I left the trees like a man stepping off a cliff.

  Not fast. Not brave. Just… committed, because staying hidden didn’t make water appear in my hands and it didn’t put food in my mouth. It only delayed whatever came next, and I was already running on delay.

  The field looked closer than it was.

  Each step through it took more from me than it should have. The ground was uneven, rutted from old plows and rain. Thin snow still clung in dirty patches where the sun didn’t reach, and the rest was mud—heavy, sticky, grabbing at my soles. My boots made soft sucking sounds when they lifted. The sound felt loud in my skull even though the open air swallowed it.

  The smell of smoke grew stronger the farther I went.

  Not the stale smoke that lived in cloth. Fresh smoke. Wood and ash and heat. It made my mouth flood with saliva so suddenly I almost choked. Under it came the smell of animals—manure, hay, damp wool, old straw—sharp and familiar in an ugly way that still meant life. And then the smell of cooked grain, warm and faintly sweet, drifting out with the smoke like an insult.

  My stomach cramped hard enough that my vision narrowed for a second. A hot wave rolled through my gut, then faded into the constant gnawing.

  I kept moving.

  My legs shook. Not from fear—though fear sat under my skin like cold—shook from weakness. My knees felt loose, unreliable, like the joints belonged to someone else. My hands hung heavy at my sides, fingers stiff, cracked skin pulling and stinging whenever I flexed them. My throat was so dry that each swallow felt like dragging cloth down my neck.

  I watched the farm as I walked.

  The house was small and low, roofline crooked, patched in places with darker wood. Smoke rose from the chimney in a thin line that leaned with the wind. A shed sat off to one side, door hanging slightly open. A pen held moving shapes—small, quick, pecking at the ground. Chickens. I knew chickens. I’d seen them in the village yards.

  A fence ran around the yard, half-fallen in sections, repaired with mismatched boards and rope. The gate was closed, but not locked in any way I could see. The yard itself was trampled into brown, wet earth, scattered with straw and prints.

  There was no sign of anyone outside.

  That didn’t mean no one was there.

  People hid better than animals.

  I kept my eyes on the windows as I approached. Dark rectangles. No movement. No face watching. Still, I felt watched anyway. My skin didn’t know the difference between a human eye and a predator’s gaze. It just tightened.

  Halfway across the field, my head started to ache harder. Pressure behind my eyes. My vision shimmered at the edges, tiny flickers like heat haze in cold air. I blinked and it didn’t go away.

  The wind shifted.

  It carried a new smell.

  Dog.

  Old dog. Warm fur and damp breath, carried low to the ground.

  I stopped without meaning to, breath caught.

  Then I saw it.

  A shape moved near the farmhouse—slow, steady, not the frantic motion of chickens. A dog stepped out from behind the shed, pale brown coat mottled with grey, tail held level. It paused and stared straight at me.

  My body went rigid.

  For one heartbeat I expected teeth and speed and blood. My mind flashed my own dog being dragged into brush, that short cut-off yelp. My hands twitched, empty, useless.

  The farm dog didn’t charge.

  It stood still and watched.

  Its ears were half up, half relaxed. Its head tilted slightly. It sniffed once, then took a cautious step forward. Its paws sank into mud without hurry. It didn’t bark. It didn’t growl. It just kept its eyes on me with the calm focus of something used to strangers being dangerous but also used to hunger smelling like hunger.

  I tried to keep walking.

  My legs didn’t respond the way they should have. They moved, but the movement felt delayed, like my mind gave commands and my body took a moment to obey. My feet dragged. My boots felt like they weighed twice what they had yesterday. The bundle strap cut into my shoulder and I didn’t have the strength to shift it.

  The farm dog advanced another few steps, stopping whenever I stopped, mirroring distance.

  As I got closer, the yard details sharpened. Wet straw stuck to the ground. A broken bucket lay on its side. A hoe leaned against the fence. Dung piles near the pen steamed faintly in the cold, smell sharp enough to sting my nose.

  The smell of food was stronger here. It made my stomach twist again, hot and sour.

  I opened my mouth to speak and nothing came out.

  My throat was too dry. My tongue felt swollen. Words didn’t form. Even if they did, I didn’t know what I would say. I didn’t know if they spoke the same dialect as the village. I only knew I didn’t have the energy for negotiation.

  The dog sniffed again.

