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Chapter Text

The rumors have been going around for weeks now. Even Lan Wangji, who never pays attention to gossip, has heard it, filtering up through the rafters of the store to where he sits in the alcove, digging through the books of magic. The moving castle is back, they whisper, in low voices, in the bookstore his brother runs. On the hills above the city, there’s a castle that crawls like a centipede, made of black brick. Smokes pours from its chimneys. He’s here, they whisper. Wei Wuxian. The demonic cultivator, in his moving castle, roaming around the Yiling Wastes.

The rumors come on the heels of other, nastier rumors; rumors that Lotus Pier burned down, that the family was all slaughtered. Rumors that Wen Ruohan sent his son, Wen Chao, to do it. The war between Wen Ruohan and the sect alliance has been going for a year now, eating up all the young cultivators for soldiers. He attacked Gusu Lan first, after all, sending Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji fleeing the mountain, disgraced. Yunmeng Jiang is just the latest to suffer destruction. Lan Wangji can’t tell, from where he sits in his alcove above the rafters of the bookstore, what connection the two have. Wei Wuxian is attacking Wen Chao, the rumors say, though some disagree with this. He’s on the side of the sect alliance. No, he’s on the side of Wen Ruohan, terrorizing innocent villages with his moving castle. No, he’s on his own side, killing both the sect alliance and the Wens.

People talk too much, Lan Wangji decides, as he leafs through charred pages, day after day. All the pages that Lan Xichen saved from their library pavilion. All the history they have. Lan Wangji sorts them, marking which books are missing parts, re-binding loose pages together, trying to figure out what is too damaged to save.

The gossip keeps him company. As time passes there’s more and more gossip about Wei Wuxian, about the black castle lurking in the hills. He’s a shameless flirt, the women whisper, in low voices. And so attractive! A tall, thin man, wearing all black and red, who doesn’t use a sword but uses a black flute. Lan Wangji has to suffer their matchmaking schemes, listening to an auntie go on at length that demonic cultivation or no, he seems to be killing a lot more of the Wen-dogs than the Alliance soldiers these days, no matter how he does it…

On that subject, the rumors dip into whispers. He makes ghost puppets, some whisper. He stops the hearts of soldiers using black magic, others say. He fights using a single fierce corpse, with the strength of a dozen men. One day a soldier comes into the bookstore, his voice rough, the sound of his footsteps accentuated by a cane, and swears at Lan Xichen that Wei Wuxian is raising the dead to be his soldiers. Lan Wangji stops his sorting at that, his hands gripping the edges of a book too tightly. Raising the dead? Necromancy?

All the voices in the bookstore dip low. Nonsense, the consensus is, from the variety of voices that override the lone soldier. No one can raise the dead. That’s simply battlefield ramblings.

Lan Wangji, who spends all day staring at rare cultivation texts on the theory and practice of novel uses for spiritual energy, has a cold feeling in his heart that it might be possible, after all. He digs through the texts he’s researching, looking up passages, and makes notes that he should discuss with his brother.

Lan Wangji sits alone, working upstairs, while Lan Xichen does all the customer-interaction downstairs. From the alcove where he sits Lan Wangji can hear, if not see, the dim tinkle of the bell on the front door, the murmured conversation of people below. It makes him feel a little bit like a ghost, listening to stories and unable to reply. Some people would think it lonely, he supposes, and sometimes he finds himself wanting to share a segment of book he’s reading or putting together. Generally he feels relieved that he doesn’t have to interact with people. Sometimes as he works he makes lists of things he wants to tell Lan Xichen, as he goes through the burned books. But the days are long, and often by the time he descends from the tiny office to have dinner with his brother, he often feels it’s no longer worth talking about. Sometimes days go by and he realizes that he hasn’t said anything at all.

Lan Xichen is worried about him, he realizes, dimly. But it’s hard for Lan Wangji to make himself care very much. The days are very much the same. He listens to gossip in the store while he works, and reads cultivation texts, and gossip and magic blend in his head until one night, he dreams about Wei Wuxian, a man in black robes with a dark smile, who holds a hand out to him, and Lan Wangji wakes with a start, his heart pounding.

———

There’s a minor festival coming up, for the spring equinox, an odd thing to celebrate in the middle of a war. The town celebrations, according to the gossip Lan Wangji hears, are going to be toned down this year, nothing like they normally are. The tone of the gossipers is mournful on this.

Lan Xichen closes the store and sends Lan Wangji out to buy osmanthus cakes, for the festival. Lan Xichen is going to Qinghe, for a few days, using the festival as an excuse to close his shop, hoping no one will notice his absence. “Go to the festival. Bring some cake home for me. Take your time, brother,” he says, gently, before giving Lan Wangji money and sending him out of the shop.

The day is bright, piercing sunshine and blue sky, wispy clouds that cast no shadows. Flowers are blooming, the air full of scents, and bees are buzzing around them. Lan Wangji wears blue robes, paler than the sky. Holding a money pouch from his brother, he feels like a child, sent on an errand by a worried parent. He makes his way through the paths of town to the center square, where the stalls selling cakes are set up.

The festival is loud, and in the city square it is dusty and hot. He can feel sweat trickling down the back of his neck. Lan Wangji hates crowds, and there are too many people here, too much noise, a crowd of riotous humanity in bright colors. Women in pastel dresses holding parasols are laughing and waving, flirting with young men holding swords, who are yelling and flirting back. In short, it is a perfectly ordinary festival, and Lan Wangji hates it. He misses his own sword like a phantom limb.

Something buzzes at the edge of his senses, hard to notice under the loud and distraction of the crowd. Something like an aura of evil. He can’t focus enough to chase what it is.

He moves through the crowds, trying not to touch anyone, to find a booth selling cakes. He stops at one, and is cornered by a trio of brightly-dressed young women, holding floral parasols.

“Ah, gongzi!” one shouts at him, winking. “What’s a handsome young lord like yourself doing alone on the equinox?”

“Oooh, he’s so handsome!” the second one squeals, laughing at the first one. “Pick him up quick!”

“Think he’s already married? Looks pretty single to me,” the third one says, grinning at Lan Wangji. He can feel the tip of his ears turning pink.

“Please excuse me,” he says, but the three laugh at him.

“Oooh, he’s shy,” the second one says. “You’re gonna have to toughen him up!”

“Look at his ears go pink like that,” the first one says, sounding amazed. “Gongzi, you’re so easily embarrassed!”

“I can think of a few other things that would embarrass him,” the third girl says, grinning. “Imagine if we were to—“

“I must go,” Lan Wangji says, his ears turning pinker then they were, but the group encircles him more tightly.

“Are we making you uncomfortable?” the first one says, laughing, and rests her hand on his arm. Lan Wangji stiffens, staring down at her hand.

A low, throaty laugh sounds from behind them, and the three ladies turn around. “Ah, ladies,” a new voice says, smooth and dark. “You’ve found my friend for me!”

“Sir, is this your friend?”

“Imagine, leaving this young specimen alone on the festival! He’s gonna get snatched up!”

The women move enough for Lan Wangji to be able to see the new voice speaking. He lifts his face, and catches sight of the stranger’s face.

He looks like a young man, maybe a little older than Lan Wangji himself. His robes are black, textured and with faint sheen in the sunshine, with crimson red underrobes that make his skin look delicate, framing a long neck, and a thin face. He smiles with a wide, practiced smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. His eyes are dark, and locked with Lan Wangji.

“There you are,” he says, and his voice is low, and directed straight at Lan Wangji’s spine. It sends vibrations down his whole body. “I’ve been looking for you.”

And then the stranger is just between the ladies, effortlessly pushing them out of the way, murmuring: “My apologies to these beautiful ladies,” and then his hand is on Lan Wangji’s arm, gently leading him away. Something on his hand flashes.

Lan Wangji hates people touching him. He suffers his brother’s touch only fleetingly. The touch of that woman in the market made his skin crawl. But where this stranger touches him, his arm feels hot, a searing flash of heat that radiates from that stranger’s palm up his whole arm, jolting into his chest. That must be why his heart is doing that thing, why the beats feel so funny. Lan Wangji stiffens under the stranger’s touch, but the man is already leading him into a shady alleyway.

The man ducks his head, turning it only a hair, then moves closer to Lan Wangji. His lips are close to Lan Wangji’s ear, enough so that when he speaks, Lan Wangji can feel the air from his breath. “They’re following me,” he whispers, his voice soft but insistent, and Lan Wangji’s eyes widen. The stranger pulls him deeper into the alleyway.

Lan Wangji sends out his senses and here, away from the noise of the square, he can feel those shadows of evil that he sensed earlier. Only now they’re much stronger. He turns his head to the side and sees shadows stretching into the alley where no shadows should be.

“Eyes straight ahead,” the man murmurs to him, grasping his arm more tightly. “Don’t let them know. Just follow my lead, all right?”

“All right,” Lan Wangji says, softly, his voice lower than he expects. The man smiles at him, now, and this smile does touch the corner of his eyes.

“Thank you, gege,” he murmurs, and his voice is dark and smooth again, but Lan Wangji doesn’t have time to think about it before the grip on his arm tightens. “And now, we have to speed up, hmm?”

“What—“ Lan Wangji starts to say, because the alleyway ends in a brick wall, and now they are almost running towards it.

The man grins again, eyes narrowing, and with his other hand reaches into his sleeve and pulls out a paper talisman, glowing crimson in the air. He throws it against the wall, and without breaking stride, Lan Wangji and the stranger run through the brick in time for the shadows to crash against it on the other side.

“Nice!” the man compliments him, grinning again. “But that’s not going to be all. These shadow-wraiths are going to keep following me, I’m afraid.”

“Shadow wraiths?” Lan Wangji asks, quietly, and the man smiles at him again.

“Even a young cultivator like yourself can’t be expected to know everything,” he says lightly. They’re still running, now, along a maze of bricked-up alleyways with slanted sunlight through the walls, taking random lefts and right. Lan Wangji can’t keep up.

“We’re in a maze array,” he says, looking towards the other man, who raises his eyebrows.

‘Oh, you are a talented young cultivator, hmm?” he says, voice playful. “Yes, gege, but no need to worry. I control this one. We just need to lose them, that’s all.” He looks up at the top of the brick walls, then looks over at Lan Wangji. “Trust me?”

Lan Wangji stares at his face, his mischievous smile. The other man’s eyes are dark, but—gray, he thinks, not black. Gray, and glassy, missing something of the spark that makes a person look alive. But still handsome. This man is….bespelled, maybe, Lan Wangji thinks, but doesn’t have time to think anymore. “Mn,” he hears himself saying, surprising even himself, and then the two are in the air, feet stepping on nothing, and then they’re running lightly along the top of the walls in the maze array, in the blinding sunshine.

“Excellent,” the man’s voice says, sounding very close to Lan Wangji’s ear. “What a high cultivation level gege has. If only you’d seen me in my younger days,” he says, voice teasing, but he’s looking over his shoulder, not staring at Lan Wangji’s face. His expression clouds. “And they’re coming again. Okay, gege, trust me one more time,” he says, turning to lock eyes with Lan Wangji for a second, and then they are in the air again.

The heat is less up here, skimming the rooftops of the town. Lan Wangji’s blue robes flare out in the wind, and the other man’s crimson under robes flash in the sunlight, vivid and bright. He hasn’t let go of Lan Wangji’s arm.

“Gege is a natural at this, hmm?” he says, his tone full of laughter.

Many responses flit across Lan Wangji’s mind, from you are too familiar to of course I am to who are you? to a small, plaintive Call me gege again, and he pushes them all down. “Who are they?” Lan Wangji asks instead.

“Oh, just some wraiths Wen Ruohan has sent out for me,” the man says, lightly. “But nothing we can’t shake.” He turns his head again, and this time Lan Wangji looks too, both turning toward each other to look behind them. The shadows are more obvious, up here, ten dark shapes leaping across the rooftops, trying to keep up with them. “Dammit,” the man says, almost too soft for Lan Wangji to hear. Their eyes meet as they turn their heads back.

“I’m going to let go of you,” the man says, softly, “and throw more talismans at them, all right? They’re not after you. They should leave you alone once you’re not with me anymore. But just in case, gege, take this,” he says, and reaches into his robe to pull a yellow talisman. He reaches his other hand over and places it on Lan Wangji’s chest, where it sticks to the front of his robes. Lan Wangji doesn’t realize he’s put his other hand up to cover it. The man meets his eyes again.

“Ready, gege?” he asks, and Lan Wangji, holding his gaze, finds himself nodding.

In the blink of an eye he is released, floating gently down, and turns his head in time to see the black-robed cultivator reach into his robes, coming out with talismans in both hands, and throw them towards the shadows in a flash of crimson light. Every shadow is hit with a yellow slip of paper. As the papers hit, they emit a crimson flare, and the shadows turn to smoke with a shriek. The man reaches for his belt, but Lan Wangji can’t see what it is as he drifts below the roofline.

Impatient and alarmed, he glances off the rail below and rises back into the air, coming to balance on a rooftop. But when he comes back up there is no one there. No black-clad cultivator or shadows, not even any used talismans littering the roof tiles. Lan Wangji balances on the edge of the rooftop, staring across the square, but there is nothing to see.

The maze array? He had to have entered the maze array again. Lan Wangji’s mind is whirling. He looks down, and realizes his right hand is still clutching the talisman against his chest. He peels it free and stares down at the yellow paper. The character is brown, and Lan Wangji realizes it is drawn in blood instead of the usual cinnabar. He stares at it for several minutes before he descends from the rooftop. He’s the best student in his sect, and talismans are no secret to him, but he’s never seen this one before.

He doesn’t get the cakes after all, and avoids the square as he goes back to the bookstore. He keeps his senses alert, but nothing more appears.

———

The next day it all seems like a dream. When Lan Wangji wakes to the pale light against his window, birds singing, the events of yesterday feel far away. Shadow-wraiths, attacking in broad daylight? He thinks, unbidden, of that person’s eyes, dark gray, glassy, like something missing from them. He reaches over to his bedside table, where the talisman still sits, the incantation as unreadable as ever.

For some reason, he tucks it into his robes before he goes to the bookstore.

With no gossip from below, no murmur of customers, it’s quiet in the shop. Lan Wangji always found it easier to concentrate, back at Cloud Recesses, when there was absolute quiet, when he didn’t have to try to focus over the background noise. But he discovers now that the silence is almost jarring. Every stray noise, every birdcall, every footstep passing by in the street, makes him tense up and lose his place in his reading. By the time the late afternoon sunlight is slanting across the shelves of the bookstore, Lan Wangji has given up on his organizing and gone down to sort through the list of book requests at the register.

The sun has just crept to the edge of the desk, all the way in the back of the shop, when the door of the shop opens, and Lan Wangji sets the list down carefully, all the hairs on his arms standing up. A cultivator in dark robes stands in the doorway, frowning at him.

“Our store is closed,” Lan Wangji says, his sentence short, and the man at the doorway grins at him. His grin has a manic edge to it.
“Oh? Is it? You filthy associate of the Yiling Laozu,” the man says, his tone syrupy-sweet, “I don’t give a fuck if it’s closed or not.”

“I don’t know who your Yiling Laozu is, but I am not his associate,” Lan Wangji says, voice a little louder.

“Nice try, but you can’t lie to me. I can smell it on you,” the man hisses, his eyes glittering. “I’ll kill him and every one of his associates. Now!”

Lan Wangji steps forward, hand raised, but the man has raised his hands, eyes gleaming, and a wave of magic speeds towards Lan Wangji, pushing him back against the desk. He gasps for breath, standing up, and stares at the man. His chest feels funny.

“What the fuck,” the man hisses, again, eyes narrowed. “You should be dust!”

“Get—get out,” Lan Wangji grunts, holding up his hand, readying his own spell, and sends an incantation flying towards the red-robed cultivator. It pushes him backwards, towards the door, and he bares his teeth at Lan Wangji.

“Fine,” he spits. “But even if you’re not dead, you don’t have long left. Tell that fucking Yiling Laozu that next time, it’ll be his life!”

“OUT!” Lan Wangji shouts, again, throwing another wave of power at the man, who is pushed against the door. He gives Lan Wangji a final sneer before leaving, the door slamming behind him.

Something is very, very wrong with Lan Wangji. His magic is wrong. Those blasts should’ve been powerful enough to break all the windows in the bookstore—not just push someone against a door. His chest feels funny, still, a tight pressure, and his heart is beating irregularly in his chest. He reaches a hand up to touch his chest, then reaches inside his robes. The talisman, tucked inside, feels different, and when he pulls it out, the paper crumbles to dust in his hand.

His hand. Lan Wangji stares at his hand. It’s not the hand he had this morning. The long fingers are twisted with age, looking arthritis, skin sunken and dry, veins and tendons prominent. There are age spots. He stares at them again. These—these aren’t his hands.

Something deep in Lan Wangji’s head is panicking. It’s a faint sheen of static that’s overlying his thoughts, making it impossible to think or concentrate. I have to stay calm, he thinks, looking at his hands, and then he walks to the stairs that lead up to their living quarters, above the bookshop. At the top of the stairs is a mirror.

The person staring back at Lan Wangji isn’t him.

Their face is wrinkled, eyes more sunken into their face. The nose is wrong, too. Their hair is long and wispy, all the way grey. Lan Wangji raises his hands to his face, and in the mirror the elder does the same.

The panic in the back of his mind is rising. I have to stay calm, he thinks, looking in the mirror, as this elder’s eyes widen in shock.

The sense of unreality is unmooring him. The room doesn’t feel like his room. His body is not his body. His chest still hurts, even if it doesn’t look like what he’s used to, but inside the heart beats at him still mine, still mine. Lan Wangji goes to his room, lays down, and hopes that in the morning this will all have been a bad dream.

Chapter Text

The next morning it isn’t a bad dream. He wakes at dawn and looks in the mirror in his room and there is still, staring back at him, an old man.

Okay. This is happening.

The spell yesterday. That cultivator hit him with it, but seem surprised. “You should be dust,” he’d said. The talisman, turned to dust in his pocket. A protection talisman, it must have been, that somehow had protected him from a spell that—that was designed to kill him, probably, and, having met resistance, now has just…aged him.

The panic in the back of his head is eerily quiet, or maybe just too loud for Lan Wangji to focus on. That’s okay. One step at a time. He’s still here. He still has his core, though it seems more wobbly and weak in his chest than he remembered. If you don’t cultivate to immortality, after all, your core weakens with time, just like the rest of your body.

None of this is helping. Lan Wangji stares at himself in the mirror some more. His eyes are lighter, more golden in the early morning sunlight. At least he doesn’t have cataracts, he thinks, then looks down at the rest of his body, moving joints. No arthritis, despite the gnarled knuckles. Knees moving okay. Some back pain, but that’s not as bad as it could be.

He needs to go find Lan Xichen. His brother will have some idea of what to do. Lan Wangji packs a qiakun pouch with scraps of food and a set of robes. He sets the spells that guard the house mechanically, the array that protects the books, the wards on the front door, aware of how much more spiritual power it seems to take than it did yesterday. He feels naked without his sword, even with the guqin in his bag. If he’d had Bichen, yesterday wouldn’t have happened, he feels sure, and feels again that old, familiar anger flickering in his chest that happens whenever he thinks on the attack at Cloud Recesses. His sword taken. Not as important as his father.

He locks the last mechanical lock on the bookstore and sets out, walking away from town.

If Lan Wangji were thinking straight, at this point, he would have grabbed something besides his guqin and three apples before setting out to walk to Qinghe (a four day walk). If Lan Wangji were thinking straight, he would have sent a message to his brother, or dug into the books on cultivation currently sitting in his upstairs workroom, where he would be most likely to find some answers. If Lan Wangji were thinking straight, he wouldn’t be here, on a dusty road with green, green grass rolling away on either side, his posture stooped with age, the bright sunlight too warm on his head. But he isn’t thinking straight, because the wall of panic has taken over most of his mental processes.

When a farmer on a wagon pulls up near him, shouting: “Hey, da ye! Da ye!” it takes him several minutes before he realizes that the person is referring to Lan Wangji. “You look too old to be walking in this hot sunlight,” the farmer calls to him, from his perch on the wagon. The bed is filled with hay. “I can take you down the road a ways,” he says.

“Yes, thank you,” Lan Wangji says, and climbs up on the back of the old wagon. The hay is warm from the sun. He leans back against it, watching the dusty road disappear behind them. The path curves away gently into a forest, where trees backlit in sun are filled with soft flowers and pale green leaves. Gentle wind sends flower petals floating to the ground. Lan Wangji watches birds hop from branches in flutters of yellow wings.

“The first orioles are fighting in warm trees,” he murmurs, aloud, watching the birds take flight. “By every house new swallows peck at spring mud.”

There’s a sound of movement from above him as the hay rustles. Lan Wangji looks up as another voice speaks: “Disordered flowers grown enough to confuse the eye. Bright grass can hide the hooves of horses.” There’s a pause, and a sigh. Lan Wangji still can’t see who’s talking, but the voice is familiar. His heart does something in his chest. “What an exceptionally literary traveling companion I find myself with,” the voice from above him says, and a face appears at the edge of the haystack. “So refined! Quite unlike this nefarious person,” he adds, grinning. “I’m going to have to up my conversational level to keep up with you.”

Lan Wangji’s clenches his hands on his thighs. It’s the same black clad man from yesterday, except now his black hair is up in a lazy, crooked ponytail, hanging to one side of his face. It’s tied with a red ribbon, which flutters in the gentle wind from the cart. His face is framed in flowers and warm hay.

“There is no need,” Lan Wangji says, stiffly. He folds his hands in his lap, as if hiding the wrinkles will make them less true. But if he wanted a disguise, he could hardly do better than to have supernaturally aged several decades. Unbothered, the man leaps down lightly next to him. He dangles one leg over the edge of the cart, and props an elbow on his other knee, then turns to look at Lan Wangji.

“How else are we to pass the long, long journey into the Wastes?” he asks, sighing. “Though I am but an uncultured youth, unable to compare with this elder’s vast knowledge of poetry.”

Lan Wangji stares down at his hands. They don’t feel like they belong to him. Elder. “You are going into the Wastes?” he asks, instead. “They say dangerous things are in the Wastes.”

The young man laughs, tilting his head back to expose the long, pale line of his throat. His crooked ponytail falls over his dark robes. “Not even close to the most dangerous place I’ve been unfortunate enough to spend time,” he says easily. “What are the rumors saying about the Wastes these days, hmm?”

“That Wen Ruohan hides his armies there,” Lan Wangji says. “That Wei Wuxian hides there to slaughter cultivators.”

The man’s smile grows wider, as if he has found something very funny. He opens his palm, letting one of the falling blossoms land there. “Wen Ruohan and Wei Wuxian, huh?” he asks, his voice softer. He pinches the stem between thumb and forefinger, twirling the flower absently. “Chasing each other in circles round the Wastes?”

“Gossip,” Lan Wangji says.

“And you don’t believe gossip, da ye?” the man counters, leaning back. “Most rumor weeds grow from a seed of truth.”

“It is impossible to determine the shape of the seed from the size of the weed,” Lan Wangji says, and the man smiles again. He opens his palm, lets the flower resume its fall.

“What do you believe, then?” he asks.

Lan Wangji hesitates. Dappled sunlight makes shifting patterns on both their faces as the wagon plods through the forest. “Many things may happen in war,” he says, finally.

“Hmm, too true, too true,” the other man says. He leans back against the haystack, leg still danging over the edge of the cart, and pinches a long piece of hay between two fingers, forearm resting across his other bent knee. “Wen Ruohan is looking for trouble,” he says, softly, and for a moment there is no lightness to his voice, no undertone of mirth. Lan Wangji looks over in time to see his eyes tighten, seeming more in keeping with the dark glassiness of those eyes than his light tone. “And Wei Wuxian? Well, he’s nothing but trouble,” he says, a half smile edging back onto his face.

“As long as he’s trouble for Wen Ruohan,” Lan Wangji says. The other man startles, looks over at him, breaks into a grin and raises an eyebrow.

“I didn’t realize da ye had such resentment for the Wens,” he says.

