I found out later that when the mirror showed the blank inside me, the entire square had taken three steps back. I found out later still that it wasn't only them who had.
But that was later. That morning, I was still in the apothecary, weighing hawthorn peel.
Morning light slanted through the latticed window and cut across one corner of the blue-stone counter. I pinched a measure of dried hawthorn peel — a dry astringency against my fingertips — and set it in the brass scale's pan. The iron counterweight was cool against my palm. I shifted the weights and watched the beam level in the drifting light and dust. Outside: the ordinary noise of a mortal town. Market vendors. Cart wheels over flagstone. A woman's voice going back and forth over a price. Then, threading through the gaps between all of it — bells. Thin. High. Like a silver needle drawn lightly across a porcelain dish, nothing like the rough bronze bells or camel bells from the market. Three rings. A pause. Three more. Approaching. Evenly spaced.
Master came through from the back room, pushing aside the curtain, a freshly worked mortar in his hands. "The Immortal Sect's survey team," he said, setting the mortar on the counter and wiping his temple with his sleeve. "Two weeks earlier than last year."
I tipped the measured hawthorn peel into an oil-paper packet and tied the cord. "Do we have to go?"
"Everyone does." He looked at me. "Rules. Get your things. I'm closing the shop for half a day."
I stacked the finished packets on the shelf along the wall — seven in total, arranged in prescription order. My fingers caught the shelf's edge and came away with a trace of old herb-dust. The bells had reached the end of the street. Under footsteps and voices, they still separated themselves from everything else.
*
A temporary platform had been erected at the center of the square. It was built from some pale blue-grey stone, its surface mirror-smooth, entirely out of place against the dusty brick and flagstone around it. Two figures stood on it in moon-white robes, cloud-patterns worked in silver thread along the hems, cuffs fitted close. No elaborate crowns. Just a jade token at each waist, glowing softly in the sun. The older of the two was positioning a jade mirror in the stand at the platform's center.
The jade mirror stood about half a person's height. Its surface wasn't flat — it curved inward slightly, like a pool of shallow water held in place by the frame. The frame was carved with intricate patterns I couldn't quite make out. The lines seemed to move.
The town's mortals had already formed a queue. Approximately seventy or eighty people. Among those who had come, the quality of silence varied.
At the front: a cluster of young people, fifteen or sixteen, hair neater than usual, collars freshly starched and stiff. One boy kept rising onto his toes to see over the crowd. His friend beside him murmured something, eyes unguarded — the look of someone who wanted to be chosen. I recognized that want. I'd had it at ten. Three years of apprenticeship later, I'd traded it for a conclusion: the apothecary's blue-stone counter was considerably more stable than any road leading to the Immortal Sect.
In the middle of the queue, a woman kept her child behind her. Every time the child craned forward, she pulled at his collar. Backward. Without a word. Wherever the examiner's gaze moved, she shifted herself a half-step away. That evasion was practiced. Precise. The motion of someone who had done it many times before.
At the back of the queue: an old man, alone. The tip of his bamboo staff struck the flagstone at regular intervals. He didn't look at the platform. A deep vertical crease cut the corner of his mouth — the kind worn there by years of clenching something between your teeth.
Of the three types, only the first was genuinely glad to be here.
The queue moved slowly. Each person stepped to the jade mirror, stopped, and faced it. The older examiner pressed one finger lightly to a point on the frame. The mirror's surface lit — not with reflected sunlight but with something emanating from within, a soft milk-white luminescence. The glow settled over whoever stood before it and held for approximately three breaths.
And I saw, for the first time, what they called the "fate-thread paths."
Light began at the chest — a point of blue-white luminescence, faint as fireflies on a summer night. Then it spread outward, branching into fine filaments that followed some predetermined route through the body. Through fabric, you could see the shape they traced: from the heart out to the limbs, up into the skull — a luminous map. Translucent. In sunlight they looked white, not bright enough to hurt, carrying a coolness that had nothing to do with the sun. No two people's patterns were identical. Some dense as a spider's web. Some sparse as bare branches. All of them, without exception, originating from that single point at the chest and spreading across the body entire.
Then it was Auntie Wang's turn — the tofu seller from down the street. When the mirror's glow settled over her, her shoulders locked. The fate-thread paths lit from her chest, spread down her arm, and began thinning near the elbow. By the wrist, they were barely visible. I noticed a pale scar on the inside of her wrist. Irregular in shape. One shade lighter than the surrounding skin. The kind of white a burn leaves behind — I'd seen that kind of mark at the apothecary before. It wasn't a burn. The young assistant beside the examiner was writing in a jade register, the stylus whispering across the surface.
