I woke before the sun, which is not my favorite talent.
Cloudrest Peak was still half-asleep. The roofs were blue with night, the courtyards empty, and mist pooled along the steps like folded blankets. The only sound was the steady drip of rain sliding off the eaves.
I hadn't slept well. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw a candlelit study, a sandalwood box, and a glimmer of stolen light tucked inside it. The Heartmirror Fragment was now hiding in the Sect Master's office—safer there, I told myself. Or braver. Or stupid. The line between those three can be thin.
A low bell tolled once from the highest tower. Not the morning bell. This one was softer, older, a warning used for fog, fire, or unexpected guests.
Guests… like a Heavenly Inspector.
"Great," I whispered into the quiet. "Perfect timing."
I washed my face, tied my hair, and slipped into the corridors. The air was cold enough to make my breath show. Stone lanterns burned small, steady flames against the gray.
I told myself I was going for a walk to clear my head. I told myself I definitely wasn't going to pass by the Sect Master's office to make sure a certain relic wasn't doing anything dramatic like glowing through walls.
I'm very good at telling myself things.
The upper hallways were almost empty. A pair of outer disciples shuffled by carrying buckets and yawning. When they saw me, they straightened at once.
"Assistant Lin! Uh—early shift," one said.
"Very dedicated," I answered. "Try not to trip over dedication on the stairs."
They nodded so seriously that I had to hold in a laugh.
I crossed the bridge toward the main study. The door was still closed; a thin line of darkness showed beneath it. No light. No voices. No Heavenly Inspectors banging things and declaring "By the order of the sky!" So far, so good.
I stood for one heartbeat longer than I should have and then kept walking so I wouldn't look suspicious to, say, the morning air.
That's when the bell tolled a second time, lower and closer. It vibrated along the stone like a cat's purr if cats were made of thunder.
I stopped at the gallery that looked out over the east courtyard. Fog lay thick on the paving stones. In the center of it, a small, square table had been left under the overhang, with a brush, ink, and a single lantern beside it.
I knew this table. Elder Mei used it to sort requests before sunrise: repair this gate, move that class, please stop the Alchemy Pavilion from setting the courtyard on fire (again).
There was also something else on the table—a small, folded paper charm. Gray. Plain. Heavenly paper.
I went cold from the inside out.
I waited. No footsteps. No voices. Only the mist moving like breath.
Then I crossed the stone and picked up the charm.
It was light, almost weightless. A faint trace of gold shimmered along the edges, too faint to be seen by anyone who hadn't spent far too many nights reading divine script by candlelight.
I turned it over. On the back, a single character had been written with a hard, careful hand:
看 — Watch.
Not "beware." Not "run." Just watch.
For a moment, the world narrowed to the paper and my heartbeat.
I slid the charm into my sleeve, set my face to "calm assistant," and kept walking.
As the sky paled, I made my way to the archives. If Heaven was "watching," then I needed to look too—and faster.
The archive doors creaked like old knees when I pushed them open. Inside, the lamps were still burning from last night, tiny islands of light in a sea of shelves. Dust floated in the air like snow that had lost its sense of direction.
I went to the ledger table and pulled the investigation notes toward me. Names, times, signatures. I let my finger run down the columns, counting my own breath to keep my mind steady.
Two things jumped out:
A sign-out for a brass key at midnight. No signature. Just a neat dash.
A record added at dawn, time-stamped before the bell—by someone using my ledger seal.
My mouth went dry.
I checked the seal drawer. The stamp I used for inventory documents sat where I'd left it, clean and quiet. So whoever had done this didn't steal the stamp; they copied it. Which meant someone with Heavenly clearance… or a very good forger.
Footsteps sounded in the hall.
I closed the ledger and turned as the door slid open.
Elder Mei entered, shoulders hunched in a shawl, hair pinned up with more confidence than pins. She looked at me, then at the table.
"You're early," she said. "I should have known."
