Marked by the Four Beast Lords After Transmigration

The lower-kitchen hauler arrived as Nia prepared to leave the upper hearth. His wife walked behind him with their younger son close to her side. The man uncovered his hands when Kael looked across the room and sat beside Sera before she had to use his name.

Kitchen grease filled the cracks across his knuckles.

Mari moved the clean wraps beyond his reach. “Your son carried a lid through two corridors because you decided grease was treatment.”

The man looked toward the boy. “You told them about the lids?”

“I told Mother. Mother told all of them.”

His wife held out the dropped lid she had found beneath the grain shelf. “He also told me about hot bowls.”

Sera began washing the man’s hands while the child delivered dry cloths one at a time, counting each aloud and beginning again whenever his father complained. The argument remained behind them when Nia, Kael, and Shen left the upper hearth.

Kael kept the private strip inside his cloak. At the corridor board, he crossed out the single-file mark for the lower turn. Ice had shed after the last warm fire, and a waiting supply load needed the wider path before anyone moved it.

Shen walked on Nia’s open side while Kael took the damp wall. Near the highest passage, grit shifted beneath Nia’s boot. Kael’s hand closed around her waist before the slide became a fall.

“Water underneath,” Shen said after testing the place with his heel.

Kael added a scrape line to the route strip. They crossed against the wall and left the false-dry patch marked for the next runner.

By the time they reached the cave, the ache beneath Nia’s shoulder had spread into her neck. Kael fitted a folded fur behind her on the low seat. Shen brought the wash bowl within her reach. Nia washed while he cleaned his own hands after the corridor. Kael loosened both wrist guards, left one on the warm hearthstone, and scrubbed away the route grit before joining them. Only then did Shen lay the private strip in the middle of the table.

The public questions occupied the outer fold. Inside, smaller Earth words waited in Nia’s hand.

Shen untied the strip but did not open it immediately. “Do you want the first word, or do you want food?”

“The first word,” she said. “Then food before I pretend there should be a third.”

Kael placed the sand dish across the remaining folds. “Two.”

Nia uncovered ginger and, for several breaths, did not translate it. She remembered a fresh piece heavy in her palm, thin brown skin scraped with the edge of a spoon, and a scent that reached the air before the knife finished cutting. It had once belonged to the ordinary clutter of a kitchen. Now even its shape had to be rebuilt from memory.

“Say it,” she said.

Shen’s gaze lifted from the strip. “Ginger.”

He pronounced it carefully. Kael read the letters once.

“Ginger,” he repeated.

The word sounded different in his lower voice. Nia pressed her thumb against the table until the first ache behind her ribs loosened.

“I used to buy it without planning for it,” she said. “Sometimes I forgot a piece until it dried at the back of the kitchen. I could get another one before I had decided whether the old one was still useful.”

Kael’s hand settled beside hers without covering the word. “You do not have to make the waste sound smaller because you miss it.”

“I know.” She drew one breath through the memory of that impossible abundance. “I do not miss forgetting it. I miss being able to believe there would always be more.”

Shen left the reed where it was. Neither man hurried her toward the Vareth question.

“Fresh, it smelled sharp enough to find with my eyes closed,” she said. “It warmed broth without burning like pepper. The pieces stayed crisp if they were not cooked too long.”

Shen listened without reaching for the reed. “And when it dried?”

“It became stronger and woodier when it dried, but it was still food.” She pressed her thumb beside the word. “People also used it when the stomach felt unsettled, but I miss it first because of the taste.”

Kael drew one short dividing line beneath the entry. “Food first. Stomach use stays separate until Shen knows what the local root does.”

“Yes. Food first,” Nia said.

Shen’s eyes warmed. “You sound pleased that he learned it.”

“I am pleased he did not turn my soup into a treatment strip.”

Kael darkened the dividing line beneath food and passed the reed back to Nia. Shen spread a clean cloth across the table and brought two dried roots from his medical shelf. One was dark and ridged. Its bitterness reached Nia before he unwrapped it. The other showed a pale center where he shaved one thin piece with a clean knife.

“Neither is ginger,” Shen said. “The dark root belongs in steam for chest tightness. Swallowed, it irritates the stomach. The pale one enters broth, but its sweetness becomes unpleasant if it boils too long.”

Kael looked at the dark packet. “That is why I would begin with food stores rather than medicine.”

“And a trader hearing ‘warming root’ may bring exactly this,” Shen replied. “Knowing the wrong answer is useful before the question leaves the cave.”

Nia smelled both. The bitter root made her pull back. The pale shaving carried a mild sweetness closer to roasted carrot than the sharpness she remembered.

