The Veil sat heavy on Yunzhong that night.
Zhenan stepped into it the way other men stepped into a courtyard they owned: unhurried, sure of where the stone would be under his feet. Mist wrapped around his boots and his cloak. Lantern-glow from the main street thinned to a smear.
The first breath always tasted the same in these alleys: damp, metallic, edged with other people's old fear. Regret hung there too. Things never said sank into the stone.
Most Lotus squads sped up when they hit a Veil street. Talked louder, made cruder jokes. Anything to outrun the pressure.
He'd started walking them alone.
Just him. His Qi. This strip of broken street the Ministry's nice maps called "low-visibility corridor" and the locals called "bad luck".
Veil Zones. Broken mirrors. Jade Wind called them.
He kept his stride even. The trick was not to pretend you were calm. The Veil chewed on lies. You had to walk as if you were distracted and let your mind go where it was already trying to go.
Tonight, his mind had too many places to go.
A new clause slid into the city like a blade laid on a table. State interest, said by the right mouth, and the guilds would open their ledgers.
The Bureau addendum followed it, thinner paper, darker ink.
Any interference from local sects is to be treated as obstruction under state security.
Local sects. Jade Wind.
He felt the phrase tighten behind his ribs. He would not carry that tension openly. In the Hall, tension became a handle. Here, in the river fog, it became a weight.
He let his Qi run its circuits close to bone. Quiet. Controlled. The discipline Bai Lin called Stone Under Water. Not gone, not flaring. Present, and unhelpful to anyone trying to hook a reading off him.
That was when he felt her.
A thin, clean line of Qi ahead. Light. Trained. Not the clumsy shove of a street tough or the blunt sweep of a Ministry clerk dabbling where they shouldn't. That Qi was held tight enough not to bleed.
Jade Wind.
He didn't pause. His pace didn't change. But his attention narrowed.
The Veil blurred shapes, not weight. If you knew how to look, it showed you where a body resisted the air. A pocket of stillness clung to the left wall beyond a crumbling arch. Someone low. Balanced. Controlled.
Not an outer disciple.
Junior Ascendant, he thought. Or close enough to pretend.
Old Crane's voice surfaced in the back of his mind, smoke-rough and amused:
"Questions with good eyes behind them," the old man had said about a Jade Wind girl. "She knows enough to be dangerous and not enough to stop being."
Now, the taste of that Qi line was familiar.
A memory slid in with the fog: a bronze mirror in the morning market, a Saffron Yellow sash, long legs under a split jade robe. Eyes that had met his through reflection. Not bold. She'd dropped her gaze fast, but not before he'd seen the way she measured a crowd the way he measured a dock.
And Crane's rasp in the teahouse:
"She doesn't pull away from currents. She leans into them."
So, he thought. That's you.
The mountain girl liked Veils, too.
He let his echo walk on ahead of him, the way Bai Lin had taught: a soft impression cast into the Veil for anyone with decent sensing. Shoulders loose. Head bowed as if deep in thought. Ordinary, for what he was.
Her attention hooked on it at once.
He felt her Wind Gaze skim his step, test weight, check rank. It was fine work. Too fine for someone her rank to be doing alone in a Veil street.
He let her read.
Up to a point.
When she pressed for more, trying to see depth and not just outline, he shut the door.
Inside, his Qi folded in with neat precision: Stone Under Water. Lines drawn tight toward his centre until they felt like a fist closing slowly around a coal. To the Veil, there was suddenly less surface to touch.
Then he turned his head.
Not his body. Just the slow, deliberate angle of attention until the echo's face looked straight at the broken arch where she stood.
Her Qi jumped.
He felt her swallow it down. Good control. No flare. No bolt. She held her stance and counted exits with the stillness of someone who did not want to give a man an excuse to call her reckless.
That impressed him.
That annoyed him.
Because the new words from the scroll made people like her dangerous even when they were doing nothing wrong. Especially then.
He took himself away.
One heartbeat, his echo was there. The next, he let it unravel and stepped sideways into a denser fold of fog, Qi clenched tight enough that even an Elder would have had to guess.
