Flow-Sand was the kind of town the maps forgot. It crouched at the lip of the Endless Basin, where wind carved the earth and the world seemed to have decided nothing finer would grow there. People stayed because they had nowhere else to go, and the town returned their loyalty in petty cruelty and cheap gossip.
Yunxiao learned early what it meant to be small in a small place. He moved like a shadow through alleys, hands forever smelling of clay and porridge, shoulders pressed thin from carrying other people's burdens. When children shouted names or pushed one another for sport, Yunxiao stepped aside and let stones kiss his shins. It was easier that way.
What marked him, what made whispers follow him like stray dogs, was the sigil on his chest: a half-formed pattern, jagged as broken pottery and pale as old scar. The town called it a broken seal. Mothers pulled their daughters close when he passed. Bazaar vendors spat under their breath. Children dared one another to touch his sleeve and dart away when he did not react.
Nobody explained the seal. Most people did not need to. In the Nine Domains, marks were shorthand for a life—talent, curse, destiny, trivial blessing. A polished sigil could be a door. A bright sigil could be a ladder. A scarred or shattered mark, everyone agreed, meant only ruin.
They were wrong sometimes. But in Flow-Sand they preferred caution.
Yunxiao had little patience for tales. He lived by small rules: wake before dawn, sweep the shrine steps, sell the few salvaged trinkets, sleep before the cold bit deep. His life fit into narrow pieces and he learned to make them hold.
On the morning the dust tasted different—thicker, like it had gathered news—the ruined shrine was emptier than usual. Birds avoided the courtyard and a braided rope that once hung from the bell sagged and stayed still. Yunxiao crouched by the altar and traced the split lines on his chest with one finger. He liked to feel the ridges: they were as familiar as seams on well-worn cloth.
The broken seal never said anything. At times it burned like a coal under his ribs, and at times it stayed as dull as a stone. Twice in his life it had awakened long enough to make his breath catch; once he had chased a runaway cart from the town margin, and once he had stumbled into sleep and dreamed of iron banners and voices shouting names he did not know. Both times he woke with his knees scraped and his throat thick with something that tasted like mica.
He kept such things inside. A secret makes a person smaller in town; it makes them dangerous in the country. Yunxiao preferred the smaller life.
The market was noisy with the usual life of small economies: a child hawking pickled radish, a potter shouting prices, a crowd gathering where men played dice. Yunxiao carried a crate of cracked bowls to the tea-seller's stall and bowed, fingers numb with work. He tried to be invisible—an art the town's dispossessed learned quickly.
"Cursed one." The voice slipped between cloth and laughter. Guo Ren, the butcher's son, had wide shoulders and the insolence of those who will one day own property. He liked to practice cruelty as practice for future power.
The shove was quick. Yunxiao's crate tipped and a bowl clinked and broke. A dozen heads turned. The common reaction was a hundred small stones of scorn.
"Leave him," someone said, not unkindly but not helpful either. People had learned that cruelty was safe unless you were the only one resisting.
Guo Ren jabbed a finger at Yunxiao's chest. "That mark—look at it. Broken, useless. Heaven laughed when he was born."
Children laughed; an old woman spat on the ground. Yunxiao felt the familiar hot drumming at the base of his throat but kept his face still. He had practiced stillness. It was less tiring than arguing.
"Run to the river and wash the bowls!" Guo Ren ordered, voice rough with amusement. "Maybe water will rinse the curse out of you."
Humiliation tasted sharp. Yunxiao bowed, gathered the cracked halves and slipped into the narrow lane toward the river. He heard them call after him, voices climbing like sparrows: worthless, broken, cursed. He kept his steps measured. The cold in his chest was not only shame; it was the seal's slow ache.
Halfway through the lane, his cage of small thoughts burst—no grand reason, only a flare of pain. The seal stung under his palm and the world for a moment thinned to the size of a bright coin. He blinked. A sound like a bell thrummed across his tongue and the taste of copper filled his mouth.