Lan Wangji thinks of the Lanshi with smoke rising from its roof. He thinks of the library pavilion, of Lan Xichen pulling books from the fire, the soot staining his robes, thinks of Wen Chao’s sword pointed straight at his chest. “They have much to answer for,” Lan Wangji says, quietly. He stares straight ahead, back over the road, watching the dust from their tracks settle on the edge of the grass. When he looks to the side, the man is staring at his face.

“Call me Wei Ying,” the man says, and that makes Lan Wangji’s heart do the stupid thing again. He doesn’t want the other man to know, he realizes. He doesn’t want this man, Wei Ying (who is clearly just Wei Wuxian) to know that he is the same young cultivator from yesterday. Lan Wangji doesn’t participate much in town life but there are bound to be a few who know his name from Lan Xichen’s shop. “Lan Zhan,” Lan Wangji says, and Wei Wuxian breaks out into a smile, the first one Lan Wangji has seen that touches his eyes.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, and Lan Wangji’s heart again does something, reacting to the way Wei Wuxian holds the words in his mouth. “Lan Zhan, hmm? Lan Zhan!”

“Yes,” Lan Wangji says, looking at him.

Wei Wuxian laughs then, the sound mirthful and sudden, like sunlight breaking through trees. With his eyes closed his face looks normal. But when he opens his eyes, they are still glassy, missing a spark of life. Then his smile fades. “A Lan, hmm? I wondered, with your forehead ribbon. No wonder you hate Wen Ruohan. I’m sorry.”

“What rumors have you heard of Wei Wuxian?” Lan Wangji asks.

Wei Wuxian smiles again, that half-cruel smile that doesn’t touch his eyes. “Oh, all of them terrible, all of them true,” he says. “What do you want to know?”

“Who’s side is he on, then?” Lan Wangji asks. Dappled sunlight passes over Wei Wuxian’s face, casting it into intermittent shadows and light that make his expression hard to read.

“No one’s,” Wei Wuxian says, flicking away his piece of hay. “A demonic cultivator like that? Who would want him on their side?”

“They say he’s powerful,” Lan Wangji says. He maintains his posture, though it is harder now than it was yesterday. He keeps his hands folded in his lap.

“Before he abandoned the path of cultivation, and took up demonic cultivation, sure,” the other says.

“Was he strong?”

“They say he had much promise,” Wei Wuxian says, softly. His face has no expression. “Before he went bad.”

“And now?” Lan Wangji asks, unable to resist.

“Well, a madman like that, who can say? Yiling Laozu, mad dog of the war, feared by every decent cultivator?”

Lan Wangji watches him. Wei Wuxian seems less amused talking about himself than he did at first, his eyes still glassy but tighter around the corners. “Why is he so powerful?” Lan Wangji asks instead.

“You don’t know that one, da ye?” Wei Wuxian raises an eyebrow at him. “They say he gave away his heart to a couple of demons, and got a black flute and a cursed Stygian Tiger seal in exchange. It’s what Wen Ruohan wants most of all.”

“Stygian tiger seal?” asks Lan Wangji, who has heard no such rumors. “Why does Wen Ruohan want that?”

Wei Wuxian moves, restlessly, dangling both legs over the edge of the cart. “Why does anyone do anything in this world,” he says, philosophically, and Lan Wangji knows that thread of the conversation is over. “What does he look like?” Lan Wangji asks, after a moment. The tension still hangs in the air between them, and he feels compelled to add, “the rumors paint him as either very ugly or very handsome.”

Wei Wuxian laughs again. “When you meet him you’ll have to judge for yourself,” he says, but his eyes meet Lan Wangji’s, and the understanding passes between them: we play the game, delicately. “But you’ll know him by his black flute,” Wei Wuxian says, unexpectedly. “It looks like, oh,” he reaches to his side. “Something like this, maybe.”

He holds out a black flute with a red tassel hanging from the end. Lan Wangji reaches for it, then looks at Wei Wuxian for permission. He gets it with a small nod.

“An excellent spiritual weapon,” Lan Wangji says. His hands brush over the carved black bamboo. He can feel the spirit inside, quick, hot, lively. A small tendril of dark spiritual power brushes against him, delving into him, and his eyes widen.

“Oh, Lan Zhan! My flute likes you,” Wei Wuxian says, smiling a little. The spiritual power recedes. Lan Wangji stares down at his hand.
“Wei Wuxian’s black flute must be very powerful,” he says, still feeling the phantom of where the spirit reached down his arm to brush at his golden core. “He’s made a bargain with a very powerful spirit, then?”

“The flute’s name is Chenqing,” Wei Wuxian says, conversationally, and then twirls it between his fingers, with the air of one long-practiced. “Most don’t recognize it as a spirit,” he adds. “I wouldn’t add that to the rumor fire, if I were you.”

Lan Wangji watches him twirl the flute, and the knowledge in his chest blooms. A secret. He knows a secret about Wei Wuxian, about the man sitting next to him with pale flingers a blur on a black flute, with his dead eyes and lively smile. The secret is warm inside him.

“What gossip do you know of Wen Ruohan?” Lan Wangji asks Wei Wuxian, and Wei Wuxian gives him a half smile, their eyes meeting again. This time they say: the game? Yes, let’s continue. I still want to play.

———

By the time they emerge from the forest the hay stack has become littered with flower petals. Lan Wangji has discovered that among all the gossip he heard about Wei Wuxian, there was one important missing piece: he does not stop talking. Lan Wangji has not had someone talk to him this much….since Cloud Recesses burned, he thinks, but then, watching Wei Wuxian’s animated gestures, thinks instead, maybe in my whole life. The sun is low on the horizon and Wei Wuxian is gesturing expansively, making some point about the Wen cultivation. He overflows with ideas, and theories, and insightful observations. He is clever.

“Elder, young master, my farm is on the right,” the driver calls back to them.

“Thank you very much for the lift!” Wei Wuxian calls.

“How far are you going?” the farmer asks, as the cart slows. “Getting to be sunset here. Dangerous to be out after dark in the Wastes.”

“Oh, my house is coming to meet me,” Wei Wuxian says, cheerfully. The driver’s face pales. Wei Wuxian laughs then, and reaches into his robes to pull out three talismans. “A few extra, for bringing my friend here,” he says. “The rest as promised. Protection from ghosts and corpses for two moons, for one building per talisman.”

“Thank you, Yiling Laozu,” the man says, bowing. He straightens and looks up at Lan Wangji. “Uncle, are you going with this man?”

Lan Wangji, still on the back of the cart, starts to get up. He feels, very acutely, that his age has caught up with him, in how much his back hurts, how much his legs hurt from being crosslegged on a hard wooden cart all day. “No,” he starts to say, but Wei Wuxian interrupts him.

“I would be a disrespectful traveling companion indeed if I didn’t offer this one dinner,” he says.

“You do not have to do that,” Lan Wangji says, stiffly. Wei Wuxian looks up at him, where he stands on the back of the cart, and holds out a hand. His eyes look different, darker, in the fading light.

“It’s very late, da ye,” Wei Wuxian tells him. “Come stay at my humble house, hmm? We have plenty of space.”

Lan Wangji should say no. But being old is more tiring than he thought. The sun has just sunk below the horizon, the light in a thin strip of orange around the edge, and the first stars are just visible. The flowers are points of faint color against the haystack. He looks down at the hand that the cultivator is extending him, skin pale in the growing darkness, and takes it.

They walk perpendicular from the road, straight down the hillside, as the grass fades from underfoot and the earth becomes more barren. As the light disappears the air is colder, sliding under Lan Wangji’s white robes. Tall, rocky pieces of earth jut from the ground, hiding the surroundings as they pass by. The grade of the descent makes Lan Wangji’s knees hurt, especially the injured left one, and Wei Wuxian, seeing him struggle, takes his elbow, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Lan Wangji’s ears turn pink, and he’s glad of the darkness.

“It’s coming, don’t worry,” Wei Wuxian murmurs, and Lan Wangji looks up in time to see his eyes flash with a red light. Lan Wangji feels a twinge of something on his senses, and watching Wei Wuxian’s face, thinks resentful energy. But he doesn’t have time to think much more, because a sound is coming towards them, loud and clanking, and he looks up to see that the hard, packed ground has given away to a cliff wall, and scurrying vertically along the stone towards them is Wei Wuxian’s house.

The house is, of course, the moving castle. It’s larger than Lan Wangji imagined. Legs stick out of it at odd angles, and it clings to the cliffside with them, perched like a giant insect upon the rock. It has too many chimneys and smoke pours from each of them. Something about the building is wrong, too, the way it looks like rooms are stuck-on haphazardly, with nothing holding them up, but then again the entire structure is clinging to a cliff.

“Very humble, but plenty of space,” Wei Ying says, grinning.

Lan Wangji’s knees are aching a lot now, enough that he can’t hide the limp in his left leg (the one that Wen Chao broke when he burned the Cloud Recesses). He should be afraid, probably, he thinks as he stares at the castle, the weird angles, the stone that looks like coal, but he sees the chimneys and can’t help but think warm and then this is the moving castle they’re so scared of? It looks like it’s falling apart and then, on the heels of that thought, it still looks more cozy than Golden Unicorn Tower.

Wei Wuxian helps him through the open door, following him inside, and before the door shuts Lan Wangji watches the grass drop away from the door as if the castle has started scurrying deep into the canyon again. But when the door shuts, the whole inside is still, steady as a rock.

“Why don’t you just sit here and have a rest, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, and he has a dim impression of a large room with a warm fire before he is led through a door to a small bedroom, tucked under the stairs. Lan Wangji can only nod. When he sits down, the weariness in his limbs overtakes him and sensation rushes through his injured left leg. It's sometime after 9pm and some combination of habit, anxiety, depression, the curse, and his broken leg have made him more tired than he can remember in a long time.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, and then sitting back against the headboard of the bed is more comfortable than sitting upright, and then he is asleep.

———

When he sleeps, in that guest bedroom tucked under the stairs, Wei Wuxian stands over him, and watches him. The second jade of Lan is undone by sleep, his hair long and black, trailing across the pillow. It’s fascinating to watch the way his wrinkles disappear as he sinks deeper into unconsciousness. Wei Wuxian is unmoving, arms crossed, hair unbound, eyes glowing red.

“No use,” the fire chirps. “Not that kind of curse.”

“I know,” Wei Wuxian says. His eyes flick to Lan Wangji's left leg, recently broken, and he casts a thin thread of power into it. When it has sunk into his leg, Wei Wuxian lifts one hand over Lan Wangji’s body, fingers crooked, and traces quick lines in the air that glow red.

“You can never resist a cute boy, can you,” the fire says, disparagingly.

Wei Wuxian ignores it and continues tracing lines until a complicated array is drawn over Lan Wangji’s sleeping form. With a flick of his wrist he sends the array down. It drapes over Lan Wangji like a blanket before melting into him. Lan Wangij turns his head a little in sleep, exposing more of his neck. Wei Wuxian stares at him, unblinking.

“That’s a lot of protection array for someone you just met,” the fire says, unable to keep its mouth shut.

“You talk too much, Chenqing,” Wei Wuxian says, and turns away.

Chapter Text

When Lan Wangji wakes, he stares up at an unfamiliar ceiling. He’s looking at the underside of a set of stairs, dark wood, just high enough that if he sits up, he’s going to hit his head. The bed is smaller than his bed, with a faded quilt in blue and gray loose-woven cotton, rougher than anything he’s ever had in the Lan sect. He reaches one hand up towards his hair, and then sees the back of his palm, and remembers: the curse. The cart. Wei Wuxian.

When he sits up, he’s several inches below hitting his head on the underside of the stairs. So he’s shorter now. Okay.

Lan Wangji is not given to crying. It is not becoming of a Lan disciple to show excess emotion, and that includes crying. He still remembers his uncle chastising him for the tears he couldn’t stop, in front of the Jingshi, as a child. But sitting on the bed under the stairs, he feels a helplessness that mirrors what he felt then. That’s why he cultivates as hard as he does, after all. To never be helpless again.

His hand is shaking. Lan Wangji slept in his forehead ribbon and it feels crooked. There’s no mirror in this room he could use to adjust it. He really, really wishes he had Bichen.

He does not cry, but he sits on the edge of the bed for a long time to get his breathing to even out. He thinks of his brother, Lan Xichen. He must get to Qinghe soon.

His room is small, just the bed tucked under the stairs and a desk on the opposite wall, next to the door. There are no windows. A lamp is burning on the table. Lan Wangji stands up and walks across the room, opens the door.

Last night he was too tired to take in the surroundings but today he makes note of them fully. His first impression is of overwhelming stuff. From his open doorway he can see a large fireplace, with a fire burning low embers in a wide hearth, heaped high with ashes. The stones are all carved, interspersed faces with magic sigils that Lan Wangji can’t read because they're so thickly covered in ash. A rickety chair is in front of the hearth, over a rug full of holes from stray embers. Books are stacked in falling piles on both sides of the fireplace. In front of the stairs is a large work table, with two benches, backed up to a kitchen. The table is piled high with things, ceramic jars full of dead flowers, another with brushes, another with sticks, shoved in between baskets full of papers and wilting green vegetables. More things hang from the ceilings—strings of dried herbs, masks, fluttering paper talismans, tiny silent bells that shine in the firelight, paper lanterns in all colors, unlit, with characters he can’t read in the flickering light. On a shelf are a left and right arm, wrapped in chains, plastered with talismans, seemingly dead.

Beyond that there and two windows in the front of the small room look out onto two completely different scenes. On the sills are boxes with shoots of small plants, some still alive, some brown. Lan Wangji walks towards a window, on the kitchen side, and looks out at a city street where vendors are starting to set up stalls for the day. He walks past the front door and to the other window. It looks out onto what he assumes are the Wastes. It’s still dark, on that desert scene, and the landscape around them is moving, slowly. There’s no grass in sight. A faint orange band surrounds the horizon. Lan Wangji stares at the edge of that horizon.

“These windows are very far apart,” he says, quietly.

Behind him he hears something snap, and turns around. The fire has let out a weak spit of flame. He sees a stack of wood next to it, and walks over to put a log in the fire.

The fire looks almost excited to receive the wood, if a fire could look alive. He watches the flames dance and can almost make out a face in profile, before it flickers out and disappears. Lan Wangji watches the fire for another moment, feeling for energy in the room, then picks up another log as a test. The flames grow, as if the fire is reaching for it.

“How may I address this spirit?” Lan Wangji asks, setting the log on the hearth.

He hears a high laugh, one that hisses and pops like a flame. “You’re pretty observant for such a young cultivator,” the fire says, and the face he thought he saw before flickers to become more real.

“Young?” Lan Wangji asks, instead.

The fire laughs again. “Oh, you might fool humans but you won’t fool me, boy. That’s a nasty curse.”

Lan Wangji sits down in the rickety chair, looking into the fire.

“How can I break it?” he asks.

“Hmmm.” The fire stretches, flames reaching out to the ends of the log he just put on, and then contracts back in on itself. “You could make a deal with me. Like that one did,” letting a tongue of flame fly towards the stairs.

“Wei Ying made a deal with you,” Lan Wangji says. “I see.”

“Sure you don’t want in on it? I’m a very powerful spirit, after all,” the fire says, looking eager.

“Who are you?” Lan Wangji asks, instead.

“He calls me Chenqing,” the fire says. “It’s a name that human mouths can say.”

“Were you human?” Lan Wangji asks.

The fire hums, a high, vibrating note. “I ate humans, once,” the fire answers instead. Lan Wangji ignores this.

“Is there any other way to break the curse apart from making a deal with you?” he asks.

“Oh, sure,” the fire says, flickering up a little. “May take a while. But I’m right here, and you’re right here, and the circumstances of our meeting are so fortuitous! Why not take advantage of me?”

“I need to go to Qinghe and find my brother,” Lan Wangji says.

The fire emits another high note, this one a different tone from the last. “Qinghe?” it asks. “Well, if you take the fourth door, shouldn’t take too long, but why?”

Lan Wangji looks up. “What?”

“Who’s your brother?” the fire asks, instead. “He must be a pretty big-time cultivator if you think he’s got a chance on breaking that curse.”

But then the front door opens, and a boy comes running in, holding a large bag. “Chenqing, guess what the news is!” he shouts, dropping the bag, and then sees Lan Wangji. His eyes grow wide. “Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t know we had a visitor.”

“He’s all right,” Chenqing says.

“Chenqing, you’re talking to visitors?” the boy says, then picks up the bag and moves it to the long table in the kitchen. “You must have impressed him,” he says to Lan Wangji. “He always pretends to be a normal fire when other people are here.” He gives Lan Wangji a respectful bow. “I’m Wei Yuan.”

Wei Yuan. Wei Wuxian’s son, then? “Lan—Lan Zhan,” Lan Wangji says, after a moment, and nods back.

“Oh, you’re from the Lan clan? I heard about what happened in Gusu. I’m sorry,” the boy says.

“It is the past,” Lan Wangji says, because it is true, and he has nothing else to say.

The boy nods, and then starts unloading his grocery bags. Eggs, vegetables, and tea leaves go on shelves in the kitchen.

“Well? What’s the news, A-Yuan?” Chenqing says, impatiently.

“Oh!” Wei Yuan crumples the bag, throwing it in a cabinet. “Wen Chao spent the last three days attacking the Unclean Realm,” he says. “Everybody in the village says he’s mad, because Nie Mingjue could defend that place with only ten soldiers! It’s built for defense! But they say he had a man on the inside, and now the Unclean Realm is fallen!”

“What?” Lan Wangji asks, standing up.

“Supposedly he slaughtered everyone except a few powerful clan leaders who were there,” Wei Yuan says, adding water to a pot for tea. He walks over towards Lan Wangji and hangs the teapot over the fire.

“What happened to the clan leaders? Who was there?” Lan Wangji asks.

“Wen Chao has announced that he now holds Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen hostage,” Wei Yuan says.

Lan Wangji stares at him. Wei Yuan frowns at him. “Elder, are you okay? Sit down, you look a little pale,” he says, and takes Lan Wangji’s elbow, just like his father did, and guides Lan Wangji back to his chair. “If you’re a Lan than you must know Lan Xichen,” he says, finally. “Oh! You must be worried about Zewu-jun! Don’t worry. Wen Chao is bragging to everyone that he’s keeping them locked up in a palace as prisoners. They both gave speeches yesterday at Heavenly Nightless City, in the square.”

“What?” Lan Wangji asks, looking up at the boy. Wei Yuan looks so young, maybe eleven or twelve.

“He forced them, at swordpoint,” Wei Yuan says.

“When did this happen?”

“The fortress fell yesterday.” Wei Yuan wanders back into the kitchen, takes down a red teapot, and wipes the dust off it absently. “They gave their concession speeches last night.”

Lan Wangji stands up, walking towards the door. “My clan leader has been captured,” he says.

“I wouldn’t do that just yet, Lan Zhan,” a voice says, and when Lan Wangji turns around he sees Wei Wuxian standing on the stairs, leaning against one wall. Today he wears a different set of black robes, sharp and cut with another deep crimson under robe. He smiles at Lan Zhan, and the smile seems nice enough, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. He uncrosses his arms and walks down the stairs. “Stay for breakfast, at least.”

Lan Wangji can’t tear his eyes away from Wei Wuxian. The busy kitchen window shows full sunlight now, throwing a golden square on the floor, and the other window shows pale sky, the light from it soft and diffuse. Wei Wuxian picks up a skillet, takes it over to the fire.

“No fair,” Chenqing whines, but when Wei Wuxian throws an egg into the fire before setting the skillet down the fire makes no complaints. Lan Wangji watches Wei Wuxian’s long fingers as he cracks eggs into the skillet one-handed.

“Lan-qianbei?” someone asks, and Lan Wangji turns around to notice Wei Yuan holding a cup. “Would you like tea?”

“Lan Zhan would love some tea,” Wei Wuxian answers for him, and passes the kettle over to Wei Yuan. He grips the iron with a bare hand but makes no indication that the heat bothers him. Wei Yuan takes it carefully with a cloth and adds water to the teapot.

Lan Wangji watches, silently. “Wei Wuxian,” he says, after a moment.

Wei Wuxian flicks the skillet, flipping eggs in an easy motion. “Lan Zhan! Please, I asked you to call me Wei Ying,” he says. “I won’t have unnecessary formality in my home.”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says, instead. It seems both pointless and obvious to say Wei Wuxian, Yiling Laozu, feared enemy of both cultivation sects and Wen Ruohan, what are you doing? when the answer he knows he will get is Making breakfast, Lan Zhan! “My sect leader has been taken hostage by Wen Ruohan,” he says, instead. “I must go.”

“Such respect, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says. He picks up the skillet in his bare hand and turns towards the table, again making no show that the iron from the fire hurts him at all. “But, forgive my bluntness, what exactly is an old cultivator like yourself going to do? Do you have any kind of plan, besides charge into Heavenly Nightless City and demand Lan Xichen’s safe return?”

“You know why the clans were meeting at Qinghe,” Lan Wangji counters.

“I’m not actually as privy to clan gossip as you seem to think I am,” Wei Wuxian says, sighing a little bit. He scoops eggs onto plates. “Come, eat.”

The three sit down around the table. “But you have sources in the clans,” Lan Wangji says, not taking a bite.

“I absolutely hate talking about the war before breakfast,” Wei Wuxian says, and this time his tired smile doesn’t even pretend to reach his eyes. Lan Wangji takes the hint and starts eating, silently. Wei Yuan pours tea and he takes a sip.

“Thank you for allowing me to stay last night,” Lan Wangji says, after a moment.

“Where do you even have to go, anyway?” Wei Wuxian asks. He rests his face in his hand and stares at Lan Wangji with cool, glassy eyes. “You’re a refugee from Cloud Recesses, and the Wens are hunting down any Lans they can get their hands on right now. That forehead ribbon isn’t helping you anymore,” he adds, nodding. “There’s nowhere you can go now that is safe, Lan Zhan.”

“I can try to find others of my sect,” Lan Wangji says, but Wei Wuxian takes a drink of tea and keeps talking.

“Also, sorry to your pressing travel needs, but we’re currently deep in the Yiling Wastes,” he says. “Any further and we’ll have to cross over to the Burial Mounds.”

Wei Yuan looks up at him over his food, eyes wide. Wei Wuxian gives him a flat gaze.

“And I do not intend on bringing our esteemed guest into the Burial Mounds,” Wei Wuxian continues. “After all, a deadly cemetery from which no cultivator has emerged alive, ever, is no place to bring a guest, hmm?”

Lan Wangji looks down at his tea. “But a place to go alone?”

Wei Yuan coughs halfway through a bite of eggs.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, setting his chin on his fist. “Of course not. That place reeks of resentful energy. You’d have to do terrible things to make it out of there.”

“I will avoid it when I leave,” Lan Wangji says.

“Lan Zhan.” Wei Wuxian sets both hands on the table, staring at Lan Wangji’s face. “I will absolutely not let you go wandering around the Yiling Wastes, where Wen soldiers are camping out in mass. You may know them as they are the same Wen soldiers trying to kill anyone with a Lan headband on sight.”

“I can take care of myself,” Lan Wangji says.

“There’s an entire army out there, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says. He sighs, drains his tea, and then stands up. “A-Yuan, you better work on those talismans for when I get back. Ask Lan Zhan for help if you need it. I’m leaving.”

Ask me for help? Lan Wangji thinks. He looks up at Wei Wuxian, who stands up and throws his plate toward a sink stacked high with dirty dishes. “Wei Ying,” he says. “I need to go to get Lan Xichen.”

“Lan Zhan.” Wei Wuxian turns around, leaning back against the sink, crosses his arms. “Be reasonable. Even if you can get past them, can an old man just walk into Heavenly Nightless City and demand a sect leader back? Of course not. Just stay here until I get back. I’ll bring something useful with me when I do.”

“Where are you going?” Wei Yuan asks, at the same time Chenqing says: “But you just got back three hours ago!”

