Chapter 2: Something in the Wind

  The rains came two days early.

  The sky bruised dark by noon, and by dusk the heavens cracked open. The vilge roofs thudded under the weight of it. For once, even the chickens kept silent.

  Shen Liang sat beneath the eaves, chin resting on his knees, watching the water carve paths through the dirt like veins. The air was rich with wet earth and distant thunder. His grandmother was inside, asleep or pretending to be.

  He didn’t mind the silence. But tely, it had begun to feel like it was listening to him.

  *****

  That evening, he went to deliver dried herbs to Old Qi, the vilge apothecary. The path was slick with mud, but his feet knew the route. He didn't need a mp.

  Old Qi’s door opened before he could knock. The old man looked... distracted.

  “You’re early,” he said, blinking twice.

  “It’s ter than usual,” Shen Liang replied. “The rain makes it feel slower.”

  Old Qi grunted and waved him in. “Everything’s slower in the rain. Except the bones. They ache faster.”

  Inside, the usual clutter greeted him: pots of dried roots, yellowed scrolls, a bamboo scale held together with string. But the scroll on the far wall was different — new, ink still fresh.

  It wasn’t a medicinal recipe.

  It was a map.

  Or something like one.

  Lines curled like rivers through a sky of stars. Marks along its edge bore the symbols of ancient sects — names Shen Liang had only heard in stories: The Fractured Sky Hall, the Nine Vein Pavilion, the Sect Without Gates.

  "You're not usually one for maps," Shen Liang said.

  Old Qi stared at it with the tired reverence of a man looking at a coffin.

  "Not for finding pces," he murmured. "But for remembering where things used to be."

  He handed Shen Liang a small paper packet. "For your grandmother’s lungs. Mix it with ginger."

  "Thank you." He hesitated. "The wind’s been strange tely."

  Old Qi looked at him then — really looked. "You hear it too?"

  A beat passed. Then two.

  “I thought it was just wind,” Shen Liang said.

  “It is. Until it isn't.”

  *****

  Later that night, he y awake, listening to the storm. His room was dim, lit only by the dull orange glow of the hearth’s st breath. He closed his eyes.

  And then opened them again.

  Something was whispering.

  Not in words. Not in sound.

  In feeling. In pressure. Like a thought that wasn’t his own, brushing the edge of his mind.

  He sat up.

  Outside, the wind had gone still.

  There was no sound at all.

  Not of rain. Not of trees. Not even the usual groan of the old house settling.

  He stepped outside barefoot. The vilge slept like a painting. Frozen. Breathless.

  He turned toward the hills.

  And saw it.

  A figure, high on the ridge. Motionless. Robes too long, too still. As if time forgot it.

  And though the rain had long stopped, a single bck cloud hung over the figure’s head, swirling in pce.

  Shen Liang blinked.

  The figure was gone.

  *****

  By morning, the vilge was wet but whole.

  No one mentioned the storm.

  No one had seen a figure.

  No one else had heard the wind speak.

  But the old tree at the vilge’s center — the ancient evergreen that had stood longer than the road itself — had dropped all its needles.

  And its bark had split in a single vertical line… like an eye, closed for now.

  (End of chapter)