The mountain's shadow still stretched long when Steward Ruo shoved a slate into Rat's hands and pointed at the cliff path.
"Down. Dusthaven. These herbs. Back by second bell."
Wei Yun stood ready with a short spear and a thin smile that tried to look brave. Steward Ruo's rope belt held a pouch and a rule.
"No heroics," he said. "No interesting choices. If trouble wants a conversation, you keep walking."
Rat tucked the slate, patted his copper coin, and grinned. "Trouble never asks for directions. It finds me."
"Then be somewhere else," Ruo said, and started down.
The path cut along the mountain's inner ribs. Wind tugged their sleeves, cool and sharp, smelling of pine and stone dust. Below, mist pooled in the claws of gullies. Above, broken banners snapped from rusted rings, their faded character for sky flapping like a stubborn memory.
They passed a shrine sunk into rock, its bell melted by old fire. Wei Yun touched the rim without stopping. "My father made offerings here once."
"Did heaven say thank you?" Rat asked.
"It rained," Wei Yun said. "The fields thought so."
Rat snorted. "Fields are easier to please."
The trail narrowed to a cracked sky-bridge. Someone had patched it with timber and faith. Rat tested each plank with his staff. Mist breathed across the gap. His chest tightened.
The Codex hummed like a quiet insect.
[Qi Sense spike near exposed spans. Adjust pace.]
"I see the drop," Rat muttered. "You are not special for noticing."
Steward Ruo glanced back once. "Save breath for something that pays you."
They crossed, one by one, boot soles thumping hollow. Beyond, the land softened. Wind-stunted pines bent from a long-ago storm. Claw scrapes scored a low stretch of stone. Something had gone hunting here and been bored.
Dusthaven appeared in time with market noise. The square spilled color and stink. Fish scales flashed. Oil hissed. Mothers swatted hands that did not belong to them. Eels writhed in buckets. A hawker shouted about pears that tasted like autumn even in spring. The north gate hung open like a cracked tooth.
"Quick," Ruo said, and peeled toward three stalls he trusted. He spoke fast, bartered faster, and handed over merit stones like a man parting with teeth.
Rat drifted a few steps to the old temple lane. It waited as always, walls slumped, courtyard still, air dusty with promise. A limping stray eased out from behind a toppled lion, ribs showing, ears pricked. It regarded Rat with the same expression as any landlord assessing late rent.
"Brought nothing worth stealing," Rat told it, and tossed a heel of barley bread. The dog snatched it, then set a paw down wrong and yelped.
Rat crouched. "Hold still."
It did not, because it was not stupid. He clicked his tongue and let his hand hover. Wei Yun knelt too, voice soft. "Hello there. Show us."
The dog hesitated, then offered the paw like a tired deal. A thorn sat just under the pad. Rat's staff had a smooth notch near the cap. He used it to pinch and pull. The thorn came free with a bright shock of blood. The dog licked him, disgusted by its own gratitude, and stepped back. Tail thumped once. It stayed near.
"Patch," Rat said without thinking.
Wei Yun smiled. "You name everything you break?"
"Only what plans to follow me," Rat said, and stood.
Steward Ruo returned with a bundle of frost fern, pine resin wrapped in waxed cloth, and a small jar of bitter reed seeds. He saw the dog, saw Rat's face, and sighed like a man filing a complaint against fate.
"It will not be allowed past the second terrace," he said.
"It knows better than to climb that high," Rat said, and hoped the dog did.
They carried the bundle into the temple yard. Rat knelt at the shaded corner where cracked flagstones kept a bit of morning cool. He dug shallow, quick holes with a shard of old tile and pressed the seeds into mountain loam he had stolen in a pouch last week. Wei Yun poured a little water from his canteen. The earth breathed it in.
Steward Ruo watched with the frown of a man who liked rules and could not find one that banned hope. "Herb beds need tending," he said grudgingly. "Tend them fast."
A pebble clicked on stone.
The beggar sat on the step like he had always been there, turning a smooth black pebble with thumb and forefinger. He looked at Rat's hands, then at the shallow trenches, then at Rat again. He did not smile. His eyes did something that felt like patience.
"You still owe me a coin," Rat said, fishing the copper from his sash.
The beggar did not take it. He waited, palm out, empty, until Rat set the coin on his skin. For a heartbeat the coin warmed like a sun in a small room. Then it cooled. The beggar closed his fist.
"A thread is not a leash," he said, as if answering a question only he had heard. "It is a road that forgot to call itself a road."
"If I step off the road?" Rat asked.
