Morning came slowly.
The sun cast pale light over the clan, illuminating half-destroyed buildings and cracked ground smeared with blood-tinged snow. Snow foxes moved through the ruins, helping one another in silence.
Wuhen oversaw everything.
Ningyan stayed behind.
He sat in the middle of the bed in the chamber they were meant to share, a single black scale resting between his fingers. The one he had torn from the creature hours earlier.
He turned it over slowly, staring at it as though willing it to vanish.
But it didn't. It didn't even feel dark nor did it pulse with corruption.
It was just a scale.
Ningyan frowned, his thoughts drifting to Lan Meishan. To the silver-masked figure who had stolen the head of a clan lord.
No one had noticed yet. Not with the city in ruins and survivors to tend to.
And Ningyan didn't know if he would tell them.