  Then it barked—one sharp bark that cut through the yard like a thrown stone.

  The sound hit me physically.

  It snapped my nerves tight and made my head pound. My heart jumped. My vision shimmered harder, dark spots blooming at the corners.

  Another bark followed, louder, insistent, directed at the farmhouse.

  I forced myself forward two more steps.

  Three.

  My knee buckled.

  Not fully—just a sudden dip like the joint had turned to water. I caught myself, hands shooting out, fingers scraping mud. Cold wet soaked into my palms instantly. The sting of cracked skin flared bright.

  I pushed up again, but the push felt wrong. My arms shook violently. My shoulders trembled. My breath came out in a rasp.

  The dog backed a step, startled, then stepped forward again, closer now, nose working hard. Its breath puffed white. It sniffed at my sleeve, then at my face, then jerked its head away from the smell of me—old smoke, sweat, rot, blood, sickness.

  It barked again, and this time there was urgency in it.

  A door creaked.

  The farmhouse door.

  My head lifted slightly, slow, because lifting felt like dragging weight. The yard tilted. The world wavered.

  A figure appeared in the doorway—an old man, broad shoulders under a worn coat, hair grey, face lined deep from sun and wind. He held something in his hand—maybe a tool, maybe a stick. He didn’t come out immediately. He watched from the threshold, body half turned, ready to retreat.

  His dog barked and trotted in a tight circle between us, as if trying to pull him closer without getting too close itself.

  The old man said something.

  The words hit my ears and didn’t fit at first, like my mind was too slow to catch the shape. Then meaning arrived in pieces: a rough demand, a question, suspicion.

  I tried to answer.

  My mouth opened. Air came out. No sound.

  My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. My throat burned. I swallowed and tasted bile and dryness.

  The old man stepped off the porch, slow, careful. His boots sank into mud. He kept the tool in hand, not raised, but present. His eyes stayed on me like I was a sick animal that might still bite.

  His dog returned to my side and sniffed again, then sneezed sharply and looked back at the man, tail stiff.

  The old man came within a few paces and stopped.

  He said something again, slower this time.

  I caught a few words. “Boy.” “Where.” “Alone?”

  I nodded once, or tried to. The movement made my vision flash white.

  My legs gave up.

  It wasn’t dramatic.

  There was no final thought. No speech. No reaching.

  My body simply folded.

  I felt my knee hit mud. Then my hands. Then my shoulder. Cold wet soaked through my sleeve. My cheek pressed into ground that smelled of earth and dung and straw. The smell was so strong it should have made me gag, but my stomach was too empty for that.

  The last thing I registered clearly was the farm dog’s nose pushing against my face, warm and wet, and its barking turning into a rapid, frantic pattern.

  Then sound dulled.

  The yard noises—chickens, wind, the old man’s voice—muffled as if I’d been shoved underwater.

  I tried to keep my eyes open and couldn’t.

  Darkness came in from the edges and closed.

  Darkness swallowed me whole.

  Not the simple dark of closing eyelids. This was a dark with weight, a thick pressure that pressed in from every direction until it felt like my thoughts had nowhere to expand. There was no sense of lying down, no sense of falling. Just awareness pinned inside nothing.

  The nothing tasted like old iron.

  The taste spread across my tongue even though there was no tongue. It was an idea of taste forced into me, metallic and stale, like licking the inside of a rusted pipe. I tried to gag. The act of gagging happened without a throat. Panic came with it, sharp and immediate, and the darkness drank it down without echo.

  Time stretched into a single unbroken pressure.

  Then the pressure split.

  A hallway appeared around me—straight, long, too bright. White light buzzed overhead like insects trapped behind plastic. Lockers lined both sides, metal faces sweating with condensation. The air smelled of bleach and stale cafeteria grease. My shoes squealed on the floor with every step, the sound too loud, too thin, like teeth scraping glass.

  The floor wasn’t dry.

  A layer of black water covered it, rippling with each movement. It clung to the soles of my shoes and dragged as if it wanted me to trip. The water reflected faces, dozens of them, floating just beneath the surface—students, teachers—mouths open in silent laughter, eyes stretched too wide, the reflections lagging half a heartbeat behind my steps like they were learning how to mimic me.

  A locker door slammed open.

  Inside wasn’t books.

