Three days changed what my body could do.

  Not what it was.

  The farmer didn’t heal me. He didn’t have herbs that stitched muscle back onto bone or water that erased weeks of hunger. He just did the simple, brutal thing that kept a starving animal from dying: he fed it slowly enough that it didn’t collapse, and he kept it warm enough that the cold didn’t finish the work.

  By the third morning I could stand without the room tilting sideways.

  My legs still felt thin—hollow in the thighs, weak around the knees—but they held. My hands still shook when I tried to do something precise, like tie cord with numb fingers, but the tremor had softened. My lips weren’t splitting every time I spoke. My urine had lightened from near-black to something closer to normal. The pressure behind my eyes had dulled into a background ache instead of a hammer.

  That was “fit enough” in this world.

  The farmer measured it the way he measured weather: if you could walk, you could work; if you could work, you could survive; if you couldn’t, you were already dead and just hadn’t stopped moving yet.

  He didn’t say goodbye like a family would.

  He stood by the hearth while the pot simmered and watched me roll the quilt off my shoulders. The farm dog—old, wary—kept its distance, tail low, eyes tracking my hands. Outside, chickens scratched at frozen earth. The wind carried the smell of dung and smoke and damp hay through cracks in the walls.

  The farmer set a small bundle on the table without ceremony.

  “Bare minimum,” he said, as if he was talking to himself. “Enough that you won’t drop in my field again. Not enough that you think you’re a guest.”

  I stepped closer and looked down.

  A strip of dried meat, tough and dark, tied with twine. Two hard cakes of grain. A small cloth pouch of salt—precious enough that my fingers paused over it before touching. A stub of candle wrapped in waxed paper. A crude water skin that smelled faintly of animal hide and smoke. A length of cord, frayed but usable. A thin patchwork scarf, rough wool, the kind that scratched the neck but blocked wind. And a short, battered knife with a chipped spine and a handle polished by years of use.

  Not a weapon meant for a fight.

  A tool meant for cutting food and rope and occasionally throats if someone got too close in the dark.

  The farmer’s eyes watched my face while I looked at the knife.

  “Don’t get ideas,” he said.

  I didn’t answer. My face stayed still.

  He snorted. “That’s what I mean. You already got ideas.”

  I picked up the knife. The handle fit my palm too well, like it had been waiting. The metal was cold. It smelled faintly of onion and old blood, the way tools used for everything always did.

  “Why give me this?” I asked.

  He shrugged one shoulder, thick coat creaking. “Because a boy without a blade is meat. And because if you come back here, I don’t want you thinking my kitchen is yours.”

  Transactional. Clear.

  I nodded once and set the knife down long enough to tie the bundle properly.

  My own bundle lay near the door—damp stains dried into the cloth, edges stiff with old mud. I opened it just enough to tuck the farmer’s gifts deep inside, beneath the blanket and the last scraps of my original food. My fingers brushed the hidden knots of cloth—the three small pearls I’d stolen from a clearing that still lived behind my eyes. I didn’t open them. I didn’t check them. I just made sure they were still there and buried them deeper.

  The farmer pretended not to notice.

  But his eyes flicked once, quick and sharp, to the motion of my hands.

  “Remember,” he said, voice low. “You follow the track north until you see the stone markers. You keep to the higher ground. Don’t camp in hollows. Don’t drink still water unless you want your gut to rot.”

  “I remember,” I said.

  He made a sound in his throat. Approval, maybe. Or just acknowledgment that I’d listened.

  He pushed a wooden cup toward me. Thin broth, oily on top, warm. The last meal he’d give me.

  “Drink,” he said. “Salt helps you hold water.”

  I drank. Slowly. The warmth spread through my stomach like a small fire. It wasn’t satisfaction. It was fuel.

  When I set the cup down, my hands were steadier.

  The farmer stepped around me toward the door and pulled it open. Cold daylight poured in. Wind snapped at the hanging cloth by the frame. The yard was brown and wet with patches of old snow, and the world beyond looked hard and indifferent.

  He didn’t tell me to be careful.

  Men in this world didn’t waste breath on wishes.

  He just pointed with his chin toward the slope that led away from the farm.

