Morning didn't arrive gently.
It arrived the way it always did in the Vent Pale—wind first, then light, then the sound of people pretending they weren't afraid.
Yesterday, the decree had been read. Yesterday, the village had been shocked.
Today, the village began behaving like it had already surrendered.
Men who never spoke to each other without grunting were suddenly "cooperating." Mothers who had spent years keeping their children close now pushed them forward into the open, as if the road to Haoyang might swallow the timid first. Elders who had survived famine, storms, and the slow rot of old age sat with their backs straighter than usual—because they knew exactly what this was.
A rare chance.
A knife-shaped chance.
Li Shen woke before the rooster, not from discipline, but because sleep had stopped being trustworthy after his mother died. He lay for a moment and listened to the house. The silence had edges. The hearth was cold. His father's breathing was steady, but too deliberate—like a man counting each breath to make sure it stayed.
Li Heng was already up when Li Shen stepped out.
The pack was on the floor again. Straps tightened, loosened, tightened again. The same tools checked twice. The same cloth folded and unfolded as if order could block chaos from entering.
"You'll wear the better shoes," Li Heng said without looking up.
Li Shen's first instinct was to refuse. Pride. Stubbornness. The usual useless things.
Then he remembered the road, and the thieves that lived on roads, and the fact that the Vent Pale didn't forgive soft soles.
He nodded. "Then you'll take the thicker coat."
Li Heng's hands paused.
A single nod in return.
That was their language now. Practical bargains. No speeches.
Li Shen washed his face, ate quickly, and left before the village could trap him in its noise.
He didn't go to the Chief's yard. Not yet.
He went to the river.
If the village was going to be swallowed by this decree, then the river was the last place where words still sounded like words instead of bargaining chips.
Qian Mei was already there.
She sat on a flat rock with her feet tucked under her, hands folded in her lap. Calm posture. Calm face. The kind of calm that made adults dismiss her as "good" or "easy."
Li Shen knew better.
Calm wasn't softness. Calm was control.
"You came," she said.
"I promised," Li Shen replied.
Her eyes dropped to his hands, as if expecting paper. He didn't have paper. No one in the village wasted paper on children.
He sat opposite her and produced what he did have: a thin strip of wood and a stub of charcoal, the kind used for marking bundles, counting sacks, noting measurements when you didn't want to rely on memory and lies.
Qian Mei's gaze sharpened. "You really learned this at Han's?"
Li Shen turned the wood in his hands. The wood was cheap. The habit wasn't.
"I didn't learn it because I wanted to," he said. "I learned it because being wrong had a price."
He drew two plain headers—nothing fancy, nothing poetic.
IN. OUT.
"That's all?" Qian Mei asked.
"That's the trap," Li Shen said. "It looks small, so people think they can hold it in their head."
He tapped the OUT column once.
"At Han's, I miscounted a sack by 'almost nothing.' I told myself it didn't matter." His jaw tightened. "His storeroom clerk made me recount it in front of men who were waiting to eat. No shouting. No kindness. Just silence until I found the mistake."
Qian Mei's face shifted—she understood exactly what kind of lesson that was.
Li Shen slid the wood closer. "Write what you can prove. Not what you feel."
He drew three simple entries.
IN: grain earned
OUT: grain spent
OUT: debt owed
Then he added one more line beneath them, smaller, like it mattered more.
TIME LOST
Qian Mei frowned. "That's not grain."
"No," Li Shen said. "It's worse. Grain can return. Time doesn't."
She stared at the words, then took the charcoal and copied the same structure into the dirt—careful, deliberate.
Li Shen watched her for a moment. Ten years old, and already learning the adult world's ugliest rule: truth doesn't care if you're young.
"If I make a mistake?" she asked.
Li Shen's answer stayed blunt. "You correct it. And you don't hide it. That's the whole point."
A shout rose from the village—argument, not panic.
Li Shen and Qian Mei both turned their heads.
Two men were coming fast along the path. One was the Chief's runner. The other was Wu from the Wu family—the man who always seemed to be near elders when elders were deciding something important, the man who spoke like he was doing favors while taking inventory of weaknesses.
Wu's smile was visible from a distance.
That meant trouble.
He approached the river like he owned the air.
"Well," Wu said brightly, "so this is where the clever children meet."
Qian Mei's shoulders stiffened. Li Shen didn't move.
Wu's eyes slid to the strip of wood, then to the marks in the dirt.
"A ledger," Wu said, tasting the word. "Very useful."
The runner cleared his throat. "The Chief wants Li Shen and Li Heng at the yard."
Li Shen's gaze stayed on the runner. "Why?"
Wu answered first, still smiling. "Organization. Ten days. Too little time. We need lists. Supplies. Shares. Someone has to make sure people don't arrive in Haoyang barefoot like beggars."
He gestured as if he were already holding the village's future in his palms.
Li Shen didn't give him that satisfaction.
He looked at the runner again. "Did the Chief send you?"
The runner's eyes flicked away. "He sent me to call you."
Li Shen understood. Wu had attached himself to the message like a leech.
Wu stepped closer, lowering his voice as if offering something generous.
"You have a good head," Wu told Li Shen. "Your mother had a good head. Your father is steady. People listen to your house. If you help keep order, we'll make sure your family isn't… forgotten."
Not a request.
A trade.
Protection, in exchange for utility.
Li Shen felt anger rise—clean, controlled, sharp. He didn't let it show.
"You mean you'll make sure you're the one deciding what gets forgotten," Li Shen said.
Wu's smile didn't move.
But his eyes did.
"Careful," Wu murmured. "You're a child."
Li Shen's voice stayed calm. "And you're not the Chief."
The runner shifted, uncomfortable.
Wu exhaled through his nose, still pleasant. "Fine. Go. Let the elders decide. The village needs structure."
