Marked by the Four Beast Lords After Transmigration

Tarek’s glove remained on the peg through the next count, dark at the fingertips and dripping less often into the low plate.

The first person to stop beneath it was a boy carrying a cup lid spotted with dried berry paste. His older brother waited at the inner marker, shifting from one boot to the other while the younger boy stared at the wrap mark on the wall.

“My brother said Tarek left his glove because his fingers froze.”

Sera freed one of the boy’s ears from beneath his hood. “His fingers did not freeze. They became too stiff to close, so he warmed them and kept the dry wrap on his hand.”

The boy looked at the glove again. “Did he cry?”

Rovan hid a sound in his sleeve. Sera gave him one glance before answering. “No. He sat very quietly and wished the rest of us would disappear.”

“That sounds like Tarek,” the boy decided.

He held the sticky lid toward Mari. “Mother said this belongs with returned cups. It stuck to the shelf.”

Mari accepted it between two fingers and placed it beside the return bowl. “Your mother is correct. She is also sending me a lid that needs enough soaking to become someone else’s afternoon.”

The boy’s attention had already returned to the instructions. “Is the hand table for old people?”

“It is for any person whose fingers will not close,” Nia said.

He opened and closed his mittens to test himself. “Father says cold fingers mean you should work faster.”

Mari stopped scraping the lid. “Your father’s knuckles are split beneath kitchen grease. His wife has been trying to send him here since yesterday.”

The boy gripped the loose mitten ends. “He said the grease keeps water out.”

“It keeps dirt in,” Sera replied. “Tell your mother the station is open. Tell your father I want to see his hands after evening count.”

The boy planted his boots. “Do I have to tell him?”

Nia turned the instruction strip so he could see the heavy hand mark. “What can you remember all the way home?”

He thought hard enough that his folded ear slipped beneath the hood again. “Sera said his hands have to come after count.”

“Good,” Nia said. “Tell your mother that first.”

“His hands can bring the rest of him,” Sera added.

The boy did not leave. He rubbed one mitten against the other, watching the berry paste soften along the lid in Mari’s bowl.

“He hides them in his sleeves when Mother looks,” he said. “She knows because he drops the little lids first. The big bowls do not fall.”

Mari’s scraping slowed. “How many lids?”

“Three yesterday. One went under the grain shelf. I found this one because it pulled my hair when I looked.”

Rovan crouched nearer. A small patch of dried berry marked the edge of the boy’s hood where it had brushed the shelf. “Did your brother find the other two?”

The older boy called from the marker that one lid was still missing and that he had already checked beneath the ash basket.

“Tell your mother not to let your father carry hot bowls until Sera sees him,” Nia said. “He may still hold the large ones, but dropping the small things means his fingers are not doing what he thinks they are.”

The boy looked at his mittens again. “Do I tell him that part?”

“Tell your mother. Let her decide how much your father deserves at once.”

He nodded and turned, then came back for the sentence about hot bowls because he had forgotten it before reaching Rovan.

Rovan crouched to retie the hood and asked the child to repeat the message. The first attempt began with the kitchen grease. The second lost evening count. On the third, the boy kept Sera’s name, the open station, and his father’s hands in the correct order.

Mari called after him that she would send the lid home clean. Then she pointed toward the inner marker. “Take your brother with you. Neither of you leaves the marked side.”

Rovan walked them to the marker. The older boy took the younger one by the back of his cloak, and both remained on the safe edge until the passage turned.

When Rovan returned, Mari had the lid soaking in a shallow bowl. He wiped the wet crescents the boys’ boots had left near the clean boundary, sent the rag to the low plate, and washed before coming back to the table.

“Will the father come?” Nia asked.

“His wife sent the child because he listens sooner when his sons repeat her,” Mari said. She resumed working berry paste from the rim. “If that fails, she will bring him by the ear. I would rather not count the argument.”

Nia read the station strip from the boy’s height. Sit. Drink. Remove wet cloth. The words were plain, but the hand mark above them looked like an injury warning rather than an invitation.

“He thought this belonged to old people because everyone keeps talking about what has already gone wrong,” she said.

Shen set down the public copy. “What would have made him think of his father sooner?”

Nia drew a closed hand beside an open one. Her first fingers leaned badly. She tried again on a scrap, making the difference larger.

“The mark should show a hand that cannot do what it usually does, not a wound,” she said.

Mari glanced at the drawing. “A patrolman will understand it. A kitchen worker will understand it. The child understood it before you finished.”