  “You walk,” he said. “And you don’t look back. If you get turned around, you die.”

  I slung my bundle over my shoulder. The strap bit, but not like before. Not raw pain. Just pressure. I adjusted it once, found a balance that wouldn’t cut into the same place too fast.

  The scarf went around my neck. It scratched immediately. I didn’t care. Scratching was better than wind cutting into my throat.

  The water skin hung at my hip. The knife sat tucked into cloth, close enough to reach.

  I stepped out into the yard.

  Mud tried to take my boot, but I pulled free without stumbling. The ground was still cold enough that it stiffened the joints. The air smelled of smoke and animals and wet earth. My lungs tightened on the first inhale, then adapted.

  Behind me, the farmhouse stayed quiet. The farmer didn’t follow. He didn’t stand in the doorway waving. He had work, and I was no longer his problem.

  The farm dog watched me from a distance, ears half up. It didn’t approach. It didn’t bark.

  I walked past the fence line, past the last trampled straw, onto the track that cut into the hills.

  North.

  Up.

  Away.

  Each step took me farther from the only roof I’d had in months and closer to a mountain I still couldn’t picture—closer to a selection I didn’t understand, run by people who tested bodies and whatever lay inside them.

  My stomach held warmth. My throat held water. My legs held me.

  That was enough.

  I kept going without looking back.

  The track the farmer had pointed out didn’t feel like a road.

  It felt like a scar someone kept reopening because there was no other way through.

  Mud held it together. Old ruts from carts that had come this way once upon a time, cut deep and then half-filled, then cut again. In the cold, the top skin of the mud had crusted in places, brittle enough to crack underfoot, slick enough to betray you the moment you trusted it. My feet weren’t protected by anything sturdy. Just poor cloth shoes—straw-soled and patched, the kind that kept pebbles from cutting skin but did nothing against water. The soles drank damp like a sponge. The straw edges frayed and softened, and every time I stepped into a wet pocket, the cold seeped up through the layers and bit into my toes.

  The shoes squeaked sometimes, wet straw rubbing wet cloth.

  I hated the sound.

  Wind came down from the north and slid under my scarf and collar. The scarf scratched my neck, rough wool catching on dry skin, but it blocked the worst of the bite. The air carried pine resin, damp rock, and something faint in the distance that wasn’t forest—smoke and animals and people living close enough together that their stink became part of the weather.

  I kept my eyes moving.

  My body was improved, not fixed. My legs held me now, but they still burned too quickly. My stomach held food, but it still felt like it could hollow out in minutes. My hands shook less, but the tremor was still there when I tried to do anything careful. Each time the straw soles sank into cold mud, my toes numbed, and when they warmed again the pins-and-needles pain crawled up the arches.

  I didn’t stop.

  Stopping meant letting cold settle deeper.

  The first time I saw men on the path, it wasn’t close enough for their faces.

  Three shapes on a rise ahead where the track narrowed between boulders and scrub. One man stood in the open like he belonged there. Two others were half-hidden behind brush, the way men hid when they wanted you to pass close before they decided what you were worth. The one in front had a long shape slung over his back—spear, pole, something straight and ugly.

  I froze in place without making it obvious.

  My breath shortened. My shoulders tightened. My hands hung empty at my sides because I had nothing to show, nothing to bargain with. In this world, empty hands didn’t mean harmless. They meant poor.

  They watched.

  No wave. No shout. No friendly call.

  Just eyes weighing distance.

  The man in front shifted his stance and took two slow steps down the track, casual, like he was only curious.

  I stepped off the path immediately.

  Not running. Running was a confession. I angled into the brush on the higher slope where the ground was rockier and less likely to swallow my feet. Pine needles muffled my steps. Branches snagged my sleeve and I eased free without yanking. The straw soles slipped once on wet stone and I caught myself with a hard step that sent pain up my ankle. I didn’t show it. I just kept moving.

  Behind me, no one called out.

  No one chased.

  Either I wasn’t worth it, or they had patience and better prey.

  I stayed off the track for a long while, moving north with the path in my peripheral vision but never on it. The farmer had said follow the markers. He hadn’t said walk into hands waiting in the open.

