Yi Ner spoke with a shocked tone, her hand still frozen halfway toward the comb she'd set down moments earlier. "Young master, how did you know my name...?"
She wore a flowing white robe with a large U-shaped loop that descended from her shoulders toward her waist, the fabric catching faint traces of morning light through the room's high window. Strands of beads adorned the robe, alternating between deep-red sections and metallic golden pieces, clicking softly against one another with each small movement she made.
Below her waist, she wore a dark-black wrapped lower garment that fell loosely around her legs, pooling slightly where she knelt.
"Forget it," he said. Shree Yan didn't want to talk about it, his gaze drifting briefly toward the window rather than meeting hers. She watched him, suspicious, some small, wary part of her mind cataloguing the moment away for later.
Shree Yan raised his hand and gently placed it on Yi Ner's head. He patted her hair, the motion unhurried, almost absent. "Don't worry so much about me. I'm fine now."
A faint smile touched his face, gone again almost before it had fully settled.
"Young master, the elders are waiting for you," Yi Ner said.
Shree Yan pulled his hand back. "Who?"
"Young master, please come down to the guest room. Two elders have come to see you. They didn't give their names, but they looked like powerful elders." Yi Ner stood, her robes settling smoothly back into place, and bowed before leaving the room, her footsteps fading quickly down the hallway.
A sharp pressure bloomed behind Shree Yan's eyes without warning.
"Aaaaargh!"
"This pain from past memories," he muttered, jaw clenching hard enough that his teeth ached.
***
Guest room.
Everything in the room spoke of quiet luxury: ancient paintings in frames dark with age, a table polished to a deep, warm shine, glass catching light from the tall windows, and wooden chairs upholstered in sheepdog skin and wool, soft enough that even the sternest visitor tended to sink slightly upon sitting.
"Hey, servant, why hasn't your young master come down yet?" Hu Meng wore an impatient expression, drumming his fingers once against the arm of his chair, clearly tired of waiting.
"Elder, please be patient. The young master only woke from his coma about a week ago," Yi Ner replied politely, bowing slightly as she spoke.
"Brother Hu Meng, control yourself. He only woke up a week ago," He Meng said. "And remember, he's the prodigy our clan has been searching for over a hundred years to find." A firm glance was enough to silence his brother.
Hu Meng reined in his irritation, though his fingers kept up their quiet, restless tapping.
Tak, tak, tak.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs, unhurried but deliberate, echoing through the guest room.
Shree Yan arrived. He greeted the elders with hands clasped together and asked, "Elders, I'm surprised to see you in my house. How can I help you? Is there something you need from me?"
"Haha, young master Shree Yan, congratulations. I watched your awakening test last week. I was amazed by your talent, and no, there's nothing I need from you." He Meng's face lit up, and he leaned forward slightly in his seat.
"I'm honored that two respected elders would come personally to congratulate me," Shree Yan replied, inclining his head with a polite smile.
"Ah, well, I came to bring you our academy's invitation card. I meant to give it to you at the awakening test, but you collapsed before I had the chance." He Meng held the card out with both hands, his expression turning serious. "If you're interested, join our academy. Don't forget, it's the finest academy in the entire clan."
Shree Yan nodded, his mind already working through the possibilities. If I go to his academy, I can grow stronger, and even if I run into an advisor…
I'll lose. Even a trap wouldn't help against him. So I need to find the spy before they make their move against me, or figure out who among the people close to me is already positioned to betray me.
For now, the academy makes sense. It gives me room to plan, and to keep an eye on Niang Ming. That will do for now.
After turning it over fully in his mind, Shree Yan accepted the invitation card with a measured, appreciative bow.
He Meng smiled. "You've made a good decision. You won't regret it."
With that, he asked permission to leave, rising along with Hu Meng in a rustle of formal robes. Shree Yan granted it and walked them politely to the door, the sound of their footsteps fading down the hall.
I still need to find a saangee worm, he thought, then turned to Yi Ner. "We're going out, to the market. I want to buy a worm."
She nodded slowly, and together they stepped out into a morning grown warmer now, the earlier chill burned away by a sun climbing steadily higher.
Saangee worms were rare creatures, shaped something like snails, but without a shell to protect them. They moved slowly, had no fighting ability, and couldn't attack anything at all.
For humans, though, they were prized for one thing: night vision. Once fused into a person's eyes, a saangee worm worked like a small torch, glowing faintly green in the dark.
Guardians rarely bothered hunting them. For ordinary mortals, though, the worm was invaluable, letting them see in the dark to farm and work and keep their families fed. They weren't difficult to refine, either; an ordinary human could bond with one using nothing more than their own blood. The difficulty was finding one at all. In the open market, the odds of finding a saangee worm were barely one in a thousand.
But in this life, Shree Yan didn't need to worry about that. In his previous life, he'd heard of a lucky man who'd found one, and he still remembered the exact market, the exact shop. Centuries of memory, carried forward into this new life, gave him an advantage no one else in this world could match.
Shree Yan understood exactly how to use that advantage.
In the Rana world, those who awakened were called Guardians of the mortals. In practice, that title meant little. It was a mask, worn over something far more brutal underneath. Telling the righteous from the demonic was nearly impossible from the outside.
They could betray you at any moment, without warning. Every bond a person formed, family, friends, the people they loved, carried that same risk: betrayal, sudden and unexplained, arriving exactly when trust had made a person stop watching for it.
Shree Yan and Yi Ner stepped into the market, and the noise of it rose around them almost at once: vendors calling out prices over stacked baskets of fruit, the sharp tang of drying spices carried on the breeze, shopkeepers' voices drifting toward the road. People moved through it the way ordinary people always did, buying, bartering, a small group of children chasing a rolling wooden hoop between two stalls.
A moment later, Yi Ner stopped walking, her sandals scuffing to a halt against the packed dirt, and turned to him. "Young master, what are you going to do, going forward? What path have you chosen?"
She was the only person who had ever asked him that question, in this life or the one before it. No one else had ever dared.
But she had.
A faint smile crossed Shree Yan's face. "Why do you ask me that?" He laughed, the sound short and genuinely surprised.
Yi Ner tilted her head, confused. "Young master, did I say something strange?"
That only made him laugh again. He leaned in close, close enough that his breath stirred a loose strand of her hair, his expression turning serious. "You asked me something no one else dares to ask. I don't tell people what my next move is going to be." Then, just as quickly, his smile returned, and he stepped back to his previous distance as though nothing had happened at all.
Yi Ner felt her cheeks warm with embarrassment. "Forget I asked, young master. This stupid maid is only bothering you."
They arrived, finally, at their destination: Lawati Shop, its wooden sign swinging faintly in the breeze, the very place where the lucky man from Shree Yan's past life had once found his saangee worm.