The first sign Greyfang had bled wasn't a speech.
It was a cart in the Beast Yard before dawn—wheels squealing, wood swollen from night damp, two salvage hands pushing like they were trying to shove the problem out of their own shadows.
The crate wore an outside stamp. Not forge. Not yard.
A stamp that meant coin had already changed hands, and somebody was about to demand it back.
People gathered without deciding to. That was how the Pavilion trained bodies: orbit risk, watch for consequences, learn what not to say.
Li Shen wasn't assigned to the Beast Yard. Lane three had its own schedule, its own heat, its own leash.
But chain-of-custody had made everything everyone's business.
He saw the hook first.
Not snapped clean like a testing break. Bent open at the inner curve—peeled just enough to show it had held until it couldn't, then failed ugly.
One of the salvage hands had a sleeve tied around his forearm. Blood had soaked through anyway.
"Lift slipped," somebody muttered.
A second voice, tighter, answered immediately, like they couldn't stand the lie. "No. The hook opened."
The escort captain didn't shout. Shouting was for people without paperwork. He just stepped closer, pointed at the opened curve with a finger that couldn't stop trembling, and looked at the nearest clerk like he was pointing at an invoice.
"That came out of your lanes."
Not an accusation.
A bill.
A clerk appeared fast—brush already wet. Another runner came in behind him with a pouch of seals. The yard quieted the way animals did when a predator walked into the open.
In the Pavilion, the fastest thing wasn't Qi.
It was paperwork when a failure could be monetized.
---
By midday, the sect answered the only way it ever did when liability threatened to climb upward.
It pushed it down.
A notice went up at the forge junction—clean brush, flat language, no room for interpretation:
GREYFANG — QUALITY CLAMP (ESCALATED)
DESTRUCTIVE PULLS: INCREASED
LANE LIABILITY: ACTIVE — BONUS MAY BE FROZEN
CYCLE INDEX REMAINS: 0/2
UNDER CLAMP: 1 DEFECT = HOLD + AUDIT
Below it, smaller lines—procedural, deadly:
CHAIN OF CUSTODY — STRICT
WAX-SEALED LOG TAGS REQUIRED
SHARED WINDOWS PROHIBITED — STRICT ENFORCEMENT
Men read it the way they read storms they couldn't outrun.
Some got angry. Some went pale. Most went silent.
Silence was what you did when you understood the notice wasn't aimed at your feelings.
It was aimed at your margins.
Li Shen read it once and walked away like it meant nothing.
Boring was armor.
Inside, he felt the shift immediately.
One defect wasn't "a warning" anymore.
It was a trigger.
---
The clamp didn't just tighten lanes.
It tightened departments.
The stock draw window gained a new shelf of "approved substitutes," sealed and numbered, and the clerk's eyes stayed on hands longer than faces.
The Beast Yard ran longer shifts with fewer bodies, because the hook failure had turned salvage into evidence, and evidence needed counting.
At the clinic lane, the air sharpened—hot water, old cloth, and that thin edge of people being told no.
Li Shen passed it on his way to the Discipline window, carrying nothing that looked urgent. Urgent drew attention.
A man in front of him coughed until his shoulders shook. The sound was dry, like cloth tearing.
When the man reached the clinic clerk, she glanced at his palm ticket and didn't even pretend to hesitate.
"Insufficient points," she said.
The man's jaw worked once, like he was chewing anger into something he could swallow.
"I just need powder," he said, voice rough. "The cheap kind."
The clerk didn't soften. "Cheap still costs."
He stood there half a breath too long—waiting for the rules to feel shame.
They didn't.
He stepped aside, coughing harder, and two women moved forward without looking at his face.
In this place, compassion wasn't banned.
It was priced.
Li Shen kept walking.
He couldn't afford to be soft in public.
Not under clamp.
---
Two days after the Beast Yard cart arrived, the framing attempt landed.
A Seal Circle runner came into lane three holding a batch tag already folded, already wax-sealed, already "official." He held it up the way you held proof.
