He woke to the smell of pine and old paper.
Light lay in sharp bars across a wooden ceiling. The bed was too soft. His hands, which had not let go of glass, lay on a quilt folded by careful fingers. Someone had cleaned the cuts he did not remember getting. Someone had changed his clothes to a plain gray robe with the scent of river stone.
He sat up too fast. The world tilted and then steadied.
A low table stood by the bed. On it, two shards of blue glass rested on a square of black cloth. The shards were cold. He knew, if he pressed them to his chest, they would warm. He did not move.
The door slid open.
An old man stepped in, back straight, robe simple, hair bound with the kind of ease that comes from never having to hurry. Behind him, a young woman in a blue sash set down a clay teapot and bowed out.
"You are in Taiching Sect," the old man said. His voice was mild; the room listened. "I am Elder Qinghe. Do you remember your name?"
"Xu Pingsheng."
"Good." Qinghe looked at the shards, then at Pingsheng's eyes. "You touched a dead Lantern."
"I didn't mean—" He stopped. He had meant everything.
The Elder poured tea and did not offer it. Steam rose in coils. "Our scouts reached Nanshan before noon. The shrine was ash. The town lives—less than it did. Your parents…"
Pingsheng nodded once. It was a movement a man might miss if he blinked.
"You held this." Qinghe picked up a shard between two fingers. The light inside it stirred, like a breath almost taken. "And something held you. Do you know what?"
Pingsheng hesitated. Words felt heavy in his mouth. "A ring," he said at last. "Behind the heart."
Qinghe's gaze sharpened. "A Soulwheel. Most never see theirs until they bind a second ring in their thirtieth year. Yours turned under a dead Lantern at seventeen."
Pingsheng was quiet. Numbers meant little. He remembered the hill. He remembered his mother's hands.
"Show me your mark," Qinghe said.
Pingsheng turned, parted the hair at the base of his skull. The Elder leaned close. His breath stilled.
"Death Mark," Qinghe said softly. "Carved by Heaven's Will at birth. You should not live past twenty-nine. And yet…" He tapped the shard. "You turned a Thread."
"The what?"
"The Nether Thread—the line by which a Lantern drinks years from a town." Qinghe set the shard down. "You pulled, and not years. You pulled authority. That is not what mortals do."
He let the words hang. The wheel in Pingsheng's chest turned once, slow, as if listening.
Outside, voices drifted—young, impatient, the voices of disciples who had never seen a town die. A bell rang somewhere above, clear as ice. The Sect was a mountain built into buildings: courtyards stepping through pines, roofs like waves, stone paths that remembered every foot.
"Elder," Pingsheng said. His voice was steady only because it had nowhere else to go. "You brought me here to… keep me?"
"To weigh you." Qinghe's mouth made something like a smile and then forgot it. "The Sect shelters strays. It also cuts weeds. There are elders who will say your birth mark is enough to send you back down the mountain. There are others who will say a wheel that turns under Heaven's eye is useful, until it isn't."
"And you?"
"I say threads can be redirected." He poured the tea into the floorboards. The steam curled and vanished. "You will go to the Outer Court. You will sweep, carry water, breathe as instructed. You will not touch shrines. You will not touch Lanterns. You will not die."
Pingsheng looked at the shards. "My parents—"
"Are on the hill where the Lantern fell," Qinghe said. "If you run down now, you will find grief, not answers. If you learn to turn the wheel you woke, you may one day ask Heaven why it wrote your name the way it did."
The old man stood. He did not offer a hand. "Dress. The bell you hear is for the Ash Hall. That is where the Outer Court eats and is told what to do."
When he had gone, Pingsheng breathed. He counted to ten and failed. He counted to five and stopped. He took the shards from the cloth. They warmed against his skin. The wheel behind his heart stirred and for an instant he saw it—not with eyes, but with a sense like taste: a single ring of pale steel and light, turning slow, with empty notches where rings two and three might one day lock.
He set the shards in his sleeve and went out.
The corridor opened to a courtyard with a maple planted off-center, leaves like small hands, red as embers. Disciples moved in twos and threes, robes whispering. Some glanced at him the way one glances at an omen and then away.
At the Ash Hall gate, a boy his age in brown-grey stopped him with a broom as if it were a spear. The boy's eyes were too bright for someone who slept enough.
"You the corpse who won't die?" the boy asked.
Pingsheng blinked. "I'm Xu Pingsheng."
"Good name. I'm Li Yan. I sweep here until the broom learns to sweep itself." He grinned. "They told me to fetch the Lantern-toucher. I thought you'd be taller."
"I thought the same," Pingsheng said before he could stop himself.
Li Yan barked a laugh. "You'll live. Maybe not long. But long enough to scrub the east steps. Come on."
They moved with the stream. The Hall was stone and smoke and voices. A gong sounded. A thin man with a ledger read names as if reading debts. Pingsheng listened to syllables he did not know. His fell between them and made the ledger man pause.
"Xu Pingsheng," he said, frowning slightly, as if the name had dust on it. "Outer Court work duty. After meal, report to Instructor Han for breath-work. At dusk, errand run to Yunhe Town. Take an older hand. Return by moonrise. Do not make trouble."
Li Yan elbowed him. "That's me. Older and a hand."
"Yunhe," Pingsheng said. The Lantern in his sleeve warmed. He did not take it out. "There's a Lantern there."
"Every town has one," Li Yan said. "Ours just behaves. Mostly."
Pingsheng tasted iron. The wheel in his chest turned once, and somewhere in the back of his mind a thin line hummed, as if plucked.
He looked at the ledger man. "If the Lantern there misbehaves," he said, "do I look away?"
Li Yan's grin faltered. The ledger man looked up.
"Outer Court does not touch shrines," he recited. "Outer Court breathes and obeys. If something must be done, the Sect will do it."
"And if Heaven decrees otherwise?" Pingsheng asked.
Silence rippled three steps deep. Then bowls clinked again, voices resumed, the machine of the Hall took its next breath.
Li Yan whispered, "You really are the corpse who won't die."
Pingsheng set his bowl down untasted.
Outside, thunder spoke far away where mountains scrape the sky. He felt the answer move along a thread he could not see, from some Lantern not yet in sight, and knew—without knowing how—that Yunhe's flame was flickering.
If Heaven decrees, I will not bow, he thought.
The wheel turned.