Rovan held up his own hand, then closed it to match the second mark. “Put the words underneath. If the fingers will not close, sit.”

Shen recut the strip around Nia’s clearer drawing and copied the line beneath it, leaving the uneven thumb large enough to see from the bench.

Around them, runners checked the route count, cups settled in the return bowl, and someone at the far fire complained that a wet boot smelled worse after warming. Sera agreed and told him to move it farther from the heat.

Nia leaned back against the curve of Shen’s tail. “The outer-arch note still does not say what belongs there and what comes inside.”

“Kael will set the boundary,” Shen said. “We can show him what the station used and what the cold changed.”

Workers nearest the passage lowered their voices when Kael entered with three route strips in one hand. Wet grit marked his boots. He crossed first to the wall count, read the new restriction, and then touched the back of his fingers to Nia’s neck before settling the loose edge of her shoulder wrap.

His attention moved to Tarek’s glove. “Why is that still here?”

“Your brother said he would collect it after this count,” Sera replied. “He did not say which end of the count.”

Shen turned the glove palm upward, showed Kael the damp lining, and returned it to the peg. He washed before touching the clean strips again. “The hand warmed enough for the marker cord. The glove did not.”

Kael read Nia’s closed-and-open hand mark. “Did Tarek approve this?”

“A child did,” Nia said. “Tarek approved hooks.”

Kael traced the air beside the uneven thumb without touching the wet ink. “The child saw his father in it?”

“He saw what his father could no longer hold. That worked better than telling him the station was for cold hands.”

Kael moved the strip higher on the board so the returning tray could not cover it. “Then the mark stays.”

Nia placed the station tally beside his route notes. Mari kept working the berry paste from the lid. “The outer arch needs supplies that survive men who believe fire repairs everything.”

Kael considered the glove and the west-route strip together. “Rough wraps, warming cloths, a covered water jar, and two hooks. No oils or salves. Serious burns, deep cuts, blackened skin, fever, or a hand that still will not close after warming comes inside.”

Sera folded two warming cloths inside a thicker dry wrap. “A runner can exchange these with the water. If they cool first, the hand comes in rather than holding cloth against the fire.”

Rovan pulled a narrow broken lid board from behind the worn cup cloths and placed it in Kael’s hands. Two old holes remained near its center.

Kael tested the wood. “Sound enough for hooks.”

Nia placed the new hand strip across the top. The drawing remained visible when Rovan held the board against his chest.

“Do not give it to Tarek as though the station belongs to him,” Kael said. “Put it on the inner wall for everyone working the outer count.”

Rovan tied the strip in place. “I will tell them the chief sent it for every hand on the outer count.”

“And tell them why the hooks stay away from the fire,” Kael said.

Rovan glanced at Tarek’s stiffening glove. “They will see why.”

Sera rejected one rough wrap whose weave had tightened after washing and dropped it into the mending basket. She packed the accepted rough wraps and the warming-cloth bundle into the small return tray Mari fitted against the lower edge of the board. Rovan lifted the loaded board once and stopped when the hook ends caught his cloak.

“Turn it,” Nia said.

He carried the board edgewise. The hooks cleared his clothing, and the covered jar remained free in his other hand.

A runner waiting by the count rubbed one thumb over split glove leather. “If the outer arch gets hooks, the middle bend will ask next. We leave ours beside the second lamp.”

Kael looked at the split. “Wait for the outer report. If the tray freezes or the leather stiffens, we correct that before copying the mistake uphill.”

The runner nodded. His thumb passed once more over the split, then he lowered his hand and left the wall unmarked.

Kael pinned the upper-hearth hand strip where it could be read without lifting a lamp. The closed hand sat above the open one, Nia’s uneven thumb still visible beneath Shen’s careful lettering.

“Send someone for Tarek’s glove,” Sera said. “If it dries into that shape, he will pretend the shape is useful.”

Kael gave the reminder to the next patrol runner. Then he stayed behind Nia’s chair long enough to mark the west-grate count while Mari scrubbed the last berry paste from the boy’s lid.

When the lid was clean, she set it beside the return bowl and washed. “If his father comes covered in grease, he is sitting on the far end of the bench.”

Nia moved a blank hand strip there for him. She left the child’s drawing on the wall.

Someone challenged Rovan at the second turn as he carried the smaller station toward the outer arch. His answer carried back clearly enough this time.

“It is for every hand on the outer count.”

After a pause, the other worker called for someone to clear the inner wall, and Rovan continued beyond the middle marker.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!