On her side of the alley, Wind Gaze went wide.
He felt her searching. Forward, up, back, along the roofs. Fast sweeps, careful control. No wild panic. Just cold and angry not knowing.
He should have left then.
Instead, he waited, listening to the whisper of cloth as she shifted her stance.
The texture of the air shifted. Metal left leather.
Knife.
The throw came a heartbeat later. Low and wide, skimming the stone under the fog.
It was a beautiful throw. He recognised the technique as much as the weapon when it passed the edge of his sensing.
Swallow-wing. The kind that wanted to return.
She hadn't thrown to kill. She wasn't foolish enough. She'd thrown to mark, to make him react, to make him real in the space again.
He obliged.
His hand snapped down, fingers closing around the curved blade just as it reached the peak of its arc. Steel bit the base of his thumb. He let it. Better blood than letting it sing back to her palm with answers he did not want her to have.
The contact cut the throw's echo clean in the Veil.
He stayed hidden and listened.
He felt her Qi searching for his again, looking for a presence…
She found none.
A better man might have felt guilty for the satisfaction that gave him.
Black Lotus in a blind alley with a woman whose sect preached distance over attachment. Very bad odds, if he were that kind of man.
He ran his thumb once along the blade, feeling its balance. The weight sat oddly, heavy toward the curve, made to swing around. Definitely not a standard street knife.
This was a weapon meant to return home. Excellent work. A smith who understood wind and spin.
Someone made this for you.
No second throw.
Smart.
Old Crane hadn't oversold her.
Then her presence drew in on itself, Qi tight, and she backed out of the fog the same way she'd come. Three steady steps, no stumble, no break in pace. Refusing to run. Refusing to turn her back until the Veil pressure let go of her ankles.
Good, he thought. You know when to yield. Not reckless, then.
When her imprint finally thinned into the broader noise of the city, he stepped out of his fold of mist and walked the rest of the alley. No echo left behind this time.
He glanced down at the swallow-wing in his hand.
A Jade Wind Junior Ascendant. Alone in a Veil street. Throwing specialised blades at a Black Lotus Senior Ascendant.
If the wrong man logged that, it would become a report.
If it became a report, the Bureau would smile and call it interference.
Interference. Obstruction. State security.
Words that made bodies disappear.
He slid the knife into an inner sleeve and sealed his Qi tight around it.
A Jade Wind Junior Ascendant. Alone. Too observant. Now missing one blade.
A girl like that would make the Bureau salivate.
Zhenan stepped back into the city's noise, jaw set, already adjusting the map in his head.
He did not like how close her path was drifting to his.
---
Version 2 – The Observer & the Mouth (more political / Bureau-aware, still restrained)
The Veil always felt a little like a lie the city was telling itself.
Zhenan stepped into it anyway.
— Mountain Saffron Yellow. Uses Wind Gaze where she shouldn't. Keeps her feet. Throws swallow-wings. Now missing one.
---
Version 3 – Stone Under Water (more internal, a bit softer underneath, still dangerous)
He felt her Wind Gaze widen, sweeping the alley in tight, intelligent circles. Up. Back. Farther out. Methodical. Thorough. Irritated.
He almost laughed. Quietly. Inside.
You really hate not knowing.
The air shifted.
He didn't hear the blade. He felt the intent.
Her weight changed. There, the faint roll through her hips as she threw. The knife's arc cut the Veil at shin-level, wide and low and fast, a crescent meant not to kill but to mark and return. It carried the particular, stubborn signature of a weapon made to come back home.
He moved without thinking.
His hand came down, fingers closing around the curved steel just as the arc was about to complete. The swallow-wing bit his palm. He let it. The jolt of contact cut the throw's presence out of the Veil.
On her end, there would be nothing. No returning pull. No stinging near-miss. Just absence.
He turned the blade in his hand, feeling the weight and balance even through the dull ache where it had bitten. The metal was excellent. The shaping careful. Someone had understood wind and spin when they forged it.
