The light struck like a thrown blade. It hit the rim of the cave and spilled into Wei An's eyes. For a single stunned moment the world narrowed to white. He blinked. His hand stayed pressed to cool stone. The blue-leaf hid heavy in his sleeve. The seam in the mountain pulsed where his fingers had touched.
Two men stood beyond the trees. Green robes. Clean lines. Swords at their hips. Their boots sank into the moss like authority. The kind of people who make the world obey rules instead of asking for mercy.
"Hold there," the taller one barked. The sound split the clearing. Birds stopped mid-song. The market in the village felt a hundred breaths away.
Wei An's throat went dry. His first thought was run. The second thought was the ledger on his mother's cupboard and the debt that would not unwrite itself. He had been taught to be small. The world had taught him the same. But beneath those lessons another thing rattled. A small, wild thing that did not want to stay small any longer. It was a heat under the ribs. It made his hands tight and his chest ache.
He lifted his palms slowly. Empty. Open. "I was only gathering herbs," he said. The words came thin but steady. He had practiced keeping his voice even when the world wanted to break him.
The shorter disciple stepped forward and peered. Curiosity ran soft across his face like wind. "Blue-leaf, is it? Strange to find one so close," he said. There was no cruelty in his voice. He sounded like a man checking a thing against a rule.
The tall one did not sound curious. "Luck. Or trespass," he said. "This ground is not for common hands. What else have you touched, boy?"
A pull tightened in Wei An's palm. The faint mark stamped there answered with a pulse that felt like a small living thing. He closed his hand quick, hiding the flicker beneath callused skin. Too late. The tall one's gaze clipped at the motion like a blade catching a thread.
"Young master," the tall man said, tone sharpened. "What's in his hand?"
The shorter one put up a hand to stop him. "Brother, he is only a villager," he said. "Sometimes villagers find strange things."
"Villagers do not make the earth open," the tall one replied. "We will not let ignorant hands tear at the veins."
Heat came up his neck. The world had scripts for him. Be small. Take what little you can. Bow. Pay. Wei An felt all of that and then felt something else. A catlike hunger. A want so sharp it hurt. He could vanish. He could pretend nothing strange had happened and go home. Or he could stand and show them the small coin of himself that was not meant to be spent silently. The thought was reckless and bright.
A whistle cut the clearing. Sound came from the path above, measured and precise. The two disciples turned their heads. Whoever walked that way moved like someone who did not waste steps.
She stepped into the light without hurry. A robe of deep green trimmed in silver. Hair like ink, pinned with a single jade stick that caught the sun and kept it small. She moved as if the air around her rearranged itself to make space. Wei An had heard the name like a warning in markets and fields. Li Yue. The sect's rising blade. The woman who made grown men quarter their words.
Her eyes flicked over him the first time like a hand checking the grain of wood. The second look held. Longer. It landed on his curled fingers, then slipped under the cloth that hid his palm. For one breath the mark flared brighter. A thin glow spilled between his fingers.
Time loped strange. The tall disciple's face tightened. The shorter one looked between Li Yue and Wei An, the nets of doubt closing. Li Yue did not change her expression. She let her gaze rest a hair longer than the moment warranted. The way she held that look felt deliberate and careful. Not pity. Not kindness. A light testing an edge.
"It is nothing," she said, voice calm as still water. "A remnant breath of qi. The mountain exhales. We will mark this place and move on."
Her hand touched the seam. The faint veins dimmed as if the stone recognized her and chose silence. The two disciples bowed and followed her away. Their boots made soft marks that the moss would smooth by morning. The clearing felt emptier for their leaving.
Wei An opened his hand slowly. The glow had sunk back into him. The mark beat like a small animal. He stood with his sleeve heavy against his side. Why had she lingered like that? Why had she looked and then chosen not to say? Had she seen what the others could not? Had she chosen to pretend not to?
The market in the village shouted its ordinary life at him. Old Chen waved a fish and a tale. A woman scolded a boy for stealing millet. Men traded hours and favors. The smells of tar and boiled rice and sweat rolled like a tide. Feng Wei found him against the wall of a stall, grinning in the way of those who had not yet learned to keep fire tucked away.