  By midday, the hills rose higher. The forest thinned into stretches of scrub and exposed rock where wind hit harder and the sky felt closer. In those open places, I could see farther north.

  Something cut the horizon like a dark slant.

  At first it looked like cloud. Then it didn’t move like cloud.

  It stayed sharp and still, an angled presence against the pale sky—like a blade laid across the world.

  My throat tightened.

  Not awe. Not worship.

  The simple recognition that whatever that was, it was bigger than me in a way that made survival feel temporary.

  I blinked against wind and kept walking.

  The marker stones started appearing in the afternoon.

  The first one was half-buried near a bend where the land pinched into a shallow pass. A squat slab of grey stone with a carved line down the center—straight, thin, like a sword stroke. Snow had gathered in the groove. Lichen ate the edges but couldn’t erase the cut.

  I crouched beside it. The stone radiated cold into my fingers. When I brushed the carved line, it felt slick with ice and grit. The line meant one thing: people had come this way often enough, long enough, that someone powerful had bothered to mark it.

  A sign for those who needed direction more than dignity.

  I stood and continued north.

  By late afternoon, the wind shifted and brought a new smell—incense.

  Thin threads of it at first, drifting among the pine and wet rock, mixed with wood smoke and the sour animal stink of livestock. My mouth went dry again. Not just thirst. Instinct. Incense meant people. People meant rules that changed depending on who had the stick.

  The hills sloped downward toward water, just as the farmer had said.

  I heard the river before I saw it—dull roar over stone, constant motion. When it came into view it was wide and grey, cutting through the land like a scar. Ice clung to the edges in cracked sheets. Damp cold rose off it and sank into my clothes. The air tasted of stone, fish rot, and winter water.

  A road ran alongside it.

  Packed earth and scattered stone, churned by hooves and cart wheels. Tracks layered on tracks. Fresh manure pressed into the ground. The smell of sweat, iron, and animal hide hung low.

  I stepped onto the river road and immediately felt exposed.

  Open space. Long sightlines. Nowhere to vanish fast.

  I kept to the edge where brush and low trees still offered something like cover. My straw shoes soaked through as the road turned wetter near the river’s damp breath. Cold crawled into my toes again until they felt like dead weight I had to drag. I flexed them inside the cloth with each step, forcing blood back into them by will.

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  East, the farmer had said. East until Jiānyún’s outer stalls.

  I turned and followed the river road eastward, shoulders tight, eyes scanning every figure ahead, every group, every bend where men could wait.

  The blade-shaped mountain stayed in sight now, growing slowly larger with each hour. The smell of incense thickened. Smoke became more constant.

  As evening approached, the road’s sounds changed.

  Not just wind and river.

  Human noise layered on human noise: shouting, arguing, someone calling prices, the thin metallic ring of hammer on metal, the bray of a mule, the sharp screech of a chicken being grabbed.

  The stink arrived before the town did—stale piss, dung, unwashed bodies, cheap wine, rancid cooking oil, smoke from bad wood, and beneath it all, the sour-sweet rot of sickness living too close to hunger.

  When Jiānyún finally came into view, it wasn’t a welcoming sight.

  It was a sprawl pressed against the lower slopes, roofs crowded and patched, fences leaning, smoke hanging low like a dirty blanket. Beyond it—towering above everything—the mountain rose like a weapon stabbed into the sky.

  And somewhere in that mess of smoke and bodies, people decided who was worth turning into something more than meat.

  Jiānyún’s stink hit harder the closer I got—smoke, sweat, piss, and the sour rot of too many bodies living on too little. The road along the river tightened into a funnel of traffic: carts with cracked wheels, mules with ribs showing, men with poles over their shoulders, women with bundles on their backs, boys running errands for copper coins.

  No one looked at anyone like a person.

  They looked like you might be food, coin, trouble, or all three.

  I kept to the edge of the road where scrub and low pines still clung to the bank. My straw shoes were soaked through from river damp; the cloth around my toes felt heavy and cold, each step squelching faintly. The scarf scratched my neck and held in a thin strip of warmth, but it also marked me—something a hand could grab.

  I kept one hand near the knife in my bundle, not because I wanted to use it, but because a blade was a language people understood here. Still, I didn’t pull it out. A visible knife invited a different kind of attention: the kind that came in groups.