“Shen is right about the warning,” she said. “Kael is right that the answer will probably come from a kitchen. Put both on the strip.”

Kael wrote ordinary food root first and not bitter steam root beneath it.

Nia pushed the pale shaving back onto the cloth. “This would disappear beneath broth. Ginger stayed present under the other flavors.”

Shen folded the cloth over the rejected piece. “Then mild warmth is not enough.”

The next private word was lemon. Kael looked at it, then at Nia. “Sun-sour fruit.”

“Closest, but not the whole answer.” She remembered the dried sun-sour peel brightening berry drink and cutting through festival sweetness. “The peel we have is limited and already dried. I want to know whether the fresh fruit has juice we can cook with, and whether Hearthfang has anything sharper that does not pull every dish toward berry or fermented sourness.”

Shen drew the packet of dried sun-sour peel from the food shelf and opened it beneath her nose. The scent had faded since the festival, but the bright edge remained.

Nia touched one curled strip. “Lemon could make heavy broth taste lighter without making it taste like a fruit drink. Sometimes the juice mattered. Sometimes the skin carried the scent. I need to know whether sun-sour does both before we search farther.”

Kael did not write immediately. “Then this question begins in Hearthfang stores, not on a trade road.”

“It begins here,” Shen agreed, turning the peel between two claws. “Trade comes after we know what the local fruit lacks.”

Nia drew the sun-sour packet closer and loosened its tie.

Shen left the packet open after she took one strip. Kael turned the local name toward the top of the questions.

The packet held only a few curls of peel. Shen counted them by touch before retying it.

“I remember the first packet Elder Bran sent,” Nia said. “I thought the scent meant I had found the answer before I understood the fruit.”

“You found one answer,” Shen said. “It made the berry drink better.”

“That was enough then.” She looked at the private word. “It does not have to become every kind of sourness just because it reminded me of home.”

Nia left lemon beneath the local name and moved her hand to the next clear space.

They wrote only three public questions: whether fresh sun-sour juice entered food, whether its cut skin turned bitter while resting, and which household still had whole fruit rather than dried peel. Beneath those, Kael left room for a stronger souring ingredient if the familiar fruit failed.

Nia rubbed the dry peel between her fingers. A faint oil clung beneath her nails. For an instant the smell nearly reached the brightness of a lemon cut on Earth, but the memory changed as soon as she tried to hold it.

Shen drew the clean edge of the cloth beneath her hand. “Enough?”

She wiped her fingers. “Enough to know what we ask first.”

The unused Earth words remained under the sand dish. The pull in her shoulder sharpened when she leaned toward them.

Nia covered the fold with her palm. “Two.”

Kael sanded the last line and tied the strip loosely enough that she could reopen it without fighting the cord.

Shen returned the medical roots to their shelf, rinsed his hands with Nia, and went to the pot while Kael moved the private paper away from the steam.

The broth had been warming since before they went to the upper hearth. Shen tasted it, added rough herb salt, and poured three bowls. He set Nia’s close enough that she could lift it without reaching across the table.

Roasted winter root had sweetened the broth without making it heavy. Kael broke a root cake into his bowl. Nia kept hers in one hand and dipped the browned edge until the center softened.

“Did the climb worsen your shoulder?” Kael asked.

“The climb did not. Leaning over the hidden rows did.”

Shen carried his bowl to the low seat and checked the edge of her wrap. The upper fold had tightened toward her neck. He loosened it, settled his tail along her hip, and resumed eating.

Kael had left one wrist guard on the warm hearthstone. The second remained buckled loosely until damp grit beneath its lower cord began rubbing above his wrist bone. He freed it after several mouthfuls and passed it to Shen.

“That began after the middle rise,” Nia said.

Kael looked at the narrow red line. “After.”

Shen cleaned the guard with a used cloth and tested the cord. “The wet edge pulled the knot lower. I can move it above the bone, but bring it to me before the grit reaches your skin next time.”

“I will.”

Nia touched only the dry end of the cord while Shen retied it. He dropped the used cloth into the wash bowl, and all three cleared the remaining grit from their hands or skin before returning to their food.

Kael divided the last root cake. He placed the larger half on Shen’s plate and slid the smaller one toward Nia because she still held part of her first.

Wind scraped the entrance stone. A distant route call reached the cave, and Kael answered with the current lower-turn restriction. Shen kept Nia’s bowl near the coals until the runner repeated the message correctly.

When the cave was quiet again, Nia ate the warmed broth while the two private words rested beneath Kael’s new questions. After the bowls were empty, he placed the tied strip on the clear side of the table, away from the steam and within her reach.