The third hand in the pendant kept turning.
Weaver didn't need to look at it to feel its weight against his sternum—an anchor that ticked like policy, an object that had decided how many times he was allowed to be wrong.
Three.
He sat at the desk and stared at the papers.
If he had three tries left, then he couldn't spend them on pleading. He couldn't spend them on clever words. The men weren't cruel. That would've been negotiable. They were efficient. They treated uncertainty like infection.
So, he would do what he'd always done in his first life when a system refused him freedom,
He would study it.
He closed his eyes.
He didn't chase memories like a man looking for comfort. He hunted them like a man looking for a weapon.
Amos.
The name wasn't his. It was a tag tied to a body the world claimed it had already deleted. But the tag still had residue. Habits. Muscle patterns. A life lived inside rules Weaver didn't understand yet.
He pushed into the ache behind his eyes and waited.
At first, nothing.
Then—fragments, flooded in.
Breath, held too long.
A tongue pressed behind teeth.
A low hum in the throat like a vow being tightened.
Hands on knees. Back straight. Spine like a channel.
A heat below the navel that wasn't warmth, wasn't digestion, wasn't emotion—an emptiness being fed.
A thin thread of sensation pulled upward through his torso.
Pain.
A sharp sting at the base of his skull.
A bitter taste like copper and pine.
Amos coughing blood into a sleeve and smiling anyway.
A way to breathe.
He forced himself to focus on that.
Not the images. Not the titles. The how.
The breath again—
In through the nose, slow.
Not chest. Not shoulders.
Down.
As if you were placing air into a basin below your ribs.
Hold it—briefly—until the body listened.
Then exhale through the mouth like you were pulling a thread tight.
The breath wasn't just air. It was a command the body obeyed.
Weaver straightened in the chair and tried it.
In.
Down.
Hold.
Exhale—thin, controlled.
For a heartbeat the air around his fingers felt… attentive again.
Like the room was waiting to see if he would succeed.
His headache sharpened.
More fragments spilled—
A diagram on paper: lines through limbs, spirals around the abdomen, a single bright point marked in the centre.
A voice—Amos's voice, tired—muttering: Without a cultivated wick, you're nothing more than meat.
Weaver opened his eyes, breath hitching.
Wick.
Something cultivated — a centre Dao gathered around.
Not dao itself. The reason dao stayed.
Weaver searched himself for it.
Not with his hands—with attention.
Something that should still be here if Amos had truly been a cultivator.
But he couldn't feel it.
No pull.
No warmth.
No tension waiting to be fed.
Just… absence.
A body that carried out decisions faster than he could fully make them but nothing behind the motion. No Dao the men could sense. No circulation. No residue. As if whatever had once lived inside this vessel had been scooped cleanly out and the space left behind polished smooth.
Weaver swallowed.
He scrambled for a solution.
Maybe it wasn't gone.
Maybe it was dormant.
Maybe it needed to be started.
He closed his eyes and did exactly what the fragments insisted he should do.
In.
Slow. Through the nose.
Down—not into the chest, not into the lungs, but below, into the hollow space Amos's memories kept circling.
Hold—just long enough for the body to listen.
Exhale—thin, controlled, like drawing a thread tight.
For a heartbeat, the air around him felt attentive.
His head pulsed sharply, as if the act itself was wrong—as if something inside him rejected the attempt on principle.
He tried again.
In.
Down.
Hold.
Exhale.
Nothing answered.
No river unfurled.
No warmth sparked.
No thread caught and climbed.
Only stillness.
A perfect, infuriating stillness—as if the body knew the ritual but had nothing left to carry it.
And then—
Footsteps.
Weaver's eyes snapped to the door.
Too soon. He needed time. More Time.
He was mid-fragment, mid-theft. His mind still half-full of Amos's half-life, his skull still ringing from the strain of pulling somebody else's cultivation manual out through bone.
The footsteps stopped outside.
Weaver rose from the chair too fast.
The room tilted for a second. Not dizziness—disorientation. Like his mind was a screen dragged between channels.
He swallowed, forcing his face into something sane.
The door opened.
The two men stepped in.
Same robes. Same fox-brown layers. Same relaxed alertness. Same bodies that moved like they'd never needed to hurry in their lives.
One shut the door behind them.
Click.
Weaver's headache flared hard enough that his vision haloed.
The fragments didn't stop.
They kept coming—fat, incoherent, overlapping.
A bowl of dark liquid trembling with light.
A candle flame bending, then going blue.
A hand carving a sigil into wood.
A laugh—Amos's laugh—thin and private.
