Fire wakes me by laughing.
Not sound, exactly—more the jitter of red light across the dorm ceiling, the cheerful crackle chewing the reed mats, the heat that kisses then bites. For a foolish blink I think festival, paper lanterns, sweet cakes. Then the smoke claws my throat.
"Up," I croak, voice like a broom on brick. "Bao, Lin—under the blanket. Roll."
Cinders drift like tiny stars. A dead moth is baked into the paper screen, wings spread as if still deciding. Irrelevant. I fling a soaked blanket over the boys and kick our water jar into the doorway. It explodes into steam and hissing.
"Lianyin!" Mother Hui's voice staggers from the hall. "Back gate—take them—"
"I know," I say—and then I do.
The knowing opens like a flower I didn't plant: left at the storage room, right past the rice vat with the hairline crack, lift the lower hinge when it sticks, hidden latch beneath the clay bell with the crescent chip—
I've never found that latch. I'm sure I haven't. But I see her flour-dusted fingers pressing it last spring, hear the tiny suck-and-click, taste almond-sugar from her secret stash. Memory that isn't mine slides under my tongue.
A sound like a teacup breaking snaps the moment. My jade pendant fractures against my chest.
First a hairline, then a spiderweb, then shards green as lake water drift off the cord and hang in the hot air. From each floats a thin black thread, ink uncurling.
Cold climbs my spine. The fire seems to hesitate.
Hello, says a voice in the place a person shouldn't have voices. Dry as old paper. Patient. Little lotus. Finally.
"Not—" The word grinds. "Not now." Heat gnaws my scalp; the doorframe groans; sparks tick my wrist like stinging ants.
Not now? the voice echoes, amused. I wait a thousand years and you say not now. Charming.
A ceiling beam drops. Instinct throws my hands up.
Shadow blooms.
It unfurls from my palms without permission—petal after petal, a lotus made of night air. The beam slams in and slows, reed-boat through marsh. The bloom collapses; ripples skitter up my arms and dive under skin. I gasp. It feels like being dunked in a cold river with stones tied to your ankles.
Smoke-thread from the jade wraps my wrists and sinks in. It stings. It hums. Under that hum—under my own pulse—something else wakes.
A heartbeat. Not mine. East, tugging, steady, once, twice—
I sway. Bao whimpers. Lin's breath hitches. "Hold your breath," I tell them, crouching. "Eyes closed. Count to ten. Sloppy is fine."
"Prize?" Lin asks, twitching for my sleeve and catching sweat instead.
"Two sugar plums," I lie, because it's easier than truth.
We go. The shrine room is an oven. Guanyin's clay face slumps into a grimace. Mother Hui lies on the floor, one hand outstretched, copper carp hairpin glowing like a coal at her temple.
I drop to my knees. My palm finds her wrist. Barely warm. "Mother," I say, and the word wobbles.
Devour, the voice suggests, almost gentle. You cannot lift her. You can lift what she knew. Take it. Be quick.
"I'm not a—" Monster sticks in my throat. Smoke doesn't care.
My fingers tighten. Something in me opens.
It pours in: rough broom wood under old skin, sesame oil, temple incense, vinegar cabbage, the itch in her left knee when it rains. The latch, exactly where she hid it, the cheap paper sigil she tucked behind the bell—for thieves like me, not demons. Her laugh, warmed by noodles. The weight of my name in her mouth when I was small. For a breath, I am her—tired shoulders, stubborn light, a regret like river mud—and then I'm not. She isn't.
If I cry, I won't stop. I don't. I take the boys and we run.
The clay bell hangs crooked by the back gate, crescent chip pointing like a nail. I press where the chip points. Click. The gate shrieks and night air slaps our faces—dogs barking, neighbors throwing water that turns to steam mid-arc, men shouting prayers at whichever god is awake. Above the roofs the moon is swollen and wrong, red enough to stain the mist.
Blood moon, the voice observes, pleased. Useful.
