The afternoon light was thin, as if the clouds had crushed it and scattered it across the stones.
The capital's noise had two layers. On the surface—hawkers, cartwheels, smoke from frying oil. Beneath it—patrol routes, hidden watchers, rules that didn't need to be spoken.
On her first day in the little courtyard, Yueyao learned not to linger at street mouths and not to walk the same road twice.
But fate never followed rules.
She stepped out of the alley with a stack of papers held to her chest, heading to buy ink, cord, and—if luck allowed—information about a small shop that would store goods without asking questions. Her pace was neither hurried nor slow. Her sleeves hid her wrists. The copper Moon seal lay pressed against her collarbone.
Her left hand was stiff again.
Not sharp pain—something worse: weakness without explanation. Most days it slept quietly. But when she tried to grip hard, her fingers felt rusted, her strength always a fraction short. She had assumed it was an old injury.
She didn't remember how she got it.
At the street corner, something changed.
Not a shout.
Not an order.
A subtle emptiness.
The crowd shifted as if a wind pushed through it, parting a narrow seam. People made room without realizing they were doing it.
Not reverence.
Instinct.
Everyone's body understood: someone passed who should not be blocked.
Yueyao's steps paused.
And then a man brushed past her shoulder.
His robe was plain, colors kept low, cuffs tied tight—the look of a young master who wished to be unremarkable. Yet when he passed, the air seemed to drop by a degree. Not cold—sharp. Like the pressure of a sword sheath sliding close to your ear.
Yueyao didn't look at him.
She shouldn't.
In this city, eyes were hooks. Look once too long and trouble learned your face.
But the moment they passed, something struck her chest.
Not the sweet flutter people called attraction.
Something deeper. Heavier. Like the tremor of recovering what you'd lost.
As if someone had pressed a lantern back into her palm.
Her breathing slipped out of rhythm.
Her left fingertips went numb, suddenly, violently—like an old wound had been yanked awake. The stack of papers slid in her arms, one corner tipping toward the ground.
In the instant the paper began to fall, the man's hand moved—
Fast, but not flashy.
Precise, as if he had practiced the motion a thousand times.
Two fingers caught the corner and steadied it before it touched the stone.
Yueyao lifted her eyes.
For the first time, she saw his profile clearly.
Brow sharp. Eyes deep, winter-dark. Lips drawn clean, almost without warmth, yet not cruel—controlled. The most unsettling part was the way he stood close to the crowd but never belonged to it.
Yueyao's heart tightened like a fist.
A ridiculous thought rose, complete and certain, before her mind could argue:
It's him.
Impossible.
She didn't even remember who "him" was.
But her body remembered.
Her blood remembered.
Her hollow place remembered.
The man returned the papers, voice quiet. "Hold them steady."
Yueyao reached to take them—her left hand lifting first out of instinct—then the stiffness struck again. Her fingers refused the strength. She switched to her right hand without thinking, the movement too smooth, too practiced.
The man's gaze flickered—briefly—toward her left hand.
Briefly enough that no one would notice.
But in that blink, something fine fractured in his eyes, a hairline crack—like a buried memory had tried to rise and he forced it back down.
Yueyao's throat tightened.
She wanted to ask his name.
Wanted to ask why looking at him made her feel like crying.
Before a sound could escape her, Xing'er's voice cut through her skull, cold and immediate.
"Don't."
Yueyao's fingers trembled.
"You'll die," Xing'er added.
"I just—" Yueyao started in her mind.
"You just want to move closer," Xing'er said, ice-flat. "And the moment you do, you'll expose yourself. If you expose yourself, they will follow your threads to him."
Yueyao went very still.
Yes.
She was being watched.
Pawnshop chains, hidden ledgers, palace lists—too many lines were tied to her. If she lunged for this man, she would hand every loose end to whoever was hunting.
The man was already turning to leave.
Yueyao forced her voice out anyway, thin as breath. "Sir—"
He paused for a fraction of a heartbeat, but did not turn around.
As if he should not pause.
As if pausing invited calamity.
Yueyao's chest dropped open.
The hollow place hurt so sharply she almost lost her breath.
"Go," Xing'er ordered.
Yueyao bit down hard and swallowed the question she wanted most.
Who are you?
She stepped back, lowering her gaze, clutching the papers like life itself.
The man walked away.
The crowd closed behind him. The street noise surged back in, as if the emptiness had never existed.
But Yueyao knew it hadn't been a trick.
Her left hand was still numb—still aching faintly, as if an old scar had been scraped raw.
She stood there, rubbing her left index joint without thinking.
There was a small hard knot under the skin—a remnant, like bone healed wrong.
She didn't know why she carried it.
But in the moment she'd watched his hand catch the paper, something deep inside her flashed.
Not a picture.
A temperature. A smell. Blood.
Wind in the wild, biting cold. A fire too small to warm anything. Her left hand braced against stone, shaking, yet still pressing down hard on someone's wound.
A voice in the dark called her name—raw, tearing itself out of a throat.
"Yueyao… don't let go."
She had bitten her lip until it bled. Rain and tears had mixed and fallen.
She had used her left hand to save someone.
Saved him so fiercely she nearly traded herself away.
And after that, her left hand could never truly grip again.
The one she saved…
A prince.
The Fourth Prince.
Xing'er's voice dropped low, as if that fragment had cut her too. "You remembered."
Yueyao stood straight, but her chest felt split open.
"I saved him," she whispered, half-confirmation, half-terror. "I knew him."
Xing'er answered coldly, exactly. "You knew his past."
"And now," Yueyao's breath shook, "he doesn't know me."
Her fingers trembled.
"But I—"
"You can love," Xing'er said. "But you can't demand him yet."
Yueyao's eyes burned, but her jaw locked.
She looked down the street where he had vanished, as if watching her missing half disappear into the crowd.
She knew her sudden love wasn't random.
It was old fate.
Old debt.
Old oath.
She and the Fourth Prince had survived the wilderness together.
She had saved his life.
Her left hand's weakness was the price—proof carved into her body.
And now they had passed like strangers.
She turned away under Xing'er's pressure, because to reach for him now would drag him into her whirlpool.
Yueyao tightened her hold on the papers and stepped into a different alley.
She did not look back.
Because she was afraid that if she did, she would chase him.
But inside her, a decision formed colder than a vow:
When I am steady.
When I have money, skill, and the right to stand beside you—
I will return.
I will take you back.
Whether you are Mu Yunxi…
Or Mu Yanchen.