The desk didn't care that they'd been outside.
It didn't care about mud. Or cold. Or the way the beast had gone down clean and quiet.
It cared about the box.
Ren Jiao set the wrapped spirit-seal box on the counter, not in the clerk's hand. Wax impressions still crisp. Cord knot uncut. Oilcloth tied the same way it had left the ravine.
The clerk didn't look at them first.
He looked at the latch seam, where the wax bridged brass to wood. He tapped it once with a fingernail. Then he nodded, bored, and broke the seal with a small blade that never hesitated.
He opened the lid.
His eyes went straight to the talisman pasted inside—cheap paper, faded ink, the kind that was supposed to be standard enough to be invisible.
He held the lid near his lamp. Not to admire it.
To judge it.
The clerk's mouth tightened. "Containment talisman is spent."
Ren Jiao didn't blink. "Issued."
The clerk's brush paused. "Still spent."
Huang Qi shifted the rope on his shoulder. Not aggressive. Just present.
Bo Wen's net pole thudded once against the floor, a soft reminder that they were not a clerk's mood.
Li Shen kept his face empty. His hand stayed near his sleeve where the credit slip would eventually live.
Ren Jiao's voice didn't rise. "Write it as issued."
The clerk's eyes flicked up, annoyed at having to create a fact. Then he lowered them again and wrote.
He stamped two small marks on the intake line—one for the core, one for the container. A separate stamp went down beside it, thin ink like a bruise.
ISSUED CONTAINMENT — LOW HOLD
"Clarity dropped in transit," the clerk said, as if it were weather. "Points adjust."
Ren Jiao leaned in a fraction, close enough to be heard without being seen. "If it's issued, it's not 'transit.' It's your supply chain."
The clerk's jaw tightened. He hated when the words lined up.
He didn't argue. He didn't apologize. He slid the credit slip forward with a number that was clean enough to pay, dirty enough to sting.
Ren Jiao took it without looking like he cared.
He looked like he expected it.
"Next," the clerk called.
They stepped away.
Outside the line, the wind felt colder, not because the air had changed—because a simple truth had been confirmed:
You could do everything right and still get taxed by whatever they issued you.
—
Bai Ren was leaning against a brace stack like it was his job to be there. Mud up his shins. A plank balanced on one shoulder. Grin on his face like a mask he wore for work.
He saw them and lit up loudly. "Well? Did you bring me a trophy? Or just more paperwork trauma?"
Bo Wen let out a short laugh, surprised by it. Huang Qi's mouth twitched.
Ren Jiao didn't slow. "We're clean."
Bai Ren matched pace for two steps, grin still bright, voice dropping into the narrow lane where it became useful.
"They hit you at intake?" he murmured.
Ren Jiao didn't answer. That was answer enough.
Li Shen slid the credit slip deeper into his sleeve. "Issued box," he said, low.
Bai Ren's grin didn't move, but his eyes sharpened. "They're doing that."
Li Shen didn't ask how Bai Ren knew. Bai Ren always knew. It was his job to hear what men said when they thought it didn't matter.
Bai Ren kept his voice casual, like he was talking about nails and rot. "I saw three teams come back yesterday. Two got fresh talismans. One got a lid with ink so pale you could breathe through it."
Ren Jiao's jaw worked once. "Filter," he said. Not a question.
Bai Ren shrugged with one shoulder. "Same as everything. If they can't stop you with rules, they stop you with supplies."
Li Shen didn't respond with anger. Anger was expensive.
He stored it as process.
If the box could be used to shave value without breaking wax, then the fight wasn't on the seal.
It was before the seal existed.
Ren Jiao glanced at Li Shen once, quick. "Tomorrow," he said.
Li Shen understood the unspoken part: If you want to use your seven days, you don't wait for them to fix their supply chain.
"I'll be there," Li Shen said.
Bai Ren brightened again, loud, for the watchers. "Tomorrow! Look at you—already addicted to oxygen."
Li Shen walked on, letting Bai Ren's noise cover the fact that Ren Jiao had just made him a moving schedule.
—
Back in the dorm, Li Shen sat on his plank and peeled his boots off slowly. Mud clung like it didn't believe in leaving.
His forearms had that tightness again—the early edge of tremor that didn't show yet, but promised it would if he pretended he was fine.
Bai Ren dropped the plank he'd been carrying and started scraping mud off his own boots with the blunt end of a tool, humming a tune that wasn't a tune—just sound that made the room feel less like a holding pen.
"You're going to go again tomorrow," Bai Ren said, not asking.
Li Shen didn't answer at first. He flexed his fingers once under his sleeve. No visible shake. The debt was still contained.
"Yes," he said.
Bai Ren nodded as if confirming a brace angle. "Then eat. Then sleep. If you don't, the outside won't kill you—the inside will file you."
Li Shen's mouth moved like it might become a smile, then didn't. "Late window."
Bai Ren made a face so exaggerated it was safe. "Of course it is."
He stood and went to the corner where his stash lived—nothing illegal, nothing dramatic. Just scrounged things that made a body last longer. He came back with a small pouch and tossed it lightly onto Li Shen's plank.
Dried grain cakes. A pinch of salt. Something hard and plain.
"Eat," Bai Ren said. "Not because you're weak. Because you're not stupid."
Li Shen ate.
It wasn't satisfying. It was fuel.
When he finished, he finally pulled his ledger out—not to narrate the day, not to bleed onto paper, just to pin one fact down so it couldn't be rewritten by someone else.
Dorm plank — rotation return
Fact: core intake clean; wax intact; issued containment talisman spent → points adjusted.
Cost: forearms tight; tremor edge held back.
Action: before next gate, check issued box talisman under desk light; if faded → demand replacement before field seal.
He closed the ledger.
Bai Ren watched him do it, then looked away like it was normal, because making it normal was part of keeping Li Shen alive.
"You're learning," Bai Ren said, lightly.
Li Shen didn't take the bait. "I'm adapting."
Bai Ren grinned. "That too."
—
The forge bell pulled him back before his body had finished being outside.
Heat returned. Smoke returned. Metal returned.
The station post still had slips clipped like tools.
Wu Kai appeared again, shoulders tense in the way of a man who knew tomorrow existed and was afraid of it.
Li Shen didn't give him comfort. He gave him the only safe thing: routine.
"Same rules," Li Shen said.
Wu Kai nodded too fast. "Hands off racks unless you say. If I touch anything—"
"I know," Li Shen cut in, not unkind. Just efficient. "Keep it clean."
They worked.
Heat. Shape. Check. Dip. Lift. Cool.
Late window again. Of course.
Li Shen kept Iron Grip in short pulses, because long holds weren't control—they were panic disguised as strength. His forearms burned. He refused to let the burn become show.
Smoke-Sealing came in brief, clean cycles when the throat threatened to roughen into something audible.
The dryness stayed behind his teeth.
Rude.
Quiet.
Enough.
Near the end of the shift, the quench runner called out, casual as a knife: "Oil count near one hundred."
Li Shen's eyes flicked to the scratch marks on the stone base.
Ninety-eight.
He didn't announce it. He didn't dramatize it.
He simply stopped at ninety-nine and looked toward the forehand lane.
He didn't have to shout to make a rule real.
He just had to refuse to cross the line alone.
—
When the bell finally released them, Li Shen walked back to the dorm with heat in his bones and cold in his lungs, carrying two truths that didn't match but both mattered:
Outside paid more.
Inside could shave it down without ever touching the wax.
Tomorrow, at dawn, he would sign in again.
But this time he would not accept whatever box they handed him as if "issued" meant "fit."
If they wanted to tax him, they would have to do it in front of a light.
With a name on the line.