Not issue knives, then.
A smith had made these for her on purpose.
He slid the swallow-wing into an inner pocket, feeling the curve settle against his ribs as if it had found a new resting place.
A gift you didn't mean to give, he thought. Or a question I haven't decided to answer.
He stayed very still and listened.
Her Qi tightened, then drew away. No panicked flailing, no second throw. Just three controlled steps out of the worst of the pressure, then more, until the Veil's grip on her ankles let go and she was just another presence folded into the city's greater hum.
Only then did he breathe out.
He stepped out through a different mouth of the alley, where no trace of her lingered. The night air felt almost clean by comparison. Cold river smell. Distant shouts. The orderly noise of a city pretending everything under its skin was fine.
He looked down at his hand.
A thin line of blood marked the base of his thumb where the blade had caught him. He wiped it off on his cloak, then pressed the edge of the swallow-wing lightly to his other palm just to feel the balance again.
The knife belonged with her.
That thought arrived uninvited.
So did another: if some Ministry observer had wandered through at the wrong moment and felt what he had just felt—Jade Wind Junior Ascendant, alone in a Veil, throwing specialised blades at a Black Lotus Senior—they would have turned it into a report. And that report would have turned into leverage.
Jade Wind were supposed to be "independent verification". They stayed above mud. The Bureau didn't like seeing them ankle-deep in it with Black Lotus.
Neither, if he was honest, did he.
Bai Lin had told him once, dry as ever, "Power always has a price. Better you look at the bill yourself before someone else reads it to you."
He hadn't understood, back then. He was starting to.
Shadow contracts. Crates that didn't exist on any ledger. Writs from higher up using words like subjects and sites and thresholds that weren't supposed to apply to citizens of Yunzhong.
And him: kept one rung down.
Crimson Red on paper, when his Qi could have carried more if he pushed. His name pointedly absent from lists of "advanced candidates" that went up to the Bureau offices. Elder Qiang recommending "field deployments" whenever Lord Xie's attention lingered too long in his direction. Bai Lin quietly steering him toward dock crackdowns and ledger work instead of deeper corridors.
He was grateful. Mostly.
He'd seen enough to know he didn't want to be inside whatever doors those crates went through. The men who came back from those halls wore their calm like lacquer: smoothed over something that had already splintered underneath.
Dangerous.
He knew what Jade Wind did with their eyes. Neat reports. Polite phrasing. The sort of words that reached the regional governor's desk when people in black sashes went too far. They were as much part of the system as Black Lotus. Just… cleaner.
Not bad, he thought. For someone standing alone with my colours in their peripheral.
For a heartbeat, he considered pretending he hadn't noticed. Let her keep whatever illusion of secrecy she wanted. It would be safer, probably. Cleaner. Let Jade Wind have their quiet watching and Black Lotus their louder kind and never admit that sometimes, in places like this, the edges met.
Then a different thought rose, unbidden:
If she thinks I can't see her, she'll stay bolder than she should be.
The Bureau liked bold observers when they belonged to them. They were less generous with other sects' curiosity.
He didn't want that kind of attention turning toward a Junior Ascendant who walked Veils at night.
Zhenan pulled his Qi in.
Not all the way. Just enough.
He used the discipline Bai Lin had drilled into him for years: Stone Under Water. Breath slower. Channels closed down to quiet threads tucked close to bone. Enough that the Veil had nothing to grab, no surface to echo against.
To anyone else, he'd still look like a figure in fog.
To Wind Gaze, he would slide out of focus.
Before he erased himself entirely, he let one thing slip.
He turned his head.
Not fast. Not hunting. Just a slow, deliberate angle until his face—blurred by mist, half-erased by his own Qi work—faced the broken arch where he knew she stood.
He didn't reach outward. Didn't send intent. Just… let his awareness rest on the exact point she occupied.
Her Qi flickered, the way a candle flame jumps when someone opens a door.
He could almost feel her calculating from across the alley: distance, outcome, odds. Feel the small tug of pride that hadn't let her bolt the instant she realised he'd noticed. Most Jade Wind juniors would have run. This one stayed still long enough to measure him back.
