Old Chief Bao remained quiet as the incense would not burn.
His knotted hands rested over the broken bowl like a man trying to warm himself with the ghost of a flame. Wind lashed the walls outside, and the crows had started to gather on the gnarled tree at the edge of the hill.
One of them let out a splintered shriek, dry and metallic, like the groan of a rusty hinge.
Another dead bird was discovered this morning.
Sixteen now.
Bao had tallied. He hadn't meant to. He wasn't a man for omens. He had buried too many loved ones to believe in signs from feathers or clouds. He measured life by how many bushels the field gave, how many winters the roof held firm. He had laid the first stone of this village with his own bleeding hands. He had buried his son during the Blight Year and hadn't wept. What were birds to such a man?
He was not afraid of birds.
And yet. His fingers trembled as he struck the flint to ignite the incense. The fire flared, curled into a cloud, and went out.
Again.
The shattered bowl, which had been handed down through four generations of village leaders, felt colder nowadays. As if the gods had tired of lending even their silence.
He gazed over the room to the vacant stool. The seat where the Spirit-Watcher once sat, swathed in patchwork robes and the scent of mountain sage. That chair had been vacant for two winters. The robes still hung there behind it, moth-eaten and stiff with silence.
Bao had not dared shift them. He recalled the last day the old man had occupied the chair—back straight despite the cough, eyes keen despite the haze over his eyes.
"This land is thinning," he'd said. "Like a stretched parchment."
He rubbed the ache in his wrists. The cold seeped deeper with every year.
His eyes fell to the scroll of the census on the altar. It was ritual now—unroll it, pretend to revise it, and roll it back up in a sigh. Xinhui had not added a new family in almost ten years. Nothing but deaths. One by one. Old age. Fever. Beast attacks in the woods once tame.
And yet, he did stop this time. He had only one name to consider.
Not even a real name. Just a placeholder.
"Little Rat."
No surname. No clan. No known bloodline.
Only a mother who passed away before giving him one.
The widow who had adopted him passed away last winter. The boy has remained alone since then.
No complaint. No crying. Never begged for food.
"Strange thing," Bao complained to himself.
He went for his ink brush but hesitated.
The Spirit-Watcher had also warned him earlier.
That night, two years ago. The boy had appeared on the steps of the shrine one winter's night, hiding frost-nipped fingers in the glow of the fire.
The Watcher had stood there in complete silence for a minute. And he breathed afterward, "His shadow does not touch the incense smoke."
Bao did not know what to do with it.
He still didn't.
"What does that mean?" he'd asked.
The old man's voice, rough and worn with age, answered slowly, "Some lives are not carried forward by destiny. They are what destiny forgets. They do not emerge from the will of heaven, but rise beside it, untouched and unbeholden."
He paused, eyes distant. "They walk the edge of fate, not by its grace, but in defiance of it."
Bao hadn't thought of it. Then.
But this year, sixteen birds had dropped from the sky.
And that boy had never had an illness.
Not once fallen.
Not once cried.
He rolled up the scroll again without writing.
He did not wish that name on the parchment. He didn't know why. Bao moved away from the shrine window. Below, the village came to life like an old man in bed—slow, reluctant.
And there, at the old well, stood Yun'er.
He observed her from behind the cover of the shrine, unnoticed.
She was nine this spring. Small-boned, bright-eyed, like children should be. Hair tied up in messy knots with frayed red string. A wooden bucket almost too large to hold in her arms, filled with morning water.
She still smiled when the sun touched her. Still in the same tattered dress her mother had altered the winter before. Still knelt every night before the altar with a dumpling sacrifice, believing it would be eaten by spirits—not rats.
He had known her all her life. He had cradled her in his arms when she cried in the chill air, still pink from the womb. Her father, Jian, had been Bao's second hand in the boundary war—unobtrusive, loyal, with a sturdy back and a fragile heart.
He witnessed Yun'er, not yet six years old, cry into her mother's lap. She had asked if the gods would return her father. No one dared to tell her a lie.
Her mother name was Mei. She was a quiet woman. She never left the house except to repair linens for bartering.
And so Yun'er wandered.
She took wildflowers to the shrine. Created carved bark dolls for the other children. Sat under the bramble tree and hummed when no one was likely to hear her.
She still believed.
And Bao… Bao couldn't quite recall when his feelings began to go sour.
He told himself it wasn't desire. He repeated it like a vow. "I am not that man." He had raised children. Buried a wife. Watched grandchildren carve his walking stick. But Yun'er's presence—her lightness, her trust, her unwavering faith—began to take root in the hollowed places of his soul where no warmth had grown in years.
He tried to justify it at first.
He gave her extra rice during the lean months. When others grumbled, he silenced them with a glance. He brought dried roots and resin to her mother's door, wrapped in cloth and humility. But it wasn't kindness anymore. It was something else. Something needful. His body aged, but his longing twisted backward—toward innocence, toward purity, toward something lost.
