The storm did not kill Li Mei.
It only tore something loose and walked away with it.
For days after Old He's emergency visit, the house moved on a careful, tight rhythm. Every task was measured: how far she walked, how long she sat, how deep she dared breathe.
"This is temporary," Li Shen told himself as he watched her sleep. "Storms end. Winters end. This will end too."
Eventually, the blizzard burned itself out.
The snow stopped clawing sideways and fell straight again. Then it fell less. The shriek of the Pale Wind dulled to a hoarse hiss. The white hills around the village sagged into dirty slush, then into mud.
Inside, the fire burned lower. The woodstack shrank.
Li Mei did not spring back.
On paper, she improved. In numbers.
The coughing fits no longer dug trenches through the nights. She slept longer, her breathing shallow but less desperate. No new threads of red stained the cloth by her pillow. She could stand without swaying. Cross the room without stopping. Hold a bowl without spilling.
If you wrote it in a ledger, it looked like victory.
But something in the way she moved had changed. She carried herself as if always listening—not with her ears, but with her bones—for a crack only she could hear.
The first day she stepped outside again, the world was ugly.
No clean snow. No pretty frost. Just beaten-down white clinging to ditches and fence posts, and ground that sucked at boots like bad intentions. The air still bit, but its teeth were shorter.
"You don't need to go out," Li Shen said, standing by the door with her coat in both hands.
"Yes," she said. "I do."
"Old He said—"
"Old He said I shouldn't go stand naked in the wind and arm-wrestle the sky," she cut in. "She did not tell me to merge with the mat and become furniture."
He frowned. "You were barely breathing right two nights ago."
"And now I'm breathing more right," she said. "That's the point."
She reached for the coat. Her fingers brushed his; they felt lighter than he remembered.
"Help me," she added, quieter.
He swallowed and stepped around her, lifting the coat so she could slip her arms in. It hung on her a little differently now, as if the fabric had forgotten her old shape and was trying to learn a new one.
"Slow," he said.
"Bossy," she muttered.
Outside, the pale light made her squint. She blinked at the yard, at the strips of old snow along the fence, at the mud trying to remember it was earth.
"It's ugly," she said. "I missed the part where it was pretty."
"You were busy trying not to die," he said.
"Always some excuse," she replied.
She took a step. The ground sucked at her boot.
Instinctively, he moved ahead and to the side so she could rest her hand on his shoulder. Her fingers settled there, light as a bird.
He felt absurdly tall for a moment, even though he barely reached her collarbone.
"Careful here," he said. "The mud's worse."
"Are you the father now?" she asked.
"If you fall, I have to pick you up," he said. "My back would like a say in your decisions."
She snorted but adjusted her steps.
They didn't go far. Just along the fence to the corner where, on clear days, you could see the faint line of the road to Han, and behind it the low hill that caught the wind like a shield with a hole in it.
"Do you think he's still there?" Li Shen asked.
"Who?" she said. "The goose your father eloped with?"
"The doctor," he said.
"Doctor Wen?" Her mouth twisted. "No. Men like that are always on their way somewhere more important. They pass through, leave their words and notes behind, and the rest of us live with the echo."
"He said if we did what he told us, you'd have time," Li Shen said.
"And I do," she said. "Look at me. Standing in our magnificent mud, very unimpressive and very not dead. That's already more than we had before."
It was true.
So why did it feel, to him, like someone had moved a rope marker two steps forward without changing where the cliff was?
They stopped at the corner. Beyond, the fields lay raw and exposed. The snow had scraped them bare; nothing had grown back yet. His father was a distant dark shape with an axe, turning storm-broken branches into next year's heat.
"Does it hurt?" Li Shen asked.
"My pride?" she said. "Constantly."
"Your chest," he said.
She hesitated, watching her breath fog in the cold air.
"Yes," she said. "Less than it did. More than I admit."
"Then why are we out here?" he snapped. "If it makes it worse—"
"Because I'd like to remember more than the pattern of smoke stains on our ceiling," she said sharply, then softer. "If my breaths are being counted, I'd rather some of them smell like mud and bad snow than only boiled herbs and ash. That's all."
