If Liu Shen was a mountain, then the small politics of youth were pebbles thrown at its base: noisy, splashing, and quickly forgotten. But pebbles could also start rivers if cast with the right intention.
Huo Ling'er's presence in Stone Village did not fade. She lingered as a guest and became an apprentice of the ember-craftswoman who lived near the lava-stitched ovens by the southern ridge. It amused her to rough up the apprentices and teach them to coax flame like a creature of their making. Sometimes she would find her way to the willow and sit with Qingmu, letting the child's chortles warm the cold places in her ribs.
The system, which recorded every currency of warmth and closeness, chimed a soft, suggestive note.
[Compatibility Meter: Huo Ling'er — rising. Suggestion: Form a Pact (temporary alliance) to increase potential Blessing yield through mutual trials.]
"Pact?" Huo Ling'er said one afternoon, brow tilting as she watched Bai'e chase a vine and fail. "You mean like a friend pact? Or… like a marriage pact? Don't be ridiculous; I just came to see what all the fuss is."
Qingmu giggled, toddled toward her, and pressed a doughnut-sized mud pie into her palm. When she tasted it, smoke and laughter came into her face — the doughnut was kind of awful, but somehow perfect.
Shi Hao leaned against a post and called out, "We should make things formal, if only to keep less scrupulous clans from doing something reckless."
Thus, the First Pact was made on a small afternoon with a pot of stew, three witnesses, and one branch of the willow threaded through a copper ring. It was not marriage. It was not a vow forever. It was a public compact of protection: Huo Ling'er would aid Stone Village and, if the future required, lend her name and blood to the lineage in a way that would be negotiated later.
The ceremony was more play than performance. Qingmu, deputized by the elders as the official ring-bearer, handed the ring to Shi Hao who pretended to misplace it. Huo Ling'er caught the mischievousness and planted her foot on Shi Hao's toe until he yelped. Everyone laughed, the tension rolled off like steam, and the pact, though light, carried weight. It read on scrolls later as "The Pact of Ember and Bark," an arrangement as much social as strategic.
That night, as the moon rose thin as a sickle, Liu Shen pulled one branch close to her child. "Pacts are seeds. Tend them or they rot."
Huo Ling'er, who snored by the fire so loud that she frightened the children awake, mumbled in her sleep, "If I must tend, I shall become the best gardener of flame."
The system, delighted with the human melodrama, hummed a satisfied tone and logged the pact as an item of value: a small boost to future Blessing yield if Huo Ling'er's line ever joined Qingmu's. Fate sometimes listened more to laughter than to decrees.
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