The noise of the sect faded long before the path ended.
Steel still clashed somewhere in the distance.
Voices carried faintly across the terraces.
Training, laughter, arguments—life moved as it always did.
But here, it softened.
The inner court rested beneath a carved jade overhang, its pillars etched with faint golden patterns that caught the afternoon light in quiet pulses.
Sunlight filtered through in narrow beams, falling across the stone in warm lines that shifted with the wind.
It wasn't silent.
Just removed.
Like the world had taken a step back.
Lin Shu sat against one of the jade pillars, her back straight despite the fatigue resting in her shoulders.
A light cloth wrapped around her upper arm, another secured carefully across her ribs beneath her robe.
The worst had healed.
What remained was slower.
Her breathing was steady, but not entirely natural.
