The notice went up where nobody could pretend they hadn't seen it.
Not in the forge lane, where heat made men blind.
Not in the dorm corridor, where shadows gave excuses.
On the Beast Yard board—where shortages turned into policy before they turned into hunger.
BEAST ROTATION — LOW-GRADE SPIRIT BEAST (QI CONDENSATION STAGE 1)
OBJECTIVE: SUPPLY STABILIZATION / SALVAGE QUOTA
ISSUANCE REQUIRED — STAMPED ONLY
FAILURE TO RETURN = DEDUCTION + ROTATION BAN
The wording was calm. The timing wasn't.
Since the Greyfang incident, the yard had been chewing through stock like it could bury liability under fresh output. Salvage ran longer. "Approved substitutes" ran thinner. The clinic line ran colder.
Li Shen read the notice once and stepped away before someone could decide his face meant something.
A hunt rotation wasn't an escape from the clamp.
It was a different clamp.
But it was also points. Materials. Air.
And air was a resource the forge couldn't mint.
Bai Ren found him before he reached Armory—not inside the forge lanes, never there, but at the yard corner where men loitered to pretend they weren't listening.
"You're really signing up for teeth," Bai Ren said. "That's new."
Li Shen didn't slow. "It's points."
"Points won't matter if you come back flagged," Bai Ren shot back, matching his pace. "You know how fast a story spreads when it's convenient."
"I'm already being watched," Li Shen said.
Bai Ren made a sound like a laugh that didn't quite form. "There's watched, and there's 'fun to test.' Don't become the second."
Li Shen kept his gaze forward. "What did you hear."
Bai Ren's eyes flicked past him, scanning the board crowd—who stood too close, who didn't, who kept looking over shoulders like they expected paperwork to bite. "Yun Xue hasn't been in the dorms for weeks."
Li Shen's steps didn't change. His breathing did, once—small, controlled.
"She's under Elder Yan," Bai Ren continued, quieter. "Different corridor. Different rules. People don't say her name anymore. They say 'that one' and look away."
Li Shen nodded once, as if it was just another posting. "Anything else?"
Bai Ren hesitated, then leaned in as they walked. "Armory 'shortages' don't hit everyone the same. Watch which hands come out with clean weapons."
Li Shen didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
He went to Armory because procedure demanded it.
The Armory lane sat between departments like a throat. Everything that moved into hands passed through it—rope, blades, heads, hafts—issued, tagged, recorded. Nobody sold courage here. They sold liability.
The rack where short spears should have been was half-empty.
Not "used up" empty.
Inspection empty.
Several spearheads hung from cords with small tags tied to them like warnings:
HOLD — INSPECTION
BEND / MICRO-FRACTURE SUSPECTED
RETURN BACKLOG
A runner called numbers without looking at faces. Servants stepped forward in a line that smelled of sweat, oil, and the kind of patience that was just fear behaving.
Li Shen waited his turn.
Hands visible. Papers dry. Breath neutral.
Boring, even here.
Especially here.
When he reached the counter, the clerk didn't greet him. Names were already ink.
"Rotation slip," she said.
Li Shen slid it under the bar. Stamped. Clean.
Her eyes moved over it, then over him, then to the rack behind her.
"Short spear issuance is suspended," she said.
Li Shen didn't argue. Arguing was for people with robes. He asked the only question that wasn't complaint.
"How long?"
"Pending inspection," she replied, brush already scratching. "Backlog."
"Alternative," Li Shen said.
She didn't react like he'd requested an option. She reacted like he'd requested a category.
Her hand went to a different shelf and set something down on the counter stone.
Not a spear.
A hatchet.
Short haft, wide head. The kind of tool you used to open carcasses and split joints—not keep distance from something with tusks.
A small paper tag hung from the eye:
CARCASS HATCHET — BEAST YARD TOOL
ROTATION USE ONLY
RETURN REQUIRED
LOSS = DEDUCTION
Li Shen looked at it for half a beat too long, then forced his eyes away.
Preference was just another way to admit you believed you had choices.
He started to speak—then didn't.
The clerk tapped the hatchet once with a fingernail. "This or nothing."
Li Shen nodded. "Issue."
She pulled a second form from a tray and pushed it forward.
TOOL ISSUANCE — LIABILITY ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
He signed.
A stamp fell.
She tied a thin cord tag to the haft, knot tight, wax dabbed and marked.
Paper wrapped around wood and steel like a leash.
