Twin Serpents' Curse

In the thirty-fifth year of the Dali reign, a man arrives at Willowell Monastery on Mount Aetheron with a donation of silver and is given leave to stay. He is there for the Aurum Core carried by one of the two serpents who have held the mountain's earth vein for a thousand years. A spider spirit wants the same core and proposes they work together. Kane Black and Ivy White have lived beside the monks in human shape for centuries. A fire breaks out in the temple and the pair go into it to put it out, which is what brings them to the attention of the two visitors. The visitors use illusion to take the shape of the abbot, and Kane is poisoned and his Aurum Core taken from him. Ivy White turns on the monastery. She raises floodwater and the dead and moves through the grounds after the monks and the villagers sheltering in the scripture hall, and the abbot has no way to prove it was not him. The two who took the core are not finished, and what they mean to do with it would break the earth vein under Mount Aetheron. Manjushri comes down carrying a mirror that shows what happened in the temple. Ivy is left deciding between the revenge and the mountain.