The feast ran until the lanterns guttered.
Mount Hua celebrates the way it fights: in strict order, with a great deal of noise held carefully inside it. There were toasts from every elder, and each toast was a small speech, and each speech found a new way to say "We were wrong to doubt you" without ever saying it. Li Zenith filled my cup twice himself. Mo Zenith did not smile once all evening, and somehow that felt like the highest praise on offer. At the far end of the hall, a knot of junior disciples argued in whispers about whether the Silent Cut could be blocked, and lost the argument to an older girl who simply said, "No."
Seraphina sat beside the elders with her back straight and her face calm and ate almost nothing. Every time I looked at her, she was already looking somewhere far away: into the mountain, into the cold, into the months ahead. Twice I caught her eyes coming back to me. The second time, she held them there a beat longer than was polite.