"Then you teach the road a new turn," the beggar said, and tapped the soil where the seeds lay. The flagstones under their knees seemed warmer. It might have been the sun.
Rat frowned. "You always talk like that?"
The beggar's gaze flicked to Wei Yun, then to the dog, then to Steward Ruo, and back to Rat. "Plant debts well. Some bloom into doors."
He stood without creaking and walked into the bright like a rumor leaving a story.
"Who was that," Wei Yun whispered.
"A man who likes pebbles," Rat said. "And taxes."
Steward Ruo made a sign against chance. "If you speak to strangers with eyes like that, do it less."
They turned back toward the gate. Dusthaven had gathered a little more noise and a little more trouble. At the old well, three teens in stone-gray sashes lounged with care. Rooted Stone juniors. Their hair was oiled wrong. Their smirks were right.
One had arms like a mule and a fresh bruise near his eye. He flicked a pebble at Wei Yun's copper badge. It clinked.
"Open Sky must be hungry," the boy drawled. "Recruiting ghosts and rats."
Steward Ruo stepped forward. "This is Open Sky territory."
"Then charge gate fees," the boy said. "We are public spirited."
His friend laughed. He had a sling looped around three fingers. The leather was new. His teeth were worse.
Wei Yun went pale and started to turn away. The mule-armed boy leaned in, breath sour. "Your father died supplicating the wrong elder. You will die kneeling to the wrong wind."
Rat moved before he decided to. It felt like walking down the wrong alley and choosing to keep going anyway.
"Your mouth is very brave," he said to the mule-armed boy. "Does it know your brain is small?"
The boy grinned like a door. "You are the gutter vermin that bites."
"Only when fed stupidity," Rat said, and lifted the staff so the cap met the boy's wrist with a neat pop.
The boy yelped and jabbed. Rat pivoted, let Horizon Flow pool in his belly, then push into the staff like water through wood. He slid the shaft along the boy's forearm, rotated, and flicked the butt at the ankle. The boy stumbled, swung wide. The sling boy's stone whined by and hit his own friend in the calf. Satisfying chaos.
Steward Ruo's voice went flat. "Enough."
He did not shout. He put a small weight into the air. It pressed the juniors a step back, then two. They knew the feel of disciplined Qi. It made their smirks crack. The mule-armed boy massaged his wrist. The sling boy found somewhere else for his eyes to live.
"Open Sky territory," Ruo said again. "Pay your fee to gravity if you need to make noise."
They did not bow. They did not spit. They backed away with the memory of Rat's face tucked in their pouches.
Rat let the staff drop to the ground and leaned on it like a man who had always been tired.
"Sorry," he told Ruo. "My mouth rented me out."
"Your staff collected interest," Ruo said. He did not smile. "If you fight in my line again without my leave, I will sweep your legs and make it look like the wind."
Wei Yun exhaled. His hands were steady now. He watched the juniors go with something complicated on his face.
"They will remember," he said quietly.
"Good," Rat said. "That is one fewer thing I have to carry."
They started up the mountain. Patch followed, always ten steps behind, pretending it was going the same way for its own reasons. The wind rose. Bells that were not there chimed in Rat's ears. Far below, the Jade River pulled a line through the Basin.
Halfway up, Rat felt the coin heavy in his sash, warmer than metal ought to be. He pressed it. Heat answered like a heartbeat.
"Did you just adopt a coin," Wei Yun asked.
"It adopted me," Rat said. "It thinks I am a shelf."
Steward Ruo grunted. "Hurry. The second bell is not late for anyone."
They rounded a bend where the cliff pinched the path thin, and the world's sound changed. The wind tightened to a whining thread. Feathers flashed in the corner of Rat's eye. A shape dropped out of the light, white-gray, wings long and narrow, eyes bright and hungry.
"Down," Rat snapped.
Wei Yun flinched. Talons scissored where his throat had been, catching cloth and nothing. The bird climbed with a sharp cry, wheeled, and dove again. A Cloud Kestrel. Common, lean, fast, bold enough to test what moved.
Rat planted his back foot near the lip and raised the staff at an angle, not to block, but to guide. The kestrel hit the wood, slid, and Rat pushed. Horizon Flow ran up his arms and through the shaft. The strike did not stop the bird. It turned it.
The kestrel slammed shoulder-first into the cliff, skittered, and clawed into air. It snapped its beak, angry and surprised.
Another cry answered from above. A second kestrel circled, cautious, smart, reading the three shapes on the path and the dog quivering behind them.
Steward Ruo's hand hovered near his belt. "Do not waste Qi. Keep them off. No kills if you can help it."
