The foggy morning left the rice paddocks steaming as birds began to chirp, their calls tentative at first before swelling into a restless chorus. Crickets hopped through the damp grass, silencing their songs as the light crept in. Farmers and their eldest children emerged from low wooden homes, sleeves rolled, feet already caked with mud as they set out toward the fields. Oxen and cows lowed dully, breath fogging the air, while chickens scattered underfoot, feathers brushing against bare ankles. The village stirred the way it always did, slow, habitual, and unaware of how thin the veil truly was. Even as the demons and spirits had already crept back into their hidey holes.

At the edge of the settlement, the local tea house stood half shrouded in mist, its lanterns still glowing faintly against the dawn. The back room remained sealed, incense and smoke creeping steadily from the narrow gap of a sliding door. The wooden deck outside that section was conspicuously empty, boards unoccupied despite the morning bustle. Guests and workers alike diverted their paths without comment, eyes lowered, steps quickened, no one was eager to disturb the mercenary resting within. Some instincts rested in one’s bones, a call of the soul, older than the body it rested inside of.

Inside the stable behind the tea house, his horse shifted and stamped, ears pinned back as the stable hands gave it a wide berth. It tolerated their presence poorly, muscles tight beneath a dark, ash toned coat, breath huffing in short, irritated bursts. Leather creaked softly with each movement, tack worn but meticulously cared for. The animal seemed attuned to something unseen, head lifting whenever the wind shifted, nostrils flaring as if scenting smoke where none should be. Observant, and coiled. Always ready, listening for some order that only it can hear or understand.

Within the back room, Lin Hu slept lightly, the way men like him always did. Stretched out on the mattress and the pillows and blankets. His presence pressed against the space even in stillness, coiled, restrained, dangerous. Faint warmth radiated from his skin, embers hidden beneath ash, and the living ink beneath it lay quiet but not dormant. Outside, the fog thinned as the sun rose higher, unaware that a Tiger rested among them, one who had refused and still refuses Heaven, and a tiger who has not yet decided what he would do with the day.