  I watched for marker stones and sword-line carvings the farmer had described. I watched for the town’s outer stalls. I watched for anything that told me where to go without asking questions.

  And I watched the men who watched me.

  Most eyes slid off when they saw my thin frame, my hollow cheeks, my mud-stained clothes. Poor wasn’t worth the effort. Poor fought hard for scraps and didn’t carry much more than skin and trouble.

  One man didn’t slide off.

  He paced me for a while at a distance—close enough that I could feel the attention, far enough that he could pretend he wasn’t following. He wore a short coat patched at the elbows and a rope belt cinched tight. His hair was tied back with a strip of cloth. His face was sharp with hunger, but his eyes were sharper with calculation.

  He drifted closer when the road bent and the brush thickened, where the river bank rose into a small embankment and the path narrowed between roots and stones. People ahead were clustered around a cart stuck in mud, shouting and pushing. Noise. Distraction. Perfect cover.

  My shoulders tightened. My jaw clenched. I slowed just slightly, letting distance open between me and the crowd.

  That was the wrong move.

  He took it as permission.

  He stepped in close, fast, a shadow sliding into my space, and his hand shot for my bundle strap.

  “Give it,” he hissed, voice low, trying to keep it between us. “Don’t make noise. Just give.”

  His fingers dug into cloth and pulled.

  My body reacted before my mind finished translating intent. I twisted my shoulder down and forward, rolling the strap off the line of his grip, and drove my forearm into his wrist. Not a punch. A shove with bone.

  He grunted and tightened harder, jerking the bundle toward him.

  My feet slipped on wet clay. Cold water squeezed from the straw soles as I caught my balance, and for a moment my body lagged—weakness, dehydration, three days of food not yet rebuilding what months had stripped.

  He saw it.

  He smiled, quick and ugly.

  His other hand came up with a small blade—more a sharpened scrap than a proper knife—aimed not for my throat but for the strap, to cut it free.

  I grabbed his wrist.

  The skin was hot and rough under my fingers, and he stank of sour wine and unwashed sweat. His arm was stronger than it looked. He wrenched, trying to pull the blade down.

  I leaned in, forehead almost touching his, and drove my knee into his thigh.

  He sucked air, but he didn’t fold. He pivoted instead, trying to use my momentum against me, shoulder slamming into mine. We staggered into the brush at the road’s edge where roots clawed up through mud. My soaked shoes slid again, and this time my back hit a tree trunk hard enough to knock breath out of me.

  Pain flashed white behind my eyes.

  He pressed in, trying to pin me to the bark, blade hand working like a rat’s teeth.

  I turned my head and the blade scraped along my collarbone through cloth. Hot sting. Not deep, but enough that warmth began to seep under my shirt.

  Blood.

  The sight of it—just the sensation of warmth spreading—flipped something cold inside me into a sharper focus.

  No panic.

  No bargaining.

  Only the understanding that if I lost, I didn’t just lose food. I lost the pearls. I lost the knife. I lost the next hour, the next day, the chance to reach anything but another ditch to die in.

  I slammed my palm into his throat.

  Not a strike meant to crush. A shove meant to break rhythm.

  He gagged and reflexively pulled back half a step to breathe.

  That half-step gave me space.

  I ripped the scarf off my neck in one violent motion. The wool scratched across my jaw and then came free, trailing like a leash in my hands. He saw it and laughed—actually laughed—because a scarf wasn’t a weapon.

  He lunged again, blade aiming for my belly this time, low and fast.

  I snapped the scarf out like a whip and looped it over his knife wrist.

  The wool caught and tightened. The force of his lunge helped me. I yanked hard, twisting his arm across his body. His blade hand jerked wide and the point cut air instead of me.

  His eyes widened, anger flashing now.

  He tried to punch with his free hand.

  The fist hit my cheekbone glancing, enough to make my head ring. My mouth filled with the taste of copper where my teeth cut the inside of my lip. I spat blood without meaning to, thick and warm, and the spit hit his coat.

  His expression went meaner.

  He surged closer, trying to wrestle the scarf off his wrist, trying to get inside my grip where his strength mattered more.

