The Hall of Frozen Echoes was not a hallway.
It was a storage room.
I mean that literally. The corridor beyond the guardian's chamber opened into a vast cavern filled with shelves. Ice shelves, carved into the walls, stacked with boxes and crates and bundles wrapped in frozen cloth. The warm light from the gate had faded, replaced by the same dim purple glow that lit the rest of the realm, but the cold was less aggressive here. Manageable.
"It's a supply depot," I said.
"It's a tomb," Lin Mei corrected.
I looked closer. The bundles on the shelves weren't supplies. They were bodies. Frozen cultivators, preserved in the ice, their faces peaceful, their hands folded across their chests. Some held weapons. Some held scrolls. Some held nothing at all.
"Those who came before," Han said. "The ones who didn't make it through the Hall."
"How many?"
"Count the shelves."
I counted. Twelve shelves. Each shelf held between ten and fifteen bodies. A hundred and fifty cultivators, at least, frozen in repose, their journeys ended here.
Lin Mei walked to the nearest shelf. She looked at the face of a woman who had been dead for centuries — robes of blue silk, a jade hairpin still in her frozen hair, her hands wrapped around a sword that had never been drawn.
"She was Foundation Establishment," Lin Mei said. "Late stage. Her cultivation base was higher than mine."
"Did she reach the Lotus?"
"She reached this room. That's as far as the records go."
We walked in silence. The shelves stretched on. Frozen cultivators lined the walls like books in a library, each one a story that ended in this cold chamber.
"This is creepy," Han said.
"It's a memorial."
"It's a creepy memorial."
"Death is not meant to be comfortable."
I found her at the far end of the room.
Not a cultivator — a bundle. A large one, wedged between two shelves, wrapped in canvas that had frozen solid. The canvas had cracked in places, revealing fabric beneath. Colorful fabric.
"Han, give me your shovel."
"Why?"
"I'm going to open this."
"That's a dead cultivator's belongings. You're grave-robbing."
"It's a frozen survival supply that someone didn't need anymore. There's a difference."
"There isn't."
"How do you know it's not a realm-supplied emergency cache?"
"Caelan."
"Just give me the shovel."
Han sighed and handed it over. I wedged the blade into a crack in the canvas and pried. The frozen fabric shattered, revealing the contents of the bundle.
Clothes.
Not cultivation robes. Not sect uniforms. Real clothes. Tunics and trousers and cloaks and hats and — buried at the bottom, wrapped in a separate layer of cloth — a sweater.
I pulled it out.
It was mustard yellow. With orange zigzags. And green cuffs. And a collar that had been knitted too loosely, giving it a floppy, deflated look. The fabric was thick — not warm, exactly, but substantial. The kind of sweater that had been made by someone who cared more about durability than aesthetics.
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I held it up.
"What is that?" Han asked.
"A sweater."
"I can see that. Why is it that color?"
"I don't know. Maybe the person who knitted it was colorblind."
Lin Mei walked over. She looked at the sweater. Then at me. Then at the sweater again.
"It is... bright."
"It's ugly."
"It is aggressively ugly."
"That's the best kind."
I held it out to her.
"Try it on."
She stared at me. "You want me to wear that."
"You're still in the cloak I gave you. The cloak is functional but it's not warm. This is warmer. And it's uglier. Ugly clothes are warmer. It's a scientific fact."
"That is not a scientific fact."
"It's a spiritual fact, then. Put it on."
Lin Mei took the sweater. She held it at arm's length, her expression a mixture of horror and curiosity. The orange zigzags seemed to glow in the purple light.
"Two hundred years," she said. "I have worn robes of white silk, blue silk, silver-embroidered frost-pattern silk. I have worn the formal vestments of the Azure Frost Sect, the ceremonial armor of the Frost Flower Fairy, the dress uniform of the jade beauty honor guard. I have never worn anything that looked like this."
"There's a first time for everything."
She hesitated. Then, slowly, she pulled the sweater over her head.