He didn't want to break that.
Zhenan's jaw tightened once. Then he closed his hand, metaphorically, around the coal of his Qi.
If she was smart—and he suspected she was—she'd take that for the warning it was.
Black Lotus. Jade Wind. Veil street between.
She shouldn't have been there. Neither should he, if he wanted life simple.
He thought of the way her Qi had held steady under his regard. The way she'd chosen to stay still, even when it would have been easier to turn and run blindly out of the fog.
Too curious, he thought. Too composed.
He understood, suddenly, why certain men in upstairs rooms got nervous when they read that kind of temperament in reports.
He also understood, to his own quiet annoyance, that he did not like the idea of that temperament being crushed between two sets of orders—his sect's and whatever offices sat above them.
On another night, in another alley, he might have followed that thread.
Tonight, he let it go. Bai Lin's words tugged in his memory again: Know what you're not ready to know. That's a kind of discipline too.
He rolled his shoulders once, let the last of the Veil damp shake free from his cloak, and set his feet toward the next patrol point. Routine, routes, ledgers. The work he'd been given to do.
Behind him, the Veil street settled back into its usual low murmur.
Then he did what he was best at.
He disappeared into his own work and pretended, for a little longer, that the machine he served didn't have deeper rooms he was still relieved not to see.
She found none.
A better man might have felt guilty for the satisfaction that gave him.
Black Lotus in a blind alley with a woman whose sect preached distance over attachment. Very bad odds, if he were that kind of man.
Elders would lose you, he thought. What are you doing down here alone?
He heard her knife whisper free of its sheath.
He could feel her now only as a knot of tension in the fog. Her hand tightened on metal. Her stance shifted, weight spreading slightly—balanced on the balls of her feet for silence, but not so far forward she'd slip if she had to move suddenly.
Used to roofs, he noted. Not just courtyards. Good judgment on footing even when rattled.
Good, he thought. You know when to yield ground. That might keep you alive for a bit longer.
A Jade Wind Junior Ascendant, alone in a Veil Zone, testing her sight against a Black Lotus Senior Ascendant whose name sat closer than most to Bureau ink. If Hall Master Xie Han knew she was doing this, he'd call it provocation. If the wrong Ministry observer happened to log her presence near a Lotus patrol, they'd call it grounds.
Grounds for investigation. For pressure. For a "corrective example."
He didn't particularly care about Jade Wind's mountain politics. He did care about what widening the Bureau's net in Yunzhong would do to his sect, to the rank-and-file men who already flinched when the Mantle hall door opened.
And, if he was honest, there was that other thing.
The way her attention felt.
Bright. Focused. It had the same stubborn edge as the feeling that rose in him whenever Master Hall Xie Han lingered on the words "subject control."
He could have stepped after her. Closed the distance, let her see him for real instead of as a trick of mist. Asked what exactly she thought she was doing, down here with knives and questions she had no mandate to ask.
He didn't.
Not tonight.
Instead, he crossed the alley in three quiet strides, letting the Veil slide off him as he emerged onto a broader street. The mundane dark felt almost loud after the muffled pressure of the Zone. Distant tavern voices. A cart wheel hitting a rut. Somewhere, the faint clink of chains from a Lotus patrol changing routes.
He turned away from Jade Wind's slopes and walked toward the river, Crimson Red sash hidden again under his plain cloak.
Behind his ribs, something warm and unwelcome lingered.
Not attraction. He knew what that felt like, easy and burnished and gone with the next morning's drill. Not yet, anyway.
It was the awareness of a particular presence now fixed in his mental map of Yunzhong: a girl from the mountain who moved like she trusted the wind more than walls, who watched him as if she suspected he was more than the rank he wore, and who had just proven she was willing to bring Jade Wind eyes into the places everyone kept telling themselves were Black Lotus alone.
Trouble, he thought.
The kind the Bureau liked to turn into leverage.
And the kind he was not entirely sure he wanted to hand them.