  I stepped into him.

  I wrapped the scarf up and around—over his forearm, across his neck—using the motion like I was tying down a load. The wool bit into my cracked fingers. My hands shook with effort. I didn’t stop.

  He realized what I was doing a heartbeat late.

  His free hand flew to his throat, grabbing at the scarf as it crossed his windpipe. He made a choking sound—half cough, half curse—and his blade hand thrashed, trying to cut the cloth, but the angle was wrong and my body was tight against him now, chest to shoulder, denying him room.

  We stumbled again, roots snagging, mud sucking at our feet.

  He slammed me sideways into the tree trunk, trying to crush me against it. My shoulder jolted and pain shot down my arm. The scarf slackened for a fraction of a second.

  He sucked in air and tried to twist free.

  I drove my weight backward and down, anchoring my heels in the mud and pulling the scarf tight again—harder. The wool dug into his neck. I felt it through the cloth: the corded tendons, the heat of his skin, the frantic vibration of his breath against fabric.

  His face changed.

  The confidence drained fast. His eyes bulged slightly. His mouth opened and closed, trying to drag air in past the pressure. Spit foamed at the corners of his lips. His fingers clawed at the scarf, nails scraping wool, slipping because his hands were wet with mud and sweat.

  He kicked at my shins, heel striking bone. Pain flared. I didn’t loosen.

  He tried to hook his leg around mine and topple us both. We went down together.

  Mud hit my side. Cold soaked into my shirt. My elbows sank. The scarf stayed tight because I kept my forearms locked and my back braced, using my whole body like a lever.

  He bucked, desperate, trying to break the hold. His blade scraped uselessly at my sleeve, then dropped from his numb fingers into the mud with a soft, final plop.

  His movements became uglier—no longer fighting, just flailing.

  His face went red, then blotchy. Veins stood out at his temples. The sound coming from his throat turned into a wet, strained rasp that barely counted as breath.

  My arms burned. My hands shook. My shoulder screamed where it had hit the tree. My vision narrowed to his throat and the scarf and the simple math of pressure.

  Keep pulling.

  Don’t let go.

  He slammed his fists into my forearms, weaker now, slower. Then his hands started pawing instead of striking, fingers trembling, grip failing.

  The world around us continued like we didn’t exist. Shouts from the stuck cart. A mule braying. Someone laughing. Boots passing on the road. No one turning their head, because this was normal here: men settling things in mud while everyone else kept moving.

  His eyes rolled slightly.

  His mouth opened wide, trying to draw air that wasn’t there. A thin, strangled sound escaped and then broke into silence.

  His body spasmed once, hard—full-body, violent—then sagged.

  I didn’t release immediately.

  I held for another long stretch, counting nothing, listening for breath, feeling for movement. My arms trembled so hard the scarf quivered against his neck, but I kept it tight until the last twitch faded and his weight became dead weight.

  Only then did I loosen.

  The scarf slipped free, wet and mud-streaked. My hands went numb as the tension left them, the sudden absence of strain making my fingers cramp.

  I pushed myself up from the mud slowly, chest heaving. Cold air hit the sweat on my face and made me shiver. Blood from the shallow cut near my collarbone had soaked a line into my shirt. My cheek throbbed where his fist had clipped it.

  The man lay on his side, eyes half open, staring at nothing. His lips had a bluish tint now. Mud clung to his jaw.

  I stood there for a moment, breathing hard, waiting for someone to shout, to grab me, to demand I pay for it.

  No one came.

  Because the world only cared when you killed someone important.

  I wiped my mouth with the back of my sleeve, smearing blood and mud together, then bent and found his dropped blade in the muck. A cheap scrap of metal, not worth much, but metal was metal.

  I didn’t keep it.

  I flung it into the brush toward the river where it disappeared with a soft splash.

  Then I retied my scarf—wet, stained, rough against my neck—and tightened my bundle strap. My hands shook as I did it. My arms felt like they might fail any second.

  I left the body where it was.

  Not out of mercy.

  Out of time.

  I stepped back onto the road’s edge, head down, breathing controlled again, and kept moving east toward the stink and smoke of Jiānyún—toward the mountain blade in the sky and the selection I still didn’t understand.