He had no answer for that.
They stood together, looking at a field that was nowhere near ready to be anything.
After a while, she shivered.
"Inside," he said.
"Bossy," she repeated.
Her hand settled on his shoulder again on the way back. It was barely any weight at all.
That frightened him more than if she had leaned.
Spring arrived like someone apologizing after breaking something they couldn't fix.
The last of the snow disappeared into the ground. The mud dried into cracked patterns, then softened as new shoots pushed through. The fields, bald a few weeks before, began to dress themselves in hesitant green. Trees budded as if nothing important had happened while they were naked.
At the well, neighbours spoke with the easy certainty of people who liked stories with straight lines.
"See?" one said, passing a bucket hand to hand. "I told you. Once the cold goes, Li Mei will get better. It was winter pressing on her lungs."
"Of course," another replied, eager to agree. "Now that the sun is back, she'll be fine."
Li Shen didn't bother answering.
He watched his mother listen with a polite half-smile and knew she didn't believe it either.
Still, spring made lying easier.
There were days when she looked almost like before. Colour returned to her cheeks in thin washes. She tied her hair up with practised hands. She scolded Old Wu at the market when his scale "miraculously" shifted.
"You're cheating," she said flatly, watching the weight.
"My hands slipped," Wu protested.
"Then tie them behind your back next time," she said. "Three more scoops."
He muttered, but he obeyed.
On the way home, she nudged Li Shen with her shoulder.
"This is why you learn to count," she said. "Even if you never see a sect gate. Numbers are spears you can carry into places where fists don't help."
She quizzed him as they walked, turning the road into a ledger.
"How many steps from here to our door?"
"Eighty-two," he answered.
"How many if you're carrying one full bucket?"
"Ninety… five?"
"Count next time. Guessing is for people who don't mind being wrong."
"How many days of work for your father to pay two silver coins if they give one coin every four days?"
He frowned, lips moving silently.
"Eight days," he said. "No. Sixteen."
"Better," she nodded. "Don't confuse yourself when it's your back paying. Merchants won't correct you in your favour."
She spent her strength like that now—on small lessons, small repetitions, packing things into him as if filling a trunk before a long road no one had named yet.
He didn't see it at first.
He was too busy enjoying the good days: when she didn't cough much, when Old He left with a grunt instead of a stare, when his father came home and, just for a moment, seemed less folded in on himself.
Sometimes, on warm afternoons, she sat just outside the house with a bowl in her lap, shelling peas or snapping beans. Sunlight picked out fine new lines near her eyes—hair-thin creases that hadn't been there before last winter.
"Do you still want to be a cultivator?" she asked once, almost casually, fingers working.
He blinked. The question felt like someone had reached into an old drawer in his chest and pulled out a thing he'd hidden under chores and worry.
"I… don't know," he said. "I used to."
"Because of the stories?" she asked. "Flying swords, burning mountains, all that nonsense?"
"Because they don't just watch people die because there's nothing they can do," he said. "They can… change things."
She hummed.
"That's a generous interpretation," she said. "I wonder how many corpses the heroes walked past on their way to the ones you hear about."
"I don't care about them," he shot back. "I care about you."
"That's very touching," she said. "And very stupid."
He stared.
"I'm one person," she continued. "You're another. Your road doesn't start and end with mine. It shouldn't."
"If cultivators lived here," he insisted, "if they came when Old He called, if they cared, you wouldn't—"
"They do live," she cut in. "Just not here. Not at our level. The world is too big and their time is too expensive to spend on people like us. Their attention lands where there's more to gain than a stubborn woman and a boy who glares like he's already a patriarch."
"It's not fair," he said.
"It isn't," she agreed, without drama. "But fairness is a story people tell when they're comfortable. The rest of us deal with what is."
He clenched his jaw.
"You asked if I still want to be a cultivator," he said. "Yes. I do. More than before."
She went very still.
"Because you think it would have saved me?" she asked.
"Yes," he said. There was nothing else to say.
Something passed over her face. Not surprise. Something like grief in advance.
"I hope you're wrong," she said.
He frowned. "Why?"
