The night the reprisal came it was dressed as a soft wind. Scouts had been on watch for weeks; they had the sudden, ugly certainty that things would not remain a quiet peasant tale for long. Runan's first answer had been messengers; his second answer—when words failed—was steel.
They came in a slice: a small, disciplined band whose faces were covered, who moved like practiced thieves of legend. Their goal was precise—capture or kill the source of the village's growing luck. They aimed for children. Their first strike caught a sleeping merchant's wagon ablaze to draw the watch, then they slipped in under the cloak of that distraction.
Shi Hao smelled wrongness before it landed. There are instincts cultivated not by books but by repeated danger, a muscle memory of smell and tension. He barked the alarm and the village rose like a tide, not a confused one but a flowing defense that had recently discovered both courage and craft.
Bai'e's howl sliced through the dark and the wolf sprang like silver lightning. The invaders, trained for stealth, met the sudden, violent reply of a place that would not be plucked easily. The first of them tried to seize a cradle but Bai'e's flank smashed the thief against a post, and vines—tendrils the villagers had coaxed into thorned nets—wrapped a second and left him stuck and guzzling for breath.
Shi Hao moved as a man with sharpened aim. His wooden staff became a lever, a blunt blade, a teacher of equilibrium. He disarmed two attackers before Huo Ling'er swept in with a ribbon of smoke and fire to drive others off. Shi Yi, who had been a boy who loved mischief, now loved the village like a brother. He tackled a masked man who had wrestled a sack and found, to his disgust, it contained not treasure but a child: a newborn of a family allied to the village. The thief's hands were shaking—recruited by poverty or hired by greed—but he had not counted on the weight of siblings and neighbors.
As the skirmish curved, the leader of the attackers stepped into the light, and there was a hush like an intake of breath. A man in a cloak with the darked rune of Runan on it. He had come to send a message.
"You should give him up," the leader hissed, voice like wind through scrapers. "Lord Runan offers protection for your little orchard—an orchard that could feed many under his hand. You will be safer under his roof."
Liu Shen's branches twined and lowered; the willow did not speak but the air tightened as if the very sky had chosen a side. A single leaf slid from her branch and cut the leader's cheek like a warning. Blood dripped, and it was the leader who hesitated.
The leader cursed, signaled his men, and retreated into the night with their wounded and stolen plans. A few men were taken alive—captured, bound, and forced to explain through threats and bargains what had gone wrong. It turned out the attempt had been ordered by a petty noble with too much greed and too little patience, men who thought to take something small because they could not take something big.
In the morning the village counted its losses—one guard with a broken arm, a few bruised egos, a burnt cart. The captured men were delivered to the elder who, after an hour of stony-faced judgment, decided to send them away stripped of equipment and with a warning carved into their backs: "Willow Roots Watch."
Runan's first real touch had been an embarrassment. For the villagers it was a lesson: threats may come clothed in the night, but a people who have learned to stand together will light fires that keep bandits and lords wary. For the attackers, it meant Runan's hand had misjudged the soil he wished to wrest.
Qingmu pressed his small face to the window of the hut where Lian's son slept and watched the adults patch torn nets and mend fences. He felt the gravity of repair in his belly, tasting the kind of responsibility that arrives sooner for some than others. It was not glory. It was waking to the long work of keeping fragile lives safe.
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