It fit. Barely. The sleeves were a bit short — it had been knitted for someone with shorter arms — but the body was roomy enough to accommodate her robes underneath. The mustard yellow clashed violently with her white-and-blue sect robes. The orange zigzags created a visual effect that was dizzying at close range. The green cuffs looked like they had been added as an afterthought by someone who had run out of matching yarn.
Lin Mei looked down at herself.
"It is warm," she said.
"Yeah?"
"Yes."
She flexed her fingers. The cuffs stretched slightly.
"It is also... comfortable."
"The ugly ones always are."
She looked at her reflection in the ice wall. The sweater was a disaster. A mustard-and-orange-and-green catastrophe that violated every principle of fashion that had ever existed.
"This is the ugliest thing I have ever worn," she said.
"And?"
She touched the fabric. Ran her fingers over the zigzags.
"I like it."
"You do?" Han asked.
"I do. It is warm. It is comfortable. It offends every aesthetic principle I was programmed to uphold. That is why I like it."
"Because it offends your programming?"
"Yes."
"That is the most spite-driven fashion choice I have ever witnessed."
"Thank you."
"That was not a compliment."
"I choose to interpret it as one."
I smiled. "Good. It's yours now."
She didn't argue. She turned to the ice wall and studied her reflection. The sweater was a disaster from every possible angle — a mustard-yellow, orange-zigzagged, green-cuffed catastrophe that somehow looked better on her than anything she had worn in two centuries.
"I look absurd," she said.
"Absolutely."
"I look like a vegetable that has declared war on fashion."
"That's the most accurate description of a sweater I've ever heard."
"I am keeping it."
"I know."
We searched the rest of the room for anything useful. Han found a pair of gloves that fit him — thick leather lined with fur, slightly too large but functional. He held them up with the reverence of a man who had been shivering for three days. "I could cry," he said.
"Don't. Your tears would freeze."
"Let me have this moment."
I found a coil of rope that wasn't frozen solid, a water flask made of some kind of animal bladder, and a small knife with a chipped blade. Nothing extraordinary, but everything useful. Lin Mei found a small leather pouch containing dried herbs that she identified as "probably medicinal, maybe poisonous — we should keep them either way."
"You're keeping poison?" I asked.
"I'm keeping options."
"Fair."
At the far end of the chamber, a door stood open, leading into a corridor that sloped upward. The light beyond was brighter — not warm, but less purple. Natural.
"This is the way to the Lotus," Lin Mei said.
"Then let's go."
She didn't move. She was looking at the sweater. At the lines of orange and yellow and green.
"I forfeited the combat forms," she said. "When I rejected the programming. I can still fight, but I have to think about it now. Every movement. Every strike. I cannot rely on instinct anymore."
"That sounds exhausting."
"It is."
"Does it bother you?"
She considered the question. Her hand drifted to the hem of the sweater, adjusting it slightly.
"I thought it would. Losing the forms. Losing the programming. I thought I would feel empty. Vulnerable."
"But?"
"But I don't." She looked up. "I feel like I can choose now. Every movement I make is my own. Even the clumsy ones."
"That's called being a beginner. Everyone goes through it."
"You went through this?"
"I went through a lot of things. Being a beginner was one of them."
She nodded slowly. Then she turned and walked toward the door, the ugly sweater catching the light, the orange zigzags glowing like a warning sign in the dim corridor.
"This is the ugliest thing I have ever worn," she said again, her voice carrying back to me. "And I will wear it until we leave this realm."
"The sweater saga begins," Han muttered.
"The what?"
"Nothing. I'm writing it down."
"Write down that I heard you."
"I'm writing down that you heard me and responded. Future scholars will need the full context."
"Of course you are."
We followed her into the light.
I looked back at the Hall of Frozen Echoes. At the shelves of supplies. At the bodies we had passed. At the path that had led us here.
"I'm glad you found the sweater," I said.
Lin Mei paused at the door.
"Why?"
"Because it's the first thing you chose for yourself."
She didn't answer. But she was still wearing it.