Chapter 119: The Fading

Singapore 1902–1904

By 1902, Zhao Lian has gathered dozens of clues from carvings, stories, manuscripts, and symbols. She has visited temples, shrines, libraries, and markets. She has spoken with sailors, merchants, elders, and scholars.

She hasn’t found the Directional fragment but she has found other places containing the encircled-star and spiral symbols. The ones in Singapore are all the same, and differ in detail from the one in Shangping. In each case, the spiral is north of centre.

Lian sits at her table one evening, her notebooks spread before her, her brush resting between her fingers. The lantern flickers softly, casting warm light across her face.

She whispers, “I don’t know where to look next.”

I drift beside her, sensing her pulse tighten. She is not discouraged. She is simply tired.

“The tetrad is incomplete,” I say softly. “The bracelet’s fragment cannot guide you fully.”

She nods. “I know.”

She closes her notebook slowly. “But I will keep trying.”

I pulse gently. “Yes.”

She smiles faintly. “Rebecca would want me to.”

I drift closer. “She would.”

Zhao Lian continues her search ... quietly, patiently, steadily. She doesn’t rush. She doesn’t despair. She simply continues, day after day, year after year.

She isn’t a scholar by training. She isn’t an adventurer. She isn’t a visionary.

But she is determined. She is perceptive. And she is steady.

And she is the bearer of the Solar fragment, and I now hold the knowledge necessary to align it to the Venus and Lunar fragments. But not the Directional fragment.

Her search will not end here. But her connection to me will begin to fade before long. Her ability to summon me is dependent on the depth of her own well of spirit magic. Unfortunately that isn’t large. Although she is careful to only summon me in corporeal form when absolutely necessary, those instances are more frequent when sifting through the huge number of scrolls and records.

Singapore 1905–1909

Singapore’s heat settles into the shop-house like a second skin, clinging to the wooden shutters and the clay tiles and the narrow courtyard where Zhao Lian hangs laundry each morning. The air smells of spices and sea salt, of incense drifting from the temples in Telok Ayer, of the faint metallic tang of the port. Life here is louder than Shangping, faster, more crowded ... but Zhao Lian moves through it with the same quiet steadiness she carried in the hills of Meixian.