Wei Wuxian ignores both of them and walks across the room. The black flute that Lan Wangji touched yesterday is tucked into his belt, red tassel swinging when he walks. There’s a switch beside the door, with red, purple, blue, and black, and he flips a marker to the black side before opening the door.

Wei Yuan cleans up breakfast before disappearing upstairs, presumably to his room. Lan Wangji pours himself another cup of tea, then looks at the rest of the table that isn’t the two square feet Wei Yuan cleared for breakfast. He sighs and starts picking through it, pulling out books and papers and sprouting potatoes, reading papers for content. Unsurprisingly, Wei Wuxian keeps all his secret correspondence on his kitchen table under wilting vegetables. Lan Wangji reads through them, drinking tea.

The papers are a mess. Everything from grocery receipts, to flyers advertising different shops, to talismans sold by street vendors, these often annotated with a bold, messy scrawl that Lan Wangji thinks has to be Wei Wuxian’s. Some are flyers from the Wens, propaganda proclaiming triumph over various sects, like the one that says Lotus Pier is Ours! Yunmeng Jiang Subdued Under Our Glorious Leader! that’s crumpled into a ball so tight it has rips in it. Another one proclaims Gusu Burns and Lan Wangji can’t stop the flash of energy he uses to burn it to ash in his fist.

There are letters, too, digests from one person who has pretty impressive knowledge about the war. The hardest part is making sense of what kind of order anything goes in. Wei Wuxian’s confidant is someone in the Nie sect, though his knowledge of happenings in other clans seems far-reaching. There are letters dating months back, before Lotus Pier was attacked, even some before Cloud Recesses burned. Lan Wangji reads through sheafs of barely-legible handwritten papers outlining rough estimates of defenses for every major cultivation sect. Some of the older ones keep Lans out of the war until the Jins had fallen, which clearly demonstrates someone who underestimates Lan Xichen’s influence on the former sect leader, Lan Wangji thinks. Most reports seem surprised that the Cloud Recesses had fallen first. They’d picked Lotus Pier and the Yunmeng Jiang to go first—the city the most accessible, not as rich as Lanling Jin to fear retribution, not as hard to reach as Cloud Recesses in Gusu, not as defensible as the Unclean Realm. They again underestimated Lan stubbornness, Lan Wangji thinks, holding the papers carefully. And how much it would piss off Wen Chao. And how volatile and unpredictable Wen Chao is.

He reads through the papers for most of the morning. He doesn’t have Wei Wuxian’s replies, but from the letters he can guess some of the contents. The large-scale distance-shortening array has caused more trouble than anything else, and reading through the letters it’s easy to trace its source—and the course of the war—to the burning of Gusu, the first time it was used. To resounding success. It hurts, a little, to read about the furtive search for Lan Xichen and his promising younger brother, who has been kept out of the mainstream cultivation world. There are rumors about Lan Wangji himself, too, which Lan Wangji reads with a certain degree of amusement. Some people think he is powerless, and the Lans keep him out of the public eye because he was born with no core, an embarrassment to a powerful family. Some say that he is Gusu’s secret weapon, trained in the most deadly Chord Assassination techniques, kept away from disciples and from disciples of other sects, held in reserve for when something threatens Cloud Recesses. That one’s closer to the truth. But none of his secret techniques mattered when Wen Chao had his sword to his father’s throat.

Lan Wangji shoves his memories down and keeps reading. He pays particular attention to the reports of Lotus Pier, an event he got scant news on, as he and Lan Xichen were already in hiding. The reports are scarce on this. One letter makes reference to “your family” and Lan Wangji realizes Wei Wuxian lived through this event, and probably needs very little secondhand intelligence on it. He takes a drink of tea, staring down at the letter for a moment, then keeps reading.

One letter makes mention that Wen Zhuliu went to Lotus Pier, and claims that he killed the Jiang sect leader, his wife, and their heir before they died. But Jiang Wanyin and his sister both showed up, somehow, in Lanling. Jiang Wanyin’s core was intact. He seemed different, the letter-writer speculated, but didn’t elaborate.

Lan Wangji finishes the pile. At the bottom is a fragment of a ripped letter. He can’t make out anything except the character for “oriole”, which this confidant has been using to sign. He reaches for his cup and realizes his tea is finished, then stands up, taking the kettle back to the fire.

In the light of day the castle is even worse. The rug lets up puffs of dust when he walks on it. Ash litters the floor and is stacked a hand deep in the hearth. There are sigils on the stones, but the smoke and soot is so thick he can’t make anything out. Dusty sunlight reveals spiderwebs hugging the ceiling and the bookshelves. “This castle is….astonishingly dirty,” he says, after a moment.

“Hey! I’m right here, you know!” Chenqing says, flaring up. “Are you done snooping?”

“So Wei Ying was gone all night,” Lan Wangji says, staring at Chenqing. “Where?”

“I’m not his babysitter,” Chenqing grumbles.

“This fireplace is terribly dirty,” Lan Wangji says. “I’m going to get rid of some of these ashes.”

“No! Mercy!” Chenqing yells, pulling back toward the rear of the hearth.

Lan Wangji digs through the room, tying back his sleeves. He’s never lived anywhere so dirty before in his life. At Cloud Recesses, of course, they’d had servants to clean and cook for them, but these days with himself and Lan Xichen, Lan Wangji finds himself more irritated by the dirt and clutter than the lack of elaborate food. Cleaning isn’t hard, it’s just tedious, work he hadn’t done since he was a first-year disciple and even rarely then, as the best behaved of them all. It’s soothing, now, to have something in front of him that seems clear cut, with a simple way forward.

Besides, if there’s any place to find an unknown, mysterious magic relic that could magically cure a curse, he thinks, I could do worse than to search the castle of the most nefarious sorcerer in the war. In a cupboard behind the sink he finds a broom, hidden under a long grey outer robe that reeks of resentful energy, dark stains on its hem. He shakes out the robe, scattering pieces of ash across the floor, and hangs it on a coat rack by the door. He rolls up the ember-burned rug in front of the hearth and sets it up in a corner. With a poker he pushes Chenqing’s log to the back of the hearth, then uses the broom to pull all the ashes out of the fireplace and into the floor. Dust goes everywhere. It makes him cough until he opens the window, over the sink, letting the street sounds into the room.

“Chenqing, how can I dump the dirt?” he asks, looking towards the fire.

Chenqing, still sulking in the back of the hearth, flares up to answer, petulant: “Just open the black door and dump it in the Wastes. I’ll move us around to get rid of it.”

The black door. Lan Wangji turns to the switch on the side of the door. The switch is yellow up. “Counterclockwise,” Chenqing says, and Lan Wangji gives it a twist. Even this close to the front door he can’t feel any changes in it when he flips through yellow, purple, landing on black. The blue and purple are very faded, the yellow and black vivid.

“Where do they go?” he asks, touching the dial, looking back at Chenqing.

“Black is the Wastes,” Chenqing says. “Purple…well, used to be Lotus Pier. Blue for Gusu. Yellow for Qinghe. But Gusu and Lotus Pier are both too dangerous now to use.”

Lan Wangji’s fingers linger on the blue switch, his hand trembling only faintly. Too dangerous. He turns the knob to black and opens the door.

It’s a crisp day in the Wastes, wind blowing his hair when he opens the door. He stands in the doorway and looks out as the landscape moves away from under him. This view matches the other window in the front room. It’s a bright morning, sun blazing on the desert, stretching away to the right, and green grass that slopes up to the left. Lan Wangji lets the wind blow at his hair, and staring at the sunshine, feels his heart settle. Fragrant grass in slant rays, he thinks, and then wishes, against himself, that Wei Ying would complete the line with him.

“This…is very impressive,” he says, turning back to Chenqing. “You must be a very powerful spirit, to move the whole castle like this.”

Chenqing flickers in red and sends off a few sparks. “Aw, this is nothing,” it says. “Just wait. You’ll see more interesting things than this if you stay here.”

Lan Wangji pushes the ashes towards the door, sending dust flying up everywhere. Sometime during this process Wei Yuan comes back downstairs.

“Lan-qianbei! Let me help!” he shouts, and grabs another broom. The two of them push the dirt across the floor, dumping it into the desert of the Wastes, wind blowing at their faces.

“You don’t have to clean all this, elder,” Wei Yuan says, as Lan Wangji uses a broom to pull spiderwebs off the bookshelves.

I really, really do, Lan Wangji thinks, part of him shrinking up in horror at the mess, but just says: “If you have finished your talismans, Wei Yuan, then help me with the dishes and we can look at them together afterwards.”

“Yeah!” Wei Yuan smiles at him, beaming. “And you can call me A-Yuan,” he adds, as he rolls up his sleeves.

“A-Yuan,” Lan Wangji says, and it’s oddly satisfying to watch the way the child beams at him before picking up a cloth to wipe down the dishes.

They leave the door open as they work. Lan Wangji starts with the obvious spiderwebs and dust over every surface, pushing all the dirt out into the Wastes. He pulls piles of dust off the shelves, pausing when he comes to the two arms, covered in talismans. They are neatly ensconced on separate shelves, missing much of the mess of the others. “Whose arms are these?” Lan Wangji asks.

“Don’t touch that!” A-Yuan yells, sounding terrified. “He says it’s part of someone who’s been cursed that he’s trying to restore.” He shivers. “Sometimes they move on their own, so he covered them in talismans.”

Lan Wangji examines the arms, wearing black sleeves. It’s hard to tell anything specific with the yellow talismans covering almost every inch of them. The talismans, at least the ones he recognizes, are for sleep, confinement, immobility. Most of them he doesn’t recognize.

He moves on to the rest of the shelves, clearing books from the top of dusty history books hidden behind small boxes, pendants, pieces of stone, loose gems, crumpled talisman paper, feathers. Below that are less-dusty, more oft-used books of magic, with less trinkets obscuring them. Some are mirrors of ones he has in the store, some mirrors of ones that they couldn’t save from Gusu, some he’s never seen before. Below that is a shelf of verse, many volumes askew, with some pieces of black cloth that have been used as bookmarks trailing off the edges. Lan Wangji picks up a jade hair ornaments set with jewels, then a black veil, then a pair of silver dice. There are faint traces of resentful energy coming off most of the trinkets.

By the time A-Yuan is done with the pile of dishes, a pile drying next to the sink, it’s almost lunchtime. Lan Wangji and A-Yuan pick up the other half of the worktable, sorting more piles of books and papers and brushes and half-wilted vegetables and rotted flowers.

“No! Don’t throw that away! Wei-gege needs that sage!” A-Yuan says at one point, as Lan Wangji is about to throw away a vase full of dead plants. Lan Wangji raises an eyebrow, staring down at the bundle of weeds in his hand.

Wei-gege? he thinks. Not a blood father, after all. But all he says is: “If A-Yuan is sure,” and then doubtfully sets the vase back down.

They work long enough that A-Yuan digs out some buns from the paper bag of groceries he had brought this morning. Lan Wangji eats them while he reads over more papers on Wei Wuxian’s worktable, and A-Yuan brings his talismans down, soon covering the newly-cleaned table surface.

“Lan-qianbei, will you look at these talismans?” A-Yuan asks him, tugging on his sleeve, and Lan Wangji turns away from the papers.

The boy is taking notes in careful, cramped writing. Lan Wangji looks over them once before he picks up a talisman. A-Yuan is studying well, but the lessons that Wei Wuxian has left for him are, to say the least, circuitous. He hands Lan Wangji a talisman that he’s been left to work on, and Lan Wangji realizes that he has never seen it before. It looks like a warped version of a teleportation talisman, but Lan Wangji has no idea what it actually does.

“What other talismans do you have?” he asks, hoping that some of them will be ones he knows, and then A-Yuan is pulling stacks of blank talisman paper over. Soon they have too many to fit on the table, and instead spread out on the newly-clean floor before Chenqing, shutting the door when the wind blows the talismans all over the room. Many of these are ones that Lan Wangji knows, and within the dozen talismans that A-Yuan hands him, he starts to find a rhythm. There’s a reason to the way that Wei Wuxian has been teaching them, he realizes. Sets of talismans fit together to make new, more powerful spells. Some of the basic spells are layered together. Others are inversions of each other, and after seeing one of these Lan Wangji realizes that some of the other talismans he’s been seeing, not recognizing, are inversions of ones he knows too. He sits on the floor with A-Yuan, both holding calligraphy brushes, pointing out the pattern. They arrange them in a circle, and then Lan Wangji makes A-Yuan draw lines between the first and second talismans, the compounds, then the inversions, then the ones which change radicals.

Following through the trail is a fascinating glimpse into the mind of Wei Wuxian. There is logic there. At least in his teaching methods. A-Yuan holds talismans for unlocking, protection, fire, wind, water, laying them out in groups. The first talisman, the one he didn’t know, seems to come from what looks like a transportation talisman, though not one Lan Wangji has ever used. When the light is slanting, late, into the room, Lan Wangji looks up at the fireplace and realizes that the newly-clean strange sigils carved into the stones are there for protection, from the five elements, from the three realms. Some of the radicals on the outside sigils he doesn’t recognize. Because A-Yuan’s lessons aren’t comprehensive, after all, he thinks and feels a pang of something at the thought that Wei Wuxian’s only disciple is so much more proficient with talismans than any adult cultivator he has ever met.

Lan Wangji was always considered one of the smartest of his sect, the Second Jade of Lan, the boy who could see connection and put things together without prompting. Lan Qiren always praised him the most. But sitting on the floor with A-Yuan, deciphering Wei Wuxian’s scribbled talismans, he feels like he’s the disciple, barely able to keep ahead of A-Yuan.

“This one?” Lan Wangji asks, holding up a paper before A-Yuan, who looks at him, then wrinkles his nose.

“To….to make someone ugly?” he says. “That can’t be right, Lan-qianbei!”

The room gets lighter, and Lan Wangji holds up a hand to shield his eyes.

“What on earth has happened in here,” Wei Wuxian asks, his voice amused. “Chenqing! A-Yuan! What did you let him do to this place!”

“I think it’s much better,” Chenqing fires back, and A-Yuan ignores this entirely, scrambling up from the floor.

“Wei-gege!” he shouts, and runs to hug Wei Wuxian around the waist. “Look, we’re doing the talismans! Did you really give me one to make someone ugly?”

“This is an extremely useful talisman,” Wei Wuxian says, putting a hand on A-Yuan’s head.

“We studied all afternoon!” A-Yuan says, looking up at Wei Wuxian. “And he’s much better than you, Wei-gege, he explained everything about what the radicals mean and how you fit things together and you never explain all that stuff!”

“Lan Zhan is very smart,” Wei Wuxian says, meeting Lan Wangji’s eyes over A-Yuan’s head. He holds his smile in the corners of his glassy eyes. “Didn’t I tell you that this morning?”

“Look at how clean it is, too!” Wei Yuan says, pulling back.

“Yes, I noticed,” Wei Wuxian says. “Lan Zhan, this is terrible. How on earth am I supposed to find anything?”

“Were you terribly attached to the spiders living on the bookshelves?” Lan Wangji asks, stiffly getting to his feet. He feels self-conscious now, certain his age must show in his face, in a way he didn’t think about all day with A-Yuan.

“I’ve trained them up just the way I want them,” Wei Wuxian says. Lan Wangji tilts his chin down the tiniest bit, as if to say Really, Wei Ying, and Wei Wuxian smiles at him in return, eyes crinkling in a full smile.

“Where were you all day, anyway?” Chenqing interjects, uninterested in their banter. “Out all night and all day? When are you going to sleep?”

“There’s a war on, you horrible demon,” Wei Wuxian says, lightly. “Some of us have to work around here.”

“Yeah, like me,” Chenqing grumbles, but Wei Wuxian walks over and picks up a log. “Look at how nice my hearth is,” Chenqing says, reaching gratefully for the log Wei Wuxian sets down. “You can see all the sigils now! Lan Zhan gave me so much more space!”

“I’m being out-voted as the most popular person in my own home now,” Wei Wuxian says. In the light from the fire he has circles under his eyes. “I’m going to bed,” he says, walking towards the stairs and waving at them both. “Wake me up when—” he pauses on the stairs, then waves a hand again. “Don’t wake me up, ever,” he says, walking upstairs.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says. “You said you would bring news.”

“In the morning, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, before disappearing up the stairs.

“News?” A-Yuan asks, watching him go, then looks over at Lan Wangji. “Oh! Your clan leader! You must be worried sick.”

“Something like that,” Lan Wangji says. He feels nervous energy drain from him, leaving him tired and irritable in its wake, some small part of him that he’d been ignoring all day howling at him that his brother is still gone and he is still cursed. It sours the look of concern that A-Yuan gives him, timidly.

“Lan-qianbei?” A-Yuan asks, and Lan Wangji looks up at him, pushing back frustration.

“It is not you, A-Yuan,” he says, after a moment. “You’re right, I am concerned. That’s all.”

———

Lan Wangji falls asleep immediately, again, in the room under the stairs, the lamp still burning on the desk. Tiredness washes over him like a wave and he dreams. He dreams of himself, restored to youth, standing in front of the moving castle, holding Bichen up to the front door, with a fierce wind blowing his hair. He dreams of the Wastes flooding, filling up with water, watching a wave rush towards the castle door. He dreams that he is in Cloud Recesses, at the cold spring, with his fingers going numb and his hair spread out behind him, dreams about watching Wei Wuxian drop his robe and walk into that cold water. He dreams about the Jingshi catching fire.

When he wakes the light is out, and he is still alone.

Chapter Text

Lan Wangji wakes at five, the force of Gusu trapped in his bones, and when he comes outside even the window over the sink is still dark.

“Where does he go?” Lan Wangji asks Chenqing. He stands in the middle of the room, his feet bare, wearing only his white inner robes. His voice is quiet, but in response the low fire glows slowly to life, throwing more light across the room.

Chenqing flickers, expressions sliding in and out of flames, too fast to be read. “He’s sabotaging the Wens. They camp, in the Wastes. They invented a new spell, the Distance-Shortening Array—”

“I know,” Lan Wangji says, quietly. “They used it at Gusu. We had everyone watching the hills. There was no way they could have appeared without warning.”

“Yeah, and it’s not just Gusu they’re hitting,” Chenqing adds. “They attacked Lotus Pier. They attacked the Unclean Realm. They’re coming for the Jins next.”

“I need to stop them,” Lan Wangji says. He realizes his hand is gripping the cloth of his robes, fisting in it, and stretches out his fingers. “I cannot, at this level of power.”

“How much cultivation did you lose, with that curse?” Chenqing asks. “How powerful were you?”

In his memory, Cloud Recesses burns, and Wen Chao’s sword is pointed at his chest. “Not powerful enough,” he says.

“Make a bargain with me,” Chenqing says, unexpectedly. “I’ll lift your curse if you can free me.”

“Free a powerful demon who made a contract with Wei Wuxian?” Lan Wangji asks. “What did you offer him, and what did he offer you?”

“I can’t say,” Chenqing says.

“Then how am I supposed to help you?”

“Please!” Chenqing’s face flickers in and out, too fast, like he is desperate. “It’s hurting us both, you know! The more Wei Wuxian practices demonic cultivation, the more his soul erodes!”

Lan Wangji pauses, and towards turn Chenqing. “How could I even help you?” he asks. “How do I help him?”

“He—Wen—” Chenqing’s voice is strangled, and sputters and spits. “I can’t say!” the fire says, after a moment. “He’s missing something. If you return it to him, then I think you’ll be able to free me. I think.”

“What is he missing?” Lan Wangji asks, sitting in the chair in front of the fire.

“I can’t say,” Chenqing says, voice taking the whine of despair. “But you can figure it out. And once you know, then you’ll be able to help us.”

Lan Wangji thinks of Wei Wuxian, of long fingers gripping his elbow, of the corners of his eyes when he smiles, of the long line of his throat, of his hands catching a single falling flower blossom.

“I don’t know how much I can help like this,” he says, his voice quavering again, staring down at his gnarled hands.

“And some Wen cultivator put that spell on you, hmm?” Chenqing asks, thoughtfully.

“A cultivator who came into the store, wearing black robes,” Lan Wangji says. “He told me to…give word, to Yiling Laozu.” He looks up at Chenqing. “Not Wen Chao.”

“Well, he’s got a variety of low-class flunkies,” Chenqing muses. “Was he more strong and silent, fist like a sledgehammer? Or look like a rabid animal that you need to put down, real mouthy?”

Lan Wangji tilts his head to the side, and Chenqing gives a flicker of flame that could be a shrug. “Mouthy,” Lan Wangji says, finally.

“Probably Xue Yang,” Chenqing says. “He’s got an inferiority complex a mile wide and really likes torturing people. But not terribly sophisticated.” The fire flickers a little bit, meditatively. “Make a bargain with me and I can tell you more,” it adds, throwing a tongue of flame towards Lan Wangji.

Lan Wangji looks piercingly at the fire. He thinks of all the cunning demons in folktales, in fairy stores, and feels the hairs on his arms rise up. He looks down at his hands again. “No formal contracts,” he says, lifting his eyes to Chenqing. “But I will do my best to protect Wei Ying, and A-Yuan, no matter what happens to you.”

“I’m not that bad,” Chenqing protests. “Just stick around. You’re smart. I see you watching everything, thinking more than you talk. You’ll figure it out. And when you’re ready, I’ll be here.”

———

Lan Wangji spends the morning reading a book he’s never seen before, about speed and time energy, arrays that compress and extend time in a confined space. He’s frowning at pages when A-Yuan wakes, after sunrise, and gives him a cheerful “Good morning, Lan-qianbei,” and puts the tea on. He sits next to Lan Wangji and pulls out his stack of talismans and a book, both reading silently in the morning light, tea steaming next to them.

“Lan-qianbei, can you look at this,” A-Yuan asks, after a while, and Lan Wangji puts his book aside and starts looking over the papers with him. Wei Wuxian comes downstairs sometime after that, standing in the stairs in his crimson inner robes, waiting for A-Yuan and Lan Wangji to look up and notice him.

“But what’s this one?” A-Yuan asks, pushing another talisman over to Lan Wangji, and flips through the book open in front of him. “I can’t find this radical…”

“Ahem!” Wei Wuxian says, loudly, and A-Yuan looks up.

“Oh, good morning,” he says.

“Is that all I get! A lackluster good morning!” Wei Wuxian rolls his eyes, and comes the rest of the way down the stairs, into the kitchen. “After all the work I do!”

“Wei Ying. Good morning,” Lan Wangji says, raising an eyebrow.

“Okay Lan Zhan, I can tell when you’re making fun of me,” Wei Wuxian grumbles, sitting on the bench opposite them. “Give me some of that tea, A-Yuan. Got all these figured out, huh?” He picks up some of Wei Yuan’s talismans while A-Yuan pours him a cup of tea. “Pretty good. A-Yuan, focus on your transportation talismans!” He takes a drink of tea, his eyes scanning down the papers. “But Lan Zhan, you’re teaching him far too much of the simple stuff. He’s gotta be able to pick this up on his own. This isn’t Gusu summer school, after all,” he says, his voice teasing. “We’re not here for rote memorization.”

“What news do you have of the clans?” Lan Wangji asks, quietly, as A-Yuan pours tea. His eyes are fixed on Wei Wuxian’s face, and as he watches it settles, the smile fading. He looks older, more tired, when he doesn’t smile.

“I hate talking about the news before breakfast,” he says, voice colder, and Lan Wangji pushes a plate towards him, with rice and eggs.

“I know,” Lan Wangji says, handing him a clean pair of chopsticks, and Wei Wuxian gives him a lopsided grin.

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry I ever doubted you,” he says, shoveling the food into his mouth.

“What else am I working on today?” A-Yuan asks, pulling the talismans into a pile.

“Teleportation is your first priority,” Wei Wuxian says. “You have to be able to escape if Wen Ruohan comes for you, A-Yuan.”

“You always say that,” A-Yuan sighs. “I know! I can teleport almost 3 li now! But you said today we could work on other stuff too! What are we doing?” He practically bounces in his seat with excitement.

Wei Wuxian hums, eyeing him. “Practical things,” Wei Wuxian says, finally, around bites of food. He pauses for a long sip of tea. “There’s a farmer at the edge of Yiling who’s troubled by a lightless lantern. You’re gonna take care of it.”

