Cen Bai's wards didn't look like miracles.
They looked like stones.
Three smooth river rocks sat on the table, each etched with a different ring pattern: one spiraled inward like a whirlpool, one carried a bar across its center like a shut mouth, and the last one held a broken ring—open on one side, the gap filled with tiny mirrored facets.
"Salt-calm," Cen Bai said, tapping the spiral. "It settles panic and dampens shock. It won't stop pain, but it will keep a body from falling apart because fear told it to."
He tapped the barred stone. "Breath-hold. It buys minutes when lungs can't."
Then he tapped the mirrored one. "Mirror-skin. It blurs edges and bends attention. It won't make you invisible. It will make you… inconvenient."
Gu Xingzhou picked up the mirror-stone and turned it. "So it's a trick."
"It's a rule," Cen Bai corrected. "The city sees what it expects. This makes expectation slip."
Shen Jin watched Cen Bai's hands while he spoke. Not the gestures—the pauses between gestures. Cen Bai's caution wasn't cowardice. It was calculation. He knew exactly how close death lived in a pattern.
"Put it on him," Luo Xian said, nodding at her brother.
Cen Bai shook his head. "Not yet," he said. "If the mark under his skin is an oath-trace, then any ward placed wrong can hook into it."
Luo Xian's face tightened. "Then what do we do?"
Cen Bai looked at Shen Jin. "We cut the city's attention first," he said. "Then we work."
Gu snorted. "How do you cut a city?"
Cen Bai's eyes didn't move. "By making it look somewhere else," he said.
He pulled a thin chalk bar from his kit and drew a ring on the stone floor. Inside the ring, he drew a second ring, slightly off-center. The lines were simple, almost childish. And yet the air above them felt different—like a sheet being pulled over a lamp.
"Shen Jin," Cen Bai said. "Put your hand here."
Shen Jin stepped into the ring and placed his palm on the inner circle.
The chalk lines warmed. Not hot—alive.
Cen Bai placed the mirror-stone on the chalk ring's gap and spoke a word under his breath. Shen Jin didn't hear the word clearly. He only felt the sensation: the room's corners loosened.
Gu's eyes narrowed. "What did you do?"
"Made this arch forget itself," Cen Bai said. "For a little while."
Outside, the horns drew nearer. Voices rose—orders, boots, halberds scraping stone.
Luo Xian's crossbow came up. "They're here."
Cen Bai didn't flinch. He lifted the canvas slit and peered out into the fog.
Court enforcers had entered the river quarter. Not a full squad—three men in black armor and two plainclothes runners. They weren't sweeping every arch. They were moving with purpose.
Toward this one.
Shen Jin felt the Broken Ring Key warm in his sleeve as if it recognized pursuit as a familiar ingredient.
"They're following the warrant," Gu murmured.
"No," Luo Xian whispered, eyes narrowing. "They're following something else. They're not asking questions. They're not checking stalls."
Cen Bai let the canvas fall. "They have a tracer," he said.
Shen Jin's stomach tightened. He thought of the counterfeit Ring Marks they'd used at South Cage. A leash. A trace.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the pouch the Guild had paid him. He spilled the coins onto the table.
Cen Bai's gaze sharpened immediately. "Don't touch those," he warned.
Too late.
Shen Jin hadn't touched—he'd looked. And looking was enough for a craftsman.
Most of the discs were true. But one sat wrong, the way a rotten tooth sat wrong in a smile.
A disc with a sheen that was too even.
"Counterfeit," Shen Jin said softly.
Gu's eyes darkened. "They paid you with a tracker."
"They paid me with a hook," Shen Jin corrected. He picked up the disc carefully with the copper pin and held it near the candle.
In the candle's light, the inner geometry didn't stutter like a normal fake.
It crawled.
A tiny ring-line moved, shifting position as if it were listening for heat.
Cen Bai's voice went cold. "That's not counterfeit," he said. "That's bait."
Luo Xian swore under her breath. "The Guild found us anyway."
"They didn't find us," Shen Jin said. "They led the Court here."
Gu's hand went to his knife. "Then we cut the bait."
Cen Bai shook his head. "If you break it, it sings," he said. "It's designed to scream when damaged."
Shen Jin stared at the disc, mind racing through patterns. "Then we don't break it," he said. "We move it."
He set the disc down and pulled out a small glass vial from his kit—solvent used for cleaning etchings. He poured a drop onto the disc's surface.
The ring-line twitched, then slowed, as if drowsing.
Cen Bai's brows rose a fraction. "You can sedate it?"
"I can gum the gears," Shen Jin replied. "Not forever. Just enough."
Outside, boots were closer now. One voice barked, "Check the river-arches!"
Cen Bai moved fast. He scooped the bait disc into a small clay jar, sealed it with wax, and shoved it into Shen Jin's hands.
"Run that jar to the east arch," Cen Bai said. "Place it beneath the third step and leave."
Gu frowned. "We're splitting?"
"We're redirecting," Cen Bai said. "If the tracer points at east arch, the Court will swing away. We buy time."
Shen Jin nodded. "I'll do it," he said.
Gu's hand snapped out and grabbed his sleeve. "No," Gu said. "You're the wanted one. You go out, you don't come back."
Shen Jin met his gaze. "Then you do it," he said, and shoved the jar into Gu's hands.
Gu scowled, then accepted it because time didn't care about pride.
Luo Xian stepped forward. "I'll guide him," she said.
Cen Bai shook his head. "You stay," he said. "Your brother needs you. And if this goes wrong, I need your eyes here."
