The first good rice broth in weeks brought warmth back to Tian's Watch, but warmth does not blind rumor's enemies.
By the second dusk after the raid on the trader's camp, a new frost pressed through the orchard — not from the cold alone, but from eyes that did not belong.
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Li Shen stood by the Wolfchain banner at dawn, watching drills scrape rust off blades and fear off spines. Frost crackled under boot heels. Children balanced stick spears under Yue Lan's watchful threads, learning how not to cut their own feet before they cut a crown's throat.
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It was Yue Lan who felt it first — a hair-thin thread of breath that did not belong to the orchard's hush. A shape that bent shadows wrong at the edge of the pines.
She slipped through the ranks of villagers drilling clumsy thrusts at straw dummies. Her spirit threads drifted low, brushing soil, gathering the hush around her bare feet like a ghost's skirt.
Li Shen caught her eye across the orchard — a single tilt of her chin was enough.
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They found him crouched behind an old split trunk where the orchard's roots met the last black pine slope — a man in dull gray, cloak bleached to stone shades, eyes lined with ink so fine they seemed to drink the light.
No sword. No visible steel.
Shadow Guard never needed steel when rumor was their blade.
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Li Shen stepped over the split trunk, boots crunching frost until they stopped an arm's length from the man's crouch.
The spy looked up, calm as winter water. His lips cracked in a smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"Chain-breaker," the spy murmured. His voice was young — too young for the cold scarring his knuckles. "I heard you'd lost your teeth."
Li Shen didn't grin. He didn't blink. He simply knelt, blade loose in his palm, tip kissing the spy's knee.
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"Name," Li Shen said.
The spy's smile twitched. He did not answer.
Yue Lan's threads coiled behind Li Shen — a soft halo at first, then thin cold wires drifting toward the spy's throat.
Still the man smiled.
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"You'll kill me?" the spy asked. "Good. My death says more than my life."
Li Shen leaned closer — until the cold from Yue Lan's threads brushed his jaw too.
"I don't need your death," he murmured. "I need your message."
He flicked the blade sideways — not deep. Just enough to open the hem of the spy's cloak. Inside, a strip of rice paper sealed in wax.
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Yue Lan caught it in her threads. Slit it open with a single frost-edged hair.
One line, painted in black mineral ink:
> THE WOLF HOWLS. THE HUNTERS GATHER.
Beneath it, a single mark — a crowned serpent eating its own tail.
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Li Shen felt his teeth bare then — not a grin, but something older than frost and rumor.
Shadow Guard messages did not lie. They did not bluff. If this eye was here, then the other eyes had already seen too much.
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The spy watched Li Shen read the mark. He did not flinch when Yue Lan's threads coiled around his throat. He only whispered like the frost itself:
"Break your chain, wolf. The crown comes fed and armored."
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Li Shen rose. The spy's throat hissed once — a clean, soft snap of frost.
No scream. No echo.
Yue Lan's threads drifted through the pine hush, carrying the limp body deeper where the orchard roots would take rumor's last eye and feed it to the soil.
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By dusk, Tian's Watch knew: the Wolfchain's roar had reached the crown's banquet halls.
And the crowned serpent coiled to strike.
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Li Shen stood beneath the Wolfchain banner again — drills done, blades cleaned, rice boiling thick over Master Tian's hearth.
His voice was quiet, but every ear in Tian's Watch heard it:
"No more thorns."
He touched the banner's edge — black silk snapping once in the wind that carried the serpent's hiss.
"Next they send the fang."
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⚡ End of Chapter Twenty-Two — The Crown's Eye
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