They walked south until the paddies gave way to rolling dikes, then to dry earth patched with wild thorns and early spring flowers. The river pulled away east, curling around foothills that hid half-forgotten shrines and fox dens.
Ahead lay Gray Hollow — a border town built where two old clan roads met and traded silver for secrets. Once, elders called it Gate Between Stones. Now they called it Gray Hollow because the stone gate was gone, and so was most of its promise.
Li Shen knew the name. He'd passed through as a boy, years ago, when snow crusted his boots and he'd sold a bundle of stolen herbs for stale rice buns. He remembered the taste. He remembered the merchant's fat ringed fingers counting copper like they were counting how long he might live.
He remembered swearing he'd never kneel for scraps again.
---
They reached the town at dusk. The "gate" was still there — two leaning stone pillars propping up a cracked arch, half buried in moss. A pair of beggar children squatted beneath it, poking at an old incense stick with twigs.
Yue Lan flicked her gaze over the crumbling stone, then to Li Shen.
"This is the famous gate?"
He shrugged. "Door's gone. Still keeps the wind out."
She snorted — but her spirit threads drifted around her shoulders all the same, brushing the air as if testing for hidden knives. She didn't trust walls that didn't shut tight. Neither did he.
---
Gray Hollow's streets coiled between low clay houses and crooked shophouses with warped shutters. Lanterns burned low — cheap oil flickering with every stray breeze. Vendors called out halfheartedly about dried fish and moldy radishes. Nobody looked twice at a ragged boy with a chipped blade or a girl with threads like breath.
Except one man.
He sat at a cracked tea stall beneath a tattered awning — half-hidden behind a cloud of pipe smoke. When Li Shen stepped closer, the man raised his eyes. Brown, rheumy, but too sharp for a beggar. A crooked grin split his patchy beard.
"Li Shen, boy," the man rasped. "Didn't think I'd see your ghost first."
Yue Lan stiffened. Her threads quivered between her fingers. Li Shen rested his hand on her wrist — not to stop her, but to steady her.
"Master Liao," Li Shen said.
He hadn't spoken that name in years. The first fence who'd paid him half a copper for stolen roots. The man who'd taught him how to sharpen a blade just enough to keep bigger thieves wary.
---
Liao flicked ash off his pipe. "Hollow Sky cracked, they say. Demon crown devoured by a half-starved gutter fox. You look fed enough to me."
Li Shen pulled up a stool, scraping it loud against the stall's warped plank floor.
"I didn't come to sell roots this time."
Liao's laugh was soft, wheezing. "No, boy. You came for news. Same as always. And the news says your name's worth silver in three provinces. More if they bring your witch alive."
Yue Lan bristled — threads darting like cold moths. Liao watched them flicker, unbothered.
Li Shen leaned forward — his grin sharp as the edge he'd kept hidden under frost and iron.
"You selling me, old crow?"
Liao puffed his pipe, eyes twinkling like gutter lamps.
"Sell you? Boy, you broke a chain no crown could hold. If I could sell that, I'd own a city."
He jabbed the pipe stem at the cracked arch behind them. "Watch your back. The sect dogs don't bark first. They buy others to sniff first. Thieves, hungry monks, drifters. Gray Hollow's got a dozen of those tonight."
Li Shen rose — the stool legs shrieking on old wood.
"Then I'll give them something to sniff."
---
They left the tea stall before the oil lanterns guttered out. Yue Lan kept close at his side, her threads weaving faint arcs in the shadows.
At the broken gate, Li Shen paused. He brushed his palm over the moss-slick stone — felt old frost, old hunger, old echoes of a boy who once sold stolen roots for stale buns.
No door. No chain. No crown.
Only his name.
He stepped through.
---
⚡ End of Chapter Four — A Gate with No Door
---