soul back into the world of the living. So she can finish what she started."

"And what did she start?"

The four teachers exchanged another glance. This one was different. This one held fear.

"She wrote a poem," Headmaster Zhao said. "The same poem that got her imprisoned. The same poem she was composing when she died. It is a poem of endings. The end of dynasties, the end of empires, the end of death itself. If she finishes it, if she speaks it aloud with a living voice, she will unravel the boundary between life and death. Not just for Wutong Academy. For the entire world."

---

Bai Su left the headmaster's study in a daze.

The corridors of Wutong Academy had never seemed darker. The lanterns flickered as if troubled by her presence. The portraits on the walls watched her with eyes that followed every step.

She needed to find the ghost scholar. The one who had warned her. The one who knew more than he was telling.

But when she reached the library, he wasn't there.

Instead, she found Li Wei.

The senior student was sitting at their usual table, surrounded by scrolls and inkstones, his face pale in the candlelight. He looked up when she entered, and his expression shifted from concentration to concern.

"Bai Su. You look terrible."

"I feel worse."

She sat down across from him, her legs threatening to give out. Li Wei pushed a cup of tea toward her, steam curling from its surface.

"Drink. It's the good stuff—stolen from the headmaster's private stores."

She managed a weak smile. "When did you become a thief?"

"When the academy started hiding information that could get us all killed." He pulled a scroll from his pile and spread it across the table. "I've been doing some digging. About the bell tower. About the girl who died there."

Bai Su's heart skipped. "Wei Ling."

Li Wei's eyes widened. "You know about her?"

"The headmaster just told me. She's been dead for forty years. She's trying to come back. She's chosen me as her vessel."

Li Wei's face went through a series of expressions—shock, fear, and then something that looked almost like relief.

"That matches what I found." He tapped the scroll. "According to this, Wei Ling wasn't the only one who died in that tower. There were others. Seven others. All poets. All killed by the same thing."

"Seven?"

"The records say six. But I counted the names. There are eight."

Li Wei unrolled the scroll fully. It was a registry of deaths, written in precise calligraphy, each entry marked with a date and a cause. Bai Su scanned the names—

And stopped.

Her blood turned to ice.

The eighth name was hers.

"Bai Su," she whispered. "Date of death: three months from today. Cause: completion of the unfinished poem."

She looked up at Li Wei. He looked as shaken as she felt.

"There's more," he said, his voice barely audible. "Look at the date of the first death. Wei Ling's death."

Bai Su looked.

The date was forty years ago. Exactly.

But it was the second number that made her stomach drop.

Wei Ling's year of birth was the same as Bai Su's.

Her season of birth was the same.

Her day of birth was the same.

"She's not choosing me as a vessel," Bai Su said slowly, the horror dawning like a terrible sunrise. "She's choosing me because we're the same. The same soul. The same fate. She's not possessing me—she's *becoming* me."

Li Wei grabbed her hand. His grip was warm, alive, grounding.

"Then we stop her. We find the ghost scholar. We figure out how to break the connection."

"The ghost scholar is gone. The teachers are hiding something. The bells are ringing on their own." Bai Su's voice cracked. "I don't know what to do."

Li Wei was quiet for a long moment. Then he stood, pulling her up with him.

"There's one person who might know more than the teachers. One person who was there when Wei Ling died."

"Who?"

"The ghost bell ringer. The one who was found hanging from the rope the morning after her death. He's been bound to the tower for forty years, ringing the bell every night to keep her soul from escaping."

"But he's a ghost. He can't speak. He can only ring the bell."

Li Wei's smile was grim. "Then we'll have to find another way to communicate."

He led her out of the library, through the moonlit courtyard, toward the tower that loomed against the starless sky. The door was still unlocked. The stairs still creaked. The air grew colder with every step.

At the top, the bell chamber was empty.

But the rope was moving.

Back and forth, back and forth, as if pulled by invisible hands. The bell didn't ring. The rope made no sound. It simply swayed, hypnotic and wrong.

"Show yourself," Bai Su said, her voice echoing in the stone chamber. "I know you're here. I know you were the first one she killed. I know you've been trapped here for forty years."

The rope stopped.

A figure materialized beside it. A young man, no older than Bai Su, with a rope burn around his neck and empty eyes that held forty years of silence.

He raised one hand.

In his palm, written in what looked like dried blood, was a single character:

*SONG*

"He wants us to sing?" Li Wei asked.

The ghost shook his head. He pointed at Bai Su. Then at the window. Then at the sky.

"He wants me to remember the song," Bai Su whispered. "The one I heard in my dream. The one I heard when I woke up with blood on my hands."

The ghost nodded.

Bai Su closed her eyes. The song came back to her in fragments—a melody that seemed older than the academy, older than the mountains, older than the concept of time itself. Words in a language she didn't know but somehow understood.

She opened her mouth to sing.

The ghost lunged.

His hands closed around her throat—cold, dead, desperate—and Li Wei screamed, trying to pull him off, but the ghost was too strong, his grip too tight—

And then Bai Su understood.

He wasn't trying to kill her.

He was trying to stop her from singing.

Because if she sang the song, Wei Ling would complete her poem.

And if Wei Ling completed her poem, the world would end.

Bai Su stopped struggling.

The ghost's empty eyes met hers.

And in that moment, she saw what he had been trying to say for forty years.

*Don't sing. Don't remember. Don't become her.*

*But if you must...*

*Sing the song wrong.*

The ghost released her throat.

He stepped back.

And for the first time in forty years, the bell ringer opened his mouth and spoke.

"Remember," he croaked, his voice like grinding bones. "Remember the child who died in the garden. Remember the poet who loved the moon. Remember the girl