  It was damp straw, matted and dark, reeking of urine and mold. The smell hit my lungs like a fist. Another locker burst open. Then another. The hallway began exhaling the stink of a shed into the sterile school air, and the two smells fought until my stomach churned.

  The lockers rattled in waves, metal trembling as if something inside the corridor was pushing against the walls. The buzzing lights flickered, and for a moment the lockers became tree trunks—black pines crowding in—then became warped planks with gaps breathing cold.

  Laughter breathed against my ear.

  Warm. Human. Sour with beer and tobacco.

  “Where you going?” a voice said, close enough that the words seemed to vibrate against skin.

  I spun.

  Nothing stood there. Only the hallway stretching too far in both directions, doors gone, exits erased, the white light flattening everything into a cage.

  The black water deepened suddenly.

  My foot sank to the ankle. Cold surged up my leg like a bite. I tried to yank free and the water clung, thickening into something closer to mud. My balance shifted. The squeal of my shoe became a wet slap as I stumbled.

  The reflections changed.

  The faces in the water weren’t school faces anymore. Villagers stared up through the blackness—men with cracked lips and mean eyes, women with tight mouths and judging stares. Their lips moved in slow unison, and the words came from every direction at once, overlapping until they became pressure.

  Bastard.

  Temple-trash.

  Each insult landed like a finger pressing into a bruise inside my skull. The air grew denser, harder to breathe, though the smell was still bleach and straw and something sweet-rotten rising beneath it.

  Lockers opened as I ran past, slamming wide like jaws.

  A trough filled with frigid water.

  A stick worn smooth by use.

  A bowl of grey slop steaming weakly.

  A hatchet wrapped in burlap.

  A coil of rope.

  Then a locker opened and the inside of it was not a locker at all—pure black, deeper than shadow, swallowing the metal frame as if the darkness had eaten a hole through the world. Cold brushed my face as I passed, and my teeth chattered with a sound that didn’t feel like mine.

  The hallway narrowed.

  The ceiling lowered.

  The lights flickered faster, and with each flicker the corridor changed shape—school to forest to shed to temple steps, stone slick and cold, then back to school again. The black water surged up to my knees. Something slid beneath it, long and smooth, brushing my calf with a touch that made cold pain spike up my spine.

  The surface broke.

  A cluster of slick, multifaceted lenses rose just above the waterline, swiveling on a thick stalk. The lenses caught the buzzing white light and fractured it into a thousand small squares. Hooks followed, too many joints, black chitin glistening wet.

  It lunged.

  The impact wasn’t on skin. It was on thought—pressure clamping around my head, cracking, vibrating my teeth. Hooks punched into me with hot, sharp points, and the pain bloomed bright and then dulled into a pulsing ache that hummed through my bones.

  The lenses filled my vision, and inside each facet I saw myself at a different angle—pale face, steel-grey eyes, shaved black hair—each reflection marked by different bruises, different scars, different expressions. In some of them, my mouth was twisted in a smile that didn’t belong on any human face.

  Something pale and huge heaved into view beside it.

  A waxy mound, seam-split, peeling back like grotesque petals. Inside it, a core pulsed orange and yellow, phosphorescent, alive. The air filled with the sick-sweet smell—burnt sugar and vomit—so strong it coated my tongue.

  The waxy thing bloomed wider and sprayed.

  Thick syrupy fluid coated the chitinous beast. The black plates softened. Ran. Turned to oily sludge dripping into the black water. The hooks embedded in me loosened, their grip turning slick and weak. My body lurched as if freedom was possible.

  Then a blur of polished bone and iridescent membrane cut through the scene.

  A blade-sharp forelimb speared down, anchoring. A hook caught under softened carapace, and it began to peel.

  The sound was a series of sharp, sticky pops, like ripping something that should not rip, deeper and wetter than skin. Tendons snapped like ropes. Dark sacs spilled and steamed in cold air.

  The peeling shifted.

  It wasn’t the beast being stripped.

  It was me.

  Something hooked under the edge of my existence and pulled. The sensation was intimate and wrong, like someone getting fingers under skin and lifting. My thoughts felt exposed, raw to cold air.

  Memories spilled out as if they were organs.

  A classroom desk under my hands, smooth plastic, the stink of disinfectant.

  My stepfather’s hand closed around my collar, the heat of his breath, the glare.

  A gunshot—white flash—then the void.

  Temple steps, cold stone against newborn flesh.