A clerk beside him read the line out loud, for the lane to hear.
"Maker: Li Shen."
Heads didn't turn fully. Full turns were risky. But attention shifted anyway—quiet, heavy, hungry.
Li Shen stepped forward and took the tag with two fingers.
The wax impression looked like his.
Close enough that a tired clerk would accept it. Close enough that an audit would circle his name and stop caring about nuance.
But copied seals had a tell.
They were too clean.
Too perfect.
A stamp without the mess of real handling, real heat, real hands.
Li Shen didn't argue in the lane. He didn't accuse. He didn't raise his voice.
He did the only thing that didn't read as panic.
He separated stamp from chain.
"My chain doesn't submit from shelves," he said evenly. "My tags stay on-body until handoff."
The runner's eyes narrowed. "It matches ledger impressions."
"It matches a stamp," Li Shen replied, calm. "Not a chain."
The runner opened his mouth as if to push, then stopped. Pushing here would create a scene, and scenes created questions.
Li Shen didn't wait for a second attempt.
He turned with the ghost tag in hand and walked straight to the Discipline window.
---
The Discipline lane smelled like ink, stale sweat, and that faint metallic tang of fear nobody admitted to.
A low counter divided the clerks from the bodies. Behind it, shelves held forms that had ended men more effectively than fists ever could.
When Li Shen reached the window, the clerk didn't look up.
"Report," she said, like she was asking for a stock slip.
Li Shen placed the ghost tag down. "Seal irregularity. Tag assigned to me. Wax impression copied."
The clerk finally looked—not at his face.
At the wax.
"Seal tool," she said.
Li Shen pulled the chipped coin edge from inside his shirt and set it on the counter.
Not from a pouch. Not from an apron lining.
On-body meant theft required contact.
Contact meant witnesses.
Witnesses made framing expensive.
The clerk pushed a small blob of wax across the stone. "Stamp."
Li Shen pressed. Lifted. Set.
The impression came out ugly and consistent, with the same ragged tear line where the chipped edge bit too deep.
The clerk compared it to the ghost tag's too-clean wax. Her mouth tightened by a fraction—barely visible, but real.
She stamped the corner of the ghost tag:
FLAGGED.
Then she slid it back. "Reseal. New tag. Note the time. Submit direct. No shelf."
Li Shen nodded once. "Understood."
Her brush scratched in a ledger he would never see.
Paper trace deepened.
The trap failed.
That didn't mean it ended.
It meant it got sharper.
As he turned to leave, a side board caught his eye—small posting, easy to miss if you didn't know how to look:
LANE FIVE — BONUS FROZEN (LIABILITY EVENT)
CLINIC PRIORITY: SUSPENDED (NON-CRITICAL)
Frozen bonus didn't mean inconvenience.
It meant men would stop buying lung powder. Stop wrapping wrists. Stop replacing worn gloves.
It meant defects would rise, not because people got worse, but because they got poorer.
The sect didn't have to punish anyone else.
The freeze would do it for them.
---
That night, Li Shen didn't chase sleep.
He chased capacity.
Qi Condensation Stage 1 had been workable for too long: mist in the lower abdomen that held as long as he kept his life narrow. On good days, it stayed. On bad days, it leaked into heaviness—stone behind the navel—and then, if he pushed, tremor in the hands.
Under clamp, tremor wasn't discomfort.
It was liability.
He sat on his bunk with the lamp low and didn't use Smoke-Sealing. Smoke-Sealing was a work valve. This wasn't work.
He slowed his breath until it stopped being "breathing" and became timing.
Then he guided the mist down.
At Stage 1, the dantian felt like a stitched pouch: it held, but pressure found seams. When he densified too quickly, the seams answered with heaviness—warning before failure.
So he treated cultivation the same way he treated technique in the forge:
Burst.
Release.
Burst.
Release.
He drew the mist in and let it gather until the first hint of weight rose behind the navel.