Li Shen took it and felt the weight settle into his palm—too forward, too honest about how close you had to get to use it.
Less safe.
More real.
A step behind him, another servant reached the counter.
Li Shen didn't turn. Turning made it a scene.
But he heard the change in cadence: the clerk's brush moved differently. A different stamp landed—heavier, decisive.
And when she reached under the counter, she didn't pull a hatchet.
She pulled a short spear.
Not from the rack.
From below.
The servant took it fast, like speed could make it invisible, and moved away before anyone could measure what they'd seen.
Li Shen kept his head forward.
But his stomach went cold anyway.
Short spear issuance suspended.
Except when it wasn't.
That was what Bai Ren had meant by "clean weapons."
Outside, the yard air hit his face like it had teeth—dust now, not mud, and dust carried farther.
Li Shen carried the hatchet like what it was.
A tool.
Tools belonged to work. Work belonged to procedure. Procedure was the only reason he was still alive.
He crossed toward the wash lane, because water was where you cleaned metal and truth leaked from mouths that thought they were whispering.
Bai Ren was there, of course—hands tucked in his sleeves, posture loose, eyes sharp.
He saw the hatchet and didn't grin.
"They finally run out of spears?" Bai Ren asked.
"They ran out of spears for me," Li Shen said.
Bai Ren's gaze slid past him toward Armory, toward the stream of bodies. "They run out for everyone?"
Li Shen set the hatchet on a flat stone and ran water over the head. A thin line of oil streaked off. The edge looked serviceable. The haft looked dry.
Dry hafts split at the worst possible moment.
"I got issued a tool," Li Shen said.
Bai Ren made a small sound that wasn't laughter. "Generous."
Li Shen rotated the hatchet, checking wedge, eye, grain. "Rotation's tomorrow."
Bai Ren leaned closer, voice low enough to stay private without sounding like conspiracy. "Someone wants you close."
Li Shen didn't look up. "Close to a mouth."
"Or close to a reason," Bai Ren corrected.
Li Shen's fingers found a faint roughness along the haft—nothing obvious, just the kind of texture that told you it had been stored too dry, too long, handled by too many hands that didn't care.
"If it fails," Li Shen said, "it fails in my hands."
"And they'll say it was your grip," Bai Ren replied. "Not their stock. Not their 'suspension.'"
Li Shen shut his hand around the haft. He didn't trigger Iron Grip. He didn't waste breath.
He simply let the problem align itself in his head, clean and ugly:
A spear buys distance.
A hatchet demands timing.
Timing demands margin.
Grey Step.
Angles.
And not being alone when something can rush you faster than you can think.
He couldn't afford to be brave.
He could only afford to be correct.
That night, the clinic line didn't shorten.
It grew.
A boy Li Shen recognized from lane five stood near the wall with his wrist wrapped in old cloth, eyes hollow, trying to pretend he wasn't waiting for someone to tell him he didn't have enough points to matter.
A woman behind him muttered, "Frozen bonus. No powder. No wrap."
Someone answered, bitter and quiet, "Then don't cough."
As if coughing was a decision.
As if anything here was.
Li Shen walked past without stopping.
He could have dropped something on the clinic shelf—an aid ticket, a packet, a wrap.
He didn't.
Not tonight.
Tomorrow he'd be in brush and rock with a tool that wanted him dead the moment he overcommitted. Tonight he needed every margin he could keep.
That was the Pavilion's real talent: it didn't force you to be cruel.
It forced you to choose where compassion could afford to exist.
At his bunk, Li Shen set the hatchet across his knees and held it under the lamp.
He didn't romanticize it. He didn't whisper names.
He inspected it like hardware.
Wedge. Eye. Grain.
He ran his thumb along the haft looking for hairline cracks the way he looked for micro-fractures in bent iron.
Then he oiled the wood until it drank, and wrapped the grip in cloth tight enough to keep sweat from turning control into slip.
A tool could be a weapon if you lived long enough to swing it twice.
He wrote one line in his journal, not as drama—as constraint:
Rotation issued: carcass hatchet (tool). Spears "suspended." Not for everyone.
He extinguished the lamp and lay down.
Inside him, the dantian held denser mist than it had last month—Stage 2 seated and unnamed on paper, quiet and contained.
Tomorrow, it would pay for itself the only way cultivation ever paid for anything in the low world:
by keeping his hands steady when something with teeth tried to make them shake.