Luo Xian's jaw tightened, but she nodded, forcing herself to obey.
Gu slipped through the canvas slit and vanished into fog with the jar tucked under his coat.
Cen Bai turned to Shen Jin. "Now," he said. "We work."
He pressed the breath-hold stone to Luo Jian's throat, then traced a ring pattern around the boy's neck in the air. The ward-stone glowed faintly, and Luo Jian's breathing deepened, steadying as if the air itself had thickened.
Cen Bai then placed the salt-calm stone on Luo Jian's sternum and repeated the gesture.
Luo Jian's eyes cleared by a fraction. He swallowed. "Sister," he whispered.
Luo Xian gripped his hand. "I'm here," she whispered. "I'm here."
Shen Jin watched Cen Bai's hands as the healer shifted focus to the bruised ring-lines beneath the skin.
"This isn't an oath-mark," Cen Bai said quietly. "It's an imprint. Like something brushed against him and left residue."
"A feather?" Shen Jin asked.
Cen Bai didn't answer immediately. He lowered his voice. "There are patterns in this city that aren't Court patterns," he said. "They don't rule with law. They rule with inevitability."
Shen Jin's sleeve warmed. He felt the Broken Ring Key pulse, like a heartbeat that didn't need permission.
Cen Bai's eyes lifted to him. "What did you touch tonight?" he asked.
Shen Jin didn't lie. He drew the Broken Ring Key out and set it on the table.
The air shifted.
Luo Xian's eyes flashed, but she didn't speak.
Cen Bai stared at the shard as if it were a knife placed on a child's tongue. "So," he said softly. "That's why you're loud."
Shen Jin kept his voice steady. "It chose me," he said. "Or someone chose me for it."
Cen Bai's expression hardened. "Keys don't choose kindly."
Outside, a shout rose—closer than before. Someone had found the arch.
Cen Bai snapped the mirror-skin stone into Shen Jin's palm. "When I say now," he said, "press it to your sleeve. Not your skin. Your sleeve. You want the world's eyes to slip off you, not your blood."
Shen Jin nodded, feeling the stone's cold, slick surface.
The canvas slit lifted as a Court enforcer yanked it open.
Light stabbed into the chamber.
"Inspection!" the enforcer barked, seeing only shadows and the vague outline of a healer's shop. "By order of the Yao Court—"
Cen Bai stepped forward like an annoyed clerk. "You're early," he said, voice flat. "My clients sleep."
The enforcer frowned. "We're looking for a fugitive."
Cen Bai shrugged. "Then you're in the wrong arch. I sell wards, not criminals."
The enforcer's lantern swung, searching. The beam passed over Shen Jin, then slid away as if it had forgotten why it was looking.
Shen Jin pressed the mirror-stone to his sleeve.
The fog in the room thickened by a degree. The edges of his body softened. Not invisible—just annoying, like a thought you couldn't hold onto.
The enforcer's gaze slid off him again.
"Search," the enforcer ordered.
Two more armored men stepped in, boots loud on stone. They pushed past shelves, rattling ward-stones. Luo Xian raised her crossbow a hair.
Cen Bai lifted a hand—stop.
Shen Jin held still, breathing shallow.
One enforcer stepped close enough that Shen Jin could smell the leather on his armor. The man's lantern hovered inches from Shen Jin's face—then drifted to the side, searching elsewhere, as if Shen Jin were a smudge of nothing.
The ward worked.
But wards didn't last.
The enforcer's brow furrowed. He looked at the chalk ring on the floor. "What's that?" he demanded.
Cen Bai didn't blink. "A boundary," he said. "For plague."
The enforcer recoiled a fraction. "Plague?"
Cen Bai's eyes went colder. "You want to step inside? Be my guest."
The enforcer hesitated. Fear was a simple lever.
Outside, a runner's voice shouted, "East arch! Signal's east!"
The enforcer stiffened. "Move!" he barked, and the patrol surged back out, boots retreating into fog.
Cen Bai let the canvas fall. The chamber exhaled.
Luo Xian's knees nearly buckled. She pressed a hand to the wall, forcing herself upright.
Shen Jin lowered the mirror-stone, fingers tight.
Cen Bai looked at him. "That," he said, "is why I don't bargain."
Shen Jin's voice was quiet. "Because the city doesn't bargain either."
Cen Bai nodded once.
A moment later, Gu Xingzhou slipped back into the arch, breath fogging, eyes hard. "Jar's placed," he said. "They bought it."
Cen Bai turned back to Luo Jian. "Now," he murmured. "We finish."
He pressed two fingers to the bruised ring-lines and began tracing a counter-pattern—slow, careful, like untying a knot you couldn't afford to tighten.
Luo Jian shuddered, then exhaled, long and deep.
The bruised lines faded by a shade.
Not gone.
But quieter.
Cen Bai sat back, sweat beading at his hairline. "He'll live," he said. "For now."
Luo Xian's eyes filled with something she hated showing. "Thank you," she whispered.
Cen Bai didn't respond. He stared at the Broken Ring Key on the table, then at Shen Jin.
"You have one day," he repeated. "And after that—"
Shen Jin's voice cut in, soft but firm. "After that," he said, "you'll have to decide whether you want the feathers to keep writing on children."
Cen Bai's jaw tightened.
Outside, the river quarter horns sounded again, shifting away—toward the east arch, chasing a false scent.
For a moment, they had space.
And in that space, the Broken Ring Key pulsed like a patient engine.
(End of Chapter 7)