The first man toppled like a sack that had remembered it was only straw pretending to be muscle.
The ledger boy followed, his knees folding under him in an untidy prayer. Up on the beam, the archer who laughed earlier clung to the rafter and learned how much a thumb can tremble when the world grows a margin.
Xinying didn't hurry.
She tipped her wrist, and the last loop slipped off like a shy snake, then rested the hairpin along her palm as if balancing a brush before a stroke.
The mist held steady, a faint, lucid shimmer in lantern light, not the vulgar kind that rip-roared into a room—it worked the edges first, where certainty lives.
Yizhen rolled to a sit with all the time in the world, flexing rope-bruised hands as if evaluating merchandise. His grin stayed lazy; his eyes didn't.
"Inner room?" he drawled toward the braid-woman.
She didn't take her gaze off Xinying. "You won't reach it."
"That's true," he agreed. "We don't need to."
