Dawn after flame is colder than steel. The bribes burned through the night — silk turned to ash, silver bars cracked and blackened where Yue Lan's threads fed the sparks. By first light, the gate of Tian's Watch was a charred arch crowned in thorn shadows.
Rumor did not cross it. But iron did.
---
The first blade slipped between pine trunks before the frost thawed. A scout — no cloak, no crest, just a short saber bound tight in oil cloth to kill its shine. Li Shen felt him before Yue Lan's threads flicked through the brush.
Li Shen didn't draw. He waited, leaning against the smoldering gate post, breath curling in the morning chill.
The scout saw the ruin of the gate. Saw the blackened coins scattered in the dirt. Saw the Frost Witch's pale threads drifting through the smoke like ghost hair.
He turned to run.
Li Shen's boot crunched frost — just once.
The scout's feet left no second print.
---
By midmorning, they gathered proper: half a dozen shapes drifting up the slope, pine boughs shivering under their boots. No silk now — boiled leather armor, rusted clan plates repainted with crow sigils half-scraped by river stones. Old sect traitors. Outlaws paid in rumor and blood.
They stopped just beyond the circle of ash where the gate once whispered prayers.
Li Shen stepped forward alone. Yue Lan stayed behind him, spirit threads flicking ghostlight from the scorched vines.
---
One stepped out — a broad man with pitted cheekbones and a jaw that never closed fully. A wolf grin twisted what was left of his mouth.
He pointed at Li Shen's blade with two fingers wrapped in black cloth.
"Chain-breaker," he rasped. "The Nine Heavens buy your name with blood now."
Li Shen tilted his head, almost curious. "Yours or mine?"
The man barked a short laugh, teeth clacking like loose coins.
"Both."
---
He lunged — no speech, no threat. Just iron scraping frost.
Li Shen slipped sideways, the edge of his blade catching the morning sun — then catching the wolf's grin at the hinge of the jaw. Bone cracked. Steel hissed through half a prayer.
The others surged forward — blades high, boots sliding on old pine needles. Yue Lan's threads snapped out in arcs of frostlight, coiling around ankles, wrists, throats. One fell to his knees before his sword cleared its sheath. Another dropped his spear, hands clawing at the threads tightening like winter's last breath.
---
Li Shen moved like hunger — sharp, fast, silent. His blade cut through boiled leather as if rumor had softened it. Each strike left no cry behind, only a spray of steam on the morning wind.
When it ended, frost covered the ash. Steel glinted half-buried in the trampled dirt. The crow sigils bled into the pine roots, feeding nothing but rot.
---
Li Shen wiped the blade on a dead man's sleeve. Yue Lan's threads flicked the blood aside before it could stain his boots.
She met his eyes — voice softer than the pine hush.
"More will come."
Li Shen's grin cracked like a branch under snow.
"Let them."
---
Master Tian stepped from the shadows of the largest hut, staff tapping frost that now smelled faintly of blood.
He looked at the dead crows, then at the scorched gate posts.
"Tian's Watch was never meant for crowns," he rasped. "Or chains."
Li Shen planted his blade tip in the earth. The frost hissed where steel touched old roots.
"Then it stands with me."
---
Above them, the pine tops bent in a wind that smelled of distant snow and iron rumor.
The first flame had called teeth.
Li Shen's throat stayed open.
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⚡ End of Chapter Fourteen — The Crow's Teeth
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