  Slop in a bowl. Mold in straw. Old Wang’s stick cutting air.

  The dog curled against my legs, warm in the night.

  The dog’s yelp cut off.

  Each memory dropped into the black water with a wet slap, and the bone creature lowered its tapering skull and inhaled them. Its ribcage flexed outward like a cage making room, and as it fed, the memories dimmed, colors draining, edges blurring, as if being swallowed erased them.

  The bone creature convulsed.

  Polished ribs cracked. Iridescent membrane tore with wet ripping sounds. Spines erupted outward through its own body, piercing from inside to out. Dark ichor poured from the wounds, thick as oil, smelling of rust and rot. It splashed onto me and the cold numbness spread immediately wherever it touched, swallowing sensation, crawling up my arms and into my throat.

  The world snapped back into pure black.

  Not empty—full.

  Whispering brushed my mind like insects in a wall. Not words, just the textures of voices, the sense of mouths moving in darkness too close to see. The whispers pressed in and retreated and pressed in again, as if the void itself breathed.

  A point of light appeared.

  A small pearl, floating in front of me, warm orange-yellow pulsing faintly. I reached for it because it had shape, because it was the only thing that wasn’t nothing.

  My fingers closed aroundMy fingers closed around it.

  It was cold.

  The pearl in my hand had turned smoky green, threaded with fine crack-like lines. The light inside it flickered like moonlight behind cloud. My palm began to tingle, fine needles pushing outward from within. I tried to open my hand and my fingers refused. The pearl sank into my palm as if flesh had turned to mud, pressing deeper until it touched something inside that made my whole awareness vibrate.

  A low hum began, deep and guttural, vibrating through the bones of my jaw even though there was no jaw.

  The hum became a heartbeat.

  Not mine.

  A second pearl drifted into view—small, pale, iridescent, with a needle-bright thread of light spiraling inside. It moved toward my face on its own, slow and steady. There was no room to turn away. It touched my forehead and cold fire spread across my skull.

  The black split open like cloth being cut.

  On the other side was mud and a yard and a fence line, but the house was missing. The world was stripped down to earth and wet straw and empty space. Three shadows lay in the mud like bodies, but each shadow was wrong—too long, too many angles, edges that bent in ways bodies didn’t. The shadows twitched as if they were trying to stand.

  Breath slid against my ear again, warm and human and sour.

  “You don’t get to leave,” a voice murmured, close enough to feel spit.

  Another voice layered under it, low and cruel, spoken like a verdict.

  “Dog.”

  The word cracked against my skull like wood on bone.

  The seam in the darkness widened, and the void poured in through it, drowning the yard, drowning the shadows, drowning the voices, until everything was black again and the pressure returned—thick, absolute—holding me suspended while the taste of iron filled my mouth and the whispering crawled along the edges of my mind.

  Warmth hit me first.

  Not comfort—heat as a sensation so foreign my body didn’t trust it. It crawled across my skin in uneven waves, like I’d been laid too close to a fire and my nerves couldn’t decide whether to relax or brace. The air smelled of smoke and boiled grain and old wood soaked with years of cooking. Under that was the sour edge of livestock carried in on clothes: hay, manure, damp fur.

  I tried to open my eyes and the lids felt heavy, glued by dried sleep. When they finally parted, the light was dim and yellow, firelight and daylight mixed through a small window. My vision swam for a second—dark spots blooming at the edges—then steadied enough to make shapes.

  Low ceiling beams. Rough plank walls. A soot-stained hearth with embers breathing. A pot hanging over it, lid rattling softly with a simmer. Straw on the floor near the door. A thick quilt thrown over me that smelled like smoke and dog.

  A man stood over the bed.

  Old. Broad through the shoulders, though age had taken some height. His face was lined deep, cheeks rough with stubble, eyebrows thick and grey. His eyes were alert in a way that didn’t match his age—like he didn’t waste attention. He held a small knife in one hand, not raised, just present, as if he’d been peeling something and hadn’t bothered to set it down.

  He watched me the way you watched a wounded animal: cautious, measuring, ready to step back if it tried to bite.

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  My throat hurt when I tried to swallow. My tongue felt thick. My lips cracked and tugged.

  I pushed myself up and immediately regretted it. Dizziness rolled through me, and my stomach clenched hard, empty and sour. The quilt slid down my chest and cold air found the dampness in my shirt. I steadied myself by gripping the edge of the bed. My fingers shook.

