The forge learned your habits faster than you did.
By the eleventh morning, Li Shen no longer coughed the moment he crossed the gate. The double-layer cloth didn't make the air safe, but it turned the first breath from a knife into a dull scrape. That was enough to work.
He showed his jeton. The slot flashed once. The stone frame clicked. The guard's eyes slid over his brassard and moved on.
Inside, Circle One was already awake—bellows wheezing, charcoal dust drifting like black pollen, metal singing softly in the mouths of the furnaces.
Li Shen went where he'd been going for ten days.
Carry runs. Feed bins. Hold tongs. Stay useful. Stay invisible.
He was midway through his second charcoal load when he noticed the change.
Not sound. Not heat.
People.
The line of volunteers had thinned. A few quit. A few got reassigned. A few got injured and quietly vanished from the intake board.
In their place, different faces had appeared—men with cleaner sleeves, better boots, and that look of ownership you saw in servants who'd learned how to attach themselves to a workflow and call it a position.
One of them watched Li Shen from the edge of the hammer lane.
He was a little taller than Li Shen, shoulders square in a way that suggested he fought boredom by clenching. His brassard was newer—less stained, more carefully worn—and his cloth mask sat loose, like breathing through ash was something that happened to other people.
When Li Shen met his gaze by accident, the man smiled.
Not friendly.
Proprietary.
Then he turned away as if Li Shen had already been sorted into a category.
Li Shen filed him mentally under future problem and went back to the bin.
The foreman's shadow crossed the floor.
That meant inspection.
"Move," someone barked.
Li Shen stepped back. A cart rolled past, loaded with half-finished pieces on a tray—small, ugly work: rivets and hooks in batches, all meant to disappear into crates and become "supplies" without ever earning a name.
The cart's wheel hit a shallow rut.
The tray rattled.
The pieces clinked together, bright and careless.
Li Shen's eyes followed them out of reflex—and caught a detail he hadn't seen before.
One of the crates strapped to the cart wasn't marked for Circle One.
The tag hanging from it was a different shade, the ink strokes tighter.
Circle of Seal.
Finished goods.
That crate had no business being in this lane.
A clerk walking behind the cart noticed it too. His face pinched, but he didn't stop the cart. He gestured sharply to a runner instead.
"Tell them to hurry," the clerk snapped. "Seal is waiting."
Seal waiting meant pressure.
Pressure meant corners cut.
Corners cut meant accidents.
Li Shen turned back to his charcoal.
He didn't have enough rank to tell anyone how to route a cart.
He did have eyes.
That was all the Pavilion ever rewarded at the bottom: noticing the right thing at the right time and acting like you didn't think you deserved credit.
He carried the charcoal to Furnace Three.
The bellows operator—an older man with a shaved scalp and a cough that sounded like gravel—nodded once and didn't speak.
Li Shen dumped the load, stepped back, and wiped his hands on his trousers. The soot didn't come off. It never did.
A shout rose from the hammer lane.
Not panic. The kind of sharp irritation that came when something small went wrong in a place that punished small mistakes.
"Hold it—hold it—don't—"
A dull, wet clang.
Then a hiss, like anger poured into water.
Li Shen turned.
A piece of heated iron—longer than a rivet, shorter than a blade—had slipped off a tray and landed half in the quench trough, half on stone. Water boiled violently where it touched.
A young volunteer jerked back, eyes wide. His tongs were angled wrong, grip weak, wrists trembling from fatigue.
The man with the clean brassard—the proprietary smile—stood two paces away, arms crossed as if observing a lesson.
The foreman strode in.
He didn't shout. He didn't need to. The lane quieted around him the way people quieted around a cliff edge.
"What happened?" he asked.
The volunteer opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
The clean-brassard man spoke instead, calm and helpful.
"He rushed the transfer," he said. "Angle was wrong. Nearly splashed. Lucky it's small."
Lucky.
That word again.
Li Shen's gaze flicked to the volunteer's tray.
It was missing one support wedge.
A small block of wood that kept hot pieces from shifting during transfer.
Li Shen had held those wedges himself for days. They were always there. Always.
Unless someone moved them.
The clean-brassard man's eyes met Li Shen's for half a heartbeat, and that same smile flashed again—quick and private.
Then he looked away.
The foreman's eyes went to the trough, to the boiling water, to the iron steaming against stone.
"Get it out," he said.
The volunteer hesitated. The trough hissed louder. Steam rolled upward, thick and white, carrying the sharp mineral smell of heated metal meeting shock.
Li Shen stepped forward.
He didn't ask permission. He didn't explain.
He grabbed the long-handled hook used for pulling slag baskets and slid it under the iron, keeping his hands back from the steam. He rotated his wrist slowly, controlled, so the metal didn't flip and splash.
The iron scraped stone, sending a harsh sound through the lane.
He pulled it fully into the trough.
Water erupted.
Steam surged.
Li Shen's cloth mask went damp instantly. His eyes burned.
He held the hook steady anyway until the violent hiss dropped to a simmer.
Then he lifted the piece back out—slowly—letting it drain above the trough.
The metal had changed color. The quench had bitten unevenly. The surface looked wrong.
A reject.
But it wasn't a burn scar on someone's face. It wasn't a spill across the lane. It wasn't a bigger incident that would bring Seal down like a hammer.
The foreman watched him, expression flat.
"Name," he said.
Li Shen paused, hook still dripping.
"Li Shen," he replied.
The foreman looked him over—not like a person, like a tool.
"Cultivation?" he asked.
"Stage 1," Li Shen said.
The foreman's eyes flicked to the way Li Shen's hands didn't shake despite the heat.
"Good," the foreman said, which wasn't praise. It was inventory.
He turned to the volunteer.
