The oil lamp's flame trembled, its small, orange heart fluttering as if sensing the shift in the room's gravity. His aunt's words—"About your true parents"—hung in the quiet air between them, a delicate, terrifying spell that had finally been spoken.
Han Li's breath stilled in his lungs. The solid world of the table, the hearth, the familiar walls, seemed to tilt on its edge. Who? Why? Where?
"Your parents… the man and woman you called father and mother, my elder brother and his dear wife… they were not your origin," his aunt began, her voice a soft, frayed thread pulled from the deepest part of memory. "You came to us from a mystery. A gift wrapped in winter."
She took a steadying breath, her eyes losing focus, looking not at him but through the walls to a past fourteen years gone.
"It was a winter like this one. Bitter. The kind that whispers of famine. Your parents—the ones who raised you—were childless. It was a quiet sorrow that lived in the corners of their home, in the space set for a cradle that stayed empty. They prayed at the small family altar. They made offerings at the village shrine. But no child came. That is why they arranged my marriage to your second uncle here." She gestured to the man beside her, who gave a slow, confirming nod, his expression one of old, accepted grief. "A hope that a child born to the wider family might ease the silence in our house. But that blessing… it did not come for us, either."
Uncle's hand found hers on the table, a gesture of solidarity worn smooth by years.
"One day, late in the season. The light was thin and grey. The first hard snow was a promise in the iron sky. They went deep into the western woods, to the old pine stands, to gather a final store of firewood. A last defense against the coming freeze."
She paused, and in that pause, the present room seemed to chill. Han Li could see it: the skeletal black branches clawing at a low sky, the crunch of frozen leaves underfoot, the breath steaming, the desperate, necessary work.
"They worked quickly, their axes biting into the deadfall, their breath fogging the air. The cold was the kind that seeps past wool and leather, into the bone. As your father finished tying the last bundle with rough cord, the forest… changed."
Her voice dropped to the hushed, rhythmic tone used for ghost stories and ancestor tales.
"Not a sound. No chatter of jays, no rustle of squirrel. Just the low, endless moan of the wind in the high branches. Then, from between the black trunks of the oldest pines, it came. A wolf."
Han Li's pulse, already slow, seemed to stop.
"But it stood as high as your father's waist at the shoulder. Its fur wasn't the grey or brown of our woods. It was the color of a starless midnight, a black so deep it seemed to drink the weak light. And its eyes…" She shivered, the memory visceral. "They held a knowing. An intelligence that froze their blood more thoroughly than any winter wind. It did not snarl. It did not crouch. It took one deliberate step toward them. Then another. Then it stopped, tilted its massive head, and let out this sound… not a howl. A low, guttural groan, like a great tree bending, ready to snap under a burden of ice. Then it turned and took a few paces back toward the deeper woods. It looked over its shoulder. Waiting."
Han Li's mind flashed, bright and painful, to the intelligence in the spirit wolf's molten-gold eyes. The same measured communication. The same impossible, patient intent.
"They were terrified," his uncle cut in, his voice the gravel of that long-ago path. "Certain it was luring them to a pack, to a grisly end. They grabbed their axes, their half-tied bundles, and they ran. They crashed through the underbrush, not caring about noise or direction, only distance."
His aunt took up the thread again, her words coming faster now, chasing the memory. "They hadn't gone far—maybe the length of three rice fields—when they heard it. A soft, steady pad-pad-pad behind them. Not rushing. Keeping pace. They turned together, axes raised, ready to sell their lives dearly. And there it was. Closer now. And in its powerful jaws… it carried a bundle. Wrapped in white cloth, stained at one corner with something dark. And from that bundle came a sound. The thin, reedy, desperate cry of an infant."
She looked directly at Han Li, her eyes shimmering in the lamplight. "Your mother—my sister-in-law—all her fear vanished. She cried out, 'It's a baby! By all the gods, put it down, you creature!' But the wolf… it just walked. Right up to them, its paws silent on the frozen leaves. It was so close they could see the individual silver-tipped hairs of its pelt, see the intelligence—and something else, a terrible, urgent sorrow—in its eyes. Gently, so gently it defied belief, it laid the bundle at their feet. Then it looked up at your mother, gave one short, sharp huff of breath that fogged between them, turned, and was gone. Vanished between the trees as if it had never been."
His uncle picked up the tale, his gaze distant. "Your mother fell to her knees. She tore open the frozen cloth. She said later… it was like finding a pearl in a mudflat. A piece of flawless jade in a firepit. You were so small. Your lips were blue with cold. But your features… even then…" He gestured vaguely at Han Li's face, at the sharp cheekbones, the subtle arch of the brows. "You didn't look like a starving peasant's child left to die. You looked… placed. And around your neck, on a cord too fine and strong for our village to make, was a wooden bead." He pointed to Han Li's wrist, where the dark, unassuming bead now resided. "And clutched in your tiny fist, pressed against your heart as if for warmth, was this."