Fourth stage. Fourth stage. Fourth stage.
Weaver blinked, jaw tight.
The taller man's eyes narrowed immediately.
"…You're shaking," he observed.
Weaver realized his hands were trembling—not with fear, but with the aftershock of memory being forced through a skull that hadn't lived it.
"I'm fine," Weaver said.
The words came out too sharp. Too late.
The other man tilted his head, smile faint. Evaluative. Like a fox deciding which part of you was softest.
And then, almost gently. "You shouldn't be here."
Weaver's mind ran the calculation.
He had tried bluff. Died.
He had tried honesty. Died.
Now he would try the only language he'd been raised in: violence performed as competence.
If he could hold them off—if he could land even one clean exchange—maybe they'd hesitate. Maybe they'd talk. Maybe he'd steal a minute.
Weaver inhaled the way the fragments demanded.
Down.
Hold.
Exhale.
He took a step forward.
The men didn't move.
They just watched him like they already knew what he was about to do.
Weaver hated that.
He moved anyway.
He crossed the space in a blur.
In his first life, he had learned to fight the way he learned everything else: without consent.
Tutors. Dojos. Private instructors with polite smiles and knives in their expectations.
His father didn't raise a son.
He raised a continuation.
A symbol that could not be helpless.
Weaver's fist snapped toward the smiling man's throat.
Too fast. Too clean.
For a heartbeat, he felt satisfaction—
Then the smiling man shifted half an inch.
Not a dodge. A casual correction.
Weaver's knuckles passed through empty air.
A hand touched Weaver's wrist.
Not grabbed.
Touched—like checking temperature.
And suddenly Weaver was turning.
His own momentum used against him with effortless precision.
He spun, planted, kicked—
The taller man was already there.
Weaver's kick met a forearm that didn't yield.
Impact travelled up his shin and into his knee like a warning.
His body moved again—elbow, knee, palm strike—
The men kept up.
No.
They weren't "keeping up."
They were letting him perform.
Weaver's heartbeat stayed infuriatingly steady.
His lungs didn't burn.
His muscles didn't fatigue.
But his mind—
His mind couldn't find the threat.
Every time one of them moved, it felt wrong in a way he couldn't name.
Not invisible.
Not fast.
Just… familiar.
Like someone stepping close to adjust your collar.
Like a friend reaching out to steady you before you fall.
His body reacted late.
Weaver's palm strike should've cracked the taller man's jaw.
Instead, it landed on a shoulder that had already rotated away.
And Weaver's ribs lit up.
A clean, precise hit—two knuckles or two fingers, it didn't matter—pressed into a point beneath his sternum and shut his breath off for half a second.
He staggered.
The smiling man spoke as if they were discussing tea.
"See?" he murmured. "Mad."
Weaver growled and surged again.
He refused to be measured like this.
He feinted left, then drove right, aiming for the throat again, then the eyes—anything to force a real reaction.
He landed nothing.
Every attack slid past them like the room itself was cushioning their edges.
Weaver caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror—silver eyes, starburst irises, a face too clean—
A god's face.
A god who couldn't even make two men flinch.
Anger came, sharp and childish.
He moved faster.
So fast his robe snapped behind him.
He threw a sequence he'd drilled a thousand times—jab, elbow, knee, heel—
The taller man stepped inside it like stepping inside a story he'd already read.
A hand on Weaver's chest.
A shove.
Weaver flew.
Not stumbled.
Flew.
His back hit stone hard enough to make the wall complain.
The impact should've broken something.
His body absorbed it like information.
Still, air left his lungs in a harsh, involuntary sound.
He pushed off the wall immediately, furious, and charged again—
The smiling man's foot rose.
A kick.
Weaver saw it.
And yet his mind still didn't scream danger.
It just registered motion—familiar motion—like someone he knew was approaching.
The kick folded into his stomach.
His body caved around it.
Then he was airborne.
Up.
His spine hit the ceiling hard enough to rattle the lanternlight.
For a heartbeat, he saw the room upside down—desk below, papers like fallen feathers, the sword-shaped stand near the desk like an accusation—
Then he crashed down.
Stone.
Silence.
Weaver lay on his side, breath scraping, vision swimming.
The men walked toward him without hurry.
Weaver tried to push himself up.
His arms obeyed.
His body wanted to continue.
But he knew he was being overpowered.
Not because he was weak.
Because whatever they were doing, his mind couldn't read it as hostile in time.
He turned his head toward the desk.
The weapon.
The sword.
If he could reach it—
He wouldn't.
Not in time.
