The camp settled uneasily at dusk.
Fires were lit in careful rows, smoke rising in thin, disciplined lines that bent with the evening breeze. Laughter came in pockets...too loud in some places, too forced in others...as competitors shook off the tension of the first round and pretended their bodies were not still trembling from exertion.
Jin Yue kept to the edge.
He had chosen a spot near the stream again, not because it was quiet...though it was...but because water told the truth. It carried disturbances farther than sound, ripples whispering of movement long before footsteps reached the ear. He sat on a smooth stone with a thin book open in one hand, a fishing line looped loosely around his wrist. The hook rested just beneath the surface, unmoving.
Reading had always been easier outdoors. The air kept his thoughts from closing in on themselves.
Tonight, the words refused to settle.
He reread the same line three times and absorbed none of it.
The water shifted.
