"Where am I—" The word tore out of her like a broken spell. Ice smoked under her palms. Breath fogged and vanished. "Don't move," a voice said. Quiet. Not the voice of a stranger. Lin Ge blinked and saw white sleeves, white hair pinned with a jade pin, and a face that did not belong to the young body she inhabited and yet felt like a remembered hymn. "Hold my hand," the woman ordered. Her fingers were warm despite the cold around them. She pressed Lin Ge's wrist and kept her palm there. "Who are you?" Lin Ge asked. "You call me Qingzhu when you are rude." The woman did not smile. "Answer me. Can you feel this?" Lin Ge felt a tug beneath her skin where the fingers lay. Something moved, slow and precise, as if someone had planted seeds that woke at the squeeze. "What is that?" Lin Ge managed. Her tongue tasted of metal. The cave hummed. "Life-root seeds," the woman said plainly. "They awaken when the old owner returns. They sting at first." Her thumb brushed a tiny raised mark at Lin Ge's wrist and Lin froze. The mark was a band of ink under the skin. Small, neat, an ancestral sigil in miniature. Lin Ge's mouth went dry when she recognized the pattern. "Ge'er," the woman whispered. The word was soft and heavy. "My Ge'er." Lin Ge frowned. "Ge'er?" "Ge'er," the woman repeated, and for the