Wei Yun set his spear, point low. His knees shook, but his eyes had found a fixed place to stare.
The kestrel folded. It fell like a thrown knife.
Rat moved, guided, struck short. He felt the bird's weight through the staff, took some, gave some back, sent it glancing instead of tearing. Feathers spun. The second bird banked wide and watched with a hunter's patience.
The path was bad. Half a step wrong in any direction was a new career in falling. Rat kept his profile narrow and his breath steady. Gutter Lung thickened his air when it cut thin. Horizon Breath kept the rhythm he trusted more than sense.
The cautious kestrel hung for a moment against the sun. Wei Yun's spear flicked up, not stabbing, but placing the shaft where a wing had to go. Feather met wood. Wei Yun rolled his grip and used his small weight like a hinge. The bird twisted, angry, stuck for a heartbeat.
"Rat," Wei Yun said through his teeth.
Rat stepped and tapped hard at the skull. The kestrel went limp, then kicked twice, then stopped.
"Sorry, sky," Rat said softly.
He did not have time to say more.
From the mist above, a larger shape lanced down. Broad wings, a scar over one eye, a leg bound with old twine tight enough to crease the skin. A matriarch that had hunted too long with a trap chewing at her. She dove with the confidence of a thrown rock.
Rat could not dodge. He did not try. He gave the strike what it wanted for a breath and then returned it with interest. Reversal Instinct turned on like a door latch under his ribs. Force ran up his arms and back out as if the staff had become a hinge the world had forgotten to lock.
The bird hit him. It felt like a cart. Pain rang his bones, and his grip slipped on blood. The staff bit his palm. He twisted while falling and shoved a fraction of weight back. The kestrel caromed into a brush clump and tumbled, wing dragging. It hissed ugly and tried to strike again. Its bad leg tangled. It could not climb.
Wei Yun raised his spear. "End it?"
Rat saw the twine again. He pictured a trapper's hand tying, yanking, leaving. Mercy felt like a tax he could not afford. He paid quickly.
One strike. Clean. The world held still.
"We carry what we killed," Rat said. "Nothing wastes."
Steward Ruo nodded once. "You do not argue with hunger. You manage it."
Patch crept forward, sniffed the fallen bird, and sneezed. It looked up at Rat with an expression that could have been respect or an elaborate request for meat.
"Later," Rat said. "If you keep your mouth off the feathers."
They wrapped the bodies with a cord and set them on the shoulder. Wing bone made good tools. Feathers made better arrows. The path widened. Air turned kind again.
At the temple spur, Rat ducked into the yard and set two wing bones on the incense stone, not as worship, but as courtesy. The herb bed looked slightly greener than it should have. It was probably the light. It could have been something else.
Patch hopped up on the step and sat like a small, filthy door god. When they left, it rose and followed, pretending to sniff interesting spots that just happened to be in their direction. Rat did not argue. He did not name it out loud again.
They reached the inner yard as the second bell started to climb the air. A runner waited with a slate and a face that looked like he had kissed urgency and did not like it.
"For Instructor Zhen," he said. "Immediate."
They found her in a narrow hall that smelled like ink and cold. Lan Yue stood beside her with hands folded, pale eyes on Rat and Wei Yun like she was measuring new shelves for old jars. A third figure waited too. The man wore a black half-mask, the kind the sect used when it wanted words to land harder than faces. His presence pressed on teeth and spine.
A map lay unrolled across the table. Red pins dotted the lower ridges near the Verdant Canopy. Tiny charcoal arrows marked paths where beasts had nosed a little too far north.
The masked elder spoke first. His voice sounded like dry leaves. "We require two candidates and a steward for a low-risk retrieval near the canopy edge. A simple cache. In and out."
Rat felt the Codex flex like a muscle.
[Assessment: The task is not small.]
He smiled with no humor. "Low risk never comes to see me alone."
Lan Yue did not smile either. "Bring your breath," she said softly. "And your coin."
The map's pins glinted like small, patient eyes.
The wind found a crack and pushed a thin note through the hall. It sounded almost like laughing.
[Codex of Strands of Fate - Status Update]
Vitality: 5
Qi Sense: 5
Comprehension: 3
Fate Entanglement: 16
Realm: Foundation Establishment
Appendix Addendum: On Stats, Part One
Qi Sense and Perception: Read wind weight, room temperature, and the edges of intent. Range widens with practice. Fatigue blurs results.
System Note: Tended seeds registered at old temple. Slow effect pending.
Rat touched the coin in his sash. It was warm. He breathed, and the mountain seemed to breathe back.