With less than a month before the Conclave, the sect stopped building and started polishing.
The visitor stations near the outer courtyards were no longer chalk lines and stakes. They had walls now—new wood braced with iron bands, wash basins set into stone, drainage channels cut clean enough that even the air smelled different. The banners had gone up as well, temporary cloth hung in straight lines that made the lanes feel narrower, as if the sect itself had tightened its posture.
The redline pulses came more often.
Not everywhere at once.
Just enough to keep everyone tired.
Li Shen felt it before he saw it—windows shortened by a few breaths, counters that used to forgive one missed seal now rejecting a slip like it had teeth. The clerks didn't shout. They didn't need to. Their refusal was the shout.
By the time second bell rang, Li Shen had already run two internal receipts and one sanitation allocation, the Tier Two token at his sash drawing slower glances from guards who still didn't know his name.
Names didn't matter.
Only whether your paper returned clean.
---
The incident started at Counter Nine.
It always did, when politics wanted to pretend it was just ink.
Li Shen stepped up, placed the sealed slip and the stamped bundle on the counter, and waited with his eyes down.
The woman behind the window broke the seal, checked the stamp, and reached for her brush.
Then she stopped.
Not with drama.
With that tiny pause that turned a routine into danger.
She looked at the secondary seal already on the slip—Protocol routing, pre-marked—and her fingers tightened around the paper.
"Hold," she said.
Li Shen didn't move. "Is the window wrong?"
Her gaze flicked up once, sharp, then back down.
"It's not the window," she said, voice flat. "It's the seal."
Li Shen's chest stayed calm. He forced it to stay calm. Panic made you fast. Fast made you sloppy. Sloppy made you guilty.
"What about it," he asked.
The woman slid the slip under the lamplight. Wax caught the glow.
The seal was clean.
Too clean.
"Wrong counter mark," she said quietly. "This stamp belongs to Lower Stores."
Li Shen didn't argue. He didn't say impossible.
He said, "I came here."
"I can see that," she replied.
Her brush hovered over the slate, not writing.
Writing was the moment a problem became a record.
She leaned closer, voice dropping.
"Don't leave," she said. "If you leave, it becomes 'runner fled with disputed slip.'"
Li Shen understood.
The system didn't need truth.
It needed a shape it could file.
He stayed where he was.
"Call the attendant," he said simply.
The woman's eyes narrowed—half annoyance, half respect—and she gestured to a side table without looking up.
An attendant in neat grey stepped over a moment later, slate in hand, hair tied too tightly, face already tired.
He didn't ask Li Shen what happened.
He took the slip like evidence and scanned it in one practiced sweep.
Then he looked at Li Shen's Tier Two token.
His voice softened by half a degree.
"Route," he said.
Li Shen answered the way he had learned to answer the sect: short, precise, no extra material for others to hang him with.
"Courier counter to Stores, then straight here," he said. "No shortcuts."
The attendant's eyes stayed on the paper.
"Who sealed it," he asked.
Li Shen didn't say a name. Names made enemies.
"A clerk," Li Shen said. "Stores desk."
The attendant's pen paused.
That was careful.
That was dangerous.
Li Shen added one more piece that wasn't a name—just a fact.
"It was pre-marked for Protocol," he said. "Secondary seal already on the slip."
The attendant's jaw tightened.
Now it wasn't just a wrong stamp.
It was a wrong stamp on a slip that had already been routed into a fight.
"Sit," the attendant said, and pointed to a narrow bench by the side wall.
It wasn't prison.
It was worse.
It was being held in place while other people decided what shape your day would take.
Li Shen sat.
He kept his hands still.
He breathed slowly, the way he'd taught himself to breathe when the urge to rush rose like a hand on his throat.
In.
Hold.
Out.
Three cycles.
The heat in his lower abdomen came cleaner than usual—an ember that used to take a hundred breaths now appearing around seventy, not stronger, just steadier.
He didn't chase it.
He let it sit.
He watched it the way he watched the counter: present, useful, not to be pushed.
He swallowed, calm returning faster than it should have.
That was progress.
Not the kind you could show anyone.
The kind you could survive with.
---
Across the compound, Bai Ren was learning what a "disputed slip" looked like when it left the counter and reached flesh.
He wasn't at Counter Nine. He was at the sanitation rail, hauling lining boards toward the visitor stations where everything had to look clean enough to impress cultivators who would never touch a latrine.