"You," he said. "You're off the trough. Go carry. If you want to touch hot work, earn hands that don't tremble."
The volunteer's face drained, relief and shame tangled together. He nodded too fast and stepped back.
The foreman turned to the clean-brassard man.
"And you," he said, voice still even. "Stop watching like a disciple. This is a forge. If you see a missing wedge, you replace it. If you don't, and it costs me time, I cost you points."
The clean-brassard man's smile stiffened.
"Yes, Foreman," he said quickly.
It was the first time his confidence had cracked.
Li Shen said nothing. He kept holding the hook until the foreman waved him off.
"Put that in scrap," the foreman said, nodding at the damaged piece. "And wipe the stone. Seal doesn't want footprints."
Li Shen carried the ruined iron to the scrap bin. It clanged in with a chorus of other failures. He felt, briefly, the sting of wasted labor—then killed it.
Waste was part of production.
Survival was knowing which waste mattered.
As he returned to his lane with a bucket of water and a rag, the clean-brassard man stepped into his path.
Up close, he looked older than Li Shen by two or three years. His eyes were sharp in the way people got sharp when they thought sharpness was protection.
"You moved fast," the man said, voice low. "Trying to get noticed?"
Li Shen didn't stop walking. He kept the bucket steady, eyes forward.
"I tried to keep steam off the lane," he replied.
The man's smile returned, thinner now.
"Right," he said. "Steam. Very noble."
Li Shen's eyes slid to the man's brassard.
It had a small stitch repaired near the emblem, done carefully—someone who cared about appearance.
"Who are you?" Li Shen asked, still flat.
The man blinked, as if he hadn't expected the question to be asked so plainly.
"Zhao Kun," he said. "I've been on this line longer than you."
Li Shen nodded once, accepting the name like he'd accepted heat—no emotion, just awareness.
Zhao Kun leaned closer, still keeping his voice low enough to be deniable.
"People who act helpful get used," he said. "Then they get blamed. Don't make yourself a convenient shape."
Li Shen wiped the stone where water had splashed. The rag came away black.
"I didn't spill it," he said.
Zhao Kun's smile twitched again—annoyance at a statement that didn't invite debate.
"You think the ledger cares?" Zhao Kun murmured. "You think points care? The board shows a number. It doesn't show why."
Then Zhao Kun stepped aside as if he'd offered a kindness.
Li Shen finished wiping. He carried the bucket to the drain channel. He washed the rag once. Twice. It never became clean.
When he stood up, he saw the clerk from earlier standing at the edge of the seal line, watching.
Not the foreman.
A clerk with brush-thin eyes and ink-stained fingers.
He looked at the wet stone. At the scrap bin. At Li Shen's brassard. Then he turned and walked away without speaking.
Li Shen's stomach tightened.
That was how the Pavilion's real traps began.
Not with shouting.
With noticing.
The rest of the shift held its breath.
No one said "good job." No one said "careful." The forge continued as if nothing had happened, because acknowledging incidents created paper, and paper created accountability.
But Li Shen felt the shift in attention.
He saw it in how Zhao Kun started positioning himself closer to whatever task mattered most, like claiming territory.
He saw it in how the volunteer who'd almost spilled the iron avoided Li Shen's eyes, ashamed of being corrected by someone newer.
He saw it in how the foreman, twice, directed a hot transfer Li Shen's way instead of toward other hands.
Not reward.
Test.
On the final transfer of the day, a tray of rivet blanks came through—still dull-red, ready for quench and sorting.
The support wedge was in place this time.
Li Shen noticed the wedge's wood was different—newer, freshly cut, edges too sharp. Someone had replaced it in a hurry.
He set his tongs carefully.
He took the weight.
He kept the angle true.
He lowered the blanks into water in a single controlled motion, minimizing splash, minimizing steam, minimizing noise.
The foreman watched, then looked away.
That look-away was another kind of approval.
It meant: you didn't create a problem I have to manage.
At bell three, the lane emptied.
Li Shen showed his jeton again at the gate. The stone mouth clicked. He stepped out.
The air outside felt cold enough to cut his lungs, and he welcomed it.
In the service corridor, he caught his reflection in a dark windowpane: cloth mask stained grey, brassard streaked with soot, eyes rimmed red from smoke.
He looked like what the Pavilion wanted him to look like.
Useful.
Replaceable.
He went back to the dormitory without rushing.
Inside, the room's stale air hit him like a second forge—sweat and damp cloth and old rice.
Yun Xue looked up when he entered, then immediately looked down again as if eye contact was a risk.
She hesitated, fingers worrying at a thread.
"Are you… okay?" she whispered.
Li Shen set his bundle down. He flexed his hands once, feeling the cracks pull.
"Almost an accident," he said.
Yun Xue went still.
Her eyes widened a fraction, then she tried to hide it. She failed.
"Did you—" she started, then stopped, swallowing the rest.
Li Shen didn't give her a story. Stories traveled. Stories turned into rumors.
"I didn't get burned," he said. "That's all."
Yun Xue nodded too fast, relief and fear both obvious.
She touched the folded cloth by his pillow with her fingertips, like touching it was a way of checking reality.
"Good," she whispered.
Li Shen sat down on his mat and opened his ledger.
He didn't write about heroism.
He wrote about wedges.
Day 11: quench incident. missing support wedge.
Response: hook, controlled pull. no splash injury. one reject.
Observation: Zhao Kun. positions, smiles, deniable pressure.
Observation: clerk watched. no words.
Risk: incident becomes paper later.
He closed the ledger.
Outside, somewhere beyond the dormitory wall, hammers still spoke.
Inside, Li Shen listened to something quieter: the way attention moved through a system.
Heat was honest.
Paper wasn't.