A child's cry broke from the gutter where ordinary things gathered: a small shape, half-hidden under soggy cloth, blinked at the world. The thing was not one of the town's usual rodents. Its fur caught the dawn's light like dusted stars, and its breath came quick.
Yunxiao paused. People taught him to mind his own misery and to avoid other people's misfortune. But for reasons he could not name, he did not pass on this one.
He knelt. The creature's eyes met his like a question. It was tiny—no larger than the length of his forearm. Its fur seemed to hold flecks of the firmament. When it lifted its small head it let out a single soft sound, part chirp and part note, which felt almost like a word.
"Don't touch," a voice hissed from the road. Guo Ren and two others had followed, eager for further play. "Don't bring cursed things near us."
Yunxiao ignored them. He cupped the creature in both hands and felt its pulse stutter against his cold palms. It trembled but did not try to bite. He wrapped his cloak around it and rose.
That tiny weight shifted something inside his chest—no power, not a bloom of strength, only a strange quiet that made the ache dull to a hum. He tucked the creature beneath his robe and kept moving.
Guo Ren spat and turned back to the market. The crowd's attention dissipated as though sated. No one gave Yunxiao a second look.
At the ruined shrine, he laid the small beast on the altar and fetched water in a chipped bowl. It drank with a frantic greed and then curled up, closing its eyes. Yunxiao watched it breathe and thought about all the small decisions that had landed him here—how he had learned to swallow before he was asked, how storms taught him where to shelter. The ragged animal made a tiny sound in its sleep and passed into quiet.
That night the town's alleys were full of rumor—an envoy was coming, they said: Heavenfire scouts riding from the south, looking for marks. Some women said the sect would take any child with a fate mark because such marks made strong warriors; others said they took anyone to fill ranks. The stories shifted like sand. The important thing was the sound: the outer gate will test tomorrow.
Yunxiao heard the rumor the way one hears weather—something that might touch you but not yet. He lay on the altars in ragged blankets and listened to the seal at his ribs throb in time with his uneven breathing. He told himself the envoy would pass him by. Who would bother with a broken seal?
Sleep came in pieces and dreams in slivers. He dreamed of a long hall of mirrors and of voices whispering a word he could not catch. He dreamed of iron banners pulling free from ancient soil and a light that did not warm. In the dream his chest opened like a door and something small and bright rolled out and hid behind his ribs.
He woke before dawn with his hands sweating. The small creature was awake and watching him with those same steady little eyes. It lifted its head and made that same soft note, as if to say: You are not alone.
Outside, someone hammered a notice to the town post: Outer Gate Assessment — All marked youths must present. The paper's black characters were a simple order; the wind took the curl at the bottom and slapped it across the market bench.
When Yunxiao blinked at the posted notice, a nameless feeling slid across his skin—part dread, part something that felt dangerously like anticipation. In Flow-Sand, the future rarely arrived as welcome. It usually brought a blade.
He wrapped the small creature tighter and walked out toward the market. Guo Ren's gang were already there, louder than the day before. They watched him with the bored attention of those who have performed cruelty as rehearsal for larger crimes.
"Going to the outer gate?" Guo Ren called. He made the question into a dare.
Yunxiao met his gaze and said nothing.
He could have fled. He could have hidden the small beast and kept his patchwork life. Instead he folded the cloak around the creature and walked slowly into the market square under the new dawn—toward whatever the world might ask of him next.
There was no one to greet him. There was only the notice still flapping, the broken seal against his skin, and a small animal's faint warmth pressed into his belly. The town watched. The town would speak. The town would remember. The seal at his chest throbbed—not with a roar, but a slow, patient beat, like the hollow on a drum that waits until you are ready to use it.
He did not understand what it meant. No one in the town did. No one would explain it for him. For now the mark remained what it had always been: a rumor in cracked flesh, a rumor that would follow him as far as the outer gate.
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