  The old man’s gaze flicked to my hands, then to my face.

  “Easy,” he said, voice rough like gravel. His accent didn’t match the village exactly—same language, different rhythm. “Don’t sit up like that. You’ll spill your head onto my floor.”

  I didn’t answer fast enough. My mind was slow, like it had to wade through mud to reach words.

  I licked my lips. The motion hurt.

  “Water,” I managed. The sound came out hoarse, thin.

  He didn’t move immediately. He watched my mouth shape the word, as if confirming I wasn’t delirious.

  Then he turned, took two steps to a low table, and brought back a wooden cup. He held it out but didn’t press it into my hand.

  I reached. My fingers trembled around the cup. The wood felt warm. The smell rising from it was clean.

  I drank too fast. Cold water hit my throat and made me cough, sharp and painful. The old man didn’t flinch. He just held his hand out, palm up, steady, in case I dropped it.

  I forced myself to slow down. Sip. Swallow. Sip. The water tasted like stone and a hint of smoke, like it had been drawn from a well and warmed near the hearth.

  When I finished, my stomach cramped around the water like it didn’t know how to accept anything anymore.

  I lowered the cup carefully. My hands still shook.

  The old man took it back and set it on the table with a soft knock. Then he looked at me again, expression unreadable.

  “You got a name?” he asked.

  I hesitated. Giving a name felt like handing someone a rope.

  “…Wèi Shā,” I said finally.

  His eyebrows lifted a fraction at the sound of it. Not surprise—recognition that it wasn’t a local farm name.

  “Wèi,” he repeated, tasting it. “And where’d you crawl in from, Wèi Shā?”

  I didn’t want to answer.

  My eyes flicked around the room, searching for exits without meaning to. The door was there. The window was small and high. The hearth sat between me and the only obvious weapons on the wall—an old hoe, a wood axe, a coil of rope.

  The old man followed my glance and made a quiet sound in his nose, half amusement, half warning.

  “You’re in my house,” he said. “My dog barked me out the door. I didn’t haul you in here to watch you skitter.”

  My jaw tightened. My throat hurt. I swallowed anyway.

  “…North,” I said, because it was the safest true thing. “I… walked.”

  “That much I gathered,” he said dryly. “You walk like a corpse. Where were you before the trees?”

  I stared at the quilt. The fabric was rough, patched, warm. My hands gripped it without thinking.

  “A village,” I said.

  “What village?”

  I shook my head once. The movement made my vision tilt.

  “I can’t—” My voice broke. I cleared my throat. “I don’t know the name.”

  The old man’s eyes narrowed a little, not with disbelief, but with assessment. Like he was deciding whether that answer was ignorance or avoidance.

  “You don’t know,” he repeated. “Or you won’t say.”

  I didn’t answer.

  Silence stretched. The pot over the fire bubbled softly. Somewhere outside, a chicken clucked. The house settled with small wooden noises.

  The old man moved to a stool and sat, elbows on knees, knife now resting across his palm. The posture wasn’t relaxed. It was ready.

  “You got family?” he asked.

  My stomach tightened. My hands went colder.

  “No.”

  He watched my face for reaction.

  “Someone chasing you?”

  I stared at his boots. Mud on the edges. Straw stuck to the leather. The man smelled like smoke and animals and onion.

  “I don’t know,” I said, because that was true too.

  He snorted softly. “You don’t know much.”

  I didn’t argue.

  He reached to the side and lifted a bowl from near the hearth. Steam rose from it, smelling like boiled grain and something fatty—maybe a scrap of meat, maybe just oil. My mouth reacted before my pride could. Saliva flooded under my tongue. My stomach clenched and then lurched, as if it couldn’t decide whether to beg or reject.

  He held the bowl out.

  “Eat,” he said. “Slow. If you gulp it, you’ll throw it back up and I’ll make you lick it off my floor.”

  I took it with both hands, the heat of the bowl biting my cracked fingers. The steam warmed my face. The smell was almost painful.

  I ate slowly because he told me to, and because my body had learned the cost of being greedy. The first mouthful was bland and perfect. Soft grains. Salt. A hint of onion. Warmth sliding down my throat like something being repaired.

  My hands shook around the bowl. I kept my eyes down while I ate, listening for movement, for the old man shifting closer, for any sign this was bait.

