Chapter 19: The Mountain Town Crisis (4)
The cold hit differently before dawn.
It wasn’t the sharp, immediate bite of night air, the kind that announced itself with drama and demanded attention.
This cold crept in slowly, almost politely at first, insinuating itself through the seams in jackets and the thin gaps between scarf and skin.
It slid along wrists and down collars, settling into bones with quiet patience, as if it knew it had all the time it needed.
Lena pulled her collar higher, fingers stiff as she tucked her chin down, trying to keep what little warmth she had trapped close.
Beside her, Li Wei walked at an even pace, hands buried deep in his pockets, shoulders slightly hunched against the chill. Neither of them spoke.
The narrow lanes guided them forward, stone walls rising close on either side. Their footsteps were soft against the pavement, the sound muted by stone still dark with night and damp from lingering cold.
The city felt hushed here, not asleep, just listening, as if aware of their passage and waiting for them to move on.
They had chosen the hour deliberately.
Morning, early morning, when the sky was only beginning to lighten and the city hadn’t yet woken fully. Shops were still shuttered, streets quiet, the air carrying that thin, in-between stillness that existed only before routine took hold. It was long before night could reclaim its grip, long before shadows grew confident again.
The paperwork had been explicit about that much.
Nights weren’t safe.
Not here.
Not anymore.
Whatever moved after sunset didn’t vanish with the coming of daylight, but it loosened its hold just enough for careful work to be done.
The presence receded, edges dulling, retreating into places where it could watch without pressing too close. Morning offered no protection, only opportunity.
And opportunity, in this city, was something you used quickly or not at all.
Careful work like this.
Li stopped at the corner of a shuttered storefront and knelt, gloved fingers already moving.
He pressed a small disc, etched, dull, unremarkable, into the seam where stone met earth. He whispered nothing. He didn’t need to.
The ward took hold quietly, a subtle tightening in the air that Lena felt more than saw.
“One down,” he murmured.
Lena marked the location on her phone, then slid it back into her pocket.
“Two dozen more.”
“Thirty-two,” Li corrected gently.
She sighed. “I was being optimistic.”
The city hadn’t woken yet.
Shutters were down. Shop signs hung inert. Prayer flags stirred faintly overhead, colors muted in the half-light, as if even they were reluctant to move too much before the sun gave permission. Somewhere far away a dog barked once, then thought better of it.
They moved on, pace unhurried but efficient, falling into a rhythm that required no discussion.
Every few meters they stopped to repeat the ritual, movements precise and practiced, as if the sequence had been memorized long ago.
Lena handled placement at thresholds, doorways, alley mouths, narrow passageways where foot traffic funneled and rules tended to fray.
She worked carefully, attentive to angles and proximity. Li favored foundations and drains, crouching near grates and stonework, choosing points where the city physically touched older layers beneath it. Between them, the work formed a quiet pattern, methodical and deliberate.
The wards were small. Intentionally so. Nothing dramatic. Nothing that announced itself.
That was the point.
Li walked with his hands in his pockets between stops, shoulders relaxed, pace steady. He looked exactly as he always did, composed, observant, unreadable in a way that felt deliberate rather than defensive. The faint glow from a streetlamp caught the edge of his glasses, briefly obscuring his eyes.
“This place feels… thinner in the mornings,” Lena said, breaking the quiet as she tucked a sigil behind a loose stone.
Li considered that while adjusting the angle of another ward. “Less noise,” he replied. “Less expectation.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Like the world hasn’t decided what it’s going to be yet.”
“Which makes it easier to tell it what it should be,” Li added.
They turned down a narrower alley, the kind that felt like a shortcut only if you already knew where it went.
The walls closed in slightly, stone damp to the touch, the smell of earth and old water lingering in the air. Lena’s breath fogged faintly as she exhaled.
Halfway down, she paused and frowned. “This one feels… off.”
Li stopped instantly. He crouched, palm hovering an inch above the ground, eyes unfocused. After a moment, he nodded. “Residual. Nothing active.”