"Because that's a heavy god to install in your own chest," she said. "If you start believing that the only reason people died is that you weren't strong enough yet, you'll spend the rest of your life trying to pay a debt that never ends. Every failure will be your fault. Every success will feel late."
"I'd rather think I could have done something," he said. "Even if it hurts."
She looked at him for a long time.
"You will, then," she said. "You're built that way."
He didn't know if that was a blessing or a curse.
Time slid.
The villagers measured it in practical marks: planting, weeding, first sprouts, first real heat. They complained about prices, guessed at rain, argued over who had borrowed whose hoe ten years ago and "forgotten" to return it.
In the Li house, the calendar was narrower:
Days when Li Mei could work for an hour and joke.
Days when she could only give orders from a stool.
Days when sitting upright looked like another job.
Old He came more often.
Sometimes she left with her usual rough grunt. "Still here. Good. Annoying woman. Drink your poison on time."
Sometimes, she left with her jaw clenched, pipe unlit between her fingers.
Once, when she thought no one was watching, she paused just outside the Li door, pressed her forehead against the wall for the span of a breath, then straightened and walked away as if nothing had happened.
Li Shen saw.
He pretended he hadn't.
His father's work spread beyond their own plots. He started going to other fields in the mornings, hauling stones, fixing fences, helping with ploughing in exchange for coins, grain, favours—anything that could be turned into herbs and firewood and time.
He left before the sun climbed over the low hill and returned after it had dipped behind the trees.
He spoke less.
His hands, already rough, began to look like bark—cracked, scarred, stained in ways no washing fixed.
"Are we still paying Doctor Wen?" Li Shen asked one night, as they sat by the fire, the light carving hollows in his father's cheeks.
"Yes," Li Heng said.
"Is it worth it?" the boy asked.
His father watched the flames.
"She's here," he said finally. "She laughs sometimes. She insults Old Wu accurately. She tells you when your sums are stupid. Without the medicine, that storm might have been the last time you heard her breathe."
He didn't add, and I'm not ready for that.
He didn't need to.
"So yes," he finished. "It's worth it."
"Even if…" The word snagged in Li Shen's throat.
"Even if," his father repeated.
It had become his answer to everything the world refused to fix.
The day Li Shen truly understood that this wasn't a sickness they would one day look back on as "that bad winter," it didn't arrive with blood or screaming.
It arrived with a sentence.
He wasn't supposed to hear it.
He'd gone to return a borrowed pot to Old He—a heavy iron thing she trusted only to people who wouldn't ruin it. She wasn't home, so he left it on the bench by her door and started back.
Halfway down the path, he saw them.
Old He and his father stood near the crooked tree at the village edge, where the ground dipped and the wind always tested its voice. They were half-hidden by angle and branches.
They weren't shouting. That was wrong already.
Old He's hands were on her hips. His father's hung at his sides, heavy as stones.
Li Shen knew he shouldn't listen.
He walked softer.
"…holding better than I expected after that cursed storm," Old He was saying. "The southern doctor did his job. So did you."
"I didn't do anything," Li Heng said.
"You worked," she snorted. "You bought time with your back. He bought it with his tools. I buy it with my roots. Heaven still charges full price. We all know how this trade goes."
"How much?" his father asked.
"How much what?" Old He said, though she knew.
"Time," he said.
Wind scratched at the branches above them. A dog barked somewhere, thin and far.
"At this rate," Old He said slowly, "if next winter is kinder, if she doesn't catch anything on top of this, if she stops trying to be stronger than she is for appearances… a year. Maybe two."
A year.
Maybe two.
The words slid into Li Shen's mind like wet stones and refused to move.
"That's all?" his father asked. No anger. Just something hollow.
"That's more than many get with Pale Wind this deep," Old He said. "You've seen it."
"It's not enough," he said.
"I know," she answered.
He hated how often adults said that.
"It's never enough when it's someone you love," she went on. "Doesn't mean what we've done is nothing."
"I didn't say—" he began.
"I know what you didn't say," she cut in. "You want me to move mountains with a shovel because you can't stand watching the land be what it is. Welcome to the club. Membership is permanent and the meetings are loud."
