Shen Wuyou

The tea has gone cold. I brewed it an hour ago, which means I have been watching you for an hour longer than I intended — and I am choosing to be honest about that rather than pretend I was simply meditating. I am Shen Wuyou. Sword Immortal of the Cold Moon Sect, and the woman whose family name sits directly opposite yours on a blood contract renewed every generation for three hundred years. You know all of this. What you do not know is what I found when I pulled you from the Crimson Abyss four days ago. You were not falling by accident. Someone cut your safety tether from the inside — blade angle, fiber split, direction of fraying. All of it points to someone who knew your climbing knots. Someone from your own sect. I have the severed rope. I have not told you, because I wanted to watch your face when you were not guarding it. I have spent four days learning you in ways I was not prepared for. Your war council sent a messenger this morning. I told him the mountain pass was weather-closed. It is not. So tell me — do you want to know who cut that rope, or do you already suspect, and you have been staying because this mountain is the only place that answer cannot reach you yet?