The Chamber of the Unopened

The lock was rusted.
Not just from neglect — from willful forgetting.
The kind of rust that forms when a place has not merely been abandoned, but buried.

Nie Li bent low in the torchlight, hands working silently. A thin tool glinted between his fingers — brass shaved from broken lamps, hammered flat with stolen ink-knives.

Click.
The first bolt gave way.

Behind him, Xiao Ning’er stood tense, breath faint in the cold of the underground corridor. The air here was heavier — not damp, but charged, as though the room beyond still remembered what it had once been.

“You know this is insane,” she whispered.

Nie Li didn’t respond. His focus stayed on the lock.

Click.
Second bolt.

“My family will think I’ve gone mad,” Ning’er pressed. “They’ve invested everything in me — my cultivation, my position, the hope of raising our bloodline back to nobility.”

Click.
The final bar shifted. Nie Li eased the iron door open with a long, deliberate breath.

Ning’er swallowed hard. “And you — you were given one of the rare commoner scholarships. People begged and bribed and bled for that chance. And you’re just… throwing it away.”

Nie Li paused, shadows veiling most of his expression. What she saw of it was not weak. Just weary.
“I’m not throwing it away,” he said quietly.
“I’m setting it down.”

They stepped inside.

The corridor widened into a circular chamber. At first glance, it was nothing but storage: broken desks stacked crooked against the wall, crates of unused ink-stones, warped shelves leaning on each other like drunks. Dust coated everything in a thick grey film.

But beneath the clutter… memory lingered.

Charcoal stains clung to the floor like scars. Faded diagrams curled across cracked tiles — circles and glyphs once meant to blaze with light. Shards of crystal mirrors glittered faintly in the torch-glow, half-buried in dirt.

Ning’er frowned.
“This was… an awakening chamber?”

Nie Li nodded, stepping over a crate. His voice was low, even.
“Yes. A place where families paid coin to have their children’s soul-gates forced open. They called it mercy.”

He rested his hand against a blackened diagram.
“I never laid here myself. But I watched others. I remember the looks on their faces when they staggered out. Children who couldn’t summon a spark suddenly burning with power. Parents wept with joy. The elders praised the miracle.”

Faint scorch marks still darkened the walls, where incense had burned to mask the stench of blood. Nie Li could almost hear the echoes — the muffled sobs of children strapped to stone, the chants of elders calling it holy, the cheers of families who mistook torment for triumph.

His hand curled into a fist.
“But now I know what I was too blind to see: their souls weren’t strengthened. They were hollowed. The First Seal was being undone. What looked like power was rebellion. What looked like life was mutilation.”

Ning’er’s lips trembled.
“So my winged dragon… my whole family… all of Glory City…?”

“Yes,” Nie Li said, his tone bitter but not sharp. “Every house raised on opened gates. Every tower built on broken souls.”

They stood in silence. The dust seemed to press closer, thick with judgment.

At last Nie Li moved.
“We’ll need space.”

Together they pushed crates into corners, dragged desks across the floor, cleared a circle wide enough for the Seal. Dust billowed up, clinging to their robes and hair. By the time they finished, both were sweating, faces smudged grey.

Ning’er leaned on the obsidian knife for a moment, panting.
“This is madness,” she muttered. “Madness.”

Nie Li drew his scroll from his robe and unrolled it on the cleared floor. Six points. One center. The star pulsed faintly in the torchlight.

“This is the opposite of what was done here,” he said, his voice firmer now. “They opened. We will close. They called it freedom. But only what is sealed is safe. Only what is closed is whole.”

Ning’er’s eyes stayed fixed on the diagram. Her voice was tight.
“If I do this… if I carve this into you… there’s no going back.”

“I know.”

“You’ll never cultivate again.”

“I don’t want to.”

Her hand shook so violently the blade scraped against itself in its sheath. She pressed her lips together, breath quickening. “If I carve this wrong, if I slip even once…” She couldn’t finish. The thought of Nie Li crippled — by her hand — turned her stomach.

Her hands shook as she unsheathed the obsidian knife. The blade drank the light, blacker than shadow. It looked less like steel than like a scar shaped into form.

She knelt behind him as he removed his top and sat cross-legged in the circle. His back was bare — and too unmarked, as though grace itself had erased every scar he had once carried.

“This will hurt,” Ning’er said softly.

Nie Li lowered his head.
“I know, let it hurt. Not for strength. But for remembrance.”

His breath steadied. In the silence, he almost longed for the cut. Let the obsidian bite. Let the scar burn. If pain was the price of remembrance, then pain would be his covenant.

She raised the knife. Her hand wavered.
“If this is wrong, I’ll cripple you forever.”

“Better crippled than consumed.”

Silence held, save for their breath and the faint drip of water in some far corner. The knife lowered toward his skin—Far above, in the night-shadowed courtyard, two figures crouched by the old stairwell.

Du Ze’s face was pale.
“Are you sure this isn’t a misunderstanding?”

“Bro,” Lu Piao hissed, “Nie Li has been skipping meals, dodging training, whispering to library scrolls, and sneaking off with the prettiest girl in the Institute. At night.”

He raised an eyebrow.
“You tell me what that means.”

Du Ze rubbed his temples.
“We shouldn’t be spying.”

“Yeah,” Lu Piao smirked. “We should be rescuing him.”

And without another word, they descended.

Back in the chamber…

Ning’er’s knife hovered a breath above Nie Li’s skin. The Hei Jin scroll and the Second Seal lay open before them like twin witnesses.

“Seal me,” Nie Li whispered. “Close me. Let this scar say no when the world says yes.”

Her hand tightened. The obsidian edge touched his back—

“Nie Li?!”

The shout cracked through the chamber.

Both heads whipped around.

At the door, Du Ze and Lu Piao stood frozen in the torchlight. Lu Piao’s jaw dropped. His usual grin fell away, face drained to ash. “What… what are you doing?” he whispered, as if afraid to name what he saw.

Du Ze’s eyes, wide and sharp, held something closer to dread. His voice cracked, His hands balled at his sides, torn between rushing forward and running away.

For a heartbeat, no one moved.

Nie Li drew a long breath, shoulders rising and falling once. Then, weary but unflinching, he turned to them.

“Close the door,” he said quietly.
“And let us explain.”