The silence followed him all the way back to the Outer Quarters.
It wasn't a true silence. The wind still hissed through the icy peaks, and distant training yards echoed with the clatter of practice swords. But the normal background chatter, the whispers and muttered conversations that usually trailed him like a second shadow, were gone.
The paths were preternaturally clear. Disciples he passed didn't meet his eyes. They looked at the ground, or at the distant mountains, or at anything but him. When he turned a corner, he felt the weight of a dozen stares landing on his back the moment he was out of sight.
Shock. Good.
He kept walking, his pace steady despite the throbbing deep in his bones. Let them be shocked. Let them whisper behind their hands. It was better than their pity, and far better than their open contempt.
The pain was a constant companion now. It lived in the fine cracks along his meridians, a network of hairline fractures that burned with every circulation of qi.