A slate-man—one of the proxies that grew like weeds during hosting prep—stood at the edge of the work lane with his hands behind his back.
Servant grey, better cloth, boots clean.
The wrong kind of calm.
His slate was full.
Bai Ren didn't have to read it to know what was on it.
Names.
Late marks.
Docked points.
And the quiet threat of reassignment.
"You're short today," the slate-man said, glancing at Bai Ren's crew. "Two bodies missing."
"They were reattached," Bai Ren snapped before he could stop himself. "Protocol took them."
The slate-man hummed as if considering a minor inconvenience.
"Then you'll compensate," he said. "The station doesn't care whose hands hold the boards. It cares that the boards get laid."
Bai Ren's fists clenched around the plank.
"You want us to work double," he said.
The slate-man's pen hovered over the slate.
"I want your lane clean," he replied. "And I can make it clean."
Bai Ren's eyes narrowed. "How."
The slate-man lowered his voice, as if offering kindness.
"A signature," he said. "You acknowledge an 'adjusted schedule.' I mark you 'compliant' and you don't get hit for late output."
Bai Ren stared at him.
It wasn't a bribe.
It was a trap made polite.
"Adjusted," Bai Ren said, tasting the word. "Meaning what."
"Meaning the blame has somewhere to land if it needs to," the slate-man said evenly. "Not on you, if you're smart."
Bai Ren's jaw worked.
He wanted to hit him.
He wanted to throw the plank and break something that wasn't his body.
But he remembered Li Shen's voice from the shed:
No signatures. No thumbprints. No agreement slips.
Bai Ren's fingers loosened.
He forced himself to look away.
"I don't sign," he said.
The slate-man's smile barely existed.
"Everyone signs," he said.
Then he leaned in, voice still soft.
"Or they disappear from the clean lanes."
---
At Counter Nine, the attendant returned with another man—older, with a Protocol tag and a face like stone worn smooth.
Not a guard.
Not a disciple.
A senior servitor—someone who had lived long enough in the sect to stop pretending the system was fair.
He took the slip from the attendant without asking permission and held it under the light.
His thumb rubbed the wax once, slow.
Then he looked at Li Shen.
"Where did you get this," he asked.
Li Shen's answer didn't change. "Stores desk."
The senior servitor nodded as if that fit the pattern he already knew.
He didn't accuse Li Shen.
He didn't comfort him either.
He turned the slip and tapped the seal lightly.
"This wax is fresh," he said. "Too fresh."
The attendant blinked. "Fresh is good."
The senior servitor's eyes didn't soften.
"Fresh is normal," he corrected. "This is… new. New wax, new press, clean edges. Like someone wanted it to read well."
He handed the slip back to the woman behind the counter.
"Show me the ledger entry," he said.
The woman hesitated.
Then she pulled a slate with the morning's seals recorded and slid it forward.
The senior servitor scanned the rows.
He stopped at one mark.
"This counter hasn't used Lower Stores wax all month," he said.
The attendant stiffened. "How do you know."
The senior servitor looked at him like he was slow.
"Because it's my job to know what 'normal' looks like," he said.
He leaned closer to the attendant, voice dropping.
"Someone is manufacturing paper," he said. "Not to steal goods. To move blame."
The attendant swallowed.
That phrase—move blame—was the real crime.
Because it meant the hosting prep wasn't just stressful.
It was hostile.
The senior servitor turned to Li Shen again.
"Did anyone offer you smoother lanes," he asked.
Li Shen paused for half a breath.
He didn't want to answer.
But silence here could be shaped into guilt.
"A man with a slate," he said carefully. "At Protocol corridor. No seal. No stamp."
The senior servitor nodded once, as if confirming a suspicion.
"Good you didn't take it," he said.
Li Shen didn't ask how he knew he hadn't.
The senior servitor's gaze flicked to the Tier Two token at Li Shen's sash.
"You're useful," he said. "So someone wants to make you belong."
The attendant's pen hovered. "What do we do."
The senior servitor's answer was cold.
"We don't 'solve' it," he said. "We route around it."
He tapped the slate.
"This slip gets voided. A new one is issued. Counter Nine signs it. Protocol receives it. No delay."
The attendant hesitated. "And the discrepancy."