His aunt stood, her movements slow with the weight of ritual. She went to the worn marriage chest in the shadowed corner, knelt, and from beneath folded linens retrieved a small, aged wooden box, polished smooth by time and handling. She placed it on the table between them with a soft, final thud.
"They brought you home. A babe from the jaws of a spirit-beast. We warmed you by the fire, fed you goat's milk from a clean rag. You lived. You thrived. We all saw you. We loved you instantly, completely, fiercely. But we also saw this." With a trembling finger, she nudged the box toward him.
Han Li stared at it. The air grew thick. Slowly, he lifted the simple lid.
Nestled on a bed of faded crimson cloth lay a piece of jade. It was small, flat, and oval, polished to a watery, inner-glow smoothness. Its color was that of deep forest moss, of shadows under ancient trees. One edge was carved with intricate, interlocking patterns—swirling clouds, or perhaps characters from a language he had never seen. It was visibly, palpably colder than the room, holding the chill of that long-ago winter within its heart.
He reached for it.
The moment his fingers made contact, a silent shockwave passed through him. Not electric, but profound—a deep, resonant thrum that vibrated in the marrow of his bones. A cascade of sensation flooded his senses, impressions without images: the clean, mineral scent of rain on mountain stone, the dizzying, safe feeling of being held high against a warm shoulder, the sound of a woman's sob, swallowed by a rush of wind. Overwhelming it all was a sense of melancholic belonging, as if the stone itself recognized his touch after a lonely, fourteen-year vigil. His vision blurred with sudden, hot tears he did not understand. He said nothing. Could say nothing.
He lifted the jade from its rest. It was cool, dense, heavy with meaning. Without a word, he slipped it into an inner fold of his green robe, where it came to rest beside the strange, cool weight of the little tower pendant. The two objects lay against his heart, one of carved stone, one of unknown metal—twin mysteries, twin legacies.
The silence that followed was vast, but not empty. It was comfortable in its shared, terrible weight.
"We knew then," his aunt whispered, her voice finally cracking under the strain of the secret. "The parents who left you… they must have been in mortal danger. Perhaps they were pursued. The wolf… it wasn't a thief. It wasn't a monster. It was a messenger. A guardian. This jade is proof. You were never abandoned, Han Li. You were entrusted. To the wild. And the wild brought you to us."
Han Li nodded slowly, the motion helping to settle the storm of questions and emotions inside him. He looked at their faces—lined with a lifetime of honest labor and unwavering love, faces that had looked upon a mysterious, possibly dangerous infant in the snow and had seen only a child to save, a son to raise.
"I understand," he said, his voice thick but clear, grounded. He reached across the table and covered both their hands with his own. "You are my parents. This is my home. That… that is just the road I walked to get here. Thank you. For everything. For keeping me. For telling me."
He rose, the new, ancient weight in his robe feeling both alien and strangely, deeply familiar. He bid them a quiet goodnight and climbed to the loft, leaving them in the soft, forgiving light of the lamp.
---
In the absolute darkness of the loft, the events of the day and the revelations of the night collided and spun.
The selection. The two hundred taels. The title of disciple. The spirit wolf from the forest, leading him to fortune.
And now, another wolf, from a time before memory, delivering him to salvation.
Was it the same one?
The logic was inescapable, settling over him like a cold, clear certainty. The same creature that had led him to the ginseng, that had communicated a plea with its eyes, had once saved his life, delivering him from an unknown cataclysm to the safety of a woodcutter's arms. The debt he thought he had repaid in the clearing with a few roots… it was far older, and infinitely greater, than he had ever conceived. The wolf had been a silent, shadowy shepherd, watching over his path for his entire life.
A sad, wry smile touched his lips in the dark. Then we are even. More than even. My life for yours. Thank you.
His thoughts turned, inevitably, to the unknown man and woman who had carved the jade, who had faced a desperation so complete that their only choice was to wrap their son in cloth and give him to a wild spirit-beast in a dying forest. A flicker of hot, childish anger rose—Why leave me at all? Why not fight?—but it was quickly doused by the calm, practical voice that was his truest guide. They did fight. And they ensured you lived. Against what odds, you cannot imagine. The wolf chose wisely. The family you found loved you without condition. It was a harsh, strange mercy, but a mercy nonetheless. It was the first and greatest act of cultivation in his life: not of qi, but of survival.
He blew out the small candle. The mysteries of his past were not solved, but they were no longer formless, haunting shadows. They had shapes now, and names: Wolf. Jade. Entrustment.
As the deep tide of sleep finally pulled him under, his hand rested over the two cool shapes against his chest—one a tower, one a cloud-carved stone—twin keys to doors he did not yet know how to open, in a hallway he had just learned existed.
In two days, a new path would begin with a new master.
Perhaps it would lead him toward those doors, toward answers, toward the source of the rain-on-stone scent and the echo of a sob.
Or perhaps, he thought as consciousness frayed at the edges, it would lead him away from them forever, on a road of his own choosing, built with the tools his master would provide.
Both possibilities felt equally vast, and equally true in that moment.
The only certainty was the twin weight against his heart, and the first step he would take into the grey light of dawn, two days hence.