The council chamber held a painted map of the islands. Three bronze lanterns stood on the long table beneath it, their shutters closed. Patriarch Muo laid a thin manuscript beside them but kept one hand on the cover.
“This is the Soul-Lantern Division,” he said. “The hall’s copy remains here. You may read the complete method before deciding whether to practice.”
Yan opened to the first page. The opening lines described awareness as a single flame. Later passages showed how to divide its reach through three lanterns, keeping each point connected by a central thread. The warning was plain: an ordinary practitioner could lose fragments of the soul or fail to call them back.
Yan read the danger twice. The method promised a way to see from several places at once. His curiosity brightened at the idea. The written cost would have frightened another practitioner. He did not confuse that fear with proof of what his own body would experience.
“I want the complete sequence before I try anything,” he said.
Muo’s expression suggested he had expected the warning to make Yan pause. “Of course.” Suyin asked whether she could report the demonstration to her village without being asked to endorse the whole method. Muo said she could describe what she saw and what the trial did not show. “Then I’ll report that the lamps held three points, not that the ward has a new source,” she said. Yan liked the precision. The art might be useful, but a village…
