Tian's Watch slept light that night.
Inside the old hut, Li Shen sat cross-legged on the floor, back to the cold clay stove. Yue Lan rested with her threads wrapped like a nest at her side — a soft coil that drifted and pulsed, catching every heartbeat outside the door.
Master Tian dozed on his stool, chin on his chest, staff across his knees like a blade too old to rust.
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Near dawn, a child's cry cracked the hush — a thin wail that threaded through the timber walls and tugged Li Shen's eyes open. He didn't speak, but Yue Lan's threads lifted at once, brushing his shoulder. She heard it too: a mother's hush, the soft clatter of an old milk jug, the door creaking open and shut.
---
They stepped out together as the sky bled from black to iron gray. The village was waking slow — hearth smoke coiling up from crooked chimneys, old dogs barking at dawn ghosts that only rumor could name.
Near the goat shed, a mother crouched with a clay bowl cupped under a skinny nanny goat's belly. Her child sniffled against her back, arms wrapped tight around her neck. The mother's hands were raw from winter, but steady.
Li Shen paused by the shed, watching. The mother looked up — eyes wide for half a breath, then soft when she saw who stood in the frost.
"You came back," she said.
He nodded once.
She lifted the bowl — warm goat's milk steaming in the dawn.
"Take it," she said. "You're thinner than the stories say."
Li Shen crouched. Took the bowl. Drank.
The warmth slid down his throat like a promise older than any sect prayer.
---
When he handed it back, she didn't bow. She only shifted her child to her hip and said, "More will come for you. Will they burn us too?"
Li Shen's grin was tired iron. "Not while my throat breathes."
The mother nodded. Her child hid his face in her shoulder — peeking once at the blade strapped across Li Shen's back.
---
They left the goat shed for Master Tian's door. The old man waited on the threshold, leaning on his staff, snow dusting his thin hair.
"You drank," Master Tian rasped.
Li Shen nodded. "They feed me."
Master Tian's teeth flashed like old yellowed stone. "Then you bleed for them. When the crows come."
Yue Lan stepped forward — her threads drifting across the frost-cracked step.
"They won't come with knives," she said. "They'll come with silk. Silver. Sweet songs."
Master Tian spat into the dirt.
"Milk for our children. Blood for the roots. We keep the gate."
---
Dawn cracked full over Tian's Watch. Rumor clawed at the broken trail below — voices drifting through the pines, boots scraping frost off old stones. Li Shen heard them coming. So did the dogs, the wind, the thin line of children peeking from smoke-holes and shutters.
He stood before Master Tian's crooked door, blade loose at his side, frost biting his bare knuckles.
No crown on his brow.
No chain on his throat.
Only milk in his gut and blood in his teeth.
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⚡ End of Chapter Twelve — Milk and Blood
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