The night market glowed with lantern light, their reflections swaying gently across the worn cobblestones.
I walked between the stalls with a basket in my arms, breathing in the scent of roasted chestnuts, incense, and wet earth. The air was heavy with the hum of voices neighbors bargaining, children chasing one another through the alleys. This was the city I had known all my life, small and ordinary, yet tonight it felt strangely distant, as though I were only a shadow drifting through it.
My name is Lian'yin.
I am the daughter of a healer, and my hands have grown used to carrying herbs and jars, not secrets. Yet sometimes, when the world grows quiet, I hear something beyond the noise of this place a faint rhythm, as though the earth itself breathes beneath the stone streets.
The elders speak of ancient guardians who dwell where no human foot has walked, but such tales were meant for firesides and restless children. I used to laugh at them. Now, I am not so certain.
There are moments when the lanterns flicker for no reason, when the wind carries whispers instead of silence. In those moments, I feel as if unseen eyes are watching me. The feeling should frighten me, but instead it stirs a longing I cannot name.
Tonight, as I passed the old bridge at the edge of the city, I paused. The river flowed dark and quiet beneath it, carrying fragments of lantern light downstream. For an instant, I thought I heard something soft, like silver threads weaving through the night. But when I leaned closer, the sound was gone, swallowed by the current.
I tightened my grip on the basket and hurried home, telling myself it was nothing. Yet deep inside, I knew the river had noticed me. And once the river notices, it never forgets.
Our home stood at the end of a narrow lane, walls of packed earth, roof tiles cracked and weathered by countless rains. My mother often said she liked the cracks, for they reminded her that nothing in this world is perfect except, perhaps, the gaze of the heavens.
Most of my days were spent beneath her shadow: the bitter fragrance of herbs filling the air, the bubbling of small clay pots, the murmur of old prayers passed down through generations. The sick would come, weary and bent, and my mother would work with patient hands pounding roots, burning incense, weaving her words around their bodies like unseen threads. Many left with lighter steps. Others did not.
From behind the curtain I would watch their faces, their eyes shining with desperate hope, as if this house were the last refuge they could cling to. And yet, within me, something always whispered that healing was more than medicine and chants that some deeper current flowed elsewhere, hidden from us.
At night, when the city quieted and the lanterns went dark one by one, I climbed to the roof. The wind carried the scent of the river, cool and metallic, like the taste of old coins. I would tilt my head to the stars, scattered like silver dust, and imagine they were roads leading to other worlds.
In that silence, I often wished I could step beyond the limits of our streets, beyond the weight of stone walls and watchful neighbors. Perhaps to the very places the elders spoke of, where guardians and spirits still walked unseen. Yet before my dreams could grow wings, my mother's voice would call me back inside.