He added, casually, as if it were nothing: "Especially if the army passes again."
The word army struck like a stone dropped into a well.
Qian Mei's eyes flicked toward the road. The runner's face tightened. Even Wu's smile gained a new edge.
Everyone had expected conscription before the decree was read.
Everyone still feared it.
Wu enjoyed that fear. Fear made people obedient. Fear made people grateful to be exploited.
Li Shen didn't argue further. He didn't win by talking.
He won by moving first.
He nodded once at Qian Mei. "Tomorrow," he said.
Qian Mei's mouth tightened. She nodded back.
Li Shen walked away.
---
The yard was crowded again.
Not like yesterday. Yesterday had been shock—a wave that hit and left people stunned.
Today was logistics. The uglier twin.
Rope was being measured. Carts argued over. Sacks counted and recounted. People were already positioning their families as "more important" than others, as if importance could be assigned by volume.
The Chief stood near the center with the registry unrolled. Elders clustered around him like old stones resisting a flood. Old Gao looked as if he'd aged a full year overnight.
Li Heng was already there, hands at his sides, face unreadable.
Li Shen stepped to him and stood slightly behind his shoulder—not hiding, just making it clear: they were a unit.
The Chief raised a hand. "Quiet!"
It took longer today.
Because fear had already begun mutating into entitlement.
When the noise dropped enough to resemble attention, the Chief spoke.
"The decree is clear," he said. "We comply. We send every eligible child. But we do it with discipline."
Murmurs. Shouts.
"Discipline doesn't fill stomachs!"
"Discipline keeps thieves from cutting your throat!"
The Chief's face tightened. "Enough."
An elder leaned in and whispered something. The Chief nodded and turned his gaze toward Li Shen.
"You," the Chief said. "Li Shen."
Li Shen didn't flinch. "Yes."
The Chief hesitated—just slightly—like a man who didn't like asking a child for help, but had run out of options.
"They tell me you can count," the Chief said. "Track grain. Track days. Keep records."
Wu's voice drifted from the side, smooth as oil. "The boy has a good head. It would be wasteful not to use it."
Li Shen didn't look at Wu.
He looked at the Chief.
"What do you want me to do?" Li Shen asked.
The Chief's jaw worked. "Help us build the list. Who travels with whom. Who provides what. How much grain we can pool."
Li Shen understood the trap instantly.
If he touched village-wide numbers, he'd become responsible for every grievance.
If someone's child went hungry, they'd blame the one who counted.
If a cart snapped under weight, they'd blame the one who approved the load.
Numbers didn't care, but people did.
Li Shen turned his head slightly toward his father.
Li Heng's eyes asked a question without words.
Do you want this?
Li Shen thought about his mother's grave, cold beneath his palm last night. About Wu's smile. About Qian Mei copying columns in the dirt like it was the first time someone had offered her a weapon that wasn't sharp.
He made the decision that matched his actual priorities.
"I will help," Li Shen said. "For the travel group I'm in."
The yard went still for a heartbeat.
Wu's smile faltered—barely, but enough.
The Chief frowned. "Only your group?"
Li Shen didn't apologize. "I'm ten. I can count. I can't govern."
Some villagers scoffed. Others nodded, quietly relieved that a child wasn't being turned into a tool for adults' resentment.
Li Shen kept going.
"I'll help my father make our supplies clear," he said. "I'll help Qian Mei's family if they travel with us. I'll write clean numbers so no one can cheat inside the group."
Wu laughed softly. "So the boy wants to play leader."
Li Shen finally looked at him.
"No," Li Shen said. "I want to survive the road."
That landed harder than an insult.
Because it was true, and truth was difficult to argue with when everyone was thinking the same thing in private.
Old Gao cleared his throat. "The boy is not wrong," he said. "We asked for compliance, not miracles. Assign an adult to oversee the village list."
The Chief's jaw tightened, then he nodded.
"Fine," he said. "Li Heng. Your group will register your cart and supplies. Second cluster."
Li Heng nodded once.
Li Shen felt relief and tension at the same time.
They had avoided becoming swallowed by village politics.
But they had made something public:
they would not be managed by Wu.
That had a cost. Wu's eyes stayed on them, calculating what that cost might become later.
As they stepped back, Li Shen heard voices behind him.
"I thought it would be conscription," someone muttered. "I told my wife to hide the boys."
"Better this than war," another whispered.
A third voice—older, colder—answered, "Don't be stupid. This is also a draft. Just for a different battlefield."
Li Shen didn't turn.
He didn't need to.
He understood the distinction now.
The army took bodies.
The sect took futures.
Both were hunger wearing uniforms.
---
That evening, Li Shen returned to the river and found Qian Mei there again.
She didn't look up right away. Her stick moved over the dirt in short, neat strokes—lines, numbers, a few words she erased and rewrote until they sat clean.
She had made her own columns.
Li Shen stopped a few steps away, watching without speaking.
When she finally glanced up, she didn't ask what happened at the yard. She only said, "Wu is collecting names."
Li Shen's mouth tightened. "I noticed."
Qian Mei pointed at one line she'd written, then rubbed it half away, uncertain. "If we travel… what do I write when something is taken and they call it 'necessary'?"
Li Shen looked at the smeared line, then at the road beyond the village.
"You write it exactly as it is," he said. "If it was taken, it goes under OUT. Don't let language turn theft into weather."
Qian Mei's fingers paused. Then she rewrote the line more firmly.
Li Shen nodded once—approval, not comfort.
"Tomorrow," he said quietly.
Qian Mei didn't ask what tomorrow meant. She already knew.
She only replied, "Tomorrow."
Li Shen turned back toward the village.
The river kept moving.
The world didn't care.
But at least, for now, their numbers would.