The doors stood open behind Chief Chen, and yet none of the villagers came further than the threshold.
They gathered there instead, lanterns raised, faces caught somewhere between the dim amber glow and the deeper crimson bleeding down from the moon above the rooftops. Nobody spoke. Nobody moved to close the distance. It was as if the hall itself had drawn an invisible line across the doorway, and every person standing outside it understood, on some instinctive level, that to cross it uninvited would mean something none of them were prepared to face.
Lin Yue felt the ancestral spirits withdraw around him, one by one, sinking back into the black spaces between the shelves until only the faint impression of their presence remained—a colder patch of air here, a held stillness there. The hum that had filled the hall only minutes ago had gone quiet, but it hadn't disappeared. It had simply gone underground, folding itself into the silence the way a held breath folds into a chest.