"Don't be happy," I rasp.
Mrs. Hu from the pickle stall appears out of smoke and nets the boys with her arms. Her eyes jump to my throat—no pendant—and the lazy green shards orbiting my collarbone. Her mouth makes that temple shape: fear and prayer, same lines, different gods.
"Take them," I tell her. "If I can't—" I can't finish. Words are heavy and I need to run light.
Something small and black bumps my ankle. My heart jumps. Amber eyes blink up—wide, affronted at the world.
A panther cub sits in a drift of ash with judge's solemnity. Not newborn, but small. Glossy fur where not dusted gray. She tests a floating shard with her teeth, bites air, sneezes, mortified. My laugh shivers loose and dies in smoke.
"What are you doing here?" I ask, because sense has left with the roof.
Guarding, the voice says, obvious. She warmed her paws on my throne-stones. She scorns her old name. Call her Ink until she remembers the one that mattered.
The cub blinks like yes, finally, competence, and leans against my heel.
Boots drum at the alley mouth. Not neighbors—too even. The tug inside me tightens, not toward them. Away. East. The Radiant Temple's sunburst sigil gleams on polished bracers as clerics step through the haze with lanterns like bottled dawns.
"By order of the Radiant Temple," the front one calls, voice practiced-merciful. "Hands visible. Anyone who has touched the shadow—do not run."
Don't run, says a man with a spear and a clean conscience to a girl with ash on her tongue and a ghost in her bones. My feet are already moving.
"Lianyin!" Mrs. Hu hisses, crushing the boys. Her fear is a gravity well. I can't look. If I fall into it, I won't climb out.
The nearest cleric sees me. Lantern light crushes my shadow under my feet. He looks from my orbiting jade to the black curling my wrists and his face twists—duty, pity, a pinch of triumph at being right.
"Child," he says, and he means it. "Yield it. For your sake."
The voice in me laughs, not unkind. He thinks I am a cup he can empty.
I don't know if I can yield anything. I know what happens if I stand still.
"Sorry," I tell him, and I mean that, too. "Another time."
Ink flicks an ear. The silver note tugs behind my breastbone—east, east. I run.
Sandalwood Alley is a throat and I am a punched breath. We vault baskets, explode chickens into outrage, skate through a ribbon of oil greed left earlier. A prayer flag slaps my cheek, wet with night. The voice murmurs, Left, a blink late—my shoulder clips a hanging sign; I swear; keep going.
The market square is a black bowl, the blood moon a red pearl in it. The light makes everyone look untrustworthy. Even me. Especially me. A cart overturns in a clang of iron pans and my heart flinches—jade, breaking—and the other heartbeat inside me answers, startled, alive.
Who—? slips through me, warm, a voice that is not the King. Curtain, down.
A novice thrusts his spear. I don't think. Shadow whips from my palm—not a lotus, a slick ribbon—wraps the spear tip, pulls gently, like taking a knife from a child. He stumbles. I'm past.
"Stop!" someone shouts. Softer, another: "Let her—she's—" It doesn't matter.
Stone teeth give way to a road where you can see too far. My lungs are meat on a grill. Ink keeps pace by sheer insult. The thread hums inside me—east, a plucked string.
"You're pleased," I accuse, breath in rags.
I am awake, the King says, content as a mountain. Pleased will do.
"Don't take me," I blurt, bare and raw. The thought of the laugh becoming mine, the lotuses unasking themselves, Lin and Bao's names slipping off me like rings off wet fingers—no. "Not unless I ask."
Silence, even the fire listening.
Very well, the King says at last, thoughtful. Consent, then. Keep running, little lotus. Behind is not gone.
"Fine." My mouth tastes like coins. "We live."
Ink chirps, tiny and fierce. The heartbeat that isn't mine answers once—steadying or demanding, I can't tell—and the red moon watches from its wrong throne, patient as a debt collector.
We run east into whatever I have just started.