The ward stones are simply another thing that Mei Cao can take for granted. They are small round stones with a few characters of mysterious writing etched into them, placed down one every fifty feet or so along the perimeter of their woods. They were purchased partially by her father's expense, and they are still paying off the loan. The price was discounted by the grace of duchess Cai, who mandates that villagers be kept safe and treated fairly. Occasionally, a cultivator from the Ministry arrives in the village to investigate the whole perimeter and issue replacements.

They keep hostile beasts and spirits away. You never go beyond the ward stones alone, unless it's along the road back to the village, which has its own set of ward stones.

These things were told to her often enough, and implied in the stories her father tells, that it has reached the level of a subconscious, immutable fact.

Reinforcing this is that, from an early age, Mei Cao could pick out the stones from a distance of a dozen feet or so, glowing softly and feeling warm and safe like small, steadily burning embers. She could also hear the disquieting whispers of spirits, sometimes, when father's hunts take them past the ward line. The whispers and strange, unnerving feelings grow twice or thrice as strong if you step beyond the line.

Today, as she is collecting wood from a copse near the line of stones, she cannot help but see that one of them is cold and lifeless, its steady ember of protection gone dark. If she walks up to examine it directly, it proves to have cracked into two pieces.

That's not good. She will not run to warn her father, because she's carrying as much wood as she can manage and doesn't want to just drop it all and certainly doesn't want to fall in the woods and break something. But she will go as swiftly as seems feasible back to where he's already most of the way through building the second of the pits they were going to burn today. The first is already burning. 

Nothing seems to be really wrong just yet, even with the damaged stone. These woods are the same ones she knows well.

"Hey Dad! I think one of the wardstones was broken? Or something like that. It had a crack in it, it didn't look right." 

Her dad grumbles.

"Well, we'd better report it to the headman. He'll know what to do. But the fire's already burning, we can't afford to waste the fuel. So it'll have to be when we're back in the village." 

She'll trust his judgement. The ward-line can't possibly be a fragile thing, if it's kept them all safe this long. And it would be a terrible waste, to lose all their work thus far. She returns to collecting the final ingredients for the second burn. 

Things go fine and normally, for the first day. It's busy, and you can't wander far.

And then in the middle of the night, Mei Cao hears something trundling through the brush towards the charcoal burns, muttering indistinct curses and complaints in a wet and sick sounding voice.

She tears herself away from staring at the burn for any hint of escaping flame, and shouts, trying not to be so loud as to wake her father in his tiny lean-to. 

"Hey! Who is it? Be careful, we've got a burn going here!" 

She doesn't recognise the voice, but who is she kidding, she wouldn't. 

Out from the low brush comes a thing of oozing mud, almost as tall as her and thrice as wide. It does not reply so much in words as a stubborn, grumbling sound of complaint and accusation.

A spirit, or a monster, or something like that.

It doesn't have legs, merely a large pile of muck that drags itself along, leaving a stained trail as it approaches. It has something that might be called a face, at least, formed of the broken semi-hard crusts that the edges of a drying mud puddle tend to form. This face does not look happy, and is glaring at the charcoal kiln.

It pauses to regard her, raises an oozing 'arm' and points at the kiln, making more noises of complaint - they seep and shimmer across her mind, felt more than heard, and coming with a heavy, cold, stagnant feeling.

It doesn't like the burning. Fire is bad. She should put the fire out.

She's taken for a moment with the idea that the fire is burning out of control, but a glance at the mound shows it isn't, in fact. It must be ... something from the spirit. 

She's going to shout to wake her father, and then get out her sling and start hurling rocks at the spirit. It doesn't look bigger than a wolf; maybe it will go down like one. 

How annoying.

The mud thing ignores her sling stones as they sink into it with wet plops, and advances on the kiln, and begins tearing it apart with dozens of oozing tendrils of foul-smelling muck.

No! It can't do that! She's going to go grab a shovel and try and keep it away from the burn. Or fix the damage, or something. 

Her father is coming out of his hut, blearily looking for the problem, not quite sure what to do. But he's grabbing his own shovel, out of sheer ingrained reflex as much as anything else. 

The mud spirit flinches back from the heat and sparks when it breaches the outer shell of the kiln, allowing the fire to surge up vigorously and ignite all the partially-charcoaled wood with the sudden rush of air. It seems to be crusting over in the places that were closest to the sudden burst of wild fire.

Can she ... shove it further into the fire? Malicious spirits are weak to fire, right? 

Her shovel and her arms are instantly coated in the most vile sort of muck - heavy, sticky, clinging, cold.

Upon being attacked in this way, the mud spirit surges up and engulfs her entire head in muck! It tastes like dirt and winter. She can't breathe!

And then - something - She suddenly feels terribly cold and hopeless, so weak and sluggish that she could simply stop moving, then sink into the bottom of a bog and never be found.

She falls back in a panic and then - nothing. She fucked up.

She falls to the ground. 

She is vaguely aware that somewhere her father is shouting. 

She should still be fighting, but - the fire's not there, in her. 

She stops moving. 

It's as if it left something inside her, obstructive, foreign and disgustingly large, filling and clogging something inside her that is not quite her body or her mind. The sensation is incredibly alien, and rather painful.

The mud spirit sluggishly turns its attention back to the kiln, going to another spot that isn't burning so vigorously and starting to tear at it again.

Her father is going to have to drag her to safety, most likely.