The three pale lights hovered beyond the village gate.
They did not flicker. They watched.
The ward strip over the gate shivered. Once. Twice. A third time.
The square broke.
"Inside!" Aunt shouted, pulling a child off the lane.
"Clear the square!" Instructor Mei's voice cut clean. "North stalls—down! Keep the center open!"
Vendors grabbed baskets. Benches scraped. Doors slammed. The fishmonger dropped his knife; it stuck point-first in the dirt.
"Pairs!" Instructor Shen said. Calm. Cold. "Hai, Da Ren—east lane! Han Feng, Mei Ling—old well! Lin Yue, Jian Zhi—stock pens! Move!"
Lin Yue and Jian Zhi ran. Goats skittered. Rope flew. Jian Zhi looped two necks in one throw. Lin Yue slammed bars and tied ugly, tight knots.
The three lights swelled. Not closer. Larger. The air rang like a struck bowl.
Shen walked forward alone.
He stepped over the threshold. His sleeve brushed the air. Four strokes—Hold, Bind, Turn, Listen—made without paper.
A ripple moved. Dust parted.
"Gate clear!" Mei called. "South lane—go!"
The first light pulsed. Something inside it turned—long, jointed, wrong. The ward strip on the beam flared faint blue and dimmed.
Shen planted his spear.
Black shaft. Silver script running the grain. The point drew a short arc and stopped.
The light lunged.
No roar. No wind. Just speed.
Shen shifted one foot and struck once. The blow landed with a flat sound, like wood knocked straight. The light jerked back, edges tearing like wet silk. A thin howl bled into the dust.
"Pens shut!" Jian Zhi called.
"Shut!" Lin Yue answered. They turned. They looked.
The second light slid along the gate stones, hunting for a gap. Shen's left hand flicked. A talisman flashed to his palm. He slapped it in the air. The ink burned white. The light hit it and stopped, held as if by glass.
The third light drifted high. It spread thin, trying to slip over the beam.
"Ladder!" Han Feng shouted, already dragging one from the schoolhouse wall.
"Forget it!" Mei snapped. She cut a fresh strip on her knee, paste jar between her teeth, and pinned the beam with Listen. The strip settled. The third light recoiled.
"Back!" Shen said to no one and everyone.
He drove the spear butt into earth. Blue lines ran out like water. The lights resisted. The ground hummed. A bowl on the stall rattled across a plank and fell.
Lin Yue and Jian Zhi grabbed an elder each and hustled them to the hall. The elder's sandals scraped. "I can walk," he complained.
"Later," Jian Zhi said, and did not slow.
The first light struck again. Hard. Fast. Shen took it on the haft, twisted, and cut. The point bit. The light thinned, shrieked, and threw out a spray like rain—cold, sharp. The splash hit a ward post to the right and smoked, leaving a scorched crescent.
"Mei Ling!" Mei snapped, already there. "New strip! Now!"
Mei Ling pasted with shaking hands, breath tight. The fresh paper took. The smoke eased.
"Out!" Aunt herded three more, ladle raised like a cudgel. "You—stop staring—move!"
At the gate, the second light went low like a snake, then split—one pale strand left, one right. Shen flicked his wrist. The spear dragged a short circle. The strands hit the edge and rebounded, snapping like ropes pulled too hard.
The third light tested the beam again. It thinned, probing. Shen's free hand traced a small square. The air thickened. The light faltered.
"Old well clear!" Han Feng called.
"North stalls down!" Hai shouted.
"Back to the hall!" Mei ordered. "Everyone out of the center!"
They ran past the fight, heads down. Still, they saw.
Shen pressed the fight one step beyond the gate. Two steps. He was not elegant. He was exact. Every strike landed flat. Every block carried just enough force, no more.
The first light failed. It tore down the middle, then down again, then vanished all at once, as if pulled through a slit.
The second spat black grit. The grit hit the ground and crawled like dead bees. Shen's spear tip touched three points in the dirt—tap, tap, tap—and the grit slowed, cooled, and lay still.
The third rose higher.
"Over!" Mei said, eyes on the beam. "Over!"
Shen saw it late. He shifted stance, spear still low. His left hand cut the net sign in air and threw it up. The rising light hit it—stretched—held—then bled through like oil through cloth.
"Down," Shen said, but not to the students. To the village.
The ward strip on the beam flared harsh white, then failed. The third light slipped inside the gate and fell like a curtain.
Everything green went quiet.
"Inside!" Mei shoved the last four through the hall door. "Bar it!"
Lin Yue and Jian Zhi pushed from the other side. The thick wood thumped home.
Heat kissed the hall's outer wall, then vanished. A boy screamed. Aunt swore.
"Window," Mei Ling breathed.
They looked through the thin slit between shutters.
The third light pooled in the square like fog too heavy. It flowed to the right, toward the bronze box on Shen's belt. Shen moved left, drawing it away, angling the spear to keep its edge between his body and the pool.
The pool quivered. It gathered.
It struck.
Shen didn't leap. He pivoted. The spear point wrote a straight line and stopped. The pool hit that line and folded in half like a sheet. It slopped sideways. Shen stepped through the spray, planted, and drove the point down where the pool was thickest.
The point sank. White light cracked—thin, fine, like hairline ice breaking.
The pool screamed.
The sound punched Lin Yue's chest. He swayed. Jian Zhi's hand on his sleeve steadied him without words.