"You look like you saw a ghost," Feng said, leaning on his elbows. His grin was quick and bright. He was the sort of boy who could make a grim morning feel less like debt. He had a way of laughing where the laugh carried and softened corners. Feng belonged to the day. He did not carry caves in his chest.
Wei An let a small, brittle smile come. "Found a blue-leaf. Lucky day," he said. The lie felt thin and warm.
Feng shrugged and clapped him on the shoulder. "Lucky indeed. Maybe you'll buy me a bowl of millet when you get famous." His laugh bumped at Wei An's hardness with a kind of tender cruelty. The ordinary world took Wei An's shoulders and insisted he fit them.
The contrast stung. He stood at the edge of two things. One hand held the market's small comfort. The other cradled the cave's pull like a hot coal. Feng's warmth made the coal brighter in contrast. He could feel how ordinary life would comfort and suffocate him at once.
Evening crept like a slow animal across roofs. Smoke braided upward. The children's laughter thinned. His mother healed a crack in a pot by the dim light and did not speak of debts. Images of the ledger flared. The world weighed him down with small accounts. Hunger for more sharpened like a blade.
Night came and he rose. The moon was thin and sharp. He wrapped a cloak about his shoulders and climbed the ridge. The path remembered his feet and gave them the right shape. Each step was a small promise to himself. He walked the way he had always walked when a choice was ugly.
At the seam he stopped. The cave breathed faint. The veins hummed a small sound under the stone. The mark on his palm answered with a soft pulse that moved through the bone like a slow tide. He should not have come. He knew that. He also knew he could no longer pretend ignorance would save him.
When he knelt at the mouth of the cave the air smelled of old rain and cold metal. The blue-leaf rustled in his sleeve like a small bird. He set it on a rock and stared at his hands. The faint glow in his palm brightened to a soft ember when the moon touched it. He closed his eyes and, for the first time, let himself feel the pull as more than curiosity. It was a hunger braided of all the small humiliations of his life. Each debt he had seen on paper. Each laugh at the well. Each scrape on his knuckles. They were the ledger of his lowborn years. The mountain offered a chance to write a new column.
The sound arrived then. Not wind. Not animal. A small shifting like the settling of a great thing under the earth. The cave seemed less like an empty mouth and more like a watchful eye. Wei An's skin prickled. He straightened. The moon threw thin silver on the white vein. The mark flared once, precise, like a sentence underlined.
Somewhere in the black, a single bird sang and then fell silent. He felt the mountain's attention as a weight and a promise. It was not a voice he could name. It was a presence that watched and counted and waited.
He touched the blue-leaf. It smelled of old rain and soil turned over in spring. He slipped it back into the seam of his sleeve. The ember under his skin slowed. He wrapped his cloak tighter and stood.
On the path down the ridge his mind worked like a worm digging. Questions shifted under his thoughts. What would Li Yue have done if she told them the truth? Would she have taken him away. Would she have bound him with new debts of service. Silence, he realized, could be a favor or a trap.
Feng's laugh came back to him, easy and careless. His mother's back bent by the fire. The ledger of the village stared with inked teeth. The hunger that lived in his chest was no longer only a want. It felt like an account that could be balanced only one way.
He reached his door before dawn. The sky blushed pale. He slipped inside and watched his mother sleep. Her breath was slow and even. The debts were there in a small heap of papers pinned in the cupboard. He traced the edge of one. A small, childish part of him wanted to burn the list. Another part counted how long it would take to pay it all with honest work. The mountain's ember pulsed like a heartbeat against bone. The choice sat between the pages like a coin.
He sat on the doorstep until the light grew like a promise. The cave had watched him. Li Yue had looked and the mark had moved. Feng had tried to keep the world ordinary. Each piece pressed against the other and made a tightness in his chest.
For now he kept the blue-leaf where no one would see it. He kept the secret like a small coal. He would not tell Feng. He would not tell his mother. The ledger would wait a little longer.
But the mountain had put a question inside him. It would not let him leave the question unanswered. The mark on his palm hummed faint as a bird's wing. He rose as the first colors spread over the peaks and stepped into a day that would never be the same.
The seam did not sleep. It watched.