The Shadowless Inn

A merchant named Liu traveled the high mountain road each winter to sell rolls of fine silk in the southern markets. One year the snow came early and buried the narrow pass before he could lead his mules down toward the warmer valleys.

He took shelter in a roadside inn he had never noticed before, though he had walked the road a dozen times. The innkeeper was a quiet man with a pale face and hands that were as cold as river stones when he accepted payment.

That night the common room filled with travelers who ate their meals in complete silence and never once raised their eyes from their bowls. Liu, tired as he was, found their stillness unsettling and watched them from the corner.

He observed one old man lifting a wine cup. Beneath the flickering lamplight, the old man cast no shadow upon the plaster wall behind him. Liu's hand trembled as he set his own warm cup back down on the wooden table.

At first light the inn was empty and silent. The hearth was cold and thick with years of grey ash, and the doors hung from rusted hinges that groaned in the morning wind. The building seemed abandoned for a generation.

A local woodcutter passing by told him the inn had burned to the ground a decade ago, and that no traveler had rested there in all the years since. He warned Liu never to trust a fire that appeared on the high pass in winter.

Liu never traveled that road in winter again. Each year, when the first snow began to fall, he remembered the silent guests and the quiet man with the shadowless hands, and he kept his mules safely in the stable.