"Bells don't ring themselves," I answered, which was not true, because sometimes the bells absolutely ring themselves.
Elder Mei grunted. "Heaven's inspector sent a messenger ahead. They're coming at noon."
"Understood."
She studied my face for a quiet moment. "You look pale."
"I was born like this."
She almost smiled. "Keep the logs ready. If the inspector is anything like the last one, he'll pretend to respect our paperwork and then accuse it of being too mortal."
"Shocking," I said.
Elder Mei's eyes softened, just a fraction. "Be careful, Lin Xue."
"I'm an assistant," I said. "We are the least interesting creatures alive."
"Mm." She looked like she wanted to say more and didn't. She turned back toward the door. "The Sect Master asked for tea."
"Of course," I said, because of course he had.
I carried the tray to his office, steps even, hands steady. The door was open now. Shen Qianhe stood at his desk, reading a small stack of papers the color of rainwater. Heavenly papers.
My stomach tried a slow flip and I told it to stop.
I placed the cup with my usual precision. "Tea, Sect Master."
He nodded. "Thank you."
I did not look at the ceremonial shelf. I did not look at the incense box. I did not think about a shard of living light whispering, I'm here in a voice only I could feel.
"The inspector arrives at noon," Shen Qianhe said. "Until then, I want everyone visible. No private errands. No sudden trips to the cellars or the roof."
"Yes, Sect Master," I said.
His gaze lifted to mine. He wasn't unkind. He wasn't kind, either. He was exactly himself: steady, distant, a mountain at rest.
"Were you in the east gallery this morning?" he asked.
My pulse tripped. "Briefly. The bell woke me."
"There was a charm left on the table." He held up a second piece of gray paper, folded differently than mine. I kept my face very calm. "It says nothing. A blank."
"That seems unhelpful," I said.
"Sometimes a blank is an answer," he replied, and set it down.
I thought of the character on my charm—Watch. I thought of leaving it on his desk, then thought of the relic hiding two arm-lengths away and decided I liked breathing too much for that plan.
"Assistant Lin."
"Yes, Sect Master?"
"If you notice something unusual, you will report it."
"Of course."
He returned to his papers. I bowed and left before the word unusual could peel the calm off my face.
The sky turned milk-white by midmorning. Fog thinned into a fine silver drizzle that beaded on sleeves and lashes. Disciples gathered in the main courtyard, lined in tidy rows like brush strokes in a perfect character.
A horn sounded from the north rim of the mountain. Not a bell—Heaven's own trumpet, soft as sunlight but too certain to ignore.
The Heavenly contingent appeared through the mist the way stories say kings do: slowly, already victorious. At the front walked a man in pale gray with a strip of black silk across his collar. His hair was bound high; his expression was very polite and not friendly at all.
Inspector Rui Yan.
I knew him. Not well. Not happily.
He had been present on one of my first missions for the Bureau—observing, measuring, judging without blinking. I remembered the precise way he'd cut bread that day, as if crumbs were a sin. I remembered that his verdict had been "correction required," and that three names had disappeared from the records after.
Now he stopped before Shen Qianhe and bowed exactly the correct degree. "Sect Master of Cloudrest. I appreciate your cooperation."
"Inspector," Shen Qianhe said, returning the bow. "You will have it."
Rui Yan's gaze slid over the assembled elders, over the disciples, over the courtyards as if he were reading the ink of the mountain. For the briefest moment, his eyes found me and paused.
I arranged my face into "polite furniture."
He moved on.
"Preliminary review of your records," he said, holding up a sheet—one of the rainwater-colored pages from earlier, "suggests a discrepancy in vault access. We will need to conduct purity tests on the protective lines and question a number of staff."
Purity tests. Wonderful. Those were flashes of Heaven's light that reflected off a person's spirit like mirrors. If you had nothing to hide, they made you look like a glass of water. If you had a secret, they made you look like a glass of ink.
I imagined the Heartmirror Fragment glowing in a sandalwood box, pretending to be a very well-behaved incense stick, and swallowed.
