Dawn came again, thin and damp.
The yard had no clean edges now. Mud softened every footprint into a smear. Water ran off rooflines in steady drips that made time audible.
Bai Ren woke Li Shen the same way as yesterday—two taps on the plank beside his head.
"Dawn," Bai Ren whispered.
Li Shen sat up. His throat was rude but quiet. His forearms carried the leftover tightness from the late window, a debt contained but not forgiven.
Bai Ren's grin stayed off his face until Li Shen stood. Then it snapped back on, bright enough to be harmless.
"Second day of oxygen," Bai Ren announced to the dorm like it was a festival. "Don't get attached."
Li Shen checked his belt. Hatchet. Tool weight. Not comfort.
He didn't open his ledger.
The desk was the battlefield this morning. Paper could wait. Light couldn't.
—
The Beast Yard Desk line was longer than it needed to be, because half the men there were not waiting for service—they were waiting to be seen.
The board behind the slats was still stripped to its bones. It didn't explain. It pointed.
STAGE-ONE ROTATION — RAVINE CUTS
SIGN-IN: dawn
NOTE: See Desk
Ren Jiao stood ahead of Li Shen, still and unhurried, like time belonged to him and not the other way around. Huang Qi kept the rope coil high on his shoulder, away from wet ground. Bo Wen shifted his net pole once and then went still, eyes scanning without acting like he was scanning.
Li Shen held the eligible strip inside his sleeve, dry against his wrist.
A clerk called names without looking up.
When their turn came, Ren Jiao slid their assignment slip under the slats. Li Shen followed with the eligible strip—stamped yesterday, still warm with fresh authority.
The clerk stamped the strip again, then stamped a thin daily marker onto the assignment.
"Gate in five," the clerk said, bored.
Ren Jiao didn't move yet. "Issued box."
The clerk's mouth tightened as if the request itself was insolent. He reached under the counter and produced a spirit-seal box from a bin—small lacquered wood, brass latch, a talisman pasted inside the lid.
He pushed it forward.
Ren Jiao didn't take it.
Li Shen did. He didn't open it in the line. He didn't make a show. He just held it for a beat, feeling the weight of it and the way the lacquer felt slightly tacky under his thumb.
Too much damp.
He stepped half a pace sideways, toward the desk lamp set behind the slats.
"Light," Li Shen said.
The clerk finally looked up, annoyed. "What."
"Light," Li Shen repeated, calm.
The clerk's eyes narrowed. "It's issued."
Li Shen didn't argue the word. He placed the box under the lamp's spill, tipped the lid open just enough to see without touching the talisman, and let the ink tell the truth.
The talisman was pale.
Not just faded. Washed.
A corner had lifted slightly where moisture had softened the paste. The fibers looked swollen, as if the paper had breathed too much of the wrong air.
Containment that looked intact but wouldn't hold.
A clean way to shave value without breaking wax.
Li Shen closed the lid gently and slid the box back toward the clerk.
"Replace it," Li Shen said.
The clerk stared at him. "It closes."
Ren Jiao's voice came in, low and flat. "Containment is spent."
The clerk's jaw worked. "It'll do."
Li Shen didn't raise his voice. He didn't threaten. He simply stood there with the box resting on the counter and the lamp still burning over the open slit.
"It won't," Li Shen said.
The line behind them shifted. A couple of men leaned in with their eyes, pretending not to.
The clerk sensed it and hardened. "You want premium gear? Earn it."
Ren Jiao didn't blink. "We want functional gear. Issued."
The clerk opened his mouth.
Li Shen cut the argument off by changing the frame.
"Write it as issued defect," Li Shen said, and tapped the lamp wood once with a knuckle—not loud, just a punctuation mark. "Or replace it."
The clerk stared at the talisman again, and for the first time his annoyance lost a fraction of confidence. Under the lamp, the pale ink was undeniable. If he wrote "defect," it became a fact in the wrong direction.
He didn't want that.
He reached under the counter, slower now, and pulled a second box from a deeper bin.
He shoved it forward.
Li Shen didn't accept it blind. He checked it the same way, under the lamp.
This talisman lay flat. Ink dark enough to mean something. Paste set clean. No lifted corners.