  He didn’t move.

  He watched me instead, and the watching felt heavy.

  When I’d eaten half, he spoke again.

  “You’re not from around here,” he said. Not a question.

  I didn’t look up.

  “Your tongue’s got the sound of the south in it,” he continued. “Not my south—your south. And you’re thin like you’ve been running from hunger, not just working hard.”

  I swallowed another mouthful. My stomach cramped briefly, then settled.

  He tapped the knife lightly against his thumb, a quiet habit.

  “Tell me why you came to my farm,” he said.

  I paused with the spoon hovering. My hands tightened.

  “I didn’t,” I said. “I… found it.”

  “That’s not an answer,” he replied.

  I forced myself to look up.

  His eyes were steady. Not kind. Not cruel. Just… old and practical.

  “I was walking,” I said. “I needed water. Food.”

  “Everyone needs that,” he said. “Most don’t walk out of the Blackpine like a ghost and fall in my yard.”

  The word Blackpine slid past me. I didn’t respond to it.

  He watched my face again, as if expecting me to flinch at the name of the wilds.

  Then his gaze shifted—briefly, toward my bundle lying near the door, damp and muddy, set there like the old man had touched it but not opened it. My spine tightened.

  He noticed the tightening.

  His mouth twitched slightly, not quite a smile.

  “Relax,” he said. “I didn’t go digging through your rags. I’m not a thief. If I wanted to rob you, I’d have done it while you were drooling on my quilt.”

  I didn’t relax.

  He sighed and scratched his chin, thumb dragging through stubble.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “You’re one of the strays come up the road for the Heavenly Sword Sect selection.”

  The words hit my ears and didn’t fit immediately. Heavenly Sword Sect. Selection. My mind tried to place them against anything I knew—market talk, village whispers, the well-dressed man from long ago.

  I swallowed slowly.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  The old man’s eyebrows rose, this time with real surprise.

  “You don’t know?” he repeated. “Boy, the whole north slope’s been crawling with would-be disciples every year since I was younger than my own knees. You stumble out here at this time, half-dead, and you expect me to believe you’re not headed for the mountain?”

  I stared at him. My head still felt thick. The words moved too fast.

  “Mountain?” I asked, voice hoarse.

  He leaned back on the stool, studying me like I’d just spoken nonsense.

  “You really don’t know,” he murmured, more to himself than me. Then, louder: “Heavenly Sword Mountain. The sect up there. They do their selection in the lower towns—tests, tryouts, whatever you want to call it. Kids, young men, desperate fools. They come with bags of dried food and dreams. They leave with bruises, or they don’t leave at all.”

  My hand tightened around the bowl. Warm porridge trembled.

  I didn’t have dreams to bring anywhere.

  I had “away.”

  “I’m not—” I started, then stopped because I didn’t know what I was denying. “I was… escaping.”

  “From what?” he asked immediately.

  I held his gaze for a second, and my face stayed blank because it had learned that blank was safer.

  “…People,” I said.

  That answer satisfied him more than a lie would have. He nodded once, slow.

  “People are always the reason,” he said.

  He stood and moved closer, not threatening, but close enough that I could smell him stronger—smoke, sweat, onions, winter air.

  “You can stay the night,” he said. “Maybe two. You’re not dying on my floor if I can help it, but I’m not feeding you forever either.”

  I didn’t thank him. The word stuck somewhere behind my teeth. Gratitude felt like debt.

  He didn’t seem to expect it.

  He pointed with the knife—not at me, but at the bowl.

  “Finish. Slow.”

  Then he looked me in the eye, the practical weight returning.

  “And if you’re lying, if you’ve got trouble behind you, you tell me now,” he said. “Because if men come riding up to my door asking questions, I’m not dying for a stranger.”

  I swallowed another mouthful, heat spreading through my chest.

  “I don’t know if anyone’s looking,” I said.

  The old man’s gaze held mine, measuring whether that was truth.

  After a long moment, he grunted.

  “Then you’ll find out,” he said, and turned back toward the hearth as if the matter was settled for now. “Eat. Then we’ll talk again when your eyes stop swimming.”

  The old man didn’t speak for a while after that.

  He moved the way someone moved in a house they’d worn into shape with years—no wasted steps, no hesitation. He nudged a log deeper into the hearth with the end of a poker. The embers flared and exhaled a soft, hot breath that carried the smell of resin and char. The pot over the fire rattled as it simmered. Outside, something pecked and scratched at the yard with patient persistence.