“Still,” she said, already pulling another ward from her pocket. “Let’s reinforce.”
They placed two there instead of one. The air tightened, a faint pressure easing as if something unseen had been denied a comfortable place to linger.
Li glanced sideways at her. “You don’t sleep much here.”
She snorted softly. “I sleep. I just don’t… rest.”
“That tracks.”
They emerged from the alley into a small open space, cordoned off by a low metal railing. Beyond it, the ground fell away sharply, the city giving way to raw geography. The mountains loomed there, immense and silent, their edges lost in cloud and shadow. Even now, with the sky lightening by degrees, they felt impossibly close.
Lena stepped up to the railing and rested her forearms against it, the metal cold through her sleeves. She leaned forward slightly, peering out into the vast drop beyond, where darkness still clung stubbornly to the slopes.
Li joined her, setting the last ward for this stretch into a crack at the base of the railing. When he stood, he didn’t rush away. He stood beside her, just close enough that she could feel his presence without him crowding her.
For a while, they didn’t speak, letting the quiet stretch between them, comfortable and undisturbed, filled only by shared presence.
The sky began to change almost imperceptibly, black softening to deep blue, then to something paler, streaked with the promise of color. Clouds shifted, their undersides catching faint light.
Li broke the silence.
“Do you ever miss the world you were from?”
The question landed gently, without accusation or expectation.
Lena didn’t answer right away.
She watched the mountains breathe, mist rolling slowly along their contours like something alive but unbothered by being seen.
She could feel the wards they’d placed behind them, faint, steady, like a line of quiet sentinels holding their ground.
“Sometimes,” she said finally. “Not the place, exactly. The… assumptions.”
Li tilted his head slightly.
“Meaning?”
“Gravity worked the same everywhere,” she said. “Doors led where they were supposed to. When something went wrong, it was usually because someone messed up, not because reality decided to get creative.”
She glanced at him.
“You?”
Li’s expression didn’t change, but something in his posture shifted, a subtle redistribution of weight, a recalibration.
“I miss clarity,” he said. “In the past world, problems tended to be discrete. You could isolate variables.”
“And now?”
“Now,” he said, “the variables isolate you.”
Lena laughed quietly.
“That’s uncomfortably accurate.”
They stood there as the first hint of sunlight crept over the cloud line, a pale gold edging into the sky. The mountains caught it reluctantly, their faces emerging in layers, ridge by ridge, shadow by shadow.
Li watched the light spread with careful attention. “Despite everything,” he said, “this world has a strange elegance.”
“Elegance,” Lena repeated.
“Yes.” He gestured subtly toward the horizon.
“The way it hides its complexity until you look closely. The way it forces you to slow down.”
She followed his gaze. “It also forces people to disappear.”
“It does,” he agreed.
“That’s a pretty big downside.”
Li nodded. “No argument.”
The sun pushed higher, its rays finally breaking through the cloud cover in earnest. Light spilled across the slopes, illuminating paths and contours that had been invisible moments before. The city behind them began to stir, faint sounds of movement, distant engines, a door opening somewhere below.
Lena straightened, squinting slightly as the light hit her eyes.
“You ever think about staying somewhere like this? If things were… different.”
Li considered the question carefully. “I think about staying where things make sense,” he said.
“That location changes.”
She nodded. “Fair.”
A breeze picked up, carrying the scent of stone and cold air and something faintly green. Lena shivered, then smiled despite herself.
“For all this world’s complications and struggles,” Li continued, voice quiet but steady, “it is… quite beautiful.”
The word hung between them, unchallenged.
Lena watched the sunlight spill fully across the mountains now, clouds thinning, the sheer scale of it all laid bare. The vastness didn’t feel threatening in this moment. It felt honest.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “It really is.”
They turned back toward the city together, retracing their steps along the invisible line of wards they’d laid down, small acts of order pressed into a world that didn’t always want it. The alleys no longer felt quite as empty, but neither did they feel welcoming.
Daylight made the work possible.
Night would make it dangerous.
And both of them knew exactly why they were done before the sun rose any higher.