“A what?!” A-Yuan asks, and Lan Wangji tilts his head in a bare question.

“A lightless lantern,” Wei Wuxian repeats, shoveling more rice into his mouth.

“That’s a bit high-level for A-Yuan,” Lan Wangji says.

“Well, we’ll help him, of course,” Wei Wuxian says, raising his eyebrows at Lan Wangji. “But I think this particular spirit will also have some important information for you, Lan Zhan, because I have it on good rumors that it’s a Nie spirit from the attack on Qinghe. We’ll go tonight,” he says. “After you finish those, and I finish some other things I’m working on.”

“What are you working on now?” Chenqing asks, flaring up. “Is that whatever that weird junk in the backyard is?”

“Stop insulting my inventions,” Wei Wuxian calls over. He finishes his breakfast, slurps the last of the tea, and reaches over towards A-Yuan’s stack of talismans. “Now, let me take a look at these….”

When Wei Wuxian teaches A-Yuan it’s entirely different than Lan Wangji’s patient, probing questions. He doesn’t bother with the things Lan Wangji points out, ignoring the connections between the sigils as if it’s something A-Yuan should have already mastered. Lan Wangji watches him draw out that twisted transportation talisman for A-Yuan, making the boy break down the different parts of the radicals, then draws another, with different radicals, lecturing A-Yuan on spiritual toll used for different distances depending on the way the talisman is drawn. He draws parts of location talismans that are Lan Wangji can see are related but several steps ahead, leaving them for the boy to finish later, then jumps around for a lesson about resentful tree-spirits and how to subdue them. It’s very….unconventional, Lan Wangji thinks, watching him lecture A-Yuan over the workbench, while Lan Wangji finds himself cleaning breakfast dishes.

“Subdue,” Wei Wuxian says, pointing with his flute, as if illustrating the death-willow spirit. “You can use magic, of course—are you practicing flute? like I taught you?”

“Yes, Wei-gege,” A-Yuan says, sounding impatient. “Or the talismans. Or with the sword!”

Lan Wangji turns around, leaning against the edge of the sink, in time to catch the sight of Wei Wuxian’s mouth tightening at the corners. Lan Wangji gives a tiny frown. None of Wei Wuxian’s lessons mention swordwork. The path of the sword is the easiest path to cultivation.

“If you want to learn the sword way you’ll have to ask Lan Zhan to teach you,” Wei Wuxian says eventually, lifting his eyes, meeting Lan Wangji’s gaze. “I gave that up a long time ago.”

“Could you not just redirect the resentful energy in the spirit?” Lan Wangji asks, his voice even. “Using demonic cultivation?”

Wei Wuxian frowns at him and points the flute towards him. “Lan Zhan! Do you think I’d let my son practice demonic cultivation? I would never.”

But it’s okay for you to do it, Lan Wangji thinks, but doesn’t say, because he knows the use in saying this by now.

A-Yuan groans. “You’re not even my real dad,” he sighs. “It’s just another cultivation method, you use it!”

“You do not,” Wei Wuxian says. “You may learn the sword from Lan Zhan if he wishes to teach you. But you are not to use demonic energy in this house. It takes too much off your life.”

“Wait, I get to use the sword?” A-Yuan says, sounding excited. “Lan-qianbei! Lan-qianbei! Will you teach me?”

Lan Wangji’s hands clench. “The Wens took my sword,” he says quietly. “I can teach you if you have a sword.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” A-Yuan says. “Wei-gege, do we have any swords? What happened to yours?”

“Sword? Who told you I ever had a sword?” Wei Wuxian crosses his arms, still holding the flute.

“Wen Ning,” A-Yuan says, and for a second his voice is subdued. Wei Wuxian gives him a soft look. Lan Wangji files that away under the long list of suspicious tidbits from the moving castle.

“Well, not anymore,” he says. “But I bet there are some around here somewhere. I’m going out this afternoon. When I come back we’ll go after a lightless lantern, hmm?” Wei Wuxian sets the flute in a glass vase on the table and walks up the stairs. “Hot water, Chenqing,” he calls, disappearing up the stairs. “And Lan Zhan? Try looking in the corner vase for some swords.”

This is how Lan Wangji ends up teaching A-Yuan how to use the sword. The corner vase, it turns out, is full of more weapons than a slim vase should be able to hold—several swords, a few sharp and decent, many dull but serviceable, along with long graceful bows, a few thick sabres, a long jeweled scimitar, an array of long, thin knives. They take two of the better swords out the front door onto a grassy field at the edge of the Wastes, while the castle settles down around them, and Lan Wangji teaches A-Yuan how to hold a sword, stances, basic moves.

It’s all Lan moves, of course, fluid and spinning, and with it comes meditation, comes seeking mental clarity. It’s hard in the Yiling Wastes, where there is so little spiritual energy around them, where the air is heavy and dark with resentment, where he can’t close his eyes without feeling Wei Wuxian’s demonic cultivation curling on the edge of his senses, sliding dark slivers of smoke up his spine.

It feels like temptation. It feels like the thing that would take over his soul, would slide silky tendrils along his bare skin.

“Wei Ying doesn’t teach A-Yuan the sword?” Lan Wangji asks A-Yuan, as the boy is sweating through a drill in the sunshine. “Did he talk to you about why?”

“I asked like a hundred times, but Senior Wei often slithers out of answering questions,” A-Yuan says, sighing.

That sounds right, unfortunately. Lan Wangji does not ask any more questions.

When they go back to the castle they find, in a very slither-out fashion, that Wei Wuxian has left without a word. A-Yuan is exhausted, slumping with his head at the kitchen workbench, and Lan Wangji, feeling both unbalanced and more complete than he has in weeks, cleans the swords and returns them to the corner vase. The light is golden from the Wastes-window, and dimming from the kitchen window.

Lan Wangji sends A-Yuan to nap, before the night-hunt, and thinks he should do the same. Instead he finds himself playing guqin in the flickering firelight, his fingers moving lightly over the strings.

He plays Rest, he plays Clarity, he plays until his mind is quiet, and the light from the window is faded. He closes his eyes, sinking into the music, reaching out through the music, feeling his core surge with the melody.

At some point he becomes aware that notes are joining it. A high whistle of a flute weaves in and out of the notes, calm, sorrowful, piercing around the dark notes of the guqin. He feels another force alongside his own, intertwining with his spiritual energy, wrapping the notes.

He opens his eyes but doesn’t stop playing. Wei Wuxian stands opposite him, eyes locked to Lan Wangji’s, flute to his lips. He looks steadily at Lan Wangji but continues to play, melody soft, letting the guqin lead. Lan Wangji lets his fingers pluck the final notes, letting the resonance echo before he drops his hands, still staring at Wei Wuxian.

Wei Wuxian drops the flute, holding it with one hand. “Ah, Lan Zhan,” he says, then presses his lips together. He shakes his head and turns away.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says. He stands up, stiffly, waving his arm to stash his guqin.

“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting so long, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, standing at the table, still not looking at Lan Wangji. “I know all you’ve wanted is to go to Zewu-jun.”

“There is no point in my doing so only to be captured by the Wens,” Lan Wangji says. “But I cannot just come in and invade your home. I have to do something to help this war.”

“You’re not invading,” Wei Wuxian says, absently, then his gaze falls on the papers, neatly stacked on the table. Wen propaganda has its own stack. “But I know the feeling,” he adds, voice low and ragged.

“What is the lightless lantern?” Lan Wangji asks, coming to stand next to Wei Wuxian at the table. “A ghost lantern?”

“Rumor says that it’s a Nie cultivator who escaped the Unclean Realm…but not before a certain Wen cultivator got ahold of them,” Wei Wuxian says, turning around to face Chenqing, leaning against the edge of the table.

“Which Wen cultivator?” Lan Wangji asks, quietly.

“Do you know Wen Zhuliu, Lan Zhan?” Wei Wuxian asks, looking over at him, and Lan Wangji feels fear shoot into his spine.

“The Core-Melting Hand,” he says. “So this ghost is not just any cultivator, then. A cultivator…who had his core ripped out, then was killed.”

“Normally such a cultivator would become a ghost lantern,” Wei Wuxian says, nodding. “But if their core is gone…”

“That’s not your typical ghost lantern,” Lan Wangji says. “Is this safe for A-Yuan?”

Wei Wuxian laughs. “You’ve known A-Yuan two days and you’re already a better dad than me,” he says. “Lan Zhan. Let the kid try to fly. Besides, you’ll be there, and besides that, I’ll be there, supervising. What bad thing could possibly happen to him between the both of us?”

———

When they leave, Lan Zhan takes one of the spiritual swords, though he decides A-Yuan isn’t ready and Wei Wuxian laughs when he offers one to him. It’s a different weight than Bichen, slightly shorter, less responsive. But better than no sword, Lan Wangji thinks.

They go through the yellow switch, this time, to Qinghe, coming out of a door that lets them out onto a dirt road on the edge of a town. When Lan Wangji looks over his shoulder it’s a little shack on the edge of town with no light in the windows.

“Not every door is as glamorous as the moving castle,” Wei Wuxian says, dryly, and Lan Wangji turns his attention back to the road.

On the way Wei Wuxian drills A-Yuan, quizzing him on classes of monsters, ghosts, demons, and spiritual disasters. He’s a good student, Lan Wangji realizes, as he listens to A-Yuan recite off a litany of arrays, talismans, and curses that he couldn’t have known at that age. Though when Lan Wangji asks him about the origin of the cultivation sects, A-Yuan has no answer.

“We don’t study that kind of boring nonsense,” Wei Wuxian says, flapping a hand at him.

“Boring nonsense?” Lan Wangji asks, raising an eyebrow. “Wei Ying. If A-Yuan is going to become a cultivator when this is over, he needs to know history of the sects and swordsmanship, not just spiritual knowledge.”

“Well that’s why you’re here, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, his voice holding the trace of a smile. “Hear that, A-Yuan? You’re going to have to go be a real cultivator with Lan Zhan when this is all over.”

“When what’s over?” A-Yuan asks, and his voice is sharp, suspicious. “Why can’t I stay with you?”

“You can, you can,” Wei Wuxian says, backtracking. “Just idle talk, A-Yuan! Of course you’re staying with me. But you’ll have to go learn with Lan Zhan sometimes too, okay?”

“Sure,” A-Yuan says, though his voice still sounds suspicious. “Wei-gege, are we close to it yet?”

Wei Wuxian reaches forward and takes A-Yuan’s shoulder, stopping him in the road. He crouches down. “Look,” he says, quietly, and points with his flute.

Lan Wangji and A-Yuan follow the line of the flute. To the right of the road is a pond, the surface dark. On the opposite shore, a cluster of green lights floats, evenly spaced, with a conspicuous absence of light in the center.

“Ghost lanterns,” A-Yuan breathes, his voice full of excitement.

“And?” Wei Wuxian asks.

“Is the one in the middle the lightless lantern?” A-Yuan asks, quietly.

“Good,” Wei Wuxian says, standing up. “Go get ‘em.”

A-Yuan, released from his hold, rushes forward to the pond, pulling talismans out of both sleeves. He moves quickly and surprisingly soundlessly, stepping carefully around the reeds at the edge of the water.

Lan Wangji realizes he has been left alone with Wei Wuxian. They stand almost shoulder to shoulder, not quite touching. “What will he do?” Lan Wangji asks, watching A-Yuan walk towards the crowd of ghosts.

Wei Wuxian shrugs, one shoulder going up. “Ghosts like that have a lot to say to anyone who will listen,” he says. “A typical ghost lantern is so easy to scoop up that you can do it with no talismans at all. They’re often targets for other ghosts, or more powerful demons. But a lightless lantern may have more resentful energy than your typical ghost lantern.”

As A-Yuan approaches the ghost lanterns they draw together. He’s talking to them in a soft voice, his words too quiet to carry over the water. Something he says makes the ghosts bunch up, and they crowd around him, surrounding his face in soft green glow. Lan Wangji watches his face break into a soft smile, and he reaches forward and picks one up, the light turning in his hand to a physical lantern. He closes his eyes, touches his forehead and then the lantern, and then the door of the lantern pops open and the green glow leaps upward, toward the sky.

Wei Wuxian chuckles. “What a good kid,” he says. “He didn’t have to do that.”

“He’s freeing the spirits trapped in the ghost lanterns,” Lan Wangji says, watching another one coalesce into a lantern on A-Yuan’s palm. “That’s a fair bit of spiritual energy.”

“A-Yuan has potential,” Wei Wuxian says, sounding more like a real proud parent. “If he could cultivate for real, when this is all over, he will be very strong. He just needs to nurture his golden core.”

“Why don’t you teach him?” Lan Wangji asks, voice low.

“My cultivation level isn’t high enough,” Wei Wuxian says. Lan Wangji turns to look at him. Wei Wuxian doesn’t look back, staring over the lake. “I’m a demonic cultivator, remember? I gave up on normal cultivation long ago.”

“But you practiced it once,” Lan Wangji says, staring at Wei Wuxian’s face.

“Look at him, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, ignoring the question. “He’s down to the last one now, before the lightless lantern.”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says, but Wei Wuxian gives him a cold, sideways glance, his gaze sharp, and Lan Wangji stops talking. He follows Wei Wuxian’s eyes back to A-Yuan, on the opposite shore, who is holding the last ghost lantern in his hand, speaking softly to it. In the green light there’s a patch of more concentrated darkness, right in front of him. He puts two fingers again to his forehead, then the lantern, and the lantern door opens and the green light emerges. In the dissipating light, A-Yuan stares directly into the lightless lantern. He opens his mouth to say something and the darkness swallows him.

“A-YUAN!” Lan Wangji yells, and before he can register he’s leaping, sword out, across the pond, to the opposite shore, and Wei Wuxian is steps behind him. They land with the darkness between them, Lan Wangji holding his borrowed sword and Wei Wuxian with talismans in both hands. Wei Wuxian’s eyes are flashing crimson.

“Spit it out,” he says, and his voice resonates with power, reinforcing the words. The darkness vibrates, shaken.

“A-Yuan!” Lan Wangji calls again, keeping his sword pointed at the darkness, and this time the darkness vibrates harder. It begins shuddering, and Wei Wuxian’s eyes widen fractionally. He yells: “Lan Zhan!” before it splits into pieces.

Wei Yuan stands at the center, right hand in front of him, talisman flaring in his left, and an array sits like a cage in his right hand. Inside it is a black lantern with a resentful energy pouring from it like a plume of smoke.

“A-Yuan, are you all right?” Lan Wangji asks. He doesn’t drop the sword, keeping it pointed at the thing in A-Yuan’s hand.

“It’s okay,” A-Yuan says. “It’s fine. Wei-gege, Lan-qianbei, please don’t worry. It just had….a lot of emotions.”

“A lot of emotions is no excuse for attempting to swallow my son alive,” Wei Wuxian says. His eyes still burn crimson and his gaze is solely focused on the dark lantern that Wei Yuan holds.

A-Yuan blinks, and the array shrinks down around the lantern until glowing red lines cover the lantern, like a latticework, containing the plume of smoke. “I promise I’m okay,” he says, looking over at Wei Wuxian, then over at Lan Wangji. “You were right. It was a Nie sect cultivator.”

Lan Wangji finally sheathes his sword, but Wei Wuxian doesn’t let the crimson in his eyes go. “Let’s take it home,” he says, finally, but narrows his eyes at the lantern, and another layer of latticework appears on top of the one A-Yuan cast. The lantern seems to shrink even smaller, in response. “We have some questions for this deceased cultivator.”

Chapter Text

The castle, to Lan Wangji’s surprise, does have a yard. When they walk back through the shack at the edge of the road in Qinghe into the living room, with Chenqing blazing on the hearth, Wei Wuxian closes the door to Lan Wangji’s bedroom, then opens it again. This time, instead of showing the bed shoved under the stairs, it leads to a courtyard, surrounded by black walls, lit by lanterns, with threadbare grass, rough wooden work tables on both sides. Lan Wangji stares back at the door, but it seems like a perfectly ordinary door in a black wall. Overhead the stars match the stars of the Wastes.

“Is this still the castle?” he asks A-Yuan, looking up.

“No,” Wei Wuxian says, shortly. He lifts a hand and one of the tables lifts off the ground, shrinking to the size of a stool, before coming to rest in the middle of the courtyard. He pulls his right hand in, towards his heart, then up to the sky and straight down, before drawing a complicated array in the air that he sends to the stool. When the glowing red lines have settled into the ground, he gives a sharp glance to the lantern that A-Yuan has been carrying, and it floats over to settle obediently onto the stool.

Not once have his eyes been anything other than their usual glassy dark. Lan Wangji thinks of Wei Wuxian saying I gave up on normal cultivation long ago, and then stares at the black thing in the lantern. Wei Wuxian flicks the fingers on his right hand, and the latticework over the lantern dissolves. The plume of smoke pours out immediately, filling the circle of the array.

“Now,” Wei Wuxian says, crossing his arms. “I’m still pissed that you attempted to devour my son, whoever you are. I realize that things have been tough, but do not piss me off.”

You cannot imagine my torment, a voice whispers, filling up the courtyard.

“I have a very good imagination, actually,” Wei Wuxian says. “But if you attempt to possess me, or my son, or my friend, I will dissipate you so fast that you won’t remember having ever been human.”

His core is so young, the voice says. It will be so strong, someday. I want it.

“That’s not how golden cores work,” A-Yuan says, his voice surprisingly steady. “You can’t take them from other people.”

The voice fills the courtyard again, manic, desperate laughter. Young and stupid! Wish, wish! Mine was taken from me!

“So Wen Zhuliu visited your sect,” Wei Wuxian says. “What happened?”

I was just a disciple of the Nie sect, the voice hisses. I wasn’t the strongest, or the bravest, or the most talented. I was happy with my lot, and I trusted Nie Mingjue. And he—he trusted Meng Yao!

Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian exchange glances. “The Unclean Realm is designed to be defended indefinitely,” Lan Wangji says. “With very few men. The only way the Wens could have broken through is if they had a man on the inside.”

“Well, now we know who,” Wei Wuxian mutters, then raises his voice. “So Meng Yao let the Wens inside the fortress, yes? And they brought Wen Zhuliu?”

He keeps them, the voice wails, so loudly that A-Yuan winces. They call him the Core-Melting Hand but it’s a lie! Wen Zhuliu stole my golden core but they have it still! He gave it to Wen Ruohan!

Wei Wuxian staggers backwards, as if the force of the voice has pushed him back. His face is pale and his eyes suddenly flare crimson.

“Wen Zhuliu…can steal a person’s golden core,” A-Yuan whispers. “I—I didn’t know…”

“Then…that is where Wen Ruohan’s power comes from,” Lan Wangji says, looking up. “The Wens have been telling everyone that the Core-Melting Hand destroys a core. But the Chief Cultivator has just gotten stronger and stronger over the past decades. Far more than he should be able to by cultivation alone.”

“Wen Ruohan is stealing the golden cores of other cultivators?” A-Yuan asks. He, too, looks pale. “And…using them?”

He has so many, the voice whines. So many, just like me, just like you. I am ripped in two, half of me is there, and half of me trapped here, my body and my soul, separate. Not even death could reunite me. I will never have peace while Wen Ruohan lives!

“No,” Wei Wuxian murmurs, stepping forward. His eyes focus on the lantern. “But you will have peace, cultivator. Because I am going to kill Wen Ruohan,” he says, as cold as a blade. His voice is soft, with no malice or hatred. Lan Wangji feels resentment pull in the air like a string.

Kill him for me, the voice whispers, then grows stronger, so loud that A-Yuan covers his ears, and even Lan Wangji turns his face away. Kill him for me! Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!

“Will you join me?” Wei Wuxian asks, eyes blazing crimson. “The Yiling Laozu will destroy the Chief Cultivator. In vengeance, for you, for all others. Will you give me your power?”

Kill him, the voice wails, Kill him, and my power is yours!

“Then come,” Wei Wuxian says, his voice deadly soft, and the Yiling Laozu holds out his hand. The array shatters, and the plume of smoke leaps into his grasp, disappearing into that pale palm until nothing remains.

———

When they go back inside Lan Wangji glares at Wei Wuxian, then goes to A-Yuan. “Stand still,” he says, shortly, and then reaches down and picks up both of A-Yuan’s hands, two fingers pressed to his wrists. He closes his eyes and reaches down into himself, into that core, melting into the warmth and the light before pulling it up and out, into Wei Yuan’s hands. He travels through Wei Yuan, reaching into his body, until he brushes up against the seed of the boy’s golden core. Still there. Untainted. Untrained, like the voice said, but promising, burning brightly. Lan Wangji breathes a small sigh of relief and drops Wei Yuan’s hands, opening his eyes. A-Yuan stares at him, his mouth slightly open.

“What…Lan-qianbei, what was that?” he asks.

“I was checking your core,” Lan Wangji says, his voice clipped. Wei Wuxian stares at him, eyes tight around the edges.

“And?” Wei Wuxian asks, finally.

“It’s intact,” Lan Wangji says, and the relief off A-Yuan’s face could warm the room. “And he’s strong,” he adds, looking over at Wei Wuxian. “Don’t you know? Haven’t you tested him?”

They stare at each other in silence.

“A-Yuan, go to your room,” Wei Wuxian says, finally. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

“Wei-gege, I—”

“In the morning,” Wei Wuxian repeats, not taking his eyes off Lan Wangji.

Neither of them moves while A-Yuan walks up the stairs. They stare at each other, unmoving, across Chenqing, until they hear the thud of A-Yuan’s door shutting.

“Why haven’t you tested A-Yuan’s core?” Lan Wangji repeats. He stares, unblinking, into Wei Wuxian’s eyes. “What happened to your cultivation, Wei Ying?”

“Why don’t we talk about your curse, hmm?” Wei Wuxian asks, voice low.

Their eyes now say to each other this isn’t a game anymore and respond don’t push me.

“Wen Ruohan has it, doesn’t he?” Lan Wangji says. He steps forward, reaches out and grabs Wei Wuxian’s hand. “He—”

“Don’t touch me,” Wei Wuxian says, his voice very low.

Lan Wangji pulls his hand back.

“No,” Wei Wuxian says, staring, unblinking, at Lan Wangji. “No, he doesn’t.”

“But we can get it back,” Lan Wangji says. “We can get it back from him. You can cultivate again.”

“But Wen Ruohan doesn’t have it,” Wei Wuxian repeats, insistently, then sits down in the chair, in front of Chenqing. He puts his face in his hands.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says, and kneels next to Wei Wuxian.

“My brother has it,” Wei Wuxian whispers, through his fingers, and Lan Wangji freezes.

“How?” Lan Wangji asks, his voice quiet.

“Wen Zhuliu got to him first,” Wei Wuxian says, his voice barely audible. “He…he was going to be the clan leader. He couldn’t, if he couldn’t cultivate. And I was just the orphan they adopted. So I made Wen Qing transfer it. I talked her into it.”

Lan Wangji touches Wei Wuxian then, gripping his wrists, pulling them away from his face. Wei Wuxian stares down at his hands, where Lan Wangji’s fingers touch his palms. “Then we can transfer it back,” Lan Wangji says, but Wei Wuxian starts laughing, silently, shoulders shaking.

“Transfer it back?! The first time nearly killed me,” he says, his voice too loud, edging on hysteria. “Just leave it, Lan Zhan. What can you do anyway, with your cultivation like this?”

Lan Wangji flinches, dropping Wei Wuxian’s hands like he’s been burned. Wei Wuxian lifts his head, and the two stare at each other.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji begins, but Wei Wuxian stands up abruptly, knocking the chair back.

“No,” he says, turning away from Lan Wangji. Wei Wuxian walks towards the door, raising both hands, and the black flute flies past Lan Wangji’s head to go to his hand. The gray robe by the door, the one with the hem seeped in blood, flies to him. Before Lan Wangji can stand up, Wei Wuxian has turned the knob to the black and is out the door.

———

When Wei Wuxian comes back he looks like hell.

