Chapter 2: Ash on Still Water

The mountains swallowed her. Not with hunger, but with indifference—a vast, slow shrug of stone and ash that took her in and forgot her. Shen Liao walked until her legs gave out, then she crawled. She had no water, no food, no cloak against the biting wind that swept down from the peaks. She had her father's spear, its shaft still warm, and the cold coal in her chest that refused to go out.