The traveler came back at dawn.
She didn't enter through the road. She followed the old canal path, boots soaked, eyes hollow, a leather pouch pressed against her chest like it held warmth. She didn't knock. Didn't greet anyone. Just crossed the square and sat at the edge of the well, as if the ground there might hold her together.
Ye Han swept the steps of the bakery stall that hadn't opened in months. He didn't look at her directly, but his hands slowed.
Yaya appeared from behind the hut, dragging a stick and three dead leaves.
"You're the lady from the bench," she said brightly.
The woman didn't answer.
"You cried last time," Yaya added helpfully. "Are you here to do it again?"
That got a sound—a half-choked laugh that died in the woman's throat.
---
Yaya dropped the stick and stepped closer.
"You look like someone put all your thoughts in a jar and shook it."
The woman blinked. "I—"
She stopped. Her fingers tightened around the pouch.
Yaya squinted at it.
"That thing... it's making your voice all wobbly."
The traveler flinched.
Ye Han paused his sweeping.
Yaya's voice dropped. "Granny Wen says when something makes you feel heavy for too long, you have to let someone help carry it."
---
"I didn't… I didn't know it was real," the woman said. Her voice was hoarse. "He gave it to me the day before he left for the Gate. Said it was nothing. Just a crystal he found—said it looked like the color of my laugh."
She looked down at the pouch.
"I wore it on my wrist for a year. Then… I started hearing his voice at night. Smelling the ash."
She looked up. First at Yaya. Then, finally, at Ye Han.
"Then it wasn't his voice anymore. It was mine. And it hated me."
---
Yaya stepped back slightly, hugging her arms.
Ye Han hadn't moved.
The woman held the pouch between shaking fingers.
"I tried to leave it somewhere. Dropped it in the river. It was back in my bag the next morning."
---
Silence.
Then she asked, quiet and raw, "Why didn't you look away from me last time?"
Ye Han looked at her now. Just once.
Then walked over and sat on the far side of the well.
Not touching. Not close. Just present.
---
The woman's hands loosened. She opened the pouch and set it on the stone.
Inside lay a pale shard—dull, hairline cracks running through the center. No glow. But it hummed faintly, like something old breathing in the dark.
Yaya stared at it.
"I don't like it," she whispered. "It feels like it wants to cry but forgot how."
---
The wind shifted.
Ye Han looked up at the sky.
The shard pulsed once—just once.
A small ring of dust trembled around the stone's edge.
Yaya tugged on Ye Han's coat.
"Should we... do something?"
Ye Han didn't respond.
The traveler folded her arms around herself, as if trying to hold in the pieces.
"I didn't mean to carry him this long," she said.
Yaya sat cross-legged on the well's other side.
"Maybe he's not heavy. Maybe you're just tired."
---
The shard gave off a second, sharper pulse.
Ye Han narrowed his eyes.
Far across the square, behind the blacksmith's canopy, Ren paused mid-step.
He turned slowly, one hand drifting to his wrapped wrist.
The traveler hadn't moved. Her shoulders had gone still.
Her lips parted, and she said nothing.
Just breathed.
The shard lay quiet again.
Ye Han looked at it, then at her, then back at the stone.
Not a word.
But something in the square had changed.
The kind of quiet that usually comes after a scream.