Lan Wangji has no idea what time it is. He’s been sitting in the chair in front of the fire for hours, hunched over his guqin, posture that would be thinkable for him a week ago suddenly the only curve of his back. His shoulders hurt. Even playing the guqin is harder than it should be, his fingers aching in the joints, and he can’t get the resonance he wants. He can’t meditate. No matter what he does his mind is scalding.

His nerves are already on high alert when there’s a click and the knob on the door flips to black. Chenqing hisses and flares up, all the flames green, throwing the room into ghastly light. Lan Wangji watches the door open and Wei Wuxian comes through.

He doesn’t look like the same smiling cultivator of this morning. He wears layers and layers of robes, the red under robe discolored in the green flame, barely visible buried beneath multiple layers of black over robes, covered in a dark gray robe that trails the floor behind him. Its hem is dark. The sleeves, too, are long enough to trail the floor, and their edges are dark. And wet. A trail of something is behind him on the floor. Black smoke comes off his hair, curling in the air above him, coming off his arms. He clutches the black flute tightly to his chest with one hand, smoke surrounding it. His other hand carries something heavy that drips blood. In the green light of the fire, Lan Wangji watches dark liquid drip off the end of a toe, and realizes it is a leg, wrapped in chains.

Wei Wuxian doesn’t walk normally, the left leg faltering. Lan Wangji stands up, stashing his guqin with a wave of his arm, and takes a step towards Wei Wuxian. “Wei Ying,” he says, in a low voice, and Wei Wuxian lifts his eyes to Lan Wangji’s face. His eyes are burning red, the pupil so small it can barely be seen, and dirt smears his face. He stares at Lan Wangji as if he doesn’t see him. His left hand, clutching the flute over his heart, contracts, and the leg he holds in his right hand drops to the floor with a thud. “You’re hurt,” Lan Wangji says, running towards him, and the dirt doesn’t stop him from putting Wei Wuxian’s arm over his shoulder, half-carrying him towards the chair. Up close he smells like ashes, and the iron-tang of blood. Something else, too; a faint, pungent whiff of necrosis, of dead tissue left too long in the damp. Lan Wangji ignores it. He dumps Wei Wuxian in the chair, pushing him down.

“Wei Ying!” He touches Wei Wuxian’s shoulder, pushing him back against the chair, and Wei Wuxian’s eyes are slow to respond, to slide up to his face. “Chenqing,” he commands to the fire, his voice sharp. “Pull him back.”

“I’m trying,” the fire hisses, the whine to its voice more audible than before. The green flames flicker in and out of expressions, too fast to make out. Lan Wangji ignores it.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says, his voice low, and he grabs Wei Wuxian by both shoulders, shaking him. “Wei Ying!”

Wei Wuxian’s exhales are ragged, and his unfocused eyes eyes fix on some point past Lan Wangji’s face. Lan Wangji puts a hand on his chest, feeling for a heartbeat. There’s nothing there.

Slowly, too slowly, Wei Wuxian’s pupils widen, his eyes almost back to their glassy-normal, though they still hold the crimson. “Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says again, urgently. “Stop it. You are home. Let it go.”

Wei Wuxian blinks, his eyelids closed for too long , and when they open the crimson light is fading. With it the green light in the room slowly fades. His hands shake and then the flute falls to the floor with a clatter, still trailing black smoke. In the firelight his face looks hollow, sunken.

“Lan Zhan,” he murmurs, his eyes focusing, and stares at Lan Wangji’s face. He takes a deep breath, then starts coughing. “Fuck.”

“What happened?” Lan Wangji asks. “Who’s leg is that?”

“I killed them,” Wei Wuxian says, voice raspy. “It’s done. I got it back. Wen Chao took—he was jealous, of the Ghost General, of course he was! Someone he cursed, that still was more powerful than him? And he couldn’t kill Wen Ning, so he took him apart. I have three pieces now,” he says, and Lan Wangji turns his head to stare at the leg, twitching slightly on the floor, blood pooling at one end.

“Killed who?” Lan Wangji asks.

Wei Wuxian closes his eyes, leaning his head back against the chair. His long hair slips off his shoulders. The edge of one collarbone shows through his collars, crossed right over left. There’s smears of ash on the long line of his neck, and splatters that look like blood. “I stink,” he murmurs, his voice low, dripping exhaustion.

“Wei Ying!” Lan Wangji’s voice is sharp. “What did you do? Who did you kill?”

“What else would it be, Lan Zhan? The ones guarding it,” he says, his voice so low Lan Wangji strains to hear it. “There were so many. The Wen soldiers. Their military camps, on the outskirts of the Wastes. You already know what I do, so stop pretending.” Wei Ying’s voice is harsh, and tired. “You know that smell as well as I do. You know the rumors about me.”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji’s voice is the one shaking, now. “Stop. You can’t. This is killing you. You’re using your own life force to animate those corpses.”

“Pedantic and technically incorrect,” Wei Wuxian says, sighing. “I’m channeling their own resentful energy through my body to control them.”

“It is killing you, though,” Chenqing says.

“I didn’t ask for your opinion, demon,” Wei Wuxian says. His voice still sounds tired. “Resentful spirit yourself, like you didn’t float around the Burial Mounds for a hundred years waiting for me? And now you want out?” He shudders, coming back to sit upright. “That’s half the pieces,” he says. He looks back over at the leg, then lifts a hand, and talismans from all corners of the room rise, fly towards the leg, push it to the floor in front of the bookshelf, where the arms lie still. Wei Wuxian’s arm droops, with effort. “Fuck,” he mutters, then wipes a smear of ash from his face. His hand leaves a line of dirt across his high cheekbone. “I need a bath. Heat water for me, Chenqing.”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says, but Wei Wuxian ignores him. The hems of his robes trail a dark line over the wood floor, visible even in the low fire light. “Wei Ying!”

Wei Wuxian walks up the stairs, turning his back on Lan Wangji. Lan Wangji hunches alone over the fire, gray hair falling into his eyes.

Chapter Text

The next morning Lan Wangji doesn’t wake at 5. He sleeps fitfully, with restless, angry dreams that are too reminiscent of his real life, and when he wakes he hears noises of A-Yuan in the kitchen, moving dishes around. His forehead is covered in sweat. The room feels hot, and cramped. He moves through the kitchen, uncalm, unquiet, unmindful, feeling like a tangle, a snarl. The leg lies inert in front of the bookshelf, and A-Yuan keeps giving it sideways looks, but doesn’t ask him about it directly, as if he can sense Lan Wangji’s mood. He pulls A-Yuan out into the Wastes, before the sun gets too hot, and they go through sword forms, cutting slices in the desert air until both their robes are damp with sweat. The castle today isn’t near the edge of the Wastes, no soft grass or spring flowers. Lan Wangji corrects A-Yuan’s form, makes him repeat the drills. He demonstrates forms and feels ill at ease, again, in his body, like the arthritic hands and trembling limbs belong to someone else. Eventually he stops A-Yuan and they meditate, in the shade of the castle, the slanting gray shadows in the morning sunlight.

“How does meditation strengthen your core?” A-Yuan asks. “Can I strengthen mine?”

“It’s about narrowing your focus,” Lan Wangji says. “Close your eyes and reach down into yourself. Feel for the core. It may not come immediately. Accept yourself where you are.”

A-Yuan frowns, forehead creasing in concentration, eyes closed. “Listen,” Lan Wangji says, very quietly. “Listen to the sounds around you, the wind on the rocks far away, the animals moving in the distance. Listen to the quieter sounds near your body. Listen to the sounds of your own body, your breathing, your heartbeat. Listen, then, under those sounds.”

A-Yuan’s face is clearing, softening. Lan Wangji watches him, a seed of pride deep in his chest. “Do you feel the resonance?” he asks, softly. “The deep hum? Focus on that. That is your core. Sink into it. Just listen to the sound.”

When A-Yuan is settled then Lan Wangji has to come face to face with the discomfort in his own body. He needs to meditate more than A-Yuan. Lan Wangji tries to straighten his back, deepen his breathing, ignore the pressure on his legs and the sweat drying on his robes. His lungs feel different. His breath doesn’t sound like he’s used to; more labored, shallower. He falls into a trance, eyes closed, counting his heartbeats, listening, just listening. Sometimes it’s easier than blocking out his own thoughts. When ignoring them seems too hard, just listen, listen very hard, to all the currents of air whispering on the edge of sensation, to the movements of strands of hair, to the slow pooling of blood in veins, sluggish and dark.

Lan Wangji is well used to the resonance of his own core by now, the deep hum that tunes his self, his body. It’s quieter since the curse, muffled, harder to hear, but he has spent so long training to feel that sound. He sinks into the vibration, the warm hum.

Other things catch on his senses, too. It’s not an exaggeration to say that cultivators avoid the Wastes. Even here, far enough that the mountain of the Burial Mounds is just a dark scar on the horizon, he can feel resentment seeping through the ground, like a layer of oil over water. Enough to stop the plants to grow, enough to make cultivation a headache. Wrapped in his own core, it’s easier to take that resentment, to feel it pool over the landscape.

Not everywhere. Like it can sense his attention, something pulses in that resentment. Lan Wangji feels for it, at the edge of his senses, and then it hits him, cold as ice water over his head.

It’s like staring idly over the edge of the boat and realizing that the dark water you were watching is the shadow of a creature, so large you didn’t realize your boat was over it. The resentment from that mountain is alive, one concentrated, giant malevolent presence, and it moves in the Wastes, and it wants, and it is centered on that castle.

Lan Wangji opens his eyes, staring straight forward. Nothing visible has changed in front of him. The harsh shadow of the castle stretches in front of them, over the dry, cracked ground. Tufts of desert-colored grasses absorb the sunlight. Even in the heat, his palms feel clammy.

Movement draws his eyes, and he turns his head to the side. A-Yuan is still sitting, lotus-position, hands folded and eyes closed like a good disciple. Beside him, Wei Wuxian is lying on his stomach, flipping through a book. He catches Lan Wangji’s eyes and grins at him, unrepentant, as if last night had never happened.

Lan Wangji raises an eyebrow at him and then stands, silently, folding his hands behind his back. He walks away from A-Yuan, who is still in deep silence in the shade. Wei Wuxian folds his book up and gets up, silent as a cat, stalking away from A-Yuan over to where Lan Wangji stands by the stoop of the castle door. Wei Wuxian sits on the stoop, sprawling one leg out.

“I’m going out again,” Wei Wuxian says. “I just wanted to stop and see what you’re doing to my beloved son. Truly amazing you have him nurturing his core, in this woe-begotten place with the spiritual energy of a pile of trash.” He grins up at Lan Wangji.

“Angry trash,” Lan Wangji says. “That actively sucks away at spiritual energy, perhaps.”

Wei Wuxian laughs outright, looking delighted. “Lan Zhan, I think that’s possibly the best joke you’ve ever made,” he says.

“It isn’t funny,” Lan Wangji says. “It’s hampering A-Yuan’s cultivation.”

“Think of what will happen once he leaves the Wastes, how fast his cultivation will grow,” Wei Wuxian says, but his smile fades. “Once it’s safe to leave.”

“Where are you going?” Lan Wangji asks.

Wei Wuxian’s smile drops completely and he stands, dusting off his robes. His hair is only half-up today, more severe than he’s looked in several days, his robes black and silver and more formal than usual. “Today I have important Yiling Laozu business,” he says, looking less amused.

“What does that entail?” Lan Wangji asks, quietly.

“Nothing so pleasant as watching you and A-Yuan play swords,” Wei Wuxian says, sounding tired.

“Meeting up with an oriole?”

“Shamelessly reading my mail?” Wei Wuxian retorts, but there’s no heart to it. His hand is clutched on the black flute tucked into his belt. “Unfortunately, yes. I’ll tell you if there’s any word of Zewu-jun. I left A-Yuan homework and some chores.”

Lan Wangji dips his head in a slight nod. None of this requires a response. Wei Wuxian stares at him, glassy eyes focused on his face, then drops a corner of his mouth in an unsatisfied frown. “Let him meditate, though,” Wei Wuxian says, after a moment, casting his eyes back toward where A-Yuan sits in the shade. “Whatever you can teach him, Lan Zhan.”

“It is hard to raise a tree in poisoned soil,” Lan Wangji says. “There is…a presence, in the Wastes?”

“Oh, you found it,” Wei Wuxian says, joylessly.

“I should have felt it sooner,” Lan Wangji says. “What is it, Wei Ying?”

“I warned you about the Stygian tiger seal the first time you met me, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, staring off into the distance. His eyes seem darker. “I spent a lot of time trying to get that demon to shut up,” he says. “Let it lie.”

Lan Wangji looks at Wei Wuxian’s fist, white knuckles clenched on the flute, the warning in his tone belied by the fright in his grip. “Wei Ying,” he says, softly, because when Lan Wangji doesn’t know what to say he always falls back on the one thing he knows.

But Wei Wuxian turns away, and Lan Wangji thinks of A-Yuan saying Senior Wei often slithers out of answering questions. “I’ll be back late,” he says. “Don’t wait up.”

———

A-Yuan is restless, all day, despite the meditation. He copies out talismans wrong and Lan Wangji makes him copy them over, correcting his radicals. The bad copies are still active, too active for the ink and cinnabar they’re written from, and curl up the paper, casting shadows in corners.

He picks at dinner, staring over at the fire. “Something feels wrong,” he says, when Lan Wangji gives him a questioning look. “Something with Senior Wei. It feels…squiggly,” A-Yuan says, waving his fingers. “Like the air’s gone wavy, or something. Just since he’s been gone all day.”

In more precise terms, what A-Yuan is describing would be called a surge of resentful energy. Things in the house are reacting to it, and have been all day; plants wilting in the windowsill in full sun, a loaf of fresh bread cut open to reveal blooming mold, pots falling off shelves with no warning and hitting A-Yuan in the head, swords they cleaned yesterday are today covered in stains. Talismans flutter on the arms on the bookshelf, on the leg on the floor. Lan Wangji finds one of his robes dark with foul-smelling, unidentified black fluid that doesn’t come out after scrubbing. The air feels thick. Chenqing is low, skulking in the hearth, and doesn’t come out when A-Yuan tries to coax the fire up with fresh logs, kindling, even eggs.

Lan Wangji watches the fire sink low, and doesn’t respond when A-Yuan wonders aloud if Chenqing is in a bad mood. He knows a demon spread thin, knows a pale clone when he sees one. He wonders where Wei Wuxian is, what he’s doing, that the bulk of Chenqing’s power is needed somewhere else. Worry feels damp on the back of his neck.

It’s just after dinnertime when the flames of Chenqing go green, and the fire roars up in the fireplace.

“Chenqing!” A-Yuan shouts. “What’s happening! Where is he!”

“Black door!” Chenqing yells. “He’s pulling too much!”

“What’s happening?” Lan Wangji asks, stashing his guqin with a hand wave.

“Wei Wuxian is in trouble! We need to go,” A-Yuan says, grabbing a cloak from the coat rack, and then runs out the door, knob to the black, and Lan Wangji following, gripping a borrowed sword.

Outside in the Wastes it’s raining, droplets scattering large and thick over the rocks that dot the countryside. In the storm-light Lan Wangji can make out green fires, far down the valley, up ahead.

“We need to hurry,” he says, and then throws down the sword, leaping into the air. He pulls his guqin with one hand and lifts A-Yuan with the other, and in a strum of strings they are hurtling forward in the wet wind. The green fires grow closer by the second.

“Lan-qianbei! I didn’t know you were this powerful a cultivator! I’ve never ridden a sword before!” Wei Yuan says, clinging onto his arm, and Lan Wangji ignores him. His senses are tingling, the background noise of resentful energy that always surrounds the castle now a deafening roar that fizzles along his skin. “Oh no,” A-Yuan says, staring forward. “He’s called up way too much!”

Below them the whole field is ablaze with green fire. Crows fill the air, circling. Arrows mix with them but the crows don’t change course even when hit. They circle like a cyclone, and in the heart of the green fire stands Wei Wuxian. Something floats in the air next to him, covered in talismans.

The black flute is to his lips, the tone shrill and cutting. They shouldn’t be able to hear it from this high up but they can, the chaotic notes lilting and powerful. Lan Wangji can feel the tug on his own limbs, the sweet screech of kill, give in, kill, get revenge and below he watches as the corpses leap forward to attack at the Wen army with bare limbs.

From this close he can see the silhouette of another man standing opposite of Wei Wuxian, sword out, shaking badly. Wei Wuxian’s eyes are closed, and he doesn’t look at the man, but a faint smile plays at the corner of his lips as he plays.

“Damn it, Yiling Laozu! Stop! Stop!” the man shouts, and Lan Wangji feels a cold thrill in his heart when he realizes it’s Wen Chao. A-Yuan grips his arm tighter.

Wei Wuxian only continues to play, the music high and screeching. The thing in the air next to him spins wildly. The crows are flying too fast for Lan Wangji to drop through them, and he circles the edge of their path, looking for a way down. Everywhere around them are corpses, falling to the ground and then rising back up again. The corpses don’t care for weapons. They prefer to grab, and rip, and bite, and the swords of the Wens do nothing to stop their movements.

Every time a soldier falls, he gets back up again. Only on this rise, he leaves a sword behind, lets the green fire trace across his limbs, and he lurches hungrily towards his former comrades, until they, too, have fallen.

Lan Wangji spots an opening and lands, lightly, on a high boulder overlooking the military camp. Wei Wuxian has opened his eyes, and staring at Wen Chao they flash in crimson light. He lets the last flute note rise, pure and high, and the corpses freeze, suspended by that one night, limbs shaking. Wei Wuxian drops the flute, and only the crows soar silently above him.

“You don’t deserve even this death,” Wei Wuxian says.

“Fuck you!” Wen Chao screams, his face pale with terror. “I threw you in the Burial Mounds with your body full of arrows! Why won’t you die!!! Fuck you, Wei Wuxian!”

“Nothing you could do will ever be enough, Wen Chao,” Wei Wuxian says, and his face is someone that Lan Wangji doesn’t recognize. “So I’ll take what I can get.”

He walks toward Wen Chao, the whole battlefield silent, and then reaches forward, lightning quick, and shoves his hand into Wen Chao’s head. The skull collapses with a sickening crunch. The topless torso stands, comically still, before falling forward with a hollow thud, fluid dripping down from the broken sphere of its head.

A scream comes from somewhere in front of Wei Wuxian, and he pulls the flute back to his lips, closing his eyes, and begins to play again, manic flute music. His right hand drips with blood. From this close Lan Wangji can see the thing that floats next to him is a leg, like the one in the castle, covered in talismans, resentful energy coming off it like smoke. The music screams across the field, fast and furious and wild, and in tune with it the corpse of Wen Chao twitches, then stands up, the head half caved in. In tune with that chaotic, discordant music, Wen Chao's corpse and the rest of the corpse soldiers lunge on the few still-alive Wen soldiers. It doesn’t take long until they’re not anymore.

“Wei Ying!” Lan Wangji screams, trying to cut through the flute music. “Stop! They’re all dead!”

The music is too overwhelming. Wei Wuxian’s eyes are closed, his fingers moving like mad, the tune erratic and manic, snapping over the ground. The leg flails wildly.

“Wei-gege!” A-Yuan calls, but Wei Wuxian doesn’t respond.

Lan Wangji pulls the guqin forward, reaches down, and strums.

The deep sounds cuts through the high, shrill flute, music clashing and meeting, resonances forming from the two magical sounds, resonances that curl up in the corners and scatter across the battlefield, leaving corpses fallen, unmoving, in their wake. The leg pauses, in midair, quivering, tendrils of resentful energy rolling it off it and falling to the ground. Time seems interminable as Wei Wuxian turns to them, and his eyes open in a flash of red light. His face is full of hatred, eyes wide, teeth bared as he drops the flute, and lifts his gaze slowly to where Lan Wangji and A-Yuan stand atop the rock. A-Yuan is trembling against Lan Wangji’s side. The green flames flicker around Wei Wuxian. When the flute drops from his mouth the corpses pause, standing upright, shuddering, as if they are puppets held slack.

“Wei Ying!” Lan Wangji calls. “Stop, let it go!”

It takes several moments for Wei Wuxian to focus his eyes on Lan Wangji. He still grips the flute tightly. Lan Wangji takes a deep breath and plays, more, on the guqin, notes deep and ringing through the air full of ashes and feathers, notes that sing of rest and sleep, and the corpses that hear it fall to their knees, then to their stomachs, sinking down to the earth. The leg sinks, slightly, until it almost touches the ground. The crows slow in their flight, some alighting on the battlefield. Wei Wuxian’s eyes still glow red.

“Wei-gege!” A-Yuan shouts, again, and his voice sounds close to tears. He still grips Lan Wangji’s arm too tightly. “Please! It’s over! Come home!”

Wei Wuxian takes unsteady steps towards them. “Lan Zhan,” he says, his voice hoarse. “A-Yuan.” His eyes still flash crimson.

Lan Zhan stashes the guqin with a movement of his arms, and flies down to the middle of the battlefield, feet away from Wei Wuxian. “Wei Ying, come home,” he says, holding out a hand, and Wei Wuxian takes two unsteady steps towards him before his steps falter. Lan Wangji runs towards him, and catches him in both arms just before he collapses.

Three is too many for the weak spiritual sword he’s borrowed, so they pick their way over the corpses in the rain, Wei Wuxian a heavy weight on Lan Wangji’s back. A-Yuan is crying, silently, clutching the leg and the flute, walking beside them. The rain soaks through Lan Wangji’s white robes, through A-Yuan’s gray ones, turning Lan Wangji’s gray hair dark with rain. Wei Wuxian’s face is pressed into Lan Wangji’s shoulder, his dark hair dripping cold water onto white robes. His right hand is still bloody, dark smears that dirty Lan Wangji’s sleeves as he grips Wei Wuxian’s legs to carry him.

“A-Yuan,” Lan Wangji says, after they are out of sight of that bloodbath. “Is this what Wei Ying always does?”

A-Yuan nods, unhappily. “He says no one suspects him, a single person, to walk unarmed into a camp of soldiers,” he says. “He’s been taking out smaller ones for the past month, ever since I came here,” he says. “I…I didn’t know that Wen Chao…would be here. He used to have A-Ning with him, too. But they took A-Ning away, and now he goes by himself.”

“Who is A-Ning?” Lan Wangji asks, looking down at the boy, clutching the leg and the flute to his chest.

“My—my cousin,” A-Yuan says, looking down at the ground. “You probably—you probably already caught on that Wei-gege isn’t my dad. He just says that, to protect me. I’m a Wen,” he says, and something in his face flashes defiant, an old streak of stubbornness. Lan Wangji’s heart twists a little. “Wei Wuxian found us, me and A-Ning and A-Qing, in one of their camps. They used to keep us as prisoners. My cousin A-Qing, she was a doctor for Wen Chao, and Wen Ruohan, but when they started losing they say that she cursed them, and they locked me and A-Ning up to force her to do what they said. But Wei Wuxian found us, when he…when he was at the camp.”

“When he came to kill the camp,” Lan Wangji supplies, quietly. So I made Wen Qing transfer it, Wei Wuxian whispers, in his memory.

“Yeah,” A-Yuan says. “But A-Ning was….he was complicated.”

“So A-Qing, your cousin, is a doctor for Wen Ruohan, and A-Ning is…?”

“Her brother,” Wen Yuan says. “He used to take care of me. He fought with Wen Chao, when they were younger. He beat Wen Chao in an archery contest once, and then Wen Chao put a curse on him. And then he wasn’t….he wasn’t the same anymore. He wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t really alive. Wen Chao used to like to beat him, and mock him, and kept him around so that he could bully Wen Qing. They kept Wen Qing with them, and kept me and A-Ning in the camps. We didn’t get to see her except when she was with Wen Chao, and he would always beat A-Ning.” A-Yuan is silent, clutching the flute close to his chest. His voice is thick. Lan Wangji watches him, silently. “And then Wei Wuxian came, and used the flute, in the camp, to bring the corpses back. But the flute…it did something to Wen Ning, too.”

