Yan Hui's last words did not land. They made Old Crane's "helpful Black Lotus man" feel suddenly like a child's story told too late at night.
Someone is hiding him.
Maybe.
The Pavilion's lantern-light kept its disciplined calm, as if it hadn't heard. Wind murmured along the tiles.
Somewhere below, the city carried on, unbothered by the fact that a man in Crimson Red had slipped out of sight inside a Broken Mirror as easily as if he'd stepped behind a screen.
Jinx kept her face still. But her Qi would not quite settle. It paced in small circles, finding no corner to lie down in.
Why would a Senior Ascendant need to disappear that cleanly?
Then Hui spoke again.
"How long did you search?" Hui asked.
"Long enough that if it were anyone else, I'd have sworn they were gone and gone. But the Zone was still… awake. Humming. Like it knew it had lost something and hadn't decided if it cared."
Hui sat back a little, folding her arms around one knee.
"You know what we think Veils are," she said. "Places where reality's reflection cracked. Too many unfinished stories piled in one place. Confessions swallowed, doors slammed, fear that never got to land on anything solid."
Jinx listened, though she knew most of this. Hui thinking out loud always left the edges sharper.
"Most people walk in and Veils show them their own unsaid things first," Hui went on. "Guilt, desire, the little lies they told themselves to get through the day. If they stay, the Zone eventually gets bored and starts layering other people's old panic on top. You get grief that doesn't fit your chest. Anger that smells wrong. That's when they run."
She tilted her head, eyes on Jinx.
"Qi-trained people like us can usually keep it at the first layer," she said. "Use it as a mirror we control. We pick which thoughts to chew on. That's why we like those corridors more than we should."
"Get to the part where this helps," Jinx muttered.
"I have three theories," Hui said. "None of them are comforting."
"Good," Jinx said. "Comfort is overrated."
"First," Hui said, ticking a finger, "the simple one: someone in Lotus is drilling a hard shell. A Qi pattern that flattens anything soft until the Veil can't get purchase. All loose feeling pulled into a stone-knot. To Wind Gaze, that would read as a blank wall; exactly what you felt when your sight slid off him."
"Possible," Jinx said slowly. "He feels… banked. Like water behind stone."
"Second," Hui went on, lifting another finger, "is less about him, more about the Zone. Veils like familiar threads. If he walks that corridor often enough, with the same tight control, the Veil may have started treating him as part of its furniture. A fixed beam, not a moving story. The moment he pulled in, the Zone stopped offering him to you as 'something to watch'."
Jinx's mouth pressed thin. "Hm. And three?"
"Third," Hui said quietly, "is that he's learnt to use the Veil very well. To step his presence sideways, just enough that your reach slides off the wrong layer, choosing which reflection you're allowed to see. I've heard of Elders refining this: They step half a pace along the wrong reflection, let the current carry most of your presence aside. You still occupy the street, but anyone looking with a method like yours only catches the echo you left hanging."
Jinx hated that this one rang truest.
"Elders do that," she said. "He's Crimson Red."
"Colours only tell you what someone's been granted," Hui replied. "Not how far they've climbed when no one was looking."
Jinx's mouth flattened, but the thought lodged anyway: either Lotus had handed Elder tricks to someone still wearing a Senior sash… either he'd climbed further than his colours admitted.
She closed her eyes briefly.
"I threw one of my swallow wings," she said, voice low. The shame came right after, hot and stupid under her ribs. She'd felt it was a bad idea the instant her fingers opened.
"I just wanted to make him react and know if he was still in there."
Hui's Qi tightened, quick and quiet. Her eyes dropped to Jinx's belt. To the empty place.
"You didn't retrieve it?" Hui asked.
Jinx held her gaze. "I couldn't. It didn't come back to me."
Hui let out a quiet breath.
"Then treat it as his," she said."Unless he chose to let the Veil keep it for him. Either way, it is not yours anymore."
Jinx looked away.
"You want your knife back," Hui said.
"I don't."
"Good," Hui replied. "Keep saying it until it becomes true."
Jinx's jaw clenched. She looked at her friend again.
Hui leaned in, just a little. "Restraint is a method," she said. "Use it. Let the blade go. Let the story cool. If he wants a second contact, make him reach. Do not run to meet him."
Jinx sighed. "I will ask Master Rong to make another."
"Good," Hui said at once. "Do that. But do not chase the first one."
Jinx's gaze snapped up. "I am not chasing."
"You went in to observe," Hui replied. "Then you tugged at a Lotus Senior like you were checking if he'd bite. You threw steel. That is not observation. That is an invitation, a challenge with your name stitched into it."
Jinx's shoulders tightened. "He looked at me first."
"Yes," Hui said. "And you made sure he'd remember you. You didn't only endure his attention. You returned it."
Jinx's Qi surged, then pulled back, tight at the edges. She kept her tongue behind her teeth.
Old Crane's warning sat like a sealed note in her sleeve, a Senior Ascendant in Black Lotus might be the kind that helps, the kind she should watch for.
The truth was: she hadn't only been watching the street. She'd been watching for a particular kind of man. But she couldn't say that out loud.
She swallowed the confession.
Hui's voice stayed calm. "If he reports you, it will not be 'a Jade Wind woman in a Veil'. It will be 'which one' and that you attacked him."
Jinx flared. "I didn't attack him!"
Hui's eyes narrowed a fraction. "Well, that's certainly interference. And… I have heard something else," Hui said. "Rumours from the city. A writ, or a clause being sharpened by the Bureau. Something that lets them call Jade Wind interference, obstruction under state security."
Jinx's stomach sank. She kept her face still.
"If that is true, then a report becomes 'obstruction', and they'll want your name. They could use the clause to come for you cleanly."
Jinx exhaled through her nose. Wind murmured along the tiles. Her Qi ran hot, then she pressed it down.
"So what," she said. "I never enter Veils again."
"I don't believe you," Hui said mildly. "At least try not to go again tomorrow and in the next few days. Not while you are tempted to fix what you started."
"I'll stay away," Jinx nodded. "From that Zone. For a while."
Hui looked at her too long to be casual, worry tucked under discipline, her Qi hovering like a hand that wanted to grab Jinx's sleeve and didn't dare.
Jinx rose to her feet, joints protesting faintly after the stillness.
"Thank you for being my mirror when I don't want to look," Jinx said. "And for keeping this between us. I know what it costs you."
Hui's mouth twitched. She picked up her brush like it was nothing. "Don't make me come looking for you in a broken mirror. I hate chasing reflections."
Jinx smiled and turned.
On her way down the cloister, she brushed her fingers along the cool stone of a pillar, grounding herself in something that didn't echo.
Broken mirrors. Unfinished stories. A Crimson Red who could vanish inside her own seeing and had kept a knife she'd thrown at him.
Whatever was coiling under Lotus stone, whatever waited in the streets below, one thing was certain:
The Veil had found a thread in her.
And somewhere below, a man in Crimson Red now held the end of it, close enough to pull whenever he chose.