Li Shen closed the lid and snapped the latch.
He slid it to Ren Jiao without comment.
Ren Jiao took it and tucked it into his wrap, as if nothing had happened.
The clerk stamped the assignment again, hard. "Gate," he said, like a dismissal.
Ren Jiao's eyes didn't move. "Name," he said.
The clerk frowned. "What."
"The issued bin," Ren Jiao said. "Who signed it out."
The clerk's nostrils flared. He hated having his supply chain turned into a person.
He leaned sideways, plucked a tiny chit from a stack, and slapped it down with a name scrawled in fast ink.
Not a confession. A shield. A way to say not me.
Ren Jiao took the chit without looking at it too long. He folded it and slipped it away.
Li Shen didn't smile.
A name didn't fix the talisman. It fixed the direction of blame when someone tried to turn the story.
They moved out of the line before it could become theater.
—
Issued gear waited at the side table again. Rope. Net. Wax puck. Oilcloth strips. Cord.
And the spirit-seal box—now the good one—kept close to Ren Jiao's body, not because it was precious, but because damp was a quiet enemy.
A runner hovered near the gate posts, too clean again, eyes too awake.
"Going out twice in the same window?" the runner asked casually.
Ren Jiao didn't answer.
Li Shen didn't answer either. The outside didn't need to know their schedule.
Huang Qi adjusted the rope coil on his shoulder and looked past the runner like the man wasn't there.
Bo Wen muttered, "He's everywhere."
Ren Jiao said, "He's employed."
They stepped through the choke between posts.
Cold air hit Li Shen's lungs, wet enough to sting. The ravine cuts opened ahead—mud, brush, stone, the smell of old blood warmed by thaw.
Real air.
And the cost that always followed it.
—
They didn't go far before Ren Jiao stopped and lifted a hand.
Not because he'd seen something.
Because he'd heard it.
A scrape of stone, faint. The sound of weight shifting where weight shouldn't be.
Huang Qi froze with the rope ready. Bo Wen set his net pole, grip tight.
Li Shen's hand settled near the hatchet handle.
Tool.
Not hero.
Ren Jiao waited until the sound repeated—one more scrape, closer now—and then he angled them off the path, away from the obvious approach. Not chasing. Holding line.
They moved with the kind of quiet that came from practice, not stealth tricks.
Li Shen watched the ground, looking for the arithmetic that told him what was moving and how heavy it was. Tracks were messy in thaw. That didn't make them useless. It made them honest.
Ren Jiao glanced back once, quick.
"Same," he said.
Li Shen nodded.
Same rules.
Hold line. Don't chase.
And now, another one—silent, already paid for at the desk:
Don't seal a core inside a box that's already leaking.
—
They found nothing in the next ten minutes.
No staged beast. No easy kill. No gift.
Only the ravine breathing wet air and the quiet reminder that going out wasn't a scene. It was a habit.
Ren Jiao turned them back before the habit could become hunger.
"We're not spending the whole day on one rumor," he said.
Huang Qi exhaled, relieved without admitting it.
Bo Wen muttered, "Smart."
Li Shen didn't speak.
Smart wasn't a feeling. It was a sequence.
—
Back inside the walls, the forge bell was already counting down his afternoon.
Late window didn't care that he'd been outside.
Wu Kai appeared at Line Three with the same careful shoulders, the same fear of becoming a sentence in someone else's box.
Li Shen didn't give him comfort. He gave him structure.
"Same rules," Li Shen said.
Wu Kai nodded too fast. "Hands off racks unless you say—"
"I know," Li Shen cut in, not unkind. "Keep it clean."
Heat. Shape. Check. Dip. Lift. Cool.
Near the end of the shift, Li Shen's forearms tightened again, the tremor edge pressing close.
He refused to let it surface.
Short pulses. Clean releases. No greed.
Smoke-Sealing came in brief cycles to keep the throat quiet. The dryness stayed rude, but it didn't become sound.
He made it to the bell without giving the room anything to file.
When the shift ended, he walked back toward the dorm with two facts locked in place:
The window was real.
And the desk would try to charge him for it in ways that didn't look like theft—unless he put it under a lamp first.