Something, Lan Wangji thinks, hoisting Wei Wuxian up higher on his back. He thinks of Wei Ying saying He was jealous, of the Ghost General, of course he was! Someone he cursed, that still was more powerful than him? This close he can smell, overpoweringly, the ash and corpse stench, but as his nose gets used to that there’s something else. Lotus blossoms, so faint that he could think he’s imagining it.

“He used to live with us,” A-Yuan says, tilting his head up to the dark sky. “He used to fight alongside Wei-gege all the time, to protect him, and they were going to get Wen Qing back from Wen Ruohan. But when they went out to get her…something happened to A-Ning, gege said…he came back alone, and covered in blood, and A-Ning never came back…”

“A-Yuan,” Lan Wangji says, as they hike the slight uphill. They can see the moving castle, clinging to the rockface, smoke pouring from multiple chimneys, the door open like they left it. “How long have you been with Wei Wuxian?”

“Just a few months,” A-Yuan says, his voice shaking, and then Lan Wangji looks over at him. A-Yuan is crying, tears rolling down his face, clutching the bamboo flute in his fist so tightly his knuckles are white.

“Is it my fault?” he asks, crying. “Am I why Wei-gege has to go fight the Wens? Because I let Wen Qing and Wen Ning be taken by them? Before, he would protect us, I—I—”

“Wen Yuan.” Lan Wangji stops, rearranges his grip so that he is holding both Wei Wuxian’s arms with one hand, and reaches for A-Yuan with his other hand. A-Yuan hugs him, pushing his face into Lan Wangji’s chest, and Lan Wangji rests his free hand on the boy’s back. “It is not your fault,” he says. “Listen. Nothing in this war is your fault. Wei Ying cares for you very much.”

“I’m sorry, Lan Zhan,” A-Yuan sobs, against his chest, and Lan Wangji hugs the boy more tightly. “I’m sorry, I’ve been so much trouble for you, and for Senior Wei.”

“Shh,” Lan Wangji says. “We both care about you very much. Now let’s hurry and get Wei Ying back inside, okay?”

Lan Wangji carries Wei Wuxian through the door of the castle. The flames are still burning green, now down to embers, and Chenqing is low in the hearth, face invisible, just a pale glow. “Put a log on,” Lan Wangji says, "and put that with the other pieces," nodding towards the bookshelf where the other limbs rest. A-Yuan sets the leg gingerly down next to its partner. Whiffs of resentful energy come off it like smoke. It seems stronger next to its partner. Lan Wangji ignores it and and carries Wei Wuxian up the stairs while A-Yuan hurriedly throws several logs on the hearth.

He drops Wei Wuxian in the bathtub, turning the tap on as high as it will go, the water all the way to hot. Wei Wuxian’s face is ashy and pale, and his head lolls, unresponsive, against the side of the bathtub. His breathing is shallow.

“Wei Ying! Wake up!” Lan Wangji tugs sharply at his collar, but Wei Wuxian doesn’t respond. His head falls to the side. His collars are still crossed right over left, making Lan Wangji’s stomach curdle. He pulls his sleeves back and lifts up Wei Wuxian’s body, sliding his arm out of the over and under robe, moving him to pull the dirty robes out from under him. Each new layer releases fresh stench of ash, of burning flesh, of rotting flesh. Lan Wangji strips them away in the roar of the water, throwing the robes to A-Yuan, who stands outside the door. When all the robes are gone and the tub is full enough to cover Wei Wuxian to the waist, Lan Wangji pours what he thinks is soap into the tub from the bottles that cover a shelf.

“Burn the clothes,” Lan Wangji tells A-Yuan, whose face is pale with worry. He nods, mutely, and runs downstairs.

The room is full of steam, the water almost scalding. Wei Wuxian is still unmoving in the tub. His whole body is pale. His ribs jut out from his chest, his waist painfully thin, the line of his hips visible through the water and the bubbles. Lan Wangji doesn’t dare look further. His head is at an odd angle on the edge of the tub, his long neck moving too quickly with his breaths. Lan Wangji moves, behind him, sitting at the edge of the tub, laying Wei Wuxian’s head against his shoulder. He presses hands to Wei Wuxian’s neck but still doesn’t feel a pulse, and his face darkens. He’d hoped that he was wrong before.

His aged core is so much less than what it was, but anger, and fear, make him desperate. Lan Wangji reaches down into himself, into his golden core, and pulls out a stream of spiritual energy. He lays one hand on Wei Wuxian’s chest, over the place where his heart should beat, and pours spiritual energy into him like a river.

Lan Wangji has spent much of his life alone, in the quiet, misty Cloud Recesses, with books and his brother for company. When other sects sent their disciples to Gusu to train Lan Wangji did not train with them. He was too advanced in his studies, Lan Qiren insisted, and would get nothing from the lectures. Lan Xichen was against it, arguing that his brother needed to make allies of other cultivation sects, but Lan Wangji remembers, with painful clarity, his intense desire to avoid others, his arguments to his brother and his uncle that he shouldn’t have to mingle with other disciples. After all, Lan Xichen was the future clan leader, the one who had to make and strengthen alliances, and Lan Wangji was going to take over for Lan Qiren someday, in charge of teaching the cultivation of the whole sect. It didn’t matter if he made alliances. His lot was only in Cloud Recesses.

His hand on Wei Wuxian’s chest is burning. Lan Wangji closes his eyes and wishes, wishes, that he would have met Wei Wuxian then, when they were A-Yuan’s age, when he was young and stupid and desperately lonely, when he needed someone with chaos and sunlight instead of shadowed library halls. He thinks of Wei Wuxian’s laugh, his glassy eyes, and wants, so badly, to know what he would have been like with his golden core.

His eyes are closed, and withdrawn into himself, into his core, he can’t see the skin on his hands growing firmer where he touches Wei Wuxian’s chest. A-Yuan, coming back to the door, gasps softly and backs away from the sight of Lan Wangji, his face young and hair dark, holding up an unconscious Wei Wuxian.

Lan Wangji keeps pouring more and more spiritual energy. Under his hand, Wei Wuxian’s cold skin grows warmer, finally, between the bath and the magic. Lan Wangji presses a hand to his chest and listens, and counts breaths. Thirty breaths. Twenty five breaths. Twenty breaths. He counts Wei Wuxian’s breaths against his own heartbeat, until he counts one breath to five heartbeats, and the breaths are deep, like sleep, before Lan Wangji opens his eyes.

Wei Wuxian’s eyes are still closed. His long hair floats dark on the surface of the bathwater. His face has some color, now, seeming more asleep than dead. Lan Wangji moves his head off his wet shoulder to lay against the side of the tub, lifts out handfuls of water, pours them over Wei Wuxian’s scalp, uses his own hands to scrub the dirt from his hair. He pulls his fingers through the tangles, letting his hands linger on Wei Wuxian’s scalp.

“Lan Zhan.”

Lan Wangji does not move his hands, continuing the motion of pouring water over Wei Wuxian’s head, combing his fingers through his hair. “Mmn,” he says, his voice quiet.

“Thank you,” Wei Wuxian says, softly, and Lan Wangji does not answer. When he reaches forward Wei Wuxian’s eyes are closed, again, his breathing deep and regular. He doesn’t move as Lan Wangji lifts him out of the bathtub, wrapping him in a blanket and carrying him down the hall to the only room he’s never entered in the castle.

If the rest of the castle was messy than Wei Wuxian’s room is a disaster. An enormous bed, covered in rough silk and piles of quilts twisted to one side, takes up the middle of the room. The ceiling is hung with streamers, herbs, lanterns, garlands, mirrors on chains, coins carved with arrays, paper talismans fluttering in the lightest breeze, sticks and leaves, tiny figures…more things than Lan Wangji can take in as he deposits Wei Wuxian in bed and pulls two of the dusty quilts over him. Bookshelves line the walls, stuffed with books and statues and urns and trinkets, more than he can count. Though the room was dark when he entered, as soon as Wei Wuxian’s body touches the bed some of the talismans overhead illuminate, then the light spreads to the paper lanterns, casting the room in dim, rosy light.

Lan Wangji walks out and goes downstairs. A-Yuan is kneeling in front of Chenqing. The fire is no longer green, but still burnt down to embers. “C’mon, get up, please get up,” A-Yuan is cajoling Chenqing, poking the embers with kindling. A half-dozen good logs are stacked in the hearth, just behind the embers, but Chenqing is silent.

Lan Wangji touches A-Yuan’s shoulder, and the boy jumps in surprise, staring at his face, eyes wide. “Let me,” Lan Wangji says, and reaches into his core again to pull up spiritual energy. He kneels, and holds out his right hand toward the fire, and sends a small, steady stream of spiritual energy to Chenqing.

“Lan-qianbei,” A-Yuan says, hesitantly, from besides him, but then stops and gasps as Chenqing rises slowly from the embers. “Chenqing! You’re back!”

The fire is still pale, muted yellow. “I feel terrible,” it mutters. “What the fuck did that asshole do. He almost burned me out.”

“He killed Wen Chao,” A-Yuan says.

“Rest,” Lan Wangji says to the demon. He turns and walks towards the sink, taking a glass of water.

“Lan-qianbei,” A-Yuan says, hesitantly, and Lan Wangji turns to him again. Wen Yuan seems shorter, in the dim light of the fire.

“I’m going to stay with Wei Ying until he wakes up,” Lan Wangji says, gently, and A-Yuan nods. He watches Lan Wangji walk up the stairs, dark hair trailing on his white robes, and doesn’t say anything.

———

Lan Wangji has to clear a pile of books off a dusty couch, in Wei Wuxian’s room, to sit down, after pouring a trickle of water into Wei Wuxian’s mouth. He leans back against the dirty pillows, his own white clothes still damp and smelling like ash, watching Wei Wuxian’s chest rise and fall in that rosy lantern-light. Lan Wangji doesn’t notice when he slips into sleep.

Chapter Text

When he wakes, it’s to a sharp pecking sound, like rapping on glass. Lan Wangji sits up, disoriented. Sunlight streams in from a high window to the right of Wei Wuxian’s bed, half-colored by blue stained glass that twists in the air in front of the window. Lan Wangji stares over at Wei Wuxian, twisted by sleep, one bare foot hanging off the bed, half-covered with two quilts. His dark hair hangs off the edge of the pillow. In the light of day he can make out Wei Wuxian’s naked shoulder at the edge of the quilt, the bare calf that dangles off the mattress. His ankles look so small.

The tapping happens again, and Lan Wangji looks up as a shadow appears over the square of sunlight on the floor. He has to stretch to reach the window, but when he opens it a black crow hops inside. It lands on the windowsill and stares at Lan Wangji with intelligent eyes, tilting its head to one side. Lan Wangji catches sight of a paper tied to its leg, and nods to it. “Message?” he asks. “I’ll give it to him,” he adds, when the crow seems to narrow its eyes suspiciously. The crow tilts its head the other way but hops forward, sticking out one leg, and Lan Wangji unties the piece of paper from its leg. The crow gives a little shake of its feathers then hops out the window, flapping away.

Another message from the oriole. So there are more. Probably hidden somewhere safer than under the browning vegetables on the kitchen counter, Lan Wangji thinks, but doesn’t feel any trace of guilt as he unrolls the paper, pulling off the talisman used to make it small.

It’s a reply to something he doesn’t have, just a single sheet of paper. The letter reiterates, at the beginning—last night’s strike was a success. Wen Ruohan furious at Wen Chao’s death. Sunshot Campaign is a go! With that cleared we’re moving towards Heavenly Nightless City, as planned, tonight, and should be there by tomorrow and Lan Wangji feels a surge of anger tighten in his chest. They’re using him. The cultivation world, who publicly decry Wei Wuxian’s demonic cultivation, are using him to destroy Wen soldiers. That’s their whole plan, then—get Wei Wuxian to wipe out the soldiers that guard the city and then sweep in and fight Wen Ruohan?

Probably the anger is illogical. Lan Wangji is too angry to care. He keeps reading. With the south path cleared by Wen Chao’s death, we’ll be moving the forces that way. Of course, yours truly, Jiang Cheng and Jin Zixuan will come from the south. We’re counting on you to come from the north, where they’re not expecting.

Lan Wangji crumples the edges of the letter because he’s holding it too hard. He flips to the back of the page. Any luck with the missing prince? is written, but nothing else. The bottom of the paper is signed, again, just oriole.

“Lan Zhan. Are you checking my mail for me, too?”

Lan Wangji sets the paper down and looks over at Wei Wuxian. He’s sitting up in bed, bare shoulder sticking up above the comforter, grinning at him like nothing has ever happened. He should probably feel bad about opening his secret correspondence, but Lan Wangji’s anger has been simmering since he was hit with the curse in the bookshop, and he can’t even find a little shred of shame about going through his letters.

“This is what they want?” Lan Wangji asks, quietly. “To use you to take out soldiers so they can get to the main gates?”

“Well, it was my idea,” Wei Wuxian says, sitting up a little bit. His hair slipping over the pale skin of his bare shoulder is obscene. Lan Wangji is very aware that he’s wearing nothing under the blankets. Lan Wangji thinks, like it’s a thought happening to someone else, how it would feel to bite the soft skin of that shoulder.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says, unable to stop looking at him, and Wei Wuxian grins, as if he can decipher that that particular Wei Ying and it means Wei Wuxian, you idiot, what is wrong with you.

“Stop looking at me so reproachfully, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, then flops back down on the bed and sighs. “Look, I’m alive, you’re alive, we’re all fine, and Wen Chao is dead! We should celebrate! When’s the attack supposed to be?”

“Tomorrow,” Lan Wangji says, quietly, his tone full of disagreement.

“Oh, perfect,” Wei Wuxian says, crossing his hands behind his head, exposing more of his shoulders. “Then let’s have a great day today, hmm? Let’s take A-Yuan for a picnic. He needs a courtesy name, Lan Zhan. You should pick it, I’m no good at that. And I’m serious,” Wei Wuxian adds, rolling back over to face Lan Wangji, pointing a finger at him. “In the extremely likely chance that something goes wrong tomorrow, you have to take him back to Gusu with you. That boy is too good. He needs a real education.”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says. “Please stop speaking as if you will die tomorrow.”

“I’m just worried about A-Yuan,” Wei Wuxian says, then reaches down and pulls the blanket higher around his chest. Lan Wangji’s palpitations slow down, just a little bit.

“Of course I will watch over Wen Yuan,” Lan Wangji says, finally, and Wei Wuxian smiles at him, a grin so big he closes both his eyes. With eyes closed he looks young, carefree, almost like he’s not a demonic cultivator at all.

“Such a better parent than I ever was, Lan-gege,” Wei Wuxian says, teasing, and Lan Wangji’s palpitations reemerge and become physically painful.

“Get dressed,” Lan Wangji says, stiffly, standing, unable to stand it a second longer.

“Okay, okay,” Wei Wuxian says, sitting up all the way, and the blanket slides down into his lap as Lan Wangji turns out of the room, walking out and down the stairs slightly more quickly than necessary.

———

By the time Lan Wangji is bathed and changed into fresh white robes, tying his forehead ribbon over gray hair, Wei Wuxian is bouncing around the kitchen. When Lan Wangji walks downstairs it is to Wei Wuxian’s beaming face, grabbing his hand and pulling him into the kitchen. A-Yuan is laughing at something Wei Wuxian says, watching the demonic cultivator throw food into a basket.

“Bring the guqin, Lan Zhan!” Wei Wuxian calls, smiling.

“I always have my guqin,” Lan Wangji says, honestly, and Wei Wuxian starts laughing. He spins around the room in a flurry of activity, dashing round and grabbing random things, sending A-Yuan back and forth.

“And bring your flute, A-Yuan, you have to practice too! Yes, grab that quilt. No, the bigger one. Oooh, grab some bows and arrows from the corner, we haven’t practiced in ages. Bring that poetry book you were studying. Oh wait, no, Lan Zhan, you should pick out the poetry! You’re clearly the most poetic in the family. A-Yuan, do we still have any Emperor’s Smile stashed in here? I swear I had extra jars.”

“You drank them all,” Chenqing says, sulky.

“That doesn’t sound like me,” Wei Wuxian says, digging through kitchen cupboards.

“Yes, it does,” A-Yuan says, patiently.

Lan Wangji picks poetry books up off the shelf, leafing through them as Wei Wuxian prattles on in the background. “Bring the tea leaves…did you get any extra fruit? No? Loquats, A-Yuan, I must have loquats! For Lan Zhan! He needs them! Did you—ah, yes, there they are—”

Lan Wangji flips through pages in the books, the paper warm on his hands. His eyes rest on the words The pillow low, the quilt warm, the body smooth and steady and he thinks of the sun, shining on Wei Wuxian’s bare calf, catching the edge of the quilt. He flips the page hurriedly.

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Wuxian is calling. “Come, you have a book, you have your guqin, we have a quilt and loquats and bows. There’s a special spot in the Wastes I have picked out. Come on, come on,” and Lan Wangji finds his wrist grasped firmly by Wei Wuxian again, pulled towards the open door, out into the sunshine.

On the other side of the door the moving castle has stopped at the edge of a field of wildflowers. A-Yuan laughs, delighted. “Wei-gege!” he calls. “I didn’t know the Wastes could be so beautiful!”

Wei Wuxian stands uncharacteristically still, watching A-Yuan run through the flowers. “They just needed a little help,” he says.

The wind here lifts petals, scattering them in the air. Lan Wangji stares over the field, and murmurs to himself: “The warm spring gives favors. Ten thousand things growing in the radiance.”

“That’s too much, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, lightly. “I often fear that autumn will come. Flowers and leaves will yellow, wither and wane….Your sad poetry in the guise of spring beauty poetry? Why can’t we make one good day last forever?”

Lan Wangji looks at him, meeting his gaze. He has always been drawn to poetry because he is not given to effusive explanations like Wei Wuxian. Something about the look on his face must be different, because Wei Wuxian’s smile softens as he looks at Lan Wangji.

Lan Wangji looks down, eyes sweeping across the rush of color at their feet. His eyes land on a peony, a few drops of dew still clinging to its petals. He reaches down, his fingers picking the flower by the stem, and cups it in his hand. The petals are soft and cool against his fingers. He walks toward Wei Wuxian, and lifts Wei Ying’s hand, setting the blossom gently in his cupped fingers.

“There are no words for some things,” Lan Wangji says, quietly. His fingers brush Wei Ying’s, the soft edge of the flower. Wei Wuxian is staring at his face, his eyes dark and wide. “And others need only few words.” Lan Wangji looks down at where their hands overlap, and turns his fingers over so that his fingertips barely skim the surface of Wei Wuxian’s as he pulls his hands away.

Lan Wangji steps back, and Wei Wuxian sputters. “Oh my god, Lan Zhan, you’ve killed me,” he says, his tone shocked, staring down at the flower, then back up at Lan Zhan’s face. “When I die please write ‘victim of Lan sincerity’ on my tombstone, no matter how Wen Ruohan tries to take credit for it. Lay a pink peony on my grave every day and I’ll become a ghost just so I can watch you do it. Oh my god. Lan Zhan.”

Lan Wangji can’t stop the slight upturning at one corner of his mouth. Wei Wuxian stares at him, then staggers backward.

“And now you’re smiling! Oh my god. A-Yuan, help me,” Wei Wuxian says, making the boy turn around where he stands, twenty paces away. “I am dying from a heart attack because Lan Zhan is smiling and the shock has killed me—”

“You’re weird,” A-Yuan says, walking back towards them. “Can we practice archery?”

They find a clearing on the edge of the field of flowers where A-Yuan sets up a target between the trees. Wei Wuxian makes him shoot from farther and farther away, twenty, thirty, fifty paces, and when he gets to eighty paces, A-Yuan loses patience after the twentieth miss in a row. “This is impossible,” he huffs.

Wei Wuxian smirks. He picks up a bow, then turns to Lan Wangji. “Lan Zhan,” he says, seriously. Lan Wangji raises an eyebrow. “Can I borrow your forehead ribbon?”

Lan Wangji reaches a hand up, taking a half step backwards, and Wei Wuxian laughs. “Nevermind, nevermind,” he says, and walks to where A-Yuan stands, unwrapping a black tie from his wrist.

“What—are you doing?” A-Yuan asks, voice catching, as Wei Wuxian ties the cloth around his eyes.

“Just give me the bow,” Wei Wuxian says, holding a hand out, and Wen Yuan hands him an arrow and the bow. Wei Wuxian, blindfold in place, pulls the string taut, and lets go. A-Yuan gasps as the arrow hits the center. Lan Wangji merely raises an eyebrow.

“Did I impress him yet, A-Yuan,” Wei Wuxian asks, in a stage whisper, then gets a bigger grin on his face. “No, wait, give me four arrows.”

“What?!” A-Yuan asks, handing him the arrows, and Wei Wuxian nocks the bow with four arrows, pulling back as he twists his wrist.

“There were only four trees, right?” he asks, and then laughs and lets the arrows fly, across the tops of flowers, to embed in the four trees to the sides of the target.

“Wei-qianbei!! What the heck!” A-Yuan shouts, grinning ear to ear. “How do you do that!”

Wei Wuxian pulls the blindfold off, turning to smirk at Lan Wangji, who raises one eyebrow at him. “Keep practicing,” he tells A-Yuan, handing the bow back to him, walking back to Lan Wangji.

“Well, Lan Zhan?” he asks, putting one elbow on Lan Wangji’s shoulder, leaning towards him. “Did it work? Did I impress you?”

“Ridiculous,” Lan Wangji says, but cannot stop the small curve of his mouth. Wei Wuxian laughs, full throated.

A-Yuan practices archery for another hour or so, sun crawling across the blue sky. Wei Wuxian drags Lan Wangji over to the shade of the other trees—not the ones A-Yuan is shooting at—and lays down in the grass, legs crossed, staring up at the sky between the tree leaves. “Play me something,” he tells Lan Wangji, and so Lan Wangji plays the guqin, the song he’s been picking out since he came to the moving castle, one that first came into his head sitting on the back of a cart, with spring flowers in the wind.

Wei Wuxian’s eyes close as he plays. “That’s a perfect song, Lan Zhan,” he says, after a while, eyes still closed. “Play it again, I wanna play with you.”

When A-Yuan comes over, tired and panting, he flops on the grass between them and lets the guqin and dizi notes wash over him. Lan Wangji lets the last notes of the song die out and watches Wei Wuxian. The black flute is at his lips, and he’s carrying the last notes of the song out, long and breathy like a sigh above the flowers. He inhales softly, eyes still closed, then starts another phrase, slow and sweet, weaving around the flowers and the sunlight and the shade.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says, quietly. “What is the plan for tomorrow?”

Wei Wuxian doesn’t immediately answer, letting his song come to the end of the phrase. He drops the flute from his lips, lets his head fall back. A shaft of sunlight falls across his face, across his long neck, at the edge of his collar. He looks soft, vulnerable. Lan Wangji can’t stop staring at the side of his neck, illuminated by sunlight, imagining pressing his face into the side of Wei Wuxian’s neck, pressing his mouth there, feeling that soft, pale skin in his teeth. Wei Wuxian opens his eyes and turns his head to Lan Wangji, meeting his eyes.

“I have a plan, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says. He lays back on one elbow, twirling the flute with his right hand. “One that will keep you and A-Yuan safe.” He smiles, a short, sad smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “You won’t like the whole thing,” he adds, “but I don’t have a better one…”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says, helplessly. He can’t stop staring at the edge of Wei Ying’s collars, where the sunlight traces across the edge of his clavicle.

“A hundred rivers flow east to the sea,” Wei Wuxian says. “When will they return again to the west?” He sighs. “Play that song again,” he says, and lays back all the way in the grass. “I’m going to nap here with A-Yuan while you play for me. That’s my perfect day, Lan Zhan.”

Lan Wangji can’t say no. And so he does, the sunlight falling on the strings of his guqin, and Wei Wuxian closes his eyes when the song starts again.

———

“Did you enjoy it, Lan Zhan?” Wei Wuxian asks, standing on the stairs just under Lan Wangji. They stand outside of A-Yuan’s room, door shut. Wei Wuxian looks up at Lan Wangji, his eyes—not black, Lan Wangji thinks, staring at them, gray, dark gray—unreadable.

