Eleven years had passed since I first rolled off the back of that cart, half-dead and colder than a corpse. Eleven winters, eleven summers, and more blood than I cared to count.
To the best of my knowledge, I was 20 now, and thankfully, I had grown into my body. I survived, and I thrived.
The first winter nearly killed me. I wouldn't glamorize it. The cold was biting, relentless, seeping into the bones of the mountain and so deep into mine that I thought I would never warm up. Without Shadow, I might not have survived. He hunted when I couldn't. Kept watch while I slept. Curled against me to keep the chill from crawling too deep into my chest.
The snow that blanketed the woods kept more than just the dirt down; it muffled the sounds of wandering patrols and buried the scent of blood. Yelan didn't attempt another crossing that season. But that didn't mean they forgot about their latest hope for conquest.
The second summer, they came again.
Not 250 this time. Only 60. An elite force, or so they believed. The best of the best, and still, it didn't help.
I didn't even need to lift a finger.
They triggered twenty-seven traps before they even crossed the inner line. I watched from the trees as wolves—attracted by the scent of blood and the metallic tang in the air—picked off the stragglers one by one. Even Shadow got into it, and he normally avoided the wolves.
Or maybe it was that the wolves avoided him. But with enough food to keep the growing pack fed for months, they refused to back away from the easy prey.
And this time, I didn't bother cleaning up.
Let the flies find them, let the birds and the animals feast. Let anyone who thought of following see what I left behind.
There was no third attempt.
Yelan left the western ridge alone after that.
Even the bandits learned their lesson. Whatever alliances they'd once had with corrupt officers or traveling mercenaries dried up like salted meat. They stopped coming entirely, and the rare times I did venture down into Zhou Village, I heard the men joke that even demons had started avoiding the area.
Good. Let them all think that. It worked better than fear.
Because nothing spread faster than rumors whispered over rice bowls and cracked tea mugs.
That wasn't to say the world beyond my mountain had grown kinder. On the contrary, stories filtered in from traveling peddlers and desperate refugees. Crops failing. Water tainted with the scent of death. One year, a fever swept through the western territories and burned through entire towns in three days.
But not Zhou Village.
Never Zhou Village.
Their rice fields thrived. Their pigs birthed healthy litters. Children rarely got sick, and when they did, they healed with little more than boiled herbs and rest.
They credited the mountain.
They whispered blessings to the trees. They tied red strings on branches and left offerings of salted pork and sweet buns at the forest edge.
I never told them to do any of that.
I never asked for their gratitude.
But they gave it anyway, and I wasn't such an idiot to say no to free food.
Every new moon, I'd find bundles left at the stone near the old footpath. A place the children had named "The Witch's Step." No one entered the woods past that point unless they were born in the village—and even then, they stayed on the path. They remembered.
Even the ones who married in followed the customs like they were written in law.
Zhou Village had grown in those years. Quietly, slowly. A few refugees here, a tradesman there. Families who'd lost everything to war, drought, or the slow erosion of hope. Zhou Cunzhang took them in. But only after a single question:
"Are you willing to never leave this place again?"
Those who said yes stayed.
Those who hesitated were given food and a mule and sent in the opposite direction.
Everyone who lived here knew the secret, but they didn't speak it. They didn't write it. But they felt it. In the way the forest watched. In the way no predator dared to come near. In the way even lightning seemed to avoid striking too close.
There was something in the woods.
Something that protected them.
No one said the word "witch." Not out loud. But it was in the air, just beneath the breath. In the way elders looked to the trees when a child was born too small. In the way mothers paused to bow when the wind shifted.
And the children?
The children believed I was a spirit of vengeance. A ghost with silver eyes and smoke in her veins. Lin Wei—now taller than Zhou Cunzhang's shoulder and quick as a deer—told the tale with dramatic flair around every fire pit he could find.
He remembered the day he came across me fighting the Yelan army like it had happened yesterday.
He spoke about the black mist, about the man who tried to play with me, and most importantly, the silence that followed.
And no matter how many years passed, he never once wavered in his loyalty.
He left me pork dumplings on The Witch's Step every week.
He fixed the rope around my chicken coop when it frayed from age.
He carried rumors from the south, carefully written on folded paper, in case I needed to know who was coming.
And never once had he ever asked for thanks. Even when I slowly started letting villagers into my house to heal the sick, he and the others never overstayed their welcome.
And because of that, I made sure no predator ever crossed their path. The tigers turned back when they neared the village; the wolves didn't even bother getting that close. The bears never wandered out of the inner woods, and even the snakes avoided the borders where my markings were carved into bark.
Sometimes, I wondered if the villagers realized how much I was still watching.
I didn't want to be part of their lives. Not truly. I didn't want to go to festivals or pretend I cared about their petty disputes.
But I had been with them for so long that I didn't want them to die, either.
Zhou Cunzhang never pushed again. After our compromise, he kept his word. The villagers stayed on the marked paths. They didn't ask for healing unless it was life or death. They didn't bring strangers up the trail without warning me first.
And in exchange?
I let them live.
I gave them peace.
And in return, they gave me silence.
It was the best bargain I'd ever made.
Still… I knew it wouldn't last forever.
Whispers travel faster than wind. And though none from Zhou Village ever betrayed me, others began to wonder. Soldiers posted near the western ridges reported unnatural calm. Too quiet. No skirmishes. No wild animals. No disease.
When something is too good, people start looking closer.
And I knew, deep in my bones, that the mountain's peace would not go unnoticed for much longer.
But for now?
For now, I let myself breathe.
I let the garden stretch toward the sun.
I let the chickens scratch at the dirt, and Shadow curl beneath my window.
I made tea from dried apple peels, cinnamon bark, and the green tea that one of the merchants who moved into the village always gave me once a year. It was good enough that I let him cross the mountain, the only one with that privilege. The items he brought back from Yelan were worth a fortune when he sold them to the capital.
But he never gave anyone but me tea.
Taking a sip, I turned to the east and watched the forest preparing for another winter.
Silent. Waiting.
I never let down my guard, no matter how quiet it had been for so long. If Papa taught me nothing, it was that peace was temporary, and the world was just one fucked up wish away from ending.