The stone gave him something new three days later.
Not much. But something.
He'd been sitting with it every morning the same way, awareness narrowed down to just that one small shape on the table, patient in the way that didn't come naturally to him but that he'd gotten better at out of sheer necessity.
And on the third day, instead of just feeling the outermost layer of it, that slow dense tendency he'd found the first time, he felt something beneath it. Fainter. More specific. Like a note held so quietly it was almost below hearing, but once you caught it you couldn't unfind it.
He sat with it for the rest of the session without saying anything.
Afterward, Dian looked at him in that particular way he had, the one that meant he'd noticed something but was waiting to see if Xuan would bring it up first.
Xuan brought it up first. "There's something underneath the first layer."
"Yes."
"How many layers are there."