“Yes,” Lan Wangji says, but abruptly looks down, breaking the gaze. He feels something warm in his hand, and looks down to see Wei Wuxian’s hand holding his.

“Really, Lan Zhan?” Wei Wuxian asks. His hand is warm, so warm, against Lan Wangji’s. He can’t stop himself from gripping it, intertwining their fingers. Wei Wuxian is quiet, staring up at him, giving Lan Wangji space to talk.

“Wei Ying…” Lan Wangji takes a breath. “Wei Ying is only doing this because…you think you are going to die tomorrow.”

Wei Wuxian is still quiet, looking up at Lan Wangji with no expression on his face. The silence stretches until Lan Wangji lifts his eyes from their joined hands, meeting Wei Wuxian’s gaze.

“I wanted you to be happy,” Wei Wuxian says, softly. “Your curse is better when you’re happy, Lan Zhan.”

Lan Wangji feels blood drain from his face. He wants to pull his hand out of Wei Wuxian’s, but Wei Wuxian interlaces their fingers more tightly. “You didn’t know?” Wei Wuxian murmurs, staring at Lan Wangji’s face with tender sadness in the corners of his eyes. “This morning, in my bedroom, your hair was so dark, gege, your face so young. I think, Lan Zhan, that you’re really not much older than me… I saw you looking at me, your ears red. When you watch A-Yuan your face is softer. I’ve tried so much to break the curse, Lan Zhan, Chenqing and I have tried so many times.”

Lan Wangji takes a deep breath before he speaks. “And after tomorrow, then what?” he asks, looking Wei Wuxian in the eyes.

“After tomorrow Wen Ruohan will be dead,” Wei Wuxian says, resolve coming back to the corners of his eyes. “And once he’s dead, then they can get Lan Xichen back, and Nie Mingjue, and maybe even Jin Zixuan and Jiang Cheng will be there too, if they can stand to see me. And you can go back to Cloud Recesses, and take A-Yuan with you. And then A-Yuan will get training like all the other cultivators do, only,” and Wei Wuxian breaks into a grin, “he’ll have a head start, yeah? Because I trained him…because we trained him, and he’ll know so much more than everyone else. And you’ll give him a courtesy name, and no one will know he’s a Wen, and he’ll have a better life than we did.”

“And where is Wei Ying in this future?” Lan Wangji asks. The grip on his fingers is painfully tight. There is a moment of silence, and Lan Zhan counts out twenty heartbeats, rabbit-fast in his chest.

“I don’t know, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, quietly. “But you’ll be there, and A-Yuan will be there. And Jiang Cheng will get to be clan leader, and Jiang Yanli can finally marry the peacock, and they will get to have a life.”

“What about you? What about your life?” Lan Wangji asks, then reaches down and picks up Wei Wuxian’s other hand. “What about our life?”

Wei Wuxian’s eyes are shining, and he closes them, face breaking into a smile. “Lan Zhan,” he says.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says.

“I just wanted to break your curse,” Wei Wuxian says, opening his eyes. “To see you like this. I just wanted to see your real face, Lan Zhan, all the time,” and then he has dropped one of Lan Wangji’s hands and brings a hand up, gently, brushing his thumb across the smooth skin of Lan Wangji’s cheek.

“Tell me that tomorrow night,” Lan Wangji says, stepping back, away from his touch.

“Lan Zhan, Lan-gege—” Wei Wuxian begins, but Lan Wangji drops his hand, crossing his arms.

“Tell me that tomorrow night,” he repeats, frowning at Wei Wuxian. Wei Wuxian smiles at him, lopsided, a smile that does not reach his eyes.

“Do you want to sleep in my room tonight?” Wei Wuxian asks. Something in his voice sounds tremulous, more vulnerable than Lan Wangji has ever heard.

Lan Wangji’s heart is thunderous in his chest, traitorous. “Tomorrow night,” he repeats, meeting Wei Wuxian’s eyes, and Wei Wuxian smiles again, that lopsided, sad smile.

“Then sleep well, Lan Zhan,” he murmurs, and steps up to the top of the stairs, even with Lan Wangji. He steps towards him, and Lan Wangji feels the brief press of lips to his forehead, searing, and then Wei Wuxian walks towards his bedroom. At the threshold he pauses, turns, as if he’s collected himself. “Offer still stands, Lan Zhan,” he says, the cheerfulness just a hair forced.

Lan Wangji feels like he is going to crack open. He thinks of the Jingshi, and the gravel, and the snow, and the closed door, and thinks of Wei Ying not coming back from that battle. “Tomorrow,” he repeats, and now his voice is the one not as controlled as it should be. “Tomorrow I will sleep with Wei Ying.”

Wei Wuxian smiles at that, then, a genuine smile that breaks across his face like a sunrise. “Lan Zhan, you make me want to do dangerous things,” he says.

“I would rather you refrain from doing dangerous things, and come back to bed in one piece,” Lan Wangji retorts, and if his voice is a little thicker than it was a few minutes ago, neither one of them comments on it. He swallows. “Goodnight, Wei Ying.”

“Goodnight, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, and Lan Wangji feels his eyes on him the whole way down the stairs.

———

Lan Wangji, in the bedroom under the stairs, buries his face in his wrinkled hands and doesn’t cry. He breathes in and out, in and out, and if his breaths have the tinges of hysterical sobs then no one else hears. He buries his head in his pillow, his eyes burning, and doesn’t think of falling asleep until it takes him. He sleeps fitfully. He dreams of Wei Wuxian’s hands on his back, of Wei Wuxian’s lips on his spine, of a cool, silky touch that trails from the nape of his neck down the skin of his back, and wakes up in a sweat. In the middle of the night when he wakes he pulls long, black hairs off his pillow, a cruel reminder of who he used to be, when his own hair refuses to be anything other than wiry and gray in his sight. He dreams about Wei Wuxian’s fingers trailing over his palms and wakes in the dark, hand fisted in his blankets. He knows that Wei Wuxian’s fingertips are scarred and thinks of all the incantations that Wei Wuxian has drawn in his own blood, all the blood he sheds for everyone else. He thinks of green fire and Wei Wuxian’s crows flying over that battlefield. In his dreams, when he sleeps again, black feathers brush his bare skin and he wakes up gasping for air.

Chapter Text

When Lan Wangji wakes in the night the room is still dark around him. His skin burns where the blankets touch his arms and shoulders and he struggles out of bed. The lamp on the desk—the one he never touches, which lights and extinguishes itself as it pleases—is out. He feels hot, flushed, too aware of the place above and to the right of his head where Wei Wuxian is supposedly sleeping. He pulls another layer on and walks out the door of his room, looking over to the fireplace. Every window is dark. It’s sometime in the middle of the night.

“Chenqing,” he says, sitting in front of the fire. Chenqing stirs, softly, and the flames rise enough to show its face.

“Hmmm? Yes?”

“I want to make a bargain. A formal bargain.”

Chenqing flickers up a little more. “What do you want?” the fire asks.

Lan Wangji looks down at his wrinkled hands. “I want the power of the Core-Melting Hand,” he says. “To take and give golden cores.”

Chenqing regards him solemnly. “This won’t help your curse,” the fire says.

“It is not about my curse,” Lan Wangji says. “Can you do it?”

“Yes,” Chenqing says. “What will you offer me?”

He doesn't answer immediately, staring into the hearth. The low flames throw the faces carved on the stones into strange relief, their expressions flickering and malevolent. “Chenqing, were you a resentful spirit in the Burial Mounds?” Lan Wangji asks. “Did Wei Wuxian make a bargain with you to control the dead?”

“Sort of. But I think uou have me confused with a much more powerful evil spirit,” Chenqing says, throwing off flames. “I’m not the Stygian Tiger demon.”

“Tell me,” Lan Wangji says.

“Ghosts and demons can increase their power by absorbing other ghosts,” Chenqing says. “When I came to the Burial Mounds there was already a much more powerful spirit there. I heard it through the ghosts that lived there, so who knows how much is true? But they said there was a sword, buried under that mountain, that had killed thousands of people, and absorbed their blood into its blade. The owner of that sword was a prince who cultivated to ascension, who became a god. Or maybe became a ghost. Ghosts spread rumors worse than humans, with less truth, and tell stories out of order, because what is time to a ghost?

“That sword was used to kill a god.

“Killing a god isn't a physical action. They exist on belief, and the only way to end their physical and spiritual existence is to kill all their believers, or make their believers stop believing. So two gods fought, and one was defeated. The sword was stabbed into his belly, driven into the ground, and then both sword and god were sealed inside a cave and left there. In two hundred years, all the god’s believers died out. The god was trapped beneath the mountain, in the dark, in endless torment, until that god's body decayed and only resentment remained—resentment, and the sword. And so the sword absorbed the resentful energy of the god that died under its blade. The sword and the god combined, there under the mountain, and turned to a demon so strong that the whole mountain became poisoned. Thousands of cultivators for hundreds of years have tried to purify it and they all died in that mountain. The resentment grows, and grows. And that mountain is the Burial Mounds.”

Lan Wangji feels like he is not breathing. He thinks about Wen Chao screaming “I threw you in the Burial Mounds with your body full of arrows! Why won’t you die!” and thinks of Wei Wuxian’s inhuman face in green firelight.

“And that sword is the Stygian tiger demon?” he asks Chenqing.

“Wei Wuxian wasn’t the first cultivator thrown into the burial mounds to die there,” Chenqing says. “I had seen hundreds. But none were like him. I was just one spirit that carved out a niche in that mountain. Wei Wuxian, when he arrived, already had so much resentment and anger that he was halfway to a demon himself, and had no golden core besides. He was feeding on spirits and devouring their resentment. When I saw him I was afraid, and I offered him my power, in exchange for my life.”

“Your power?” Lan Wangji asks, staring at the fire intently.

“I was a bamboo dizi that had been used by a family of powerful cultivators, to control demons and ghosts, for hundreds of years,” Chenqing says. “I took on consciousness from the combination of their spiritual power and the resentment that flowed through me to be controlled. Half good, half evil. I saw Wei Wuxian, devouring ghosts on that mountain. I was afraid and I offered him my power, which is the ability to control that resentment with music. Music is protective of the soul of the user, though of course you know that, guqin-player.”

“So you made a bargain with him before he found the resentful sword-spirit,” Lan Wangji says.

Chenqing's face is hard to make out in the flickering tongues of flame. “I didn’t think he would take it. Wei Wuxian then was…very different than he is now. He wasn't dead, but he wasn't really alive, either. Too much ghost energy in his body. I told him that he could use the flute to control them, to avoid corrupting his own soul. He didn’t seem like the type very interested in preserving his own soul. A lot of spirits get like that, after a while, you know? Especially ones that used to be human. They care about revenge and nothing else.”

The shadows in the room seem darker, and the air colder. Used to be human. Lan Wangji's jaw hurts where he is clenching it. “But not Wei Ying,” he says.

“He accepted, and we made a bargain,” Chenqing says. “My life for the ability to control spirits with music. And eventually, he got us out of there.”

Lan Wangji looks down at the fire. Chenqing sends licks of orange flame across the base of the log, sinking low, deepening the shadows in the room.

“What about the Stygian tiger demon?” Lan Wangji asks.

Chenqing's face is hidden among the logs, the fire's voice monotone and quiet in the dark room. “Wei Wuxian made the same deal with the resentful spirits on that mountain that you saw him make with that spirit in the back courtyard. Give me your power and I will use it for revenge, and free you from this... He was in the Burial Mounds for three months, digging his power into that mountain. And eventually he met the god-killing sword, the Stygian tiger demon, deep in the heart of the Burial Mounds."

Chenqing's fire is so low now that most of the room is shadows. Only embers glow under the logs, white ash wreathed in deep red, no tongues of flame visible. "That demon is dangerous," Chenqing says. "I think he…he must have made a bargain with it. It's not a sword anymore. Maybe he couldn’t control it as a sword, or maybe just didn’t want to, and so he turned the sword into a seal.”

“That would have required immense amounts of power,” Lan Wangji says. “To change the form of a resentful spirit that powerful.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Chenqing says. “I don’t know. I wasn’t involved. He's not exactly forthcoming with information, you may have noticed. And I don't ask, because that Stygian tiger demon scares me. But it must have agreed to changed. The Stygian tiger demon is...very strong. It almost killed him, then. It took him weeks to recover, in the cave in the mountain, with me keeping his heart alive. It took him almost a week to breathe again, longer to be able to walk."

Lan Wangji's fists are clenched tightly in his lap, knuckles white. He thinks of Wei Wuxian's shallow breathing in the bathtub, the sickly pale of his face, the way his neck couldn't hold up his head. Chenqing stirs, and an ember throws up sparks. "He hasn’t used it since," Chenqing says. "I think he’s afraid it will get control over him.”

“But he will use it tomorrow,” Lan Wangji says, quietly. “To kill Wen Ruohan.”

“Seems like it,” Chenqing says.

“Can you give me the powers off the Core-Melting Hand, to remove the stolen cores from Wen Ruohan?” Lan Wangji asks.

“Yes,” Chenqing says, quietly.

“In exchange?”

Chenqing moves up a little, flame peeking out over the log. “What are you willing to give up?” The fire flares out in a wicked grin. “Your eyes? Your heart?”

Lan Wangji thinks of Wei Wuxian’s silent chest, the preternatural stillness under his hand. “That’s what you have from Wei Ying,” he says.

“The more you give the more power you get,” Chenqing says, flaring a little more over the log. “That’s the bargain. He…got a lot from me. More than I was expecting. We’re more powerful together, but when he dies that’s it for me. And you have no idea what he does in those Wen camps. He’s trying to burn himself out and take them all with him. That boy has a death-wish.”

“You want to be free of this bargain,” Lan Wangji says. “You don’t want to be tied to me, or to Wei Ying. To free you...”

Chenqing flares up a little more. “The only way to free me is to break the dizi," the fire says. "But if you break it, then he couldn’t control the corpses he'll use to fight the Wens."

“But I can take Wen Ruohan's cultivation," Lan Wangji says.

"Is this our bargain?" Chenqing asks, sending up sparks.

Lan Wangji looks into the hearth. "If the flute is broken, then your bargain is over?” he asks, eyes trained on the fire.

“Yes,” Chenqing says. “In exchange for the power of the Core-Melting Hand, you will break the black dizi that binds me to the Yiling Laozu, Wei Wuxian. When the dizi is broken then the the power of the Core-Melting Hand will be transferred to you. Do you agree, Lan Zhan, Lan Wangji, second Jade of Lan?”

If Lan Wangji is surprised that Chenqing knows his real name he makes no sign. “No tricks,” Lan Wangji says. “No body parts given for demonic powers. One act for one specific power.”

“Agreed.”

“Then we have a bargain, Chenqing?”

“Gotta say it,” Chenqing says, flickering up more. “The whole bargain. And give me a strand of your hair.”

Lan Wangji reaches up and breaks off a long strand of gray hair from his temple. He holds it over the fire. “I, Lan Zhan, Lan Wangji, will destroy the dizi that binds the spirit Chenqing to the Yiling Laozu, Wei Ying, Wei Wuxian. In exchange for freeing this spirit, Chenqing will give me the power of the Core-Melting Hand when the dizi is broken.”

Chenqing reaches a tendril of flame and Lan Wangji releases the hair, watching it burn. “Then it is fulfilled,” Chenqing says, and Lan Wangji feels a particular tightness across his temple, where the hair was plucked.

“When you are free, what will happen to Wei Ying’s heart?” Lan Wangji asks, looking down at the fire.

Chenqing blazes up a little more brightly, and the log in the center breaks apart. A burning coal sits, wreathed in blue flame, at the bottom of the hearth. Lan Wangji lowers his head. The coal is pulsing—no, beating, low and slow in the hearth.

“Better hurry and get it to him once I'm free,” Chenqing says.

Lan Wangji says nothing. He expected deals with a demon to be something like this. He’s not unprepared.

“Thank you,” he says, ignoring the demon’s comment. He rises from his chair, feeling drained, and walks back to his room.

———

When Lan Wangji wakes again it’s to the sound of a slamming door. With it something is gone from the castle, and he feels his core jump in his chest, pulsing wildly, like something has taken away all the resentful energy that hangs like a cloud over the castle. His heart is beating fast in his chest and he rises from bed at once, pulling on a robe quickly, before opening the door to the hearth. “Chenqing!” he calls, and the face in the hearth turns towards him.

“He’s gone,” Chenqing confirms. “With the Stygian tiger seal. And the limbs.”

Lan Wangji does not say anything but his face tightens in displeasure. His gaze travels to the empty shelves, the empty space on the floor. “Where did he go?” he asks.

“He’s traveling fast, across the Wastes,” Chenqing says. “Towards Heavenly Nightless City.”

“You have to come,” Lan Wangji says to Chenqing.

“I can’t,” Chenqing protests.

“This is just a clone of you,” Lan Wangji says.

“Yes, but this is the clone with the heart,” Chenqing says. “If I leave the castle will fall apart.”

Then A-Yuan can’t stay behind, either. Lan Wangji hesitates a fraction, but there are no safe places, not if today is the day of the Sunshot Campaign. He walks upstairs and knocks on Wen Yuan’s door, opening it onto a small room with a bed in one corner, a table covered in books, neatly organized. A-Yuan raises his head from the bed, and looks up at Lan Wangji.

“What is it?” he asks, sitting up. He frowns a little bit. “Why does—why does it feel different?”

“He’s gone,” Lan Wangji says. “He took the seal, and with it the resentment.”

“It—it’s today?” Wen Yuan asks, voice cracking a little.

Lan Wangji nods at him and A-Yuan sits up, hunched over. “He tried to hide it from me,” he mumbles, staring down at the bed. But then he looks up, determined. “Senior Lan! We have to go! I have to fight too!”

“You don’t have to fight your family, Wen Yuan,” Lan Wangji says, gently.

“Wei Wuxian is my family,” Wen Yuan says, fierce and determined. Lan Wangji’s heart does something in his chest, fierce and complicated.

“Your core is weak, still,” Lan Wangji says.

“Then I’ll fight with talismans,” Wen Yuan says. “I’ve been training for a long time. I have to fight!”

“Then get ready,” Lan Wangji says, and Wen Yuan scrambles out of bed, determined. “Bring all your transportation talismans, A-Yuan.”

“What’s the plan?” A-Yuan asks, pulling on his over robe.

Lan Wangji walks toward the desk, with stacked piles of talismans, shuffles through them, setting some aside. “Our plan is to free the sect leaders in the castle,” he says. “We will find Lan Xichen and Nie Mingjue and then you will teleport them out of the castle, back to where the clans are camped.”

“What will you do?” A-Yuan asks, finishing stuffing his feet into boots. He stands up and Lan Wangji hands him a pile of talismans.

“I will do the same, with Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says, and the words feel stiff and heavy in his mouth. It is against sect rules to lie. “Then I will meet you afterwards.”

Wen Yuan believes him. “We have to save Wen Ning and Wen Qing,” he says, determined. “They’ll be in that dungeon too.” He looks over his desk, pulls more talismans, stuffing them into his sleeves and robes. “Unlocking, fire, water…growth…metal…smaller, bigger…fire is good, more fire,” he mutters. “And some blank pieces, too...”

“We need to bring Chenqing,” Lan Wangji says, the words heavy in his mouth.

A-Yuan pauses. “What? Can we even do that? Why?”

Lan Wangji presses his lips together, hesitating, then opens them. “Chenqing cannot protect the castle today,” he says. “Wei Wuxian needs all the power he can to try to control the Stygian tiger seal.”

“Oh, I get it,” A-Yuan says. “How will we bring him?”

———

Wei Wuxian probably has a magical, elegant solution to moving Chenqing. Lan Wangji ends up holding tongs and a lantern, trying to corner the fire, who is backing away from his advances. “Oh no, no, no, no,” Chenqing says, flames licking up to the corner of the fireplace. “This is your brilliant idea? Throw me in a lantern? You have no idea how much complex magic is holding this house together! It’ll fall apart without me here!”

“Does that matter after today?” Lan Wangji asks, quietly. Chenqing slumps down, in the corner.

“This is a terrible idea,” the fire says, but let Lan Wangji pick up the small, beating heart with tongs, blue flames cooling to orange in the air, before shutting it in the glass of the lantern, with the demon’s face inside. The castle, sudenly darker than it seemed before, starts shuddering.

“I have to go out last,” Chenqing warns.

“I have a bow and arrows and about a million talismans,” A-Yuan calls, from the door. “And I brought the one good sword from the collection for you, Lan-qianbei.”

Wen Yuan is a good child. “Stand back,” Lan Wangji calls to him, and walks toward the front door. The castle shudders at every step, jars falling off tables and rolling across the floor. The floor starts to tilt as he walks.

“Go out backwards,” Chenqing says, face spinning up in whorls of flame. The fire’s voice sounds more unsure than Lan Wangij has heard before. “I have to go last,” the fire repeats, sounding anxious.

Lan Wangji turns, in front of the door, the knob set to black. He backs out gently, the lantern held in his right hand, until only his right hand and the lantern is left inside.

“Go!” Chenqing shouts, as the castle’s shuddering increases, and Lan Wangji pulls his arm and the lantern out, flying backwards and up into the air. The castle gives a final shake, stone and wood moving like a landslide, and then collapses around the front door, stones falling inward, windows shattering, the crack of breaking wood. When Lan Wangji sets back to the earth, next to A-Yuan, the castle is a pile of rubble. A-Yuan’s eyes are huge as he stares at it, then looks at Chenqing, the fist-sized ball of flame hovering in the lantern.

“We need to hurry,” Lan Wangji says, and A-Yuan gives him the stolen sword. They leave, A-Yuan risking one glimpse back at the pile of black stone rubble, Lan Wangji looking forward as they speed toward Heavenly Nightless City.

———

When Lan Wangji arrives, A-Yuan clutching one arm, high above that battlefield, Wei Wuxian is already below.

The Wei Ying he knows shows very little, in that face. His hair is down all the way, on this battlefield, and can’t be differentiated from the resentful energy that pours from him like smoke. His hands are pale streaks in front of his body. His eyes blaze all crimson, pupil not even visible, and when his hands spread, arrays burn crimson into the battlefield, large as a house, and soldiers fall under the Yiling Laozu’s hand.

Next to him is a burning black sphere. As Lan Wangji comes closer he can feel it, the shadow on the landscape, and the resentment is familiar. The lingering edge of resentment that darkens the moving castle now fills the whole battlefield with the smell of metal and rot. It overpowers his senses, tunnels his vision, increases the pressure in the air until it becomes a visible presence pushing down on him. Lan Wangji is a strong cultivator and he feels like his head will be flattened by it, a resentment so strong that it has already taken out a whole line of Wen soldiers. Their bodies lay on the ground, blood pouring from the orifices, swords fallen beside them, blades gleaming clean in the dim light.

The first wave has already happened, Lan Wangji thinks, staring down at the wave of bodies on the field. With Chenqing in the lantern he holds in his right hand, he realizes how much power Chenqing and Wei Wuxian have been exerting to keep the Stygian Tiger demon under control. Now it is unleashed.

“Oh no,” A-Yuan says, and his voice sounds as small and terrified as Lan Wangji feels. “It’s—that’s—that’s the Stygian tiger seal. How can he control that?” he asks, his voice scared, and his hands tighten on Lan Wangji’s arm.

“He can’t,” Lan Wangji says, his voice certain, and A-Yuan’s grip becomes tighter.

The black sphere next to Wei Wuxian is getting bigger. Lan Wangji looks down at that battlefield and thinks that the Stygian Tiger demon is more than capable of destroying the whole Wen army, wiping that entire battlefield clean.

“This is bad,” Chenqing mutters, flickering, agitated, in the lantern. “It’s going to kill everyone here. He's not even trying to control it. He's just feeding it.”

“How do we stop it?” Lan Wangji asks, keeping his eyes focus on the growing black sphere next to Wei Wuxian. Below, the Yiling Laozu raises his hands, and resentment ripples outward like a wave, knocking down the battlefield.

