The yard didn't announce endings.
It just changed what it measured.
That night, the lanterns were hung in straighter rows than usual. The uniformed servants moved with more purpose, their slates held closer to their chests, chalk kept ready like blades.
Li Shen lay on his platform with his eyes open.
Sleep came thin here—more like a pause than a rest.
Across the shed, Bai Ren's breathing was shallow. Not fear, not sickness. Anticipation trapped in ribs.
On the women's side, Yun Xue sat upright longer than she should have, hands wrapped around her tag as if warmth could be squeezed out of wood.
Footsteps passed outside.
Then stopped.
Then resumed.
Not patrol steps.
Counting steps.
The first name wasn't a name.
It was a number.
A voice called it from the doorway, flat and practiced:
"Sixteen."
Li Shen's tag was on his wrist. He felt it like a weight.
He didn't move immediately.
He waited half a breath—enough to confirm it wasn't a mistake, not enough to look hesitant.
"Sixteen," the voice repeated.
Li Shen rose.
The dorm shed didn't react the way it would have in a village.
No whispers of congratulations.
No pity.
Only the subtle shift of bodies pretending not to watch.
Because watching too hard was a form of hope, and hope made people careless.
He stepped into the aisle.
A uniformed servant met him at the door with a slate.
"Tag," the servant said.
Li Shen held it out.
The servant checked the number, then glanced at the gray waxed cord—confirming the quiet mark like a technician confirming a part.
He nodded once and pointed outside.
"Lane."
Li Shen walked into the night.
The buffer yard looked different after dark.
Not quieter.
Sharper.
Lantern light carved the packed earth into strips of pale and black. Shadows made lanes look deeper than they were. The air was cold enough to turn breath into something visible—proof that bodies were still working even when the sky wanted to shut down.
A line had already formed near the main office shed.
Not a crowd.
A controlled lane.
People stood with bundles at their feet, tags visible, faces blank with the kind of exhaustion that had learned to wait without asking why.
Some were familiar—survivors from his own dorm rows, eyes hollow but intact.
Some were not.
Different accents. Different wraps. Different ways of holding a bundle.
Prefectures feeding into the same funnel even at night.
A girl behind him whispered to someone, voice trembling. "Where are we going?"
The answer came from an older boy without turning his head.
"Out of here," he said. "Or off the record."
That was as much as anyone knew.
Bai Ren appeared in the lane two minutes later like a bad omen made flesh.
He looked around, eyes wide, then spotted Li Shen and exhaled as if he'd been holding his breath all day.
"Sixteen," he mouthed. Then, quietly: "They called me too."
Li Shen didn't ask his number.
Numbers weren't friendship.
But the fact that Bai Ren stood here meant something had shifted.
Bai Ren's mouth opened to speak, to joke, to stab at fear with humor.
Li Shen said, without looking at him, "Quiet."
Bai Ren closed his mouth.
He was learning.
The office shed door opened.
A clerk stepped out with a lantern and a ledger, ink-stained hands and bored eyes. Behind him walked an older uniformed servant carrying a box—wood reinforced with metal bands.
The box mattered more than the lantern.
It meant tags.
It meant classification.
The clerk didn't address them as people.
He addressed them as a batch.
"Tags up," he said.
Hands lifted.
Wood caught lantern light.
The clerk scanned the lane and made marks in the ledger without hurry, like he was balancing accounts.
Then the older servant opened the box.
Inside were tags—new ones. Cleaner cut. Heavier wood. Each with a different cord: not the gray waxed cord from the tool-cage, but a darker one, braided, stronger.
A status change you could feel with your fingers.
The clerk called numbers.
Not many at once.
Just enough to keep the lane moving.
"Sixteen."
Li Shen stepped forward.
"Twenty-four."
Bai Ren stiffened and stepped forward too.
A few more.
Men. Boys. Women. Girls—selected without regard to pride, only to usefulness.
Yun Xue's number was called a moment later—higher, quieter, easy to miss.
She flinched like she'd been struck, then stood with her bundle clutched too tight.
Li Shen felt a small, sharp relief he refused to show.
Yun Xue wasn't safe.
But she was still on the record.
The older servant held out a hand.
"Old tag."
Li Shen unlooped the gray-cord tag from his wrist and placed it in the servant's palm.
The servant dropped it into the box like it was scrap wood.
Then he gave Li Shen the new tag.
Same number.
Different cut.
A small notch on the edge—barely visible unless you cared to look.
A braided dark cord.
The servant tightened it around Li Shen's wrist with a quick knot.
No ceremony.
No congratulations.
Just replacement.
Li Shen looked down at the notch and understood, without being told, that this was the real mark.
