On the fourteenth day, I felt them.

  Two signatures. South-southeast, maybe thirty li out. Moving with the kind of purpose that wasn't travel — it was tracking. One was Iron Lotus. The other I didn't recognize, which was worse. Known threats have limits. Unknown threats have budgets.

  They weren't close. Not yet. But they were on the correct vector and correct vectors don't drift.

  I woke Wei before dawn.

  "We run."

  He looked at me. Read my face.

  "How many?"

  "Two. Far, but not far enough."

  His jaw set. He didn't argue.

  He ran.

  We moved north at the maximum sustained pace his body could maintain without qi-assistance. I didn't allow qi-output. Qi meant signature and signature meant detection and the next participants would be calibrated to Bear's report.

  Through forest that thinned as altitude dropped. Through valleys that smelled like rain. Through geography I knew from centuries ago that had changed in the slow, indifferent way land changes.

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  Wei's breathing changed on the second hour. Shorter. Sharper. The controlled rhythm breaking down into something his body was choosing for him. His jaw was set — the stubbornness-muscle locked.

  He didn't stop.

  Three hours. Ridge, descent, valley, stream crossing, ascent. The geological rhythm of northern travel.

  His breathing was controlled — not natural exertion but managed, deliberate respiration through pain.

  Five hours.

  His face was white. The color of a body that has been running on willpower longer than physiology permits.

  "Stop."

  He stopped. Immediately — the cessation of someone who had been waiting for the command and running on authority rather than capacity for the last hour. His knees buckled. He caught himself. Stood. Breathed.

  "Sit."

  He sat. On a rock. Hands on his knees. His chest rose and fell with the exaggerated motion of lungs demanding more than running allowed.

  I checked his channels. Hands near his chest — not touching, not yet. The stream responded anyway. Surging at proximity. The tremor in my fingers.

  His qi-pattern was ragged. Overtaxed. Five hours of sustained physical output without qi-assistance had depleted reserves that a thirteen-year-old body couldn't replace through breathing alone.

  I fed a thread of healing qi into his system. Stabilizing. The cycle that was treatment and damage simultaneously.

  He endured it. Before, he'd have leaned into my hands — the trust of a boy who believed completely. Now he sat still.

  The qi settled. His breathing slowed. I withdrew.

  "The next ones will be stronger," I said.

  He nodded. Didn't speak.

  The afternoon light came through the canopy in fragments. Somewhere east, smoke — a settlement, or a camp, faint enough that my perception caught it and his didn't. People. Direction. The axis along which the next phase would orient itself.

  He shouldered his pack.

  We walked. North. Into whatever north contained.

  The exhaustion would pass. The walking wouldn't. The lie wouldn't. The crack wouldn't.