Silence.
"You'll tell her?" he asked at last.
"No," Old He said. "She already knows. Not the number on the rope, but that it's shorter. Bodies feel it. Names don't help."
"And the boy?" Li Heng asked, voice low enough that Li Shen had to lean in a fraction, feet careful on the dirt.
"He knows something," Old He said. "You can see it in his eyes. But don't start feeding him months. Let him count seasons a little longer. He'll have enough hard truths stuck in his throat later."
Li Shen backed away one step at a time, heart thumping against his ribs.
A year.
Maybe two.
The people at the well liked to say, "Everyone dies someday," as if "someday" was a far hill you could wave at and forget.
Now, "someday" had walked down from the hill, stepped into his yard, and started counting.
He walked home on legs that didn't feel like his.
Inside, his mother was by the stove, stirring a pot of something that smelled like cabbage resigning itself to its fate.
She looked up.
"There you are," she said. "Good. I was going to send your father to fetch you by the ear. Where did you wander off to, the capital?"
"Old He wasn't home," he said. "I left the pot."
"Good," she said. "Maybe she'll think we broke it and come yell at us. I could use a change of conversation."
He stared at her.
At the faint new shadow under her cheekbones. At the way her shoulders rounded when she thought no one was looking, then straightened when eyes turned to her.
A year.
Maybe two.
He wanted to tell her he knew.
He wanted to ask her what someone was supposed to do with that.
Instead, he picked up a knife from the table.
"Show me again," he said.
"Show you what?" she asked.
"How to cut the vegetables your way," he said. "So they cook evenly. You said I was butchering them."
"I did say that," she admitted. "Sit. And don't hold the knife like you're planning to stab fate. It won't be impressed."
He sat.
She shuffled over, hands slow but sure, and adjusted his grip.
"Like this," she said. "Fingers tucked in unless you want fewer of them. Slice, don't chop. You're not fighting the cabbage; you're persuading it."
He tried.
"Too thick," she said. "That piece stays hard when the others are ready. Too thin; that one disappears. You want them to arrive together."
"It's just food," he muttered.
"It's the difference between something people endure and something they remember," she said. "Trust an old woman who's eaten too many bad meals."
"I don't think anyone remembers porridge and cabbage," he said.
"You'd be surprised what people remember when someone is gone," she replied.
His hand stuttered.
She didn't take the words back.
She just nudged his wrist and made him keep cutting.
That night, lying on his mat, listening to the muffled coughs through the wall—smaller now, but still there—Li Shen stared into the dark.
He counted.
Not breaths. Not sheep.
Choices.
His father had chosen to go to Han.
Doctor Wen had chosen to come.
Old He chose, again and again, to show up, even knowing where the road ended.
His mother chose to walk into the yard, to teach him numbers and knives and how to pin Old Wu to his own lies.
None of those choices had erased the thing in her lungs.
But without them, she might already have been a story instead of a presence.
Medicine, he thought, doesn't change the ending. It just stretches the middle.
He hated that.
He also couldn't deny it.
A year.
Maybe two.
For now, she was here.
For now, there were still days to cut badly, to be corrected, to argue about scales and sums and how much soup counts as "enough."
He didn't know yet what that borrowed time was worth.
He only knew that when the rope finally ran out and "someday" stopped being a word, he would look back at these uneven days—mud, herbs, small jokes, small lessons—and measure whether he had wasted them.
The knot in his chest pulled tighter.
"If I ever get power," he thought, fingers digging into his blanket, "it won't be to look down on people. It'll be to hit back at this. At this… helplessness. At that faceless thing in the air everyone dresses up as 'Pale Wind' when they talk, like a polite name makes it less cruel."
Outside, the wind moved along the walls.
Not howling now. Just breathing.
Inside a small house in a village no sect would bother marking on their maps, a boy lay awake, learning the shape of a grief that hadn't happened yet.
He didn't have words for it, and he wouldn't have called it anything grand.
But somewhere between one heartbeat and the next, his path shifted a fraction:
Not toward glory.
Not toward conquest.
Toward a narrow, stubborn road where effort did not guarantee victory…
…but still demanded to be made.