Dawn in late winter wasn't light. It was a thinner kind of dark.
Mud held the yard in slow hands. Roof edges dripped. Breath fogged and vanished. Men moved like they were trying not to be remembered.
Li Shen woke to Bai Ren's hand on the plank beside his head—two taps, not loud enough to be kindness.
"Dawn," Bai Ren whispered.
Li Shen sat up without speaking. His throat felt rude but quiet. His hands were steady enough.
Bai Ren was already dressed for outside—brace work clothes, boots that didn't mind getting ugly. He kept his grin off his face until the moment Li Shen swung his legs down.
Then it returned, bright and stupid on purpose.
"Congratulations," Bai Ren said, loud enough for anyone half-awake to hear. "You're eligible to die in fresh air."
Li Shen stood. He checked his belt. The hatchet's handle sat where it should—tool weight, not comfort. He didn't touch his ledger.
Paper would wait. Air wouldn't.
—
The Beast Yard Desk line had the same shape every morning: men pretending they weren't pushing, clerks pretending they weren't deciding who mattered.
The board behind it was stripped down to its bones.
STAGE-ONE ROTATION — RAVINE CUTS
SIGN-IN: dawn
GATE: Eligible strip (on file)
NOTE: See Desk
Li Shen didn't read more than that. He stepped into the line and waited.
A clerk called names without looking up.
When Li Shen reached the slats, the clerk's brush paused long enough to prove he existed as a file.
"Strip," the clerk said.
Li Shen slid the eligible strip forward.
The clerk stamped it, then stamped a second slip—thin, plain—into Li Shen's hand. Assignment. Not explanation.
"Team Three," the clerk said. "Ravine Cuts. Gate in ten."
Li Shen nodded once and moved.
Issued gear waited at a side table. Rope, net, a cheap wax puck, and a spirit-seal box—small, rigid, lacquered wood with a tired brass latch. A containment talisman was pasted inside its lid, the ink already faded from too many rotations. A cracked leather strap hung off the side like a reminder that nothing issued was ever truly new.
No lance.
No fancy steel.
Just enough to make mistakes expensive.
Ren Jiao was already there, checking rope by feel, not by sight. Huang Qi stood with the coil looped over his shoulder like it belonged there.
Bo Wen lingered half a step back, rubbing his hands for warmth. He looked at Li Shen's belt and then looked away, as if acknowledging the hatchet would make it something else.
Ren Jiao didn't greet him. He didn't need to.
"You're late window," Ren Jiao said.
Li Shen didn't deny it. "Yes."
Ren Jiao's eyes flicked over him—throat, hands, posture—reading for weakness the way the outside demanded.
"Hold line," Ren Jiao said. "Don't chase."
"I won't," Li Shen replied.
Huang Qi snorted once, not unkind. "Everyone says that."
Ren Jiao cut him off with a glance. Then, to Li Shen: "Tool only."
Li Shen touched the hatchet's handle once. "Tool."
Ren Jiao nodded. "Good. If something runs, it runs. We get paid for clean returns, not stories."
Bo Wen muttered, mostly to himself, "Stories don't buy ointment."
Ren Jiao's mouth moved a fraction, almost a smile, then vanished. "Move."
—
The gate out wasn't a gate. It was a narrow choke between posts with a runner watching like a bored guard. Beyond it, the ravine cuts opened into cold air that smelled of wet earth and old blood.
The world outside the forge wasn't silent.
It just didn't waste sound on talk.
They followed a path that had become a trench in the thaw. Huang Qi kept the rope high and dry, avoiding puddles the way a man avoided debt. Ren Jiao moved with the calm economy of someone who'd learned the difference between speed and panic.
Li Shen stayed in the third position and watched the ground.
Tracks weren't dramatic. They were arithmetic.
Two prints close together. A drag. A scrape on stone where something heavy had turned.
Ren Jiao stopped once and lifted a hand.
No words.
Huang Qi froze, rope ready. Bo Wen tightened his grip on the net poles.
Li Shen's eyes tracked the brush line ahead.
A shape moved low—dark hide, thick shoulders, head too square for a normal beast. Its breath came in short snorts that steamed in the cold. Mud clung to its flanks like armor.
Stage-one.
Not rare. Not harmless.
Ren Jiao didn't look at Li Shen when he spoke, because looking would make it about Li Shen.
"Angle," Ren Jiao said.
Li Shen shifted to the right without hurry, feet placed where mud wouldn't steal them. One correction—made without breaking rhythm—and he was on the flank line, hatchet low, shoulders quiet.
Huang Qi's rope snapped out in a practiced arc. It landed around the beast's foreleg and tightened before it could lunge. The beast jerked, muscles bunching, trying to tear free by force.
Ren Jiao didn't meet force with force. He met it with timing.
He stepped in and drove the net pole down—not to pin, to redirect. The beast's head swung, tusks carving air where Ren Jiao had been.
Bo Wen moved late, but he moved. The net slapped over the beast's shoulders and slid down.
Messy. But enough.
Li Shen waited for the opening that didn't cost them rope hands.
It came when the beast planted its weight to rip backward.
Li Shen stepped in close—too close for hero work, exactly close enough for tool work—and brought the hatchet down hard into the tendon line behind the knee.