Then he eased off before it could spike.
He circulated a thin thread through the loop—not forcing flow, just maintaining continuity—then returned it to the reservoir.
Each cycle was small. Controlled. Boring.
And gradually, the seams stopped complaining at the same pressure.
Not bigger.
Tougher.
Not explosive.
Sealed.
He felt it as a change in texture: the mist held denser without fraying outward into uneven pull. The loop stopped stuttering. The return stopped biting.
Then, quietly, it seated.
Not with light.
Not with heat.
With a sensation like a lid finding its groove.
A second layer of constraint settled over the reservoir—not as weight, but as stability. Pressure becoming usable instead of dangerous.
Li Shen's breath hitched once. He stopped himself immediately.
No celebration.
No chasing.
Chasing was how you overshot into tremor.
He tested it the way he tested metal: load, release, check for failure.
He drew the mist up again, slightly denser than he could have held yesterday.
No spike.
He circulated it.
No stutter.
He returned it.
No twist.
Qi Condensation Stage 2 wasn't "more power."
It was more Qi that stayed.
More reservoir. Better sealing. Smoother throughput.
He wrote one line in his journal—bare, cold, operational:
> Qi Condensation Stage 2 seated. Mist holds denser. Cycle continuous.
Then he slept.
---
The next day proved it the only way Li Shen trusted: function.
In lane three, Smoke-Sealing windows stretched a little longer before his chest started drying. Not minutes—seconds. But seconds were margin, and margin prevented rush.
Iron Grip bursts landed cleaner. Tendon heat still came, but it took longer to climb into that fine tremor that punished you in numbers.
Grey Step drills left his calves heavy, but the heaviness cleared in the same sleep cycle instead of lingering like wet sand.
Stage 2 didn't make him important.
It made him harder to break by accident.
Which meant people would have to break him on purpose.
---
Two days after the ghost tag was flagged, the system did what it actually cared about.
Not his dantian.
His paper.
At the Discipline window, the same clerk slid a form across the counter in the same tone she used for stock draws.
CHAIN NOTE — LIABILITY EVENT (GREYFANG)
MAKER TAG: FLAGGED (SEAL IRREGULARITY)
FOLLOW-UP: RANDOM DESTRUCTIVE PULLS INCREASED
VIOLATION THRESHOLD UNDER CLAMP: 1 DEFECT = HOLD + AUDIT
Li Shen read it, signed it, and handed it back.
Signatures kept you inside procedure.
Inside procedure was the only place a servant survived a clamp.
No one asked his cultivation stage.
No one needed to.
Under clamp, output was the only rank that mattered.
He walked back to lane three with more Qi sitting in his dantian than yesterday and less desire than ever to let anyone see it.
Declaring Stage 2 wouldn't buy safety.
It would buy attention.
Attention was a tax.
So he kept it private.
---
At dusk, the board updated—cold and collective:
QUALITY CLAMP: ON
CHAIN OF CUSTODY: STRICT
DESTRUCTIVE PULLS: INCREASED
LANE LIABILITY: ACTIVE — FREEZE POSSIBLE
Then the line that made the yard go quiet again:
LANE FIVE — BONUS FROZEN (LIABILITY EVENT)
A man standing near the posting stared too long, then walked away too fast—like motion could outrun math.
Li Shen saw him later at the exchange window, pushing a worn hand brace across the counter.
"Buyback," the clerk said, bored. "Low value."
"It's still good," the man said, swallowing the words like they were shame.
"Low value," the clerk repeated, and stamped it anyway.
The man took the points and left without looking at anyone.
That was the clamp's real violence.
It made men sell their margins.
Margins were how you avoided defects.
Defects were how you vanished.
Li Shen didn't stare.
He moved—back toward the dorm lanes, boring on the outside, controlled underneath—already budgeting the new margin Stage 2 gave him in breaths and seconds, not in pride.
On paper, nothing had changed.
And for now, that was exactly how he wanted it.