His robe shifted, and his hand went to his thigh without instruction.
A pocket he hadn't checked.
Something solid pressed into his palm as he reached inside.
A coin.
Worn smooth. Kept close.
Cold when it touched his skin.
The swan-stamp on the coin was worn, but unmistakable.
Weaver stared at it for half a second, unsure whether it was important—or a reminder that this body had a history he didn't own.
He dismissed the thought and moved.
He sprang toward the desk anyway, because hope was a reflex.
The men met him halfway.
The taller man's knee rose.
Weaver twisted—
Too late.
The knee caught his ribs.
He folded again and slammed into the desk leg, knocking papers loose.
Ink, diagrams,
The room became a storm of evidence.
Weaver hit the floor and lay there, chest heaving, coin clenched in his fist like a useless promise.
The men stopped over him.
The smiling one crouched.
His expression was calm, almost curious.
Weaver swallowed blood—or the taste of it, imagined and real at once.
He forced his voice steady.
He attempted to verify circulation—not by sensation, but by consequence.
His body had moved at speeds no untrained flesh should allow.
"That alone made the question plausible."
A simple question.
A question that cost them nothing.
"If I'm… circulating Dao," Weaver rasped, "would you tell me?"
The men didn't answer.
Not immediately.
They just stared at him.
The pause was small, but it had weight—caution tightening like a mask.
Weaver lifted his head a fraction.
"I won't fight," he said. "If you answer."
The taller man's eyes narrowed.
The smiling man laughed quietly.
"Look at him," he said to the other, amused. "He bargains like a merchant while bleeding."
Weaver's jaw clenched.
The smiling man leaned closer, as if speaking to a child.
"Your body is going through the motions," he said. "The breathing. The posture. The imitation."
Weaver's breath caught.
Hope—brief, stupid—
"But there's no wick," the man continued, voice almost amused. "Nothing to carry it."
Weaver went very still.
No wick.
The word lodged and refused to move.
That wasn't possible.
Amos had been a cultivator. Weaver had felt it in the fragments, in the way the room had once been used, in the confidence of the diagrams on the desk.
He searched himself again—not hurriedly this time, but carefully, like a man checking for a pulse he already feared was gone. He followed the breath. Followed the empty attentiveness of the air. Followed the place where something should have answered.
Nothing.
No resistance.
No channel.
No inward shape to push against.
The man hadn't said the wick was damaged.
He'd said there was nothing.
Weaver's mind reached for alternatives.
Suppressed?
Hidden?
Severed?
But suppression left scars. Severance left pain. Even a broken wick left residue—something twisted, something wrong.
This was cleaner than that.
This was absence.
"But Amos—" Weaver started, then stopped himself.
The name tasted false now.
Amos had reached the fourth stage. Amos had cultivated a wick. Amos had built something inside himself that allowed Dao to move, to return, to deepen.
Weaver felt his breath slow.
The men were watching him with interest now, not threat. The way you watched someone work through a puzzle you already knew the answer to.
He didn't look at them.
He looked inward.
At the body.
At the perfection of it.
At how complete it felt—and how hollow.
The thought came carefully, almost politely, as if it didn't want to startle him.
What if the wick isn't part of the body?
He swallowed.
What if it was never flesh at all?
The diagrams on the desk flickered in his memory—half-seen symbols, spirals that weren't organs, pathways that didn't align with veins or nerves. Notes about stability. About self. About anchor.
Dao didn't circulate through the body.
It circulated around something.
Something cultivated.
Something shaped.
Something that had to exist before movement was possible.
The realization didn't stab him.
It slid.
Dao wasn't something you wore like muscle.
It wasn't something grafted onto bone.
It was something grown into the soul.
And Weaver—
Weaver wasn't Amos.
He was a foreign presence occupying a finished shell. A body shaped to hold power that no longer belonged to the thing inside it.
Which meant—
No wick.
No circulation.
No stage.
The body could move. It could fight. It could perform the motions of cultivation the way it performed martial forms.
But there was nothing inside to carry Dao home.
He hadn't lost progress.
He'd never had it.
Weaver let out a quiet breath that sounded almost like a laugh.
"So that's it," he murmured, more to himself than to them.
The taller man straightened, the moment of curiosity ending. Decision settled over him like a cloak.
"Question answered," he said.
Weaver's fingers closed slowly around the coin in his palm, metal biting into skin.
He looked up at them then.
His eyes were bright—not with fear, not with pleading, but with something sharp and newly aligned.
Understanding.
As darkness came in, so did a cold certainty that this death, at least, had been worth it.
Click.