The senior servitor looked at him like he'd asked for a moral world.
"The discrepancy gets recorded as 'clerical error,'" he said. "And the next time someone uses wrong wax, we'll have a pattern."
Li Shen understood.
The sect wasn't going to punish the hand that did it today.
Not without certainty.
Not without knowing which faction would bleed if they struck.
So they chose the only thing the sect always chose:
Protect the surface.
Delay the knife.
Let the servants carry the risk in the meantime.
The attendant slid a new slip across to Li Shen.
Stamped. Double-sealed. Warm wax still soft.
"Run it," he said.
Li Shen took it.
He didn't thank anyone.
Thanking sounded like attachment.
He ran.
---
By dusk, the visitor stations were lit by lanterns that hadn't been there last week, their light making the fresh wood look older than it was.
Servants moved like shadows between newly built walls.
The Conclave was no longer an idea.
It was architecture.
Li Shen returned the final receipt to courier and was about to turn toward the dorm sheds when he saw Yun Xue in the lane ahead.
She was coming from the herb side, hands wrapped around a small cloth bundle like it was the only thing holding her together.
Her steps were too careful.
Her eyes were down.
She didn't notice him until he was close.
Then she startled and bowed too quickly.
"Li—" she stopped herself, remembering names were risky in the open. "Um… runner."
Li Shen's brow tightened. "What happened."
Yun Xue swallowed.
She tried to smile like it was nothing, like she'd learned something new, like this was normal.
"They… they said I did well," she whispered.
Li Shen didn't relax. Praise in the sect was rarely free.
"And," he prompted.
Yun Xue lifted the cloth bundle slightly. Inside was a strip of paper, folded and refolded.
No warmth. No ceremony.
A directive.
She didn't show it openly, but Li Shen saw the red wax mark at the edge—Hall-level, not sect-wide.
Her voice shook with confusion more than fear.
"They said it's… temporary," she said. "Just twice a week. And I get points. And… I should be grateful."
Li Shen's stomach tightened.
Temporary attachments were never temporary for servants.
They were the first step to being owned.
"Who told you," he asked.
"A courier," Yun Xue said quickly. "From the Hall. He… he spoke like he was reading from a slate."
Her fingers trembled around the paper.
"I didn't do anything wrong," she added, too fast. "I didn't waste. I— I kept them alive."
Li Shen's eyes sharpened.
Kept them alive.
That was the problem.
Not for Yun Xue.
For everyone who wanted her output.
"Show me the paper," he said.
Yun Xue hesitated.
Then she unfolded it enough for him to read the top line.
TEMPORARY ATTACHMENT — HALL LOTS
Two sessions weekly.
Failure to comply → dock points.
Waste recorded as theft.
Li Shen felt something cold settle behind his ribs.
Not panic.
Understanding.
Yun Xue looked up at him, eyes wide and wet.
"It's good, right?" she asked, voice small. "It means… they noticed me."
Li Shen didn't answer immediately.
He chose his words the way he chose routes: for survival.
"It means you're on someone's slate now," he said.
Yun Xue blinked, not understanding the weight of it.
"But… I can just do the work," she said, earnest. "If I do it right, it will be fine."
Li Shen saw the trap in that sentence.
Because doing it right was exactly how you became indispensable.
And indispensable servants didn't get freed.
They got priced.
Behind them, Bai Ren stepped into the lane, shoulders muddy, eyes sharp. He saw the wax mark and froze.
"What's that," he demanded, voice low.
Yun Xue flinched.
Li Shen folded the paper back into her cloth bundle with careful hands, like he was handling a blade.
"It's nothing," Yun Xue lied, because she didn't know it was a lie yet.
Li Shen looked at Bai Ren once.
A single glance that carried the whole problem.
Then he looked back at Yun Xue.
"Don't sign anything else," he said quietly. "No extra slips. No 'agreement.' You hear me?"
Yun Xue nodded too fast.
"Yes," she whispered.
She didn't understand.
Not yet.
But she heard the seriousness in his tone, and that was enough to make her afraid.
As she hurried toward the herb dorm lane, clutching her cloth bundle like a lifeline, Li Shen watched her go.
The Conclave was approaching.
The stations were almost finished.
The sect's face was being polished.
And somewhere inside that shine, Yun Xue had just been pulled into a trap that didn't look like a trap until it closed.