The silence did not break so much as it deepened, the way a held breath deepens the instant before someone finally lets it go.
Lin Yue stepped forward.
No talisman in his hand. No weapon at his side. He didn't reach for either, and some distant part of him understood that reaching would have meant something—an admission that he needed to be armed against her, that there was some part of him worth defending. He simply walked, one unhurried step after another, out of the ring of terrified players and into the open ground between them and the Mourning Mother.
"Lin Yue!" He Jian's voice cracked across the chamber, sharp with the particular fear of a man watching someone walk toward a cliff's edge. "What are you doing? Get back here—"
"Stay where you are," Lin Yue said, without turning. "All of you."
