By noon, the decree had stopped being words and started becoming weight.
It sat on every shoulder. It bent every conversation into the same shape. It made people stare at their own children like they were suddenly valuable livestock—and then hate themselves for doing it, and then do it anyway.
The village yard had emptied, but the village itself had not calmed.
In the lanes, arguments flared like dry grass.
At the well, women counted distances and rations and tried to sound practical so they wouldn't sound terrified.
At the tool shed, men pretended to talk about repairs while listening for the next rumor.
Children clustered in tight knots, talking too fast, laughing too loudly, then going quiet when an adult glanced their way.
Li Shen moved through it like a stone in a stream.
He didn't get swept into the current. He felt it pressing on him from every side.
He returned home with his father and they ate in silence—not peaceful silence. The kind that existed because anything spoken would either become a fight or a confession.
Li Heng's hands moved automatically. Bowl. Chopsticks. Water. The motions were precise and empty. The same man who could split wood for hours without wasting a breath now looked like someone whose mind was walking somewhere else, dragging his body behind it.
Li Shen watched him and understood a hard truth: the decree had not just pulled the children toward Haoyang.
It had pulled the parents toward fear.
Li Heng had already lost Li Mei.
He would not accept losing his son too, not to the road, not to thieves, not to a city full of strangers, not to a system that did not care.
And yet—Li Heng had nodded at the yard. He hadn't argued the decree. He hadn't said no.
That mattered.
After the meal, Li Heng stood and began tightening straps on an old pack.
Li Shen blinked. "We're already packing?"
"We're already counting," Li Heng said without looking up.
Counting.
Always counting.
Li Shen understood why it hit him differently now. Counting used to be about grain and winters.
Now it was about whether a child made it to a city alive.
Outside, voices rose again. Someone knocked on the doorframe without waiting for permission and leaned in.
It was Old Gao's nephew—one of those men who hovered around elders like a shadow, hoping old age would eventually produce opportunity.
He looked pale.
"You heard?" he asked, as if there was any part of the village that hadn't heard.
Li Heng did not answer.
Li Shen answered instead. "Everyone heard."
The man swallowed. "I thought it was the army."
That made Li Shen pause.
The man's eyes darted toward the road as if he expected another rider to appear. "A royal rider, a seal, an order. That's how it starts. They come, they read, and then they take men. They take grain. They take whatever they want and call it duty."
Li Heng's hands slowed for half a heartbeat, then resumed.
The man let out a shaky breath. "When I saw the horse, I told my wife to hide the boys. I thought… I thought they were going to draft."
He tried to laugh, but it came out thin. "Turns out they want children for the sect's test. Better than war, right?"
Better than war.
Li Shen didn't respond. He had seen soldiers pass through the broader region before—tired men with hard faces, moving toward places that swallowed people and never gave them back. Even if the kingdom had its own armies, everyone in the Vent Pale understood the same rule:
When the world's strong started moving, the weak got used as fuel.
The man continued talking, unable to stop. "Some of the elders—Old Gao too—he said the same thing at first. Thought it was conscription. Said he'd rather lose a cow than lose a boy."
Li Shen looked at the man's hands. They were trembling.
The man rubbed them on his trousers and finally asked the real question, the one hiding under everything else.
"You're going, right? Li Heng. Your boy qualifies."
Li Heng's voice stayed flat. "Yes."
The man's shoulders dropped with relief that wasn't his to take. "Good. Good. If the Li family goes, others will go. People trust you."
Trust.
Li Shen almost wanted to reject the word on instinct. People didn't trust. People followed what seemed safest. And right now, safety looked like a group large enough to discourage thieves.
The man stepped back, still talking. "Uncle Wu is already collecting names. Says he can 'organize carts.' Says he can 'keep order.'"
Li Heng finally looked up.
In that look, Li Shen saw something sharp.
Not anger. Calculation.
"Uncle Wu is already selling fear," Li Heng said.
The man flinched as if he'd been slapped with a truth he'd hoped to avoid.
He left soon after, walking too quickly as if speed could outrun a decree.
When the doorframe was empty again, Li Shen exhaled slowly.
"So people thought it would be the army," he said.
Li Heng tightened the strap until the leather creaked. "The army takes men. The sect takes the rare ones. People fear both."
"What's worse?" Li Shen asked before he could stop himself.
Li Heng's answer came without hesitation.
"Not knowing which one is coming."
Li Shen nodded once.
He understood that too.
---
By late afternoon, the village had broken into factions without realizing it.
Not formal factions. Nothing you could name cleanly.
But patterns formed, the way patterns always formed when scarcity met opportunity.
There were the desperate families—those who had no grain stored, no spare cloth, no shoes that could survive a long road. For them, Haoyang wasn't just hope. It was a threat, because hope demanded resources.
There were the proud families—those who had already decided their child would "surely be chosen," and whose pride made them dangerous. Pride made people reckless. Pride made them borrow grain they couldn't repay.
There were the quiet families—those who didn't speak much but watched everything, waiting to see which way the wind shifted before committing.
And then there were the opportunists.
Uncle Wu was only the most visible of them.
Li Shen saw him twice before sunset, moving through the village like a man inspecting property.
Once near the Chief's house, speaking low with someone whose face Li Shen couldn't see.
Once near the well, smiling at mothers and offering "help," his hands gesturing as if he were already in charge of the road.
Li Shen didn't go near him.
Not because he was afraid.
Because he understood something he'd learned the hard way since his mother's death:
There were people who grieved with you.
There were people who ignored you.
And there were people who watched tragedy like a market.
Uncle Wu belonged to the third kind.
---
Near dusk, Zhou Liang found him again.
Zhou Liang looked like he'd been given a sword made of sunlight and told he could keep it if he ran fast enough.
