Morning came the way it always did in Qingmu Village—quietly, gently, as though the night before had never happened at all.
Birdsong drifted over the courtyard walls, thin and cheerful. Smoke rose in lazy gray threads from a dozen household chimneys, curling up into a sky washed pale and clean, no trace of the bruised purple that had swallowed it the evening before. Somewhere beyond the gate, a rooster crowed, indignant and ordinary, as though it had never once considered that anything unusual might be happening in the streets it called home.
Lin Yue stood at the courtyard entrance for a long moment, simply looking.
The red veil was gone.