"Next."
I stepped onto the platform. The stone under my feet was cool, with a texture distinct from ordinary stone. I stood before the jade mirror. It showed me back: an average-looking mortal woman, hair loosely tied with a cord, short strands falling across her forehead, wearing a green cloth skirt washed pale. Behind my reflection: the crowd pressing in the square, and farther back, grey-tiled rooftops.
The examiner's finger touched the frame.
Milk-white light bloomed across the mirror's surface and settled over me. Soft. Not warm. No temperature at all. I waited for the blue-white point to appear at my chest. Waited to see what my fate-thread looked like — sparse like Auntie Wang's, or denser?
The mirror went black.
It flared for an instant, then collapsed into pure, opaque black. The carvings on the frame kept moving. The mirror's center was empty. The jade mirror made a sound — low, grinding, reluctant — like an old wooden gear catching on something, or like something deep inside it being severed by force.
I looked down at my hands. The skin across the backs of my hands was slightly translucent in the sunlight, the pale-blue veins beneath just visible. Wrist. Forearm. The bend of the elbow. Nothing.
No blue-white paths. No branching filaments. Clean. The same as what I saw every morning in the copper basin.
I looked up at the examiner.
He looked at the mirror. Then at me. His expression didn't change. The lines at the corner of his eye went taut for one instant. He turned to the young assistant. They exchanged a look. Brief. Nearly nothing.
A rustling moved through the crowd below.
I heard someone step back — shoe soles against flagstone. Then a second person. A third. The footsteps were soft. Hesitant. But they were happening. A faint smell of char entered the air — burnt talisman paper, very faint — drifting from the direction of the examiner's sleeve. He'd activated something else.
A child's voice rang out, sharp against the suddenly quiet square: "Mama, that lady is broken."
His mother's hand clamped over his mouth. She pulled him back.
The examiner looked away from the mirror. To me. He drew a smaller jade scroll from his sleeve, opened it, and began to read. His voice was level. No rise, no fall. The voice of someone reading from a document written long before this moment.
"Fate-blank. Classification: anomalous. Per the Immortal Sect's Provisional Regulations on Aether-Resonance Monitoring and Anomaly Management, the subject is hereby conscripted to the Resonance Institute for cooperative observation. Duration: three months. Accommodation and meals shall be provided by the Institute during the conscription period. Unauthorized departure is prohibited. Refusal of routine examination is prohibited. Appeals may be submitted to the regional Oversight Bureau within three days."
He finished. Closed the jade scroll. Looked at me.
I looked at the jade token at his waist. Then at the faces below the platform, each one angled slightly away. Auntie Wang had turned her head. The woman with the child had retreated to the crowd's edge. Master stood at the end of the queue, watching from a distance, brows drawn.
I considered for a moment. "Do they feed you there?"
The examiner looked at me. Said nothing. Nodded.
"Yes."
*
By the time I returned to the apothecary, the sun had moved past its peak. Master had closed the shop. He came from the back room with a blue cloth bundle and pressed it into my arms.
"A few changes of clothes. And your silver needles." A pause. "The herb packet at the bottom — that's the calming formula. You know it. When you get there —" He stopped. "Brew it yourself."
The bundle wasn't heavy. Solid. Through the cloth, the familiar smell of dried herbs — mint and poria, clean and dry.
"Thank you, Master."
"Don't." He waved a hand and turned to straighten the mortar on the counter, his back to me. "Three months. Not long. Cooperate with them. Don't cause trouble. The Institute —" A pause. "Sounds like a place with rules."
"Mm."
"Go on. It's getting dark."
I shouldered the bundle and walked out of the apothecary. The wooden door closed behind me. The hinge gave its familiar creak. The shops lining the street were lighting their lamps one by one, amber light seeping through paper windows and laying warm squares on the ground. I walked through the shadows between them, toward the city gate.
The city wall had gone a heavy orange in the last of the sunlight, the moss in the mortar cracks darkened almost to black. The flagstones beneath my feet rose and dipped in their familiar places. Seventeen years of walking them. Eyes closed, I could tell you exactly where to lift your foot. The bundle's cord pressed into my shoulder. The smell of herbs came in waves, mixing with the evening cool rising in the air.
The Resonance Institute of the Immortal Sect.
To study me.
I stepped onto a particularly smooth flagstone. My foot slipped, slightly. I steadied. Kept walking. The city gate was ahead, open. Beyond it, the road stretched outward, lined with straight poplars, their leaves flashing silver-white in the evening wind.
As long as they feed me.
I adjusted the bundle's cord and stepped through the gate.
From the city gate to the first intersection: seventeen poplars. I'd counted.