Shen dragged the spear, blade deep, cutting a low arc. The pool tore. Cold air rushed out. Frost leaped across the dirt in a ribbed pattern, then died.
The pool tried to run.
Shen threw a talisman. The paper stuck to nothing—then something—and burned. The fire was blue. It held the pool in a stiff ring for one breath.
Shen took that breath. He stepped inside the ring and struck fast, three times, wrist turning a little on the last stroke. The spear bit deep each time, the sound dull and final.
The blue fire went out.
The pool sagged. Its light guttered like a lamp with no oil.
It did not die.
It fled—straight up, thin as a ribbon, through the gap where the ward strip had burned. It stretched to a line, then to nothing the eye could find.
Silence.
Only then did Lin Yue notice his own breath.
Instructor Mei cracked the hall door two fingers. "Hold," she warned the room, even though no one had moved.
Shen said, "Mei."
She went to him at once, carrying paste and paper. Her fingers trembled once, then steadied. Together they set a new strip on the beam. Hold, Bind, Turn, Listen. The fourth stroke lingered a heartbeat. The paper lay flat.
Shen did not smile. He knelt, set the spear aside, and pressed his palm to the ground where the pool had been. He tapped a short rhythm. The dirt gave a soft reply two beats later, as if something far under it had listened and turned away.
"Open," Mei told the hall.
The bar lifted. People poured into the square in a cautious spill. Bodies pressed, then fanned out, keeping a respectful ring around the mark.
"What was it?" Han Feng asked, voice too loud.
"Not now," Mei said.
Aunt planted herself between Shen and the nearest fool. "He needs air. You need sense. Back."
Jian Zhi and Lin Yue joined the line. No one pushed past Aunt's ladle.
Shen rose. He wiped the spear clean in three strokes, each exact. The silver script flickered once like breath, then went dim.
"Ward teams," he said. "North and east lanes—new strips, all posts. Gate beams—double paper. House lintels—check for singe. If you find heat, you shout."
"Yes," Mei said. Her voice already moved people. "Hai—north. Han Feng—east. Mei Ling—lintels. Go."
"What about the pool?" Da Ren asked, staring at the frost pattern still ghosting the dirt.
Shen glanced at it. "It will fade."
"What if it comes back?" the fishmonger said. The knife he'd dropped lay by his foot like a thought he didn't want to pick up.
"It will," Shen said. "Or its kin will." He looked to the ridge, then to the road. "We set for it."
He turned toward the gate.
"Teacher," Jian Zhi said, sudden. "You're bleeding."
A thin line of red ran under Shen's sleeve cuff. He looked at it once, then wrapped it with a strip from his belt, quick and neat. "Shallow," he said. "Continue."
Mei's eyes narrowed, but she didn't argue in front of the square. "You—" she pointed at Lin Yue and Jian Zhi— "with me. Count strips. Paste until your arms ache."
"Yes," Lin Yue said.
They moved. Work filled the hole the fight had left.
Lin Yue climbed a stool, pressed paper to lintel wood, felt the small hum when a strip settled right. Jian Zhi handed paste, cut clean edges, took old paper down with a flat blade so the wood wouldn't splinter. Their rhythm set fast, then smoother.
"Three on the beam?" Jian Zhi asked at the next gate.
"Two," Lin Yue said, checking the heat with the back of his hand. "It's cool."
"Good," Jian Zhi said.
Down the lane, the ward hall bell clicked once. Someone shouted, "Singe!" and two runners took a bucket at a sprint.
The square thinned. People went back to their doors. The goat pens were loud. Aunt swore at the sky in a whisper like a prayer.
Shen stood alone at the gate for a long breath, looking at the road. He did not move. He did not lean on the spear.
Mei returned to him. They spoke too low to hear. She handed him the bronze box. He lifted the lid a finger. The vanes inside spun, slowed, held. He closed it, thoughtful in the way only his shoulders showed.
"Teacher," Mei said, slightly louder. "That last one—"
"Not beast," Shen said. "Not array." He looked at the frost track, then at the beam. "Old. Borrowed."
From the ridge, a small sound came like a cork pulled from a deep jar. The paper on the beam did not move. It lay obedient and blank.
Shen exhaled. "We bar the gate tonight."
"You think it can pass a beam?" Mei asked.
"I think it already did," Shen said.
Mei nodded once. "Then we hang chain."
They started to walk. He swayed a fraction. She caught his sleeve and let go as if nothing had happened.
Lin Yue watched their backs. Jian Zhi nudged his shoulder. "Next lintel," he said.
They set another strip. The paper settled. The hum was clean.
At dusk the sky went the color of cooled iron. The ridge kept its shape. No lights. No wind. Torches burned dull. The bar went across the gate. Chains followed.
Shen stood last on the inside. He tapped the beam once with the butt of the spear. "Hold," he said to the wood, and the wood seemed to believe him.
A horn sounded from far down the road. Once. Then again. Short. Warning.
No one moved for a count of three.
Then the ward strip over the gate quivered twice and lay still.
"Positions," Mei said. "Lanterns down. Eyes open."
"Inside," Aunt told the last stragglers. "Now."
Lin Yue and Jian Zhi took the shadow of the willow, faces turned to the gate. The square breathed with them, slow and thin.
Beyond the beam, something walked. Not fast. Not slow. The dust rose in three neat spirals and lay flat.
The lights did not show.
Not yet.