Riving Cut wasn't a flourish. It was an angle and a commitment.
Steel bit. The leg buckled. The beast dropped its weight unevenly and the rope went slack for half a heartbeat.
That half heartbeat was all Ren Jiao needed.
Ren Jiao's blade flashed once. Not deep. Not dramatic.
Just the cut that ended the fight before the fight could get expensive.
The beast shuddered, then went still.
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Cold air. Steam rising off hide. Mud sucking at boots.
Then Huang Qi exhaled slowly. "Clean," he said.
Ren Jiao crouched. "Bo Wen, watch line. Huang, rope."
Bo Wen stepped back to scan the ravine, net pole in hand, eyes sharp now that it mattered.
Huang Qi held the rope steady, keeping tension as if tension itself could be audited.
Ren Jiao looked at Li Shen. "Core."
Li Shen didn't hesitate.
He opened the spirit-seal box and set it on a flat stone, away from blood and mud. The talisman inside sat flat and dry—cheap ink, but intact. He didn't let his sleeve brush it.
His hands stayed steady. No tremor. Not because he felt strong—because he stayed inside what he could pay.
He cut into the chest cavity with short, controlled strokes. The smell hit him—hot iron, wet earth, old rot—but he kept his breath plain and quiet.
Then he found it.
A small, dense knot lodged near the heart, dull with low clarity, like a stone that had learned to hold a little more than stone should.
He lifted it with two fingers and didn't squeeze.
He set it into the box, closed the lid, and snapped the latch shut.
Ren Jiao took the wax puck from the issued kit and warmed it between his fingers just enough to soften—not enough to run.
He pressed wax across the latch seam, then stamped his thumb into it once, hard.
Huang Qi added a second mark—his rope knot pressed into the warm edge, leaving a pattern that couldn't be copied without his hands.
Li Shen took a strip of oilcloth and wrapped the box, then tied it with a thin cord in a simple knot that didn't pretend to be clever.
Three marks. One object.
Containment for the energy. Marks for the custody.
Bo Wen glanced back. "We moving?"
Ren Jiao stood. "We move."
Li Shen slid the wrapped box into the inside pouch against his ribs—warmth from his body keeping wax from cracking in the cold. Not because he cherished it.
Because he didn't trust the world not to trip him.
—
On the way back, a runner intercepted them near the gate. He looked too clean for mud and too casual for coincidence.
"Desk's busy," the runner said. "If you hand me the core container, I'll queue it in intake."
Ren Jiao didn't stop walking.
"No," he said.
The runner smiled like it was friendly. "It's standard. Saves time."
Huang Qi's rope shifted on his shoulder like a warning.
Li Shen didn't look at the runner. He kept his eyes on the path and his hand near the pouch.
Ren Jiao finally stopped—just long enough to make the runner feel the weight of being noticed.
"Standard is theft with paperwork," Ren Jiao said, voice flat. "Get out of the lane."
The runner's smile thinned. He stepped aside, still smiling, still harmless on the surface.
They walked on.
Bo Wen muttered, "He'll remember that."
Ren Jiao didn't answer.
He didn't care if the runner remembered.
He cared that the box made it to intake intact.
—
The Beast Yard Desk line was longer now. Men with mud on their hems, blood on their sleeves, wax on their fingers. The smell of fresh kill mixed with wet cloth and old incense.
Li Shen waited with the team, box still warm against his ribs.
When their turn came, Ren Jiao set the wrapped box on the counter, not in the clerk's hand.
The clerk's eyes went to the wax impressions first.
Thumb mark. Rope knot mark. Cord tie.
He scraped a fingernail lightly along the seal seam, then flicked the latch once to confirm it was held under wax, not just closed.
"Intact," the clerk said.
Ren Jiao didn't smile. "Intact."
The clerk wrote. Stamped. Logged.
He slid a credit slip forward with numbers Li Shen didn't read yet. Numbers were safer later.
"Next," the clerk said.
They stepped away as the desk swallowed their work and converted it into something the sect respected: entries.
Outside the line, Bai Ren was leaning against a brace stack like he belonged there, grin fixed, watching for who watched them.
He saw Li Shen and made his face even brighter.
"So?" Bai Ren called. "Did you breathe? Did you survive? Did you become spiritually enlightened by mud?"
Huang Qi snorted, the sound real. Bo Wen's mouth twitched.
Ren Jiao didn't stop. "We're clean," he said, and kept walking.
Bai Ren fell into step for two paces beside Li Shen, lowering his voice without losing the grin.
"They tried to carry it?" Bai Ren murmured.
"Yes," Li Shen said.
Bai Ren's grin sharpened. "Good. You said no."
Li Shen didn't correct him.
Ren Jiao had said no.
That mattered.
Bai Ren nodded once, satisfied. "That's air," he whispered. "Real air."
Li Shen touched the credit slip inside his sleeve—paper that meant food and ointment and time.
Forge paid.
But outside paid more, when you came back clean.
He didn't let the thought grow into hunger.
Hunger made men chase.
And Ren Jiao had already told him what chasing cost.
Li Shen walked back toward the dorm with mud on his boots, cold in his lungs, and the simple, brutal fact anchored in his ribs:
The system had let him out.
Now the system would watch how he returned.