The paper charm smelled like old temples and rain. Heaven-branch ash dusted the seal; the ink lines were thin, precise, and confident—the hand of someone who didn't practice, only executed. Shen Zhen held it over the cracked bowl, watched the sketch resolve: a blurred jaw, a half-seen seal, and six characters written without tremor.
Your father isn't dead.
The room breathed once. Then again. Then all at once—the brotherhood's voices, Jin's sharp inhale, Ling Yue's hand finding the table edge, the twins' mirrored surprise, Mei's needle stopping mid-stitch, Yuan Po's eyes narrowing until they were knife slots.
"Who sent it?" Ling Yue asked, voice steady as a held blade.
"No signature," Mei said, already turning the paper, checking the fibers, murmuring, "Pavilion pulp, river stamp, cut with a scholar's knife."
"Gray-mask," Jin ventured. "Same perfume. Same insult-smile. Same love of dramatic timing."
Shen Zhen's hand tightened until the charm wrinkled. The reverse scale reared, white heat chewing through ribs, a dragon against ice wanting only to make the world bleed. He saw the alley, the guard's laugh, the boy's rotten words, the red fog—old ghosts with new teeth.
Belly like a pot. Back like a bow. Tongue to the roof of the mouth.
He forced breath down and found the pond under the storm. The golden seal pressed warm fingers to his heart. The black mark watched like a hungry cat being taught to wait.
"Why now?" Tie Hu asked, voice small, brave. "Why tell us this now?"
"Because names are doors," Yuan Po said. "And someone wants to open yours with their key."
"Or break it," Ling Yue said. "On stage. In front of the city."
Jin hovered at Shen Zhen's elbow, a joke dying and being reborn as loyalty. "If he's alive," Jin said softly, "we find him. If he's a bait-hook, we break the rod."
"We don't bite bait," Shen Zhen said, though his knuckles whispered that he would chew through iron if it had a name on it.
Yuan Po tapped the charm. "Three tells. One: ash-seal is real, but cheap—meant to pass glances, not altars. Two: the jaw-sketch is meant to be almost yours—blurred just short of proof. Three: six characters for a door, not a map. This is a push, not a path."
"Then we build the path," Ling Yue said.
"Carefully," Mei added, soft steel.
Outside, Azure Sky's bells coughed, then cleared their throat into a self-satisfied chime. Three Bridges Court still hummed in the slum's gossip—wagers settled, masks argued about, a blue-robed junior seen crying discreetly into respectable sleeves.
"Today," Shen Zhen said, setting the charm down as if it might explode, "we don't chase. We prepare. We learn to hear names and not drown."
Fatty Jin raised a hand. "And if the name yells back?"
"Then we make soup out of thunder," Shen Zhen said.
Training moved like tide through the Dragon Pockets. Breath forms first. Devourer drills next—touch and deny, sip not gorge, ask not take. Yuan Po added a new layer: "Echo-break." He had Mei thread bells the size of fingernails along a cord and hung them where breath had to pass to exit a stance.
"Speak a name," he ordered Shen Zhen. "Breathe so it doesn't ring."
Shen Zhen said, "Mother." The bells trembled. He flinched.
"Again," Yuan Po said.
He tried "Father." The bells chimed once, quiet, a sound like a memory coughing. The mark surged; the seal soothed; his throat tightened.
Ling Yue stepped close enough that he could count her lashes. "Again," she said, and her voice didn't ask, it promised.
He cut breath in thinner ribbons, laid it under the word like silk under a blade. "Mother," he said, and the bells slept. "Father," he said, and they dreamed.
The twins tried, giggling, saying each other's names until they learned that love rings even when discipline smothers sound. Tie Hu whispered his own name as if giving it back to himself and the bells stayed quiet because the boy was learning not to apologize for breathing.
Jin declared the exercise illegal and then aced it when no one watched.
By afternoon, the exercise hurt in the way that makes scars heal straight. Shen Zhen felt the reverse scale coiled, not corked, held, not starved—a dangerous animal fed the right food. He hated the charm for making the work necessary. He thanked it for forcing him now, not later.
They left the pocket for air that tasted like old fish and new rain. A runner in city livery found them, chest heaving, eyes glazed with pride at having survived the alleys.
"Summons," he croaked, holding out a folded strip, Azure Sky's stamp impressed hard enough to bruise the paper. "To present at Outer Hall, second terrace, hour of the monkey. Audience regarding 'public disturbances at a private exhibition.'"
"Three Bridges," Ling Yue said.
"Zhou Ming," Jin said, making the name sound like a weasel.
"Go," Yuan Po said.
"Go?" Mei echoed.
"The law is a game," Yuan Po replied. "If you don't sit at the table, you'll be the stake."
They washed with water that didn't deserve the name and climbed the terrace steps like men with no business being there and all the business they needed. The Outer Hall was polished wood and cold eyes. Scribes perched like birds on rails. A minor elder presided, the kind of man who had never been poor enough to starve or rich enough to buy mercy—a bureaucrat with qi.