  I kept eating because stopping would draw questions, and because warmth in my stomach felt like a trap my body wanted to fall into.

  By the time the bowl was nearly empty my hands had steadied slightly. Not steady like healthy—steady like a man who’d stopped shaking from pure starvation and started shaking from less obvious damage. My head still felt thick. When I swallowed, my throat still scraped. But the dizziness eased enough that the room stopped tilting.

  The old man watched the change.

  “Better?” he asked, not gentle. Practical.

  I nodded once.

  He grunted, satisfied with that small proof.

  “What were you doing in the wild that long?” he asked. “You look like you crawled out of a grave.”

  I stared into the bowl as if the last grains of porridge could give me an answer.

  “Walking,” I said.

  “That’s not an answer,” he replied again, same tone as before. He wasn’t angry. He just didn’t respect useless words.

  I tightened my grip on the spoon.

  “I left,” I said instead. “I kept going.”

  He snorted softly. “From that village you ‘don’t know the name of.’”

  I didn’t respond.

  He leaned back against the table, arms folded, knife now set aside. His eyes stayed on my face as if he could peel truth out by watching long enough.

  “You’re too old to be a stray child,” he said. “Too young to be a bandit. Too thin to be a soldier. So you’re either running from something or chasing something.”

  My jaw tightened.

  “Chasing implies I want something,” I said.

  “And you don’t?” he asked.

  I hesitated. The pause was answer enough.

  The old man made a low, thoughtful sound in his throat and glanced toward the small window. Beyond it, daylight was pale and cold. Snow still clung to shaded places outside, and the sky looked like it might throw more.

  “You heard about the selection,” he said, as if continuing a line we’d already agreed on.

  “I heard words,” I answered. “A long time ago. In a town. Someone said ‘immortal.’”

  The old man’s eyes narrowed slightly, interested now.

  “You met a cultivator?” he asked.

  I didn’t know the word cultivator well enough to react. It slid past my understanding like a fish under ice.

  “A man,” I said. “People treated him like… like he wasn’t one of them.”

  “That’s a cultivator,” the old man said, as if that explained everything. Then he waved it off. “Doesn’t matter. Everyone sees one eventually if they live long enough and don’t die stupid.”

  I kept my face blank.

  He pushed off the table and stepped closer to the bed, boots thudding softly on packed earth floor.

  “Listen,” he said, voice lowering, the way a man spoke when he didn’t want his own walls to carry secrets. “Heavenly Sword Sect does their selection down in Jiānyún Town. That’s the base town, right under the mountain. Folks come from all over Pearl-Ash to try. Poor boys, rich boys, orphan boys, boys with a knife in their pocket and a prayer in their mouth.”

  I stared at him.

  Jiānyún Town meant nothing to me. Heavenly Sword Sect meant nothing except the name itself, sharp and clean and unreal.

  “You said the mountain,” I managed.

  He nodded. “Heavenly Sword Mountain. You can’t miss it once you’re close. Cuts the sky like a blade.”

  I swallowed.

  “Where is it?” I asked.

  The old man blinked, then gave a short laugh that held no humor.

  “North,” he said, as if that was obvious. “Always north from where men like you start. North and up.”

  My fingers tightened around the spoon handle until it bit into cracked skin.

  “How far?” I asked.

  He looked me over again—my hollow cheeks, my thin wrists, the way my shoulders hunched as if expecting a strike.

  “From here?” he said. “If you were healthy and stupid, maybe a week. If you’re like this…” He made a small dismissive motion. “You’ll die on the road if you try to push it.”

  My stomach tightened, not with fear, but with that familiar cold assessment. Die on the road. Die in the wild. Die in a yard. The options all sounded the same.

  The old man seemed to read something in my face and frowned.

  “You don’t look scared,” he said.

  “I’m tired,” I replied.

  He grunted again. “That too.”

  He walked back to the hearth and lifted the pot lid, peering in, then replaced it. The motion sent a puff of steam into the room, smelling of boiled grain and something herbal.

  “If you didn’t come looking for the selection,” he said, “then what were you heading toward?”

  I looked at the door, then at my bundle near it.

  “I was heading away,” I said.

  The old man snorted. “Away runs out. Mountains don’t.”

