"How long were you lost?" their host, the old woman, asked as she knelt to press a wet cloth to Chan'er's forehead.
"We don't know," Shen Yue admitted. It was easier to tell the truth here, wrapped in the fiction of their cover story. "It felt like... a few hours, maybe four? But..." She looked at Gu Tian, who'd paused in his eating to stare at his hands like they belonged to someone else.
"The sun," he said slowly. "When I went to find them, it was almost sunset. When I found them and we came out, it was afternoon. That was after I'd searched for... how long?" He frowned, struggling with the timeline.
"What day is it?" Shen Yue asked the woman.
"Fifthday," the woman replied, watching them with growing concern. "Fifthday of the fourth month. Why? When did you go into these hills?"
Shen Yue and Gu Tian exchanged glances. Shen Yue tried to remember—the original body's memories provided context. They'd entered the dungeon on...
"Seventhday," Gu Tian said, his voice hollow. "Last Seventhday. Of the third month."
The silence that followed was broken only by Chan'er's labored breathing and the distant creak of the water wheel.
"That's..." The woman's hand had stilled on Chan'er's forehead. "That's five days. Children, you have been missing for five days."
Five days! Shen Yue's mind reeled. Five days in that dungeon and it had felt like four hours.
"That's not possible," Gu Tian whispered. But his eye was wide, believing it anyway. "We would have... we would have died of thirst. We didn't even have..."
" You must have been confused, delirious. Five days without proper food or water, it's a miracle you survived at all!"
"What's your name?" Shen Yue asked.
"Mei Lin." The woman stood, smoothing her tunic. "You'll stay here tonight. Tomorrow I'll take you to the village elder. He'll know what to do about getting you back to..." She paused. "Where are you from?"
Another glance between Shen Yue and Gu Tian. Where were they from? The original Kaelen's memories provided fragments. A city, larger than this village, with walls and markets and wealthy cultivators who didn't see street children as anything more than vermin to be kicked aside. But the name...
"Qingmei," Gu Tian supplied. "Qingmei City." It was a good lie, plausible.
Mei Lin nodded slowly. "Qingmei is three days' walk east. That would be more for children traveling alone." She looked at them, really looked at them, and something in her expression shifted. "You're running from something."
It wasn't a question. Shen Yue met her gaze and said nothing. The truth was impossible to explain and lies would only tangle them further.
"I won't pry," Mei Lin said finally. "Heaven knows everyone has their reasons. But you should know that in this village, we're simple and quiet folk. We don't want trouble here."
"We won't bring trouble," Gu Tian said quickly.
"Trouble has a way of finding people whether they want it or not." Mei Lin moved to the door, pausing with her hand on the frame. "There's a basin of water outside if you want to wash. I'll be at the shrine, finishing my prayers. Try to get the child to drink if she wakes."
She left and the sudden silence was oppressive.
Gu Tian slumped forward, his head nearly hitting the table. "Five days," he muttered. "Five days. How is that possible?"
Shen Yue had no answer. She looked down at her hands, the body's hands, and saw they were still trembling. The frost-patterns on her ankle were hidden beneath her torn pants but she could feel them, she could feel the cold spreading like roots through her flesh. Each pulse seemed to sync with her heartbeat or maybe it was creating its own rhythm and forcing her heart to match it.
"Kaelen?" Gu Tian was staring at her again. "You're doing it again."
"Doing what?"
"That thing. Where you..." He gestured vaguely at his face. "Your expression just... goes away. Like you're not there. Like you're..." He stopped, swallowed hard. "Like you're someone else."
Because I am. she wanted to say. Because the Kaelen you knew is dead and I'm just wearing his skin like a stolen coat.
"I'm tired," she said instead. "We're all tired. It's been...It's been five days, apparently." She laughed with a brittle sound.
Chan'er stirred on the mat, her eyes fluttering open. For a moment they were unfocused, glassy with fever. Then they sharpened, fixed on something above Shen Yue's head and the little girl's breath caught.
"Yue-jie," she whispered. Her voice was thin, frightened. "There's something... your shadow..."
Shen Yue looked up instinctively, though there was nothing to see in the dim interior of the house. There were no shadows cast by firelight yet.
"Chan'er, there's nothing..."
"There is," the little girl interrupted, her eyes still tracking something invisible. " And it has...It has eyes." She whimpered, turning her face into the mat.
Gu Tian stood so fast his chair scraped across the floor. He grabbed Shen Yue's shoulder and spun her around. She saw his single eye widen as he looked at the wall behind her.
"What is that?"
Shen Yue turned. Her shadow stretched across the earthen wall, cast by the light from the window. It seemed normal, perfectly normal, human-shaped and proportional and... It moved!
Just for a second, just the tiniest fraction of movement but her body was still and her shadow moved. Then it snapped back to normal, perfectly synchronized with her body as if it had never been anything else.
"Did you see..." Gu Tian's voice was shaking.
"We're just tired. We're all seeing things." Shen Yue said.
"That wasn't..."
"We're tired," she repeated, harder this time. She pulled away from his grip and moved to kneel beside Chan'er. The little girl was crying silently, tears streaming down her feverish face. "Hey, hey. Look at me."
Chan'er's eyes focused on hers with effort.
"It's okay," Shen Yue said, even though it absolutely wasn't. "You're safe now. We're safe."
"You're not you," Chan'er whispered.
"Shh." Shen Yue pressed the wet cloth to the girl's forehead, gentle but firm. "Sleep. You need to sleep."
She drifted off mid-sentence, her breathing evening out.