The first time Liu Lanzhi saw her, she was nothing.
A servant, old and bent, her back curved from years of labor, her hands stained with soil. She was tending a patch of herbs in a forgotten corner of the garden, her movements slow, her breath labored. She looked like the kind of person the palace forgot—one of the hundreds who moved through corridors invisible, useful only for the work they did when no one was watching.
Liu Lanzhi had been walking through the garden alone, weeks ago, before the boy appeared. She had been learning the paths, the hidden corners, the places where no one went. Learning to be invisible herself.
The old woman looked up when she passed. Her eyes were sharp—too sharp for a servant, too sharp for someone who had spent her life in soil.
"You walk like someone who is trying not to be seen."
Liu Lanzhi stopped. She had learned, in this life, not to stop for strangers. But something in the old woman's voice held her.
"You see too much."