Not "better."
Not "chosen."
Simply: assigned.
Bai Ren received his tag next and stared at it like it might bite him.
He whispered, too quiet to be heard by the clerk, "Is this good?"
Li Shen answered without moving his lips much. "It's movement."
That was the only honest answer.
Yun Xue stepped forward when her number was called.
Her hands trembled when she offered her old tag.
The older servant took it without looking at her face, then placed a new one in her palm.
Yun Xue's cord was not the same as Li Shen's.
Still dark braided, but thinner, and the notch on her tag sat in a different place.
A different category.
Light duty.
Kitchen yard.
Wash line.
Surviveable.
Yun Xue swallowed and bowed her head as if that could hide her shaking.
"Thank you," she whispered.
The older servant didn't answer.
He turned to the next number.
The clerk closed the ledger and spoke one sentence to the lane—his only gift.
"Follow the lantern," he said.
Then he walked.
The line moved behind him.
No one looked back at the dorm sheds.
Not because they didn't want to.
Because looking back didn't change direction, and direction was everything.
They crossed the buffer yard in a controlled column, past tool racks and water lines, past the quarantine pen where figures sat under canvas like broken parts waiting for a decision.
Lantern light passed over faces—some sick, some hollow, some staring with the dead calm of people who had already been sorted out without being told.
Bai Ren's jaw tightened as they passed.
He whispered, barely audible, "That could've been me."
Li Shen didn't answer.
It could have been any of them.
They reached a second gate.
Not the sect gate.
A service gate.
Built lower, reinforced heavier, watched closer.
Two guards stood there—actual guards, not overseers with poles. Their robes were plain, but their posture was different: they were not maintaining flow. They were maintaining boundaries.
The clerk handed them the ledger.
One guard checked the seals. The other checked the line—tags, cords, notches.
He didn't meet eyes.
He checked wrists.
He stopped at one man and touched the notch on the tag with one finger.
The man froze.
The guard looked to the clerk. The clerk flipped a page, made a mark, and shook his head once.
Not a debate.
A correction.
The guard pulled the man out of the line with two fingers on his sleeve and pushed him toward a side lane where an assistant waited.
The man's face went white.
"I—" he started.
No one answered.
The gate guard didn't even look at him again.
The line moved forward without him.
Bai Ren swallowed hard.
Yun Xue's breathing hitched, then steadied—low and slow—because she had learned that panic made you visible.
Li Shen felt his own heartbeat spike, then forced it down.
In. Hold. Out.
The guard turned away.
The heavy gate creaked open.
They passed through.
The change was immediate.
Not comfort.
Control.
Inside, the ground was cleaner—still packed earth, but swept. The lanes were straighter. The sheds were built with better wood. The lanterns were fixed on posts at measured distances, not hung wherever someone thought light might help.
A different tier.
Not the sect proper.
But no longer the buffer's chaos.
The clerk stopped in the inner yard and finally spoke more than a single sentence.
"From this point," he said, voice bored, "probationary service candidates under internal allocation."
Internal allocation.
Words that sounded like nothing.
Words that meant everything.
He pointed.
"Men's dorm, east shed. Women's dorm, south shed. Tags checked at dawn. Lose your tag and you don't exist."
Same rule.
Higher stakes.
He turned and walked away, ledger under his arm as if the line behind him was no heavier than paper.
The older servant stayed long enough to deliver the real warning—still without emotion.
"You've passed the drowning," he said.
No pride in it.
No kindness.
Just the closest thing the system offered to truth.
"Now you work where mistakes cost more."
Then he left too.
The new yard absorbed them.
Assistants took bundles. Assigned platform spaces. Pointed to water lines and latrines and ration stations. Everything marked. Everything scheduled.
Bai Ren stood beside Li Shen for a moment, looking around like he'd stepped into a cleaner prison.
He tried to smile.
It came out crooked.
"So," he whispered, "this is… better?"
Li Shen looked at the straight lanes, the fixed lanterns, the guards who watched wrists instead of faces.
He felt the shift.
Less chaos.
More control.
He answered honestly.
"It's tighter," he said.
Yun Xue stood a few steps away, clutching her new tag with both hands as if it might vanish.
Her eyes met Li Shen's briefly—gratitude and fear tangled together.
Li Shen didn't nod like a savior.
He only did what he always did.
He made the moment functional.
He lifted his bundle, stepped into the assigned lane, and let his breathing set the pace.
In. Hold. Out.
On the record.
Still moving.
Still alive.
And now, finally, inside a place where the sect's shadow didn't just watch from above—
it reached down and gripped their wrists with braided cord and notches cut into wood, deciding what kind of labor they would become.