  He turned back to me, arms crossing again. “You keep walking north like you’ve got a destination, even if you don’t have the words for it. That road doesn’t lead to much else up here besides broken country and sect lands.”

  I didn’t answer, because it was true: I’d been walking north because north was away, and now north had a name in someone else’s mouth. A place. A reason that wasn’t mine but could become useful.

  The old man watched me sit with that.

  “You don’t know where Jiānyún is,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.

  I shook my head once.

  “You don’t know what the tryouts are,” he continued.

  I shook my head again.

  His lips pressed into a thin line. “Then you’re more ignorant than most fools who come through. That might be good or bad.”

  “Why would I go?” I asked, voice hoarse.

  He stared at me for a long moment, then shrugged one shoulder.

  “Because everyone goes,” he said. “Because the world is stacked and it stays stacked. You can work yourself into the ground as a mortal and still die with empty hands. Or you can throw yourself at a sect gate and maybe crawl out with something that makes men stop hitting you.”

  My jaw tightened.

  “Or crawl out dead,” I said.

  He nodded once. “That too.”

  The room went quiet again except for the simmer of the pot. Outside, the farm dog barked once at something unseen, then fell silent.

  The old man sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, a tired gesture.

  “You got coin?” he asked suddenly.

  I stared at him.

  “No.”

  “You got a letter? A recommendation? A family name worth anything?” he continued, ticking off the questions like items on a list.

  “No.”

  He grunted. “Then you’ll go like most of them. Feet and stubbornness.”

  I hesitated, then asked the question that mattered more than pride.

  “How do I find it?”

  The old man’s gaze sharpened. There it was—the leak, the turn, the way a direction became a path because I couldn’t keep surviving without something changing.

  He didn’t smile.

  He just nodded slowly, as if the decision had been made the moment he hauled me off his yard.

  “You rest here,” he said. “Two days, maybe three. You eat. You drink until your piss isn’t black. Then you walk.”

  “And the road?” I asked.

  He pointed toward the window with his chin. “There’s a track that runs past my fields into the hills. Follow it north until you hit the old stone markers—the ones carved with sword lines. You see those, you’re on the right path. You keep following, you’ll eventually reach the river road. Take that east until you see Jiānyún’s outer stalls. You’ll smell it before you see it—too many bodies and too much incense.”

  The information landed in my mind like weights: north, markers, river road, east, stalls. Simple enough to remember. Concrete. Useful.

  I swallowed.

  “What happens at the selection?” I asked, because if I was going to walk toward it, I needed to know what kind of death waited.

  The old man’s eyes slid away for a second, toward the hearth, toward the pot, as if he’d seen it before and didn’t like looking at it even in memory.

  “They test you,” he said. “Body first. Endurance. Pain. How long you can hold a stance until your legs shake. How far you can run. How much you can bleed and keep standing. Then…” He paused. “Then they test what you can’t see.”

  I felt my skin prickle.

  “What can’t see,” I repeated.

  He looked back at me. His face was hard again.

  “If you’ve got the root,” he said. “If you’ve got the… knack. The spark. Whatever you want to call it. Some boys have it. Most don’t.”

  “And if you don’t?” I asked.

  The old man shrugged, simple.

  “They tell you to go home,” he said. “If you’ve got a home. If you don’t, you go back to starving, or you join a caravan, or you become a bandit, or you die.”

  I stared at my empty bowl.

  Home wasn’t an option.

  The old man’s voice softened—not kind, just less sharp.

  “You didn’t come looking for Heavenly Sword,” he said. “But it’s the first door you’ve stumbled near.”

  He let that sit.

  Then he added, almost as an afterthought, “And if you’re as ignorant as you look, keep your mouth shut about what you saw in the wilds. Folks hear you talking about ‘monsters’ and ‘glowing pearls,’ they’ll decide you’re either lying or cursed. Either way, they’ll treat you like trouble.”

  My fingers tightened unconsciously under the quilt where the cloth knots were hidden deep in my bundle by the door. The old man’s eyes flicked there again, brief, sharp, and then away.

  He stood up straighter.

  “Eat again when the pot’s ready,” he said. “Then sleep. Real sleep. Tomorrow we’ll see if you can stand without swaying.”

  I didn’t thank him.

  I just nodded once, because nodding cost less than words, and because the north now had a name that might kill me or change everything—and either outcome was better than going back.