The Alliance

# Chapter 16: The Alliance

The river taught him where the humans had gone.

Not with voices—water did not gossip—but with traces. Boot scuffs on mud dried in a particular pattern. Ash from a cookfire ground fine into silt. A strip of camphor root tied to a willow branch where Ling's herb paths crossed the current. Chen Yunfei moved downstream with his right hand on bark when the bank was steep, left hand open at his side. New skin caught every change of light. Void-meridian answered breath with craft's discipline instead of appetite.