Zhou Ming stood to the left, lip healed, pride rearranged. He smiled too quick. Beside him: Clean Water's woman, mask of courtesy; a Jade River emissary, serene; Constable Lu, unbothered.
"Shen Zhen," the elder intoned, tasting the name like vinegar. "You have made a spectacle."
"The city invited me," Shen Zhen said.
"By fighting."
"By breathing," Shen Zhen said. "And not drowning."
A scribe coughed ink. The elder's mouth thinned. "Allegations: demonic influence, unlawful assembly, endangerment, and unlicensed instruction."
Jin whispered, "We're very busy."
"Evidence?" the elder asked, already liking the sound of his own verdict.
Zhou Ming stepped forward with a bow that practiced respect and delivered insult. "I submit a charm delivered to the accused—sealed with heaven-branch ash—claiming to speak beyond the veil. A demonic tool to ensnare the gullible."
He held up a paper identical to the one Shen Zhen had received. The hall murmured, satisfied. Zhou Ming's eyes glittered: caught you with your own bait.
Constable Lu didn't cough, but the silence bent toward him. He raised one hand. "Permission to examine," he said, and took the charm. He scratched ash with a fingernail, sniffed, rolled the corner, then held it over a candle's light.
"The seal is ash, but not heaven-branch," Lu said. "River willow, dyed and prayer-smoked. The pulp is Pavilion, but the cut is street—made hurriedly with a dock knife, not a scholar's blade. The characters are… practiced, but not by a scribe—there's hesitation on the third stroke."
Translation: cheap fake, sold as real.
Clean Water's woman smiled behind her courtesy. "Such common tricks," she murmured. "This city should demand better charlatans."
Zhou Ming's jaw ticked. "The intent remains demonic."
"Intent," Lu said, "isn't a smell you can read in court. We have only paper and ash."
The elder considered the charm as if it had bitten him. He glared at Shen Zhen. "Do you refute the use of demonic arts?"
"I breathe," Shen Zhen said. "I bleed. I don't burn paper to raise ghosts."
The elder scowled at being denied a neat sin. "Very well. Instruction without license remains."
Jade River's emissary bowed. "Outer Hall may consider our petition to recognize the Eclipse Void Brotherhood as a civic troupe—trained in breath, discipline, and self-policing. We offer patronage to ensure… standards."
The hall shifted. A path opened that didn't like them and wanted to own them. Ling Yue's fingers brushed Shen Zhen's wrist: we can take the rope and not hang.
Zhou Ming's smile curdled. "You would give them a banner?"
"We would give them a leash," the emissary said pleasantly. "Leashes prevent accidents."
Shen Zhen held the pond under the storm. He saw the line: refuse and become prey; accept and become property.
"Conditions," he said.
A murmur rippled. The emissary inclined. "State them."
"Self-governance within the slum," Shen Zhen said. "We police our own. No forced recruitment. No levy on soup stalls."
Jin covered a laugh as if it were a cough. "Most important."
"No interference with breath instruction," Ling Yue added, voice professional. "We teach to breathe before we teach to bleed."
"Names protected by right," Mei said without looking up. "No public provocations weaponizing parentage."
The emissary's brows rose a millimeter. "Inventive."
Constable Lu said, "Practical."
Zhou Ming said, "Absurd."
The elder said, "Cost."
Clean Water's woman said, "We can accept a slum that doesn't riot before lunch."
Paper shuffled. Ink scratched. The elder loved the sound of authority on parchment. "Petition considered," he said. "Provisional status granted under observation. Any demonic whisper and the leash tightens."
Shen Zhen inclined his head—neither low nor high. "We'll breathe where you don't."
The hall adjourned. Bodies flowed. Promises broke and were remade in the same breath. Zhou Ming brushed past Shen Zhen, a shoulder bump wearing silk. He didn't speak. It was worse than insult.
Outside, rain started again with lazy cruelty. They walked under its thin knives, and the slum smelled like what it was: endurance and rot, hope fermenting.
Back in the kiln pocket, a figure waited in the doorway like a question mark made of bone and patience. Not gray-mask. Not Chen Hui. An old woman with a back like a bent bow and eyes like pools where stars fell to rest.
She held a string of wooden plaques cut from river drift, each carved with a single character. Without asking leave, she stepped close and lifted one to Shen Zhen's brow. It read: "Remember."
"You are walking toward a name," she said, voice like a stove—low, hot, useful. "Be sure it is yours."
"Who are you?" Ling Yue asked.
"Someone who loses," the woman said. "Less now that I found you."
She pressed a second plaque to Shen Zhen's chest, just above the invisible seal. It read: "Return."
The golden warmth flared so briefly he thought he imagined it. The black mark shivered, then stilled, as if a wind had crossed a lake and told waves a story.
"Bring breath to the old place," the woman said. "Where the bells won't ring. He will not come to you. He cannot. You must go."
"Where?" Shen Zhen asked, throat tight.
She looked at him with a pity that did not insult. "Where the river eats its children."
Jin swallowed loudly. "I dislike this restaurant."