"They're saying it's only ten days," Zhou Liang said, almost breathless. "Ten days and we leave. Can you imagine? Haoyang. A real city."
"I can imagine," Li Shen said.
Zhou Liang blinked at the lack of excitement. "How are you so calm?"
Li Shen didn't answer right away.
Because the truth was: he wasn't calm.
His fear was just quieter than Zhou Liang's hope.
He glanced at Li Heng, who was packing and repacking the same items as if order could protect them from randomness.
"I'm not calm," Li Shen said. "I'm preparing."
Zhou Liang leaned in. "My mother said the sect will test roots. Real roots. Like in stories. If you have good roots, you become a disciple. If you don't—"
"If you don't," Li Shen finished, "you go home."
Zhou Liang's excitement wavered for the first time. "Yeah. But… but if we get taken—"
"If you get taken," Li Shen corrected, "you don't belong to the village anymore. Not really."
Zhou Liang stared at him as if Li Shen had thrown mud on a festival banner.
"That's not how it works," Zhou Liang said quickly. "If we get taken, we come back and protect everyone."
Li Shen didn't argue.
Not because Zhou Liang was right.
Because there was no value in killing a boy's dream while it was still the only thing holding him upright.
Zhou Liang forced the grin back on. "Anyway. Qian Mei is asking about your ledger lesson."
Li Shen's attention sharpened. "She asked?"
"She said you promised," Zhou Liang said, almost smug, as if he were delivering a message that put him in the middle of something important.
Li Shen nodded once. "Tomorrow."
Zhou Liang's grin widened. "Tomorrow. Right. I'll tell her."
Li Shen watched him run off and felt the familiar itch under his ribs—the need to control details, to understand the structure of what was coming.
He couldn't control the decree.
He couldn't control Haoyang.
But he could keep one promise.
And that mattered more than people understood.
---
That night, the village did not sleep properly.
Even when lanterns went out, whispers stayed alive behind walls.
The Li house was no different.
Li Heng sat near the hearth with an empty bowl in his hands, not eating, not drinking, just holding it like an anchor.
Li Shen sat nearby and ran his fingers over the small sachet hidden under his shirt.
It didn't smell like his mother anymore. Not fully.
But it still smelled like something familiar.
A thread.
Li Shen hated that he needed a thread. He hated that he wasn't stronger than that.
But he kept his hand there anyway.
Finally, Li Heng spoke.
"You will go," he said.
Li Shen looked up. "You said yes already."
Li Heng's eyes stayed on the bowl. "I said yes to the decree. I'm saying yes to you now."
Li Shen swallowed.
It shouldn't have mattered.
But it did.
A boy could endure a lot if his father was standing beside him instead of behind him.
"What if I'm not chosen?" Li Shen asked.
Li Heng didn't lie. "Then you come home."
"And if I am?" Li Shen asked, voice controlled.
Li Heng's knuckles whitened on the bowl. "Then you don't come home for a long time."
Li Shen waited for the rest.
Li Heng exhaled slowly. "And you learn to stay alive among people who don't know your name."
Li Shen nodded.
That was the real instruction.
Not be chosen.
Not be proud.
Stay alive.
The silence returned, heavy and honest.
Then Li Shen spoke again, softer.
"Father."
Li Heng looked at him.
"I want to go to her," Li Shen said.
His father's jaw tightened.
Not refusal.
Recognition.
Li Heng stood without speaking and grabbed a lantern.
They didn't announce it. They didn't tell anyone. They simply stepped out into the night and walked.
The village's paths were familiar, but at night they looked narrower, as if darkness pressed the world into smaller shapes.
Li Shen walked beside his father and listened to the wind sliding through dead grass.
When they reached the edge where the graves lay, the lantern's light caught the stone markers and the pale weeds that refused to die.
Li Shen stopped.
His feet didn't want to move closer.
Because moving closer meant admitting something he didn't want to admit:
Leaving was real.
Even if he came back, the act of leaving would still exist as a wound.
Li Heng said nothing. He simply stood beside him, lantern held steady.
Li Shen took one step.
Then another.
He reached the marker and knelt slowly.
He did not collapse.
He did not scream.
He did not throw himself onto the earth like a child in stories.
But his throat tightened until it hurt.
He placed his hand on the stone.
Cold.
Unforgiving.
Real.
For a moment, he couldn't speak.
His breath came shallow. His eyes burned. A few tears escaped anyway—not dramatic, not loud, but stubborn, the way grief always was when it refused to leave.
"I'm going," Li Shen said finally, voice rough. "I don't want to."
He swallowed hard and forced the words out clean.
"But I'm going."
The wind answered with nothing.
Li Shen's fingers dug into the stone. "I don't know if I'll be chosen," he said. "I don't know if it will matter. I don't know if the stories were lies."
He inhaled, and the inhale shook.
"But I remember what the house became when you left it," he whispered. "I remember that it happened and there was nothing anyone could do."
His hand tightened.
"I don't want that again," he said.
That was all.
Not a prayer.
Not a vow dressed in pretty words.
A simple statement of purpose, raw enough to cut.
Li Heng's hand settled on Li Shen's shoulder—heavy, grounding.
They stayed there until the lantern's flame started to gutter.
When they finally stood to leave, Li Shen looked back once at the stone marker.
It didn't change.
It didn't comfort him.
It didn't forgive him.
But as they walked back toward the village, Li Shen felt something settle in his chest—not peace.
Alignment.
A decision that had been spoken aloud.
Tomorrow, he would teach Qian Mei how to keep a ledger.
Not because it would change the decree.
Because it was something he could do that made the world slightly less chaotic for someone he cared about.
And in a world ruled by seals and riders and sects that did not extend charity…
small control was still control.
Small promises still mattered.
And ten days—only ten days—was suddenly both too long and not long enough.