"Assistants will be interviewed as well," Rui Yan added, as if he had cracked my thoughts open and read them. "Starting this evening."
"At once," Shen Qianhe said.
The inspector nodded. "I look forward to our cooperation."
No one ever looks forward to cooperation. But Heaven said it like a compliment and a threat at once.
The rest of the day moved like a slow, careful brush stroke. I delivered lists, returned lists, carried notes from Elder Mei to the Talisman Hall, and pretended the inspector's shadow wasn't sliding over the walls like a second sundial.
At some point, a folded slip appeared on my desk, tucked under a ledger corner.
I checked the hall. Empty.
I unfolded it.
A single line of neat, thin writing stared back at me:
We have learned from you.
No signature. No mark. No color.
We?
I flipped the slip. On the back, a small ink dot had been pressed into the paper and then smudged. It wasn't Heaven's gold. It was mortal ink. Someone in Cloudrest had left this.
A friend? A warning? A mirror?
I burned it in the lamp and watched the ash curl like sleeping hair.
Dusk turned the courtyards copper. The fog finally lifted enough to show the lower terraces—gardens, bridges, the narrow path that wound down the mountain like a ribbon. Lanterns bloomed in the windows one by one, tiny oranges glowing in the gray.
I carried a tray past the Alchemy Pavilion (smelled like boiled mint and disaster) and the Sword Hall (sounded like thunder made of metal). When I reached the quiet path behind the Sect Master's study, I stopped.
No one was there. The door stood closed. A line of lamplight traced the floor.
I could leave. I could keep walking and pretend I didn't feel the relic like a warm coin two rooms away.
Instead, I walked to the little niche beneath the window, where a cracked stone bowl caught rainwater. I dipped my fingers and drew a short, simple sign along the sill—a masking charm, the kind any careful assistant might know. It wouldn't stop a Heavenly search, but it would tuck loose threads of energy in, like smoothing a wrinkled robe.
"Stay asleep," I whispered to the wood, to the incense, to the secret inside it.
Footsteps clicked behind me.
I straightened and turned.
Inspector Rui Yan stood at the corner of the path, hands folded behind his back. He looked exactly as I remembered: neat, controlled, not unhandsome in the way a closed book is not unhandsome.
"Assistant Lin," he said.
"Inspector," I answered, bowing.
"Working late."
"I tend to," I said. "Cloudrest likes its ledgers tidy."
"Do you know why Heaven likes ledgers tidy?" he asked, almost kindly.
"So nothing gets lost," I said.
"So everything that should be lost," he corrected softly, "is."
He let the words sit between us like cold tea.
Then he inclined his head and walked past me toward the main hall, his steps making no sound on the stone at all.
I stood very still until the sound of him not-sounding had faded.
The bell tolled a third time—light, almost gentle. Watch.
"I know," I whispered. "I'm watching."
Before dawn the next morning, I woke to another slip of paper under my door.
No Heavenly shimmer. No inspector's hand.
It was written in a familiar, impatient stroke:
Breakfast at second bell. Do not forget the tea. — E.M.
Elder Mei. Ordinary, harmless, wonderfully normal.
I held the note a second longer than necessary and smiled. Normal is a gift.
I brewed the tea with care—water right before boil, leaves just shy of bitter—and carried it into the waking light. The mountain sighed, the courtyards yawned, and somewhere a bird that was hopefully not divine argued loudly with a roof tile.
As I crossed the threshold of the Sect Master's office, the world felt balanced again. A balance made of lies, yes. But for one breath, it held.
"Tea," I said, setting the cup down at the precise angle that made the steam rise straight.
"Thank you," Shen Qianhe said, taking it. He didn't look at me, and I didn't look toward the incense box, and the morning didn't break under our feet.
Outside, the bell rang—bright, ordinary, alive.
Bells before dawn, warnings in the fog, inspectors in gray.
I could handle those.
It was the quiet I didn't trust.