He began to linger when she tied her hair. Watched the red string swing like a pendulum.
And he loathed himself for it.
He hated the part of himself that yearned to touch the light again, even if only by standing near it. That vile craving to bask in something unspoiled, to feel less decrepit in her presence. He convinced himself that it was harmless. He didn't touch her. He never raised his voice. He gave. He protected.
But even silence can be predatory.
Once, when she tripped on the shrine's threshold and scraped her knee, Bao had knelt to wrap the wound. Her small hand gripped his sleeve. Not in fear. Not in protest. But in trust. That was worse. Because for that one breathless second, she looked at him as though he were still good. And in her gaze, he realized the awful truth.
He had not been a good man for a very long time.
That night, he dreamed of the Spirit-Watcher.
The old man stood barefoot on the shrine's cold stone, robes soaked with incense smoke. Tears streaked down his cheeks. "You are rotting from the inside," he said. "And rot does not stop on its own."
Bao awoke with sweat chilling down his back.
The next morning, Yun'er returned to the shrine. She held something in her hands—a small square of red cloth, frayed at the corners, with uneven stars stitched across it. Each stitch was crooked, each thread too long or too short. She had tried. Earnestly.
"I made this," she whispered, her eyes fixed on the ground. "For the boy. The one who lives by the willow grove."
Bao felt his heart slow. Not stop. Not stutter. But slow—as if forced to measure each beat.
"The Rat?" he said, voice low.
She frowned. "He's not a rat."
"Then what is he?"
She didn't answer. Her eyes turned to the distant bramble tree. The morning mist had not yet lifted. Everything beyond that point seemed uncertain. Forgotten.
"I think he's lonely," she said. "But not bad."
Bao wanted to call out to her. He wanted to warn her that he was dangerous, that he wasn't like them.
But Yun'er's eyes were full of conviction.
The kind of kindness Bao no longer dared believe he was worthy of. He simply nodded in silence, unable to summon words, and watched her descend the hill without looking back.
Once more, the wind whispered through the trees, disturbing the lingering incense smoke.
But for the briefest of moments—no longer than a single breath—it rose straight and unwavering into the sky.
Old Bao's gaze locked onto it. His chest tightened. His heart, frail and weathered, thundered against his ribs.
[Shi Ren's Secret Diary (Spirit Watcher)]
Ashfall Season, Waning Cycle Year 274
Day 90
It is Ashfall again.
The fog rolls back in, yellow-gray and bitter, hanging on the rooftops as if it were a second skin.
The orchards of the west are dead for good, burned and salted by Heaven's Scar Sect fools in their last fit. The smoke still clings, though. The trees are dead, but the ghosts of the trees have persistent lungs.
I can hardly glimpse the sun. It's a smeared yolk in the sky these days. Faded and weary. The village is quieter than usual. Kids whisper instead of yelling. Even the dogs are silent.
They feel it as well.
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Day 109
Routine is the only raft I have left.
In the morning, I brew bitterroot tea until it scalds black. I burn dried pear rind for the fumes—they calm my nerves, though they no longer reach the spirit.
By midday, I cleanse the shrine and mend the red-thread offerings. The spirit-silk wards hang in tatters, only humming faintly when rainwater brushes them.
Evening calls for vigilance from beasts.
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Day 138
There is a boy who comes to shrine.
No name. No mother that anyone has ever known. No aura that awakens when I look at him. The villagers call him Little Rat, but rats at least leave dung and body heat.
He is something else.
As thin as the switch on a willow. Eyes that won't blink when they should. I've only ever seen that expression once before—and that was on a field medic during the war who had to open up his own brother's chest to remove a parasitic wasp.
But even that man wept afterwards.
This child does not cry.
I occasionally leave him food. Always wrapped. Always plain. I never give him any signal, but I think he is aware that it is me.
He never consumes it straight.
He sniffs at it. Sizes it up. And then he bows. Not like a little child saying thank you.
More like… an old scholar recognizing a tolerated agreement.
And then he vanishes.
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Day 189
The barley has shriveled within its husks, and the soil no longer sings with blessings.
Still, the village head came to me with the arrogance of those who fear irrelevance. He asked if the old rites might bring fertility back to the land. I lied, as I often do. It's easier than telling men like Bao, the Boar, that their time has passed and the spirits no longer listen.
He was once a monster with a cleaver—broad shoulders, eyes like furnace stones. Now he lingers too long near Yun'er when her mother isn't watching. His hands, once calloused with honest labor, now twitch with something uglier.
Her father should have lived. Yun'er is still soft-hearted. She sings to frogs, keeps her brother's broken flute tucked into her sleeve, believes in paper charms and forgotten deities.
I scraped out a charm for her from red shreds of bark and a tarnished jade bead from my wander years. Hung it beneath her window.
I'll improve it. If I make it through the season.