They made good time on the road.
Courier work was simple in theory. Walk fast. Hand things over. Don't linger where you didn't belong. Liang Wei settled into it without thinking, her pace even, her focus split between the stretch of road ahead and the small adjustments of the men moving around her.
There were four of them altogether, pulled from different units and thrown together for the task. None of them stood out. None of them wanted to. That, more than anything, was why they had been chosen.
By midday, the road narrowed and the land softened into low hills and scrub. The air warmed. Armor was loosened where it could be. Someone complained about the dust getting into everything. Another joked that at least dust meant they were still alive to be annoyed by it.
They stopped briefly near a stand of trees to drink and eat. Liang Wei crouched instead of sitting, spear resting across her knees. The others followed without remark, settling into the same posture as if it had been agreed upon beforehand.
Conversation drifted the way it always did when men were tired and not yet afraid again.
"My brother would have loved this," one of them said, tearing into a strip of dried meat. "All this walking. He thought it made him look heroic."
"Younger or older," another asked.
"Younger. Loud. Couldn't sit still if you nailed him to the floor."
"That's all younger brothers," someone else said. "Mine used to follow me everywhere. Swore he'd be a soldier too, until he realized he couldn't hold the sword."
A brief laugh moved through the group.
"At least yours could see where he was going," the first man added lightly. "Mine tripped over air."
It was nothing. Just words. Careless, unweighted.
Liang Wei's hand tightened on the spear shaft, then loosened again just as quickly.
For a moment, the road vanished.
She remembered stone beneath her knees, cold even in summer. Remembered pressing her forehead to the ground beside him because it felt right to do so. An Yue's hand in hers, smaller, trusting, his fingers trembling where they held the blade together. The sting of blood. The copper smell. Him smiling without seeing her face and saying her name like it was a promise.
I will follow you, he had said.
She had believed him.
The memory slipped away as quietly as it came.
She shifted her grip and rose when the others did, expression unchanged. No one had noticed anything. The conversation moved on, drifting toward complaints about rations and speculation about where the next orders would send them.
They resumed the march.
As the afternoon wore on, Liang Wei became aware of something else. Distance. The presence she had felt earlier was still there, but looser now. Less careful. As if whoever followed her had grown bored with watching nothing happen.
Good.
She kept her pace even, never breaking formation, never stepping too far ahead or lagging behind. When one of the men asked her how long she thought the rotation would last, she shrugged and said, "Long enough to regret it."
That earned a quiet chuckle.
They reached a relay post by dusk, little more than a guarded crossroads with fresh horses and sealed crates waiting under canvas. Papers were exchanged. Stamps pressed. Orders acknowledged. Liang Wei handed over her packet and received another without comment.
The sword remained quiet at her side. Too quiet. That bothered her more than when it burned.
They were given a short rest before moving on again at first light. Fires were built low. Food was passed around. Someone produced a skin of cheap wine, passed it once, then twice. Liang Wei declined without explanation and settled at the edge of the light, spear within reach, back against a tree.
She looked down the road they would take tomorrow. Forward. Always forward.
She did not know where it would end yet. Only that she could not turn back. Not to Bing Ya. Not to the fortress. Not to the version of herself that had knelt on stone and sworn to protect someone, who could not see the world that would take him from her.
The road stretched on, indifferent and patient. Liang Wei closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again. She would keep moving.
That was the only promise she still knew how to keep.