Her eyes opened.
Not slowly. Not the gradual, reluctant parting of lids that comes with sleep. They opened the way a blade leaves its sheath. Clean. Final.
Elder Mei breathed. One long draw of thin mountain air into lungs that had processed this same wind for a thousand years. The breath carried the scent of her own robes, of chilled stone, and beneath all of it, faintly, the smell drifting up from the guest quarters three terraces below. Sweat. Seed. Woman.
"So it is decided," she murmured.
Her voice came out melodious even now, a low chime of a tone that had commanded armies and silenced councils. She rose from the lotus position. Her knees did not ache. Her spine did not creak. A thousand years of refinement had gifted her a body that time had forgotten to touch.
