My dao to eternity

The tailor's wife told it first, and by the time it reached Li Fan secondhand through Old Mu's counter, the story had already passed through enough mouths that he had to sort the shape of it from underneath everyone else's embellishments before he could trust any of it at all.

Three strangers had come through the western market two days past, she said. Robes black enough to swallow the lamplight around them, faces covered by plain cloth masks that showed nothing but the eyes, and when one of them had reached up to adjust his hood against a gust of wind, something had caught the light along his sleeve — a dark thread worked into the black cloth, coiled like a serpent, gone again the instant the arm dropped back to his side.

They'd bought nothing. Asked no questions anyone could recall. Simply walked the length of the market once, unhurried, and left through the eastern gate before the hour was out.

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