“Good fucking luck,” Chenqing says, pulling back in the lantern, then sends up a shiver of flame. “You have to break it!” the fire whines at Lan Wangji. “It’s going to corrupt him, it’s going to fuse with him and turn Wei Wuxian into a demon—I can’t be bound to another demon, you have to save me—”

“Be quiet,” Lan Wangji says. “We have to get Wen Ruohan here. If I can get the core back then I can stop that.” He turns toward the fortress of Heavenly Nightless City, the tower blazing against the dark mountain. Lan Xichen is in there, somewhere, and his sword, too.

“Lan-qianbei?” A-Yuan asks, interrupting Lan Wangji’s thoughts. He looks down. Wen Yuan looks scared. “What do we do now? How do we…should we even stop it? Or let him take down Wen Ruohan?”

“And hope any of us are left alive after those two clash,” Chenqing mutters.

Lan Wangji ignores them. “The plan is the same. Rescue the clan leaders, then I will rescue Wei Ying,” he says, meeting A-Yuan’s gaze. “We need to get inside the fortress,” he says. “You can do this, A-Yuan.”

“Yes!” Wen Yuan says, and though his face is still pale with fright, his eyes are determined. “I know how to get inside,” he says.

Chapter Text

In the darkness of the fortress Lan Wangji stashes the lantern and Chenqing, and pulls from his core to throw an array into the floor. It surges through the stones, searching. His brother’s presence lights up on the array like a beacon. Lan Wangji and A-Yuan run through the fortress, pushing aside silk tapestries and gilded doors. He cuts down the scattered few Wen soldiers who get in his way with that borrowed sword, protecting A-Yuan, who throws talismans in front of them that burn through locks, leave smoldering holes in scarlet and gold doors, break through rings of magic surrounding the inner layers of the castle. The inside of the castle is almost completely empty, and the deeper they get inside the more silent it is.

Lan Wangji follows his array up, through dark rooms and floors, to a set of light and airy stairs that hang with golden lantern. He takes the stairs quickly, robes traiiling on the dark wood. The stairs let them out in front of a stone tower, high above the fortress, the walls surrounded by a final array in swirling red that he can’t pass.

“It’s—it’s just a triple layered—hold on,” A-Yuan says, gritting his teeth, and throws a series of talismans against twisting, glowing rings, in a move that looks too much like Wei Wuxian. Three talismans flicker and flare out and the last two fall to the ground. “I don’t have enough energy,” A-Yuan says, despairing, sweat beading on his forehead.

“Here,” Lan Wangji says, and puts his hand on the boy’s shoulder, feeding spiritual energy into him. A-Yuan’s face changes, opens like a flower, and he opens his eyes wide.

“Yes,” he breathes, in wonder, but then reaches into his sleeves and pulls out five more talismans, throwing them at the barrier. This time they stick, each one clinging to the crimson array. The rotating red rings of light that surround the tower flare brightly, making A-Yuan raise his hand to cover his eyes. It almost obliterates their vision before it is gone, leaving them in darkness, the talismans falling to the floor. Lan Wangji blinks and afterimages fog his vision. When it clears there is only a stone circular tower, with a dark doorway, and thick, heavy wood.

Lan Wangji pushes it open. Inside, thin light filters in from windows, high above.

“Come to taunt me again, Meng Yao?” a voice says, sounding tired. “Tell me more of how you never meant for this to happen? Are you still trying to convince me that you wanted to help me?”

Lan Wangji’s heart constricts. “BROTHER!” he shouts, up the smooth walls of the tower. A-Yuan turns to stare at him, mouth falling open.

“Brother?” he asks, staring at Lan Wangji. “That's Lan Xichen! You’re the missing—the missing prince—?”

Lan Wangji ignores him. There are no stairs in the tower, and in the dim light he can make out a platform, throwing diffuse shadows over the floor. High above, he hears movement, sees a shape distort that light. “Wangji?” Lan Xichen asks, his voice almost shaking.

Lan Wangji jumps up, white robes flaring in the dark of the castle as he comes up to with Lan Xichen’s platform, and then almost falls backwards again immediately as his brother’s body slams into him, arms wrapping around Lan Wangji. Lan Xichen’s robes are dirty, his hair tangled, and when Lan Wangji mutely returns his hug he feels slashes across his brother’s back, crusted with dried blood. Anger rises in him like fire.

“Brother,” Lan Xichen whispers, against Lan Wangji’s hair. His brother is shaking. “Wen Chao said he sent Xue Yang after you—I thought you were dead.”

“Are you hurt?” Lan Wangji asks, gently pushing his brother away so he could look at him. Up close, Lan Xichen’s face is haggard, his eyes in dark hollows of bruises. “Did Wen Zhuliu get to you?”

Lan Xichen doesn’t answer, holding his brother’s arms, searching Lan Wangji’s face. “You—you’re different,” he says, slowly. “Did he get to you, too?”

Lan Wangji’s eyes flash. He grabs his brother’s wrist, and feels the empty, gaping hole where Lan Xichen’s core used to be.

“Come,” he says, harshly, and grabs his brother, descending the tower. “No. I am here with Wei Ying. But he’s brought a demon, capable of destroying everyone. We need to get to Wen Ruohan.”

“It doesn’t matter, Wangji,” Lan Xichen says. “Nothing I can do matters now. Wen Zhuliu destroyed my core.”

“No,” Lan Wangji says, pulling him forward. A-Yuan runs towards them. “Wen Zhuliu doesn’t destroy them,” he says, shortly. “He gives them to Wen Ruohan. But we can get them back.”

“Lan-qianbei!” Wen Yuan is yelling. “Someone’s coming! He’s—” and then A-Yuan falls to his knees, and someone else stands in the doorway behind him.

“Oh, it’s you?” a voice says, and Lan Wangji feels his stomach curl. “Both brothers, this time? What a lucky day for me,” and the voice is full of delight as a familiar man in dark robes steps out of the shadows, into the fuzzy light of the tower. The golden lanterns of the stairs silhouette him, his face barely visible in the dim light from above. He is grinning, a wide, wicked grin full of delight.

“Xue Yang!” Lan Xichen says, sharply, but Xue Yang’s eyes don’t leave Lan Wangji’s face.

“I wondered why that curse didn’t kill you,” Xue Yang says, slowly walking into the room. He walks left, swinging his sword from his right hand, and Lan Wangji turns to keep himself between Xue Yang and Lan Xichen. “And here you turn up, the missing prince of Gusu, with the corrupt Yiling Laozu. Lan Wangji! Throwing your lot in with the corrupt Wei Wuxian?”

“Get A-Yuan and take him to safety,” Lan Wangji says, to Lan Xichen, his eyes never leaving Xue Yang’s face. He grips his borrowed sword.

“Where’d you get the kid?” Xue Yang says, tilting his head. He uses a foot to push aside Wen Yuan’s arm, sprawled on the ground. “He uses talismans like Wei Wuxian. Is that where you’ve been, this whole time we’ve been searching for you?”

Lan Wangji does not speak. He turns, so minutely it seems like he’s not moving, to keep his body angling towards Xue Yang.

“Good thing I managed to take out so much of your power, hmm?” Xue Yang says, his grin getting wider. “Boy, I’d hate to see you now if not. But then again, we wouldn’t even be here if you could have killed me the first time around, hmm?”

Lan Wangji is silent, still. He can feel Lan Xichen behind him. Xue Yang looks down at A-Yuan, on the ground. “A-Yuan, huh?” he says. “Reminds me of another little kid I killed recently.”

“Xue Yang!” Lan Wangji says, sharply. His sword points towards Xue Yang, who looks up at him and laughs.

“Oh, so you care about the little kid, huh? Well that’s fine. I love kids too, you know. They’re so funny. And they bleed way more than you think they will.”

There’s a flash of silver and a clash in the dark room as Lan Wangji is suddenly at Xue Yang’s throat, blades crossed. Behind him, Lan Xichen grabs A-Yuan’s body, running down the steps under the golden lanterns. The swords glint, lit from below, and Xue Yang grins again. “Fighting back this time?” he says, but Lan Wangji is tired of listening and presses him again.

He hasn’t fought like this for a long time, maybe ever. The lanterns on the stairs throw weird shadows through the door, and Xue Yang dances in and out of the square of light on the floor, twirling in and out of shadows. His sword technique is good. If Lan Wangji were younger, if he were the version of himself from two weeks ago, it would have been an interesting challenge, a training exercise that he would have ultimately won, despite its difficulty—but now he has a foreign sword, and the curse that should have killed him has sapped too much of his strength.

“Oh, no wonder they called you the Second Jade of Lan,” Xue Yang says, twirling his sword around, meeting Lan Wangji’s blade in midair, a hand’s breadth away from Lan Wangji’s neck. “Imagine how good you used to be, Lan Wangji, before I got ahold of you!”

Lan Wangji fights, silently, his mind turning. He lets his power flow down into this strange sword, feeling the currents of the battle. Xue Yang is using resentful energy, intertwined with his golden core, wielding both like a double-edged sword, swinging back and forth wildly. He’s strong, and ruthless, pushing his edge against Lan Wangji at every opportunity. Lan Wangji pushes harder. The circular floor of the tower gives him no corners to back the demonic cultivator into, and Lan Wangji wants to keep Xue Yang away from the door. His resentful energy is less powerful than Wei Wuxian’s, brutal and fierce but with none of the cleverness or speed that Lan Wangji is used to seeing. When he tries to push his edge with it Xue Yang slows down, just a hair, and Lan Wangji pushes it. He sees Xue Yang’s eyes eyes widen as Lan Wangji gets under his blade to draw blood, a long gash down Xue Yang’s right forearm.

The strike cost him. Lan Wangji feels his stamina eroding in the shake of his hands. Xue Yang’s eyes glitter in the half-light before he strikes, going for Lan Wangji’s left arm in a blow that he twists to catch on the flat of his blade, sending numb pain down his whole arm.

They circle each other, warily. Lan Wangji is aware, in the back of his mind, of Wei Wuxian with pinprick pupils, resentful energy pouring through him, of the growing black hole of the Stygian Tiger seal, at the north entrance of the city. He meets Xue Yang’s next thrust with a clash, blood dripping from Xue Yang’s arm down the sword. Crimson drops fall on the edge of his white robes, vivid against the pale fabric. He thinks of Lan Xichen, coreless, his brother’s pale and sunken face, his arms around Lan Wangji, and thinks of Lan Xichen carrying A-Yuan down the stairs, unquestioningly protecting a child he’s never met before. I have to get to them, he thinks, and then thinks of Wei Ying’s face, soft in sleep, against the pillow, his slightly parted lips. Tomorrow night, he thinks, then thinks tonight and reaches forward, suddenly, punches up as Xue Yang’s sword sends a deep gash through his left arm. Lan Wangji's sword arm keeps moving, diving under the blow to stick the sword deep into Xue Yang’s abdomen.

“You—you—” Xue Yang gasps, breath knocked away, but Lan Wangji grips the handle firmly and twists, pulling the steel through the soft flesh, feeling tissue give under his blade. Blood pours from Xue Yang, onto Lan Wangji’s wrist and hand. Xue Yang gasps again, blood bubbling up in his mouth.

Lan Wangji pulls the sword out, finally, twisting as he does, a final spurt of blood as Xue Yang’s flesh gives under the blade. Xue Yang’s sword drops to the floor, followed by the cultivator himself, and he clutches at his abdomen with both hands, staring at the blood that pours out of him. He turns a sickly pale face to Lan Wangji.

“It won’t…won’t stop your curse,” he gets out, blood dripping from his lips. “Killing me won’t…save you…!” and he bares his teeth in a grin, a snarl, before he takes a final gasp that is followed by nothing.

Lan Wangji doesn’t look at him again. He flies down the stairs, pulling from his golden core to knit together the deep wound in his left arm. “Brother!” he yells, taking corners on those stairs as quickly as he can, descending so fast the golden lanterns are a blur. “A-Yuan!”

The stairs empty out onto a platform overlooking Heavenly Nightless City, and Lan Wangji sees Lan Xichen, holding up Wen Yuan, standing at the door in front of him. He reaches them, and freezes.

From this vantage point, they can see the armies spread out before the city. To the north, darkness and thick clouds throw shadows over the walls of the Heavenly Nightless City, turning the walls to shadow. To the south, Wen forces are moving—moving north, turning away from the colorful armies that flank them. Not running away from the cultivation sects, Lan Wangji realizes, watching them pour, disorganized, through the city. Running to the greater threat, in the north.

Where the Stygian Tiger seal hangs in the sky over the battlefield, dark and pulsing, like a second sun.

Chapter Text

“What is that,” Lan Xichen says, flatly, staring at the pulsing dark sphere.

Lan Wangji grits his teeth as his sinews knit themselves together, pulling up his burning left arm. “A demon,” he says, but doesn’t look at it, instead crouching to look at A-Yuan’s face, putting his fingers to the boy’s neck. His pulse is strong. Just knocked out. Lan Wangji gives him a trickle of spiritual power, watches as his face starts to move.

“Wangji,” Lan Xichen says. “You…were you hostage to the Yiling Laozu?”

“Brother, trust me,” Lan Wangji says. “I need to get to Wen Ruohan, and I need to destroy Wei Wuxian’s flute.”

Lan Xichen stares at him. “You’re going to do something to get the cores back,” he says, softly. “Wangji, how—?”

“Please, brother,” Lan Wangji says, interrupting him for probably the first time in his life. Lan Xichen stares at his face before nodding.

“Of course,” Zewu-jun says, and the tension in Lan Wangji’s face eases, just a little bit.

“Where is Nie Mingjue?” he asks.

Lan Xichen points down. “They kept us apart,” he says. “In the lowest dungeon. I…I was kept up there, at Meng Yao’s request. The rest of the prisoners should be there, too.”

“We will deal with him later,” Lan Wangji says.

“But what happened to you, Wangji?” Lan Xichen asks. “You—your age—”

“Xue Yang tried to kill me and failed,” Lan Wangji says. “He tried to use a sloppy time-compressing spell, I think, as a clever way to kill someone. I was too strong, and was protected, and this was the result, instead. I am still…much weakened, from before.”

“Lan Zhan?” Wen Yuan asks, blinking his eyes open. “You—who was that?”

“A-Yuan, we need to get to the dungeons,” Lan Wangji says. “All the forces are moving to the north side to Wei Ying.”

“Follow me,” Lan Xichen says.

In the chaos they descend, fumbling through empty, ornate rooms full of red silk and white lacquer. Golden lamps cover every wall and ceiling. There are no shadows to hide in. Lan Xichen leads them down, deep into the bowels of the fortress. Lan Wangji keeps expecting to find soldiers and finds instead only empty hallways with mirrors at the ends, enhancing the illusion of a palace that goes on forever. From here they can’t hear the sounds of the battle outside, the screams of the soldiers, the groans of the corpses.

When they come to the dungeon it is a long stone tunnel. “Nie Mingjue!” Lan Xichen yells, voice echoing in the hallway, and a voice calls back to him.

“No,” A-Yuan says, suddenly, his face paling, and Lan Wangji turns to look at him. The boy is staring at something at the other end of the hallway, his face shocked. “No!”

Lan Wangji turns in time to see him run to an object suspended from the ceiling. A cage hangs from a thick iron chain, with tight-set bars. Inside is a head, with long dark hair, the eyes completely black, the rest of the face hidden by thick iron chains. “A-Ning!” Wen Yuan shouts, and Lan Wangji stares at the head of the missing Ghost General. A-Yuan pulls unlocking talismans from his sleeves with shaking fingers, throwing them at the cage, and it shudders open. A-Yuan picks up the head, covered in iron chains. The eyes blink at him.

In a few swift strides, Lan Wangji crosses the room, raises his sword and strikes the chains, which fall from the head. The eyes close, and then open again.

“A-Yuan,” Wen Ning says, and A-Yuan’s eyes overflow with tears and he hugs the head to his chest.

Lan Wangji pulls a handful of unlocking talismans and gives them to Lan Xichen, and his brother nods as he goes back down the hallway, freeing the other cultivators.

“Wen Ning,” A-Yuan is crying, hugging the head. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, what did they do to you…”

“Sister is here,” Wen Ning says. “The last cell. Please, A-Yuan.”

Lan Wangji takes Wen Ning’s head and A-Yuan runs to the last cell, tears streaming down his face. He throws an unlocking talisman at the door and when the door opens he rushes inside, grabbing the thin woman who sits in the corner.

Wen Qing wraps her arms around A-Yuan. “Wen Yuan,” she says, her voice hoarse. “You’re here,” and then she’s crying as well.

“Wen Qing,” Lan Wangji says, from the door, and her eyes widen as she takes in Wen Ning’s head, in his arms. She lifts an arm from A-Yuan, wiping her face quickly. He bows to her, slightly. “I am Lan Wangji,” he says, and A-Yuan shakes his head, as if he is still getting used to the name. “I understand that you’re a doctor. Wei Wuxian has some parts of Wen Ning, his arms and legs. Do you know where the rest are?”

“Yes,” Wen Qing says, standing up. She looks pale but determined, and keeps one arm on A-Yuan. “Wen Chao took him apart in front of me, and kept some parts here. Follow me.”

"Wangji," a voice calls from down the hall, and Lan Wangji turns to see Lan Xichen, his hand outstretched. He inhales sharply as something comes flying towards him, glinting in the light, and Lan Wangji extends a hand to catch it. Bichen. His arm feels complete again, lighter, the gash in his left arm suddenly inconsequential. Bichen.

“Fight them," Lan Xichen says, quietly, meeting his eyes, and Lan Wangji bows his head in assent.

“Take everyone upstairs,” he says, in return, and Lan Xichen nods.

Lan Wangji follows Wen Qing and A-Yuan deeper into the dungeon, holding Wen Ning’s head. He tries to keep the eyes forward so that Wen Ning can see.

“I can feel my body,” Wen Ning says, quietly. “Wei-gongzi has some of it. And—there,” he says, when A-Yuan stops in front of a door.

The room has no light inside. A square of lantern light from the door falls across the floor in a long slant. On the opposite wall something moves. A-Yuan gasps as he runs towards the back wall. The body of Wen Ning is headless, armless, legless, dressed in black robes. Thick black chains cross his chest, attaching the body to the stone wall behind him. A-Yuan lifts a hand to the chains, his fingers trembling, and grips the thick iron with one hand.

“How do we put him back together?” Lan Wangji asks Wen Qing. She stands in the doorway, her face hidden in shadow. She walks forward to study the body, her face unchanging. Only a tremor of her hands as she crosses her arms shows any trace of emotion.

“The body wants to be together,” she says. “If we can get the pieces all together then it will mend itself.”

"Stand back, A-Yuan," Lan Wangji says, and as the boy steps back, Lan Wangji lifts Bichen and slices the chains away from the body. It slides down the wall, resting against the stone. Free of the chains, he can see the chest rising and falling with breath. The neck is attached to nothing.

"Please," Wen Ning says, sounding hesitant, and Lan Wangji uses his other hand to set the head atop the torso.

Light flares in the room. When it fades, Wen Ning's limbless body sits against the wall. His head is bowed. The room is silent.

"Brother," Wen Qing says, hesitantly. Wen Ning's head rolls right, and up, until he is staring straight at Wen Qing. His breathing is harsh.

"It's so strong," he breathes, voice barely audible. His eyes are entirely black now, no sclera visible, and resentful energy, barely visible in the shadowed room, falls from his head. Wen Ning screws his eyes shut, baring his teeth, and the black smoke coalesces around his body, thick and opaque. His body seems to flicker in and out of smoke. He stands up.

"I can get you to him," Wen Ning says to Lan Wangji.

Wen Qing stares at him, arms tightly crossed, tears shining, unspilled, in her eyes. "No," she says, flatly, but Wen Ning just looks at her, his face open and sad.

"Go to my brother," Lan Wangji says to Wen Qing. "A-Yuan, you have the transportation talismans still? You can get everyone to safety?"

Wen Yuan nods. Lan Wangji puts an hand on his shoulder, and the boy looks up at him. "Be brave and be safe," he says. "They are clan leaders, but their cores have been stolen. You can get them out. Can you do it?" he adds, looking into Wen Yuan's face.

Tears shine but don't spill over. "I can, Lan-qianbei!" A-Yuan says, his voice determined. "I won't let you down!"

"This is a stupid plan," Wen Qing says, crossing her arms more tightly.

"You and A-Yuan are the only ones who have spiritual energy now," Lan Wangji says. "Get the others back to their clans."

Wen Qing scowls, and blinks furiously. "Don't let me lose you again," she says to Wen Ning, her voice thick, and he bows his head.

She turns abruptly, and A-Yuan goes with her. It hurts a little bit to see A-Yuan reach for Wen Qing's hand, looking up at her, as they walk away. Better for him, Lan Wangji thinks, that he doesn't look back now.

———

They follow the hallways back out, Wen Ning navigating the castle without words, without touch. When he moves, that thick smoke of demonic energy moves with him, as if he can send it out at will. At times even his body and head seem insubstantial, dissolving into and out of that black smoke as he leads them out of the fortress.

Outside it's storm-dark. Warm wind is blowing fiercely, from the south, carrying the faint smell of sulfur from the lava deep below the fortress. Overhead the Stygian Tiger demon has grown in size, still, the swirling dark sphere almost as large as the castle, hanging low. Wei Wuxian has advanced now, to the foot of the white stairs leading up from the castle gates. No living soldiers are anywhere close to him. Wen soldiers at the gates charge toward him and fall without coming close.

On this side of the fortress stairs go all the way from the top pavilion of the palace to the gates at the bottom, wide terraces breaking off at intervals, every terrace filled with soldiers. Wen Ning's body is still wreathed in resentful energy, obscuring his missing limbs, and Lan Wangji follows tight behind him as they descend the dark stairs.

"Can you--can you shield?" Wen Ning asks, hesitantly, when they come to the first terrace, Wen soldiers clutching swords turning towards them. Lan Wangji nods and puts up a tight array around himself. Wen Ning watches, making sure the lines are glowing brightly, and when he is satisfied that Lan Wangji is safe, he explodes.

Demonic energy surges out of him in every direction. Lan Wangji's vision goes dark, like he's surrounded by thick black smoke, pushing at the surface of his shield. In the smoke he hears sudden screaming, and the sound of metal clashing, and heavy, thick thuds. Then there is no sound at all. He waits calmly, hand on the hilt of his sword. He thinks of Chenqing and the lantern in that qiakun pouch until the smoke clears.

 When he can see again, the wind blowing that smoke to the north, the ground around them is covered with dead soldiers, eyes staring blankly ahead. No mark is on their bodies. Dark lines creep up the side of Wen Ning's neck.

"It is very strong," he says, in one exhalation, tilting his head back. His black eyes fixate on the Stygian tiger demon.

Lan Wangji says nothing but removes his protection array. They go forward and down.

They only go a few steps before Wen Ning stops them. "There," he says, and Lan Wangji looks down. Something is in the center of that staircase, held down by two swords that are deeply embedded in the stone. Lan Wangji takes two steps closer and registers it only obliquely, the recognizition distorted by the angle. A head. A head is nailed into the ground of those white stairs. Two swords sit at angles to each other, blade pierced deeply through the place where eyes should be. It's Wen Zhuliu's head. Lan Wangji grips the hilt of Bichen more tightly. "Look there," Wen Ning says, quietly, and Lan Wangji looks where he indicates. Something is nailed into the wall, on either side of the stairs. Red drips down the white fortress wall. Wei Wuxian has killed Wen Zhuliu, taken his limbs apart and pinned them to the walls of the Heavenly Nightless City. A sword pierces through each core-melting palm, one on either side of the wide stairs. Between them, in the ground, another sword is through his heart on his torso, another through his groin. His legs are scattered farther away, two more swords through each thigh. None of the limbs are anywhere near each other. Blood drips down onto the white stone.

Something happens over their head in a rush of wind, and Lan Wangji turns to watch a dark shadow sweep down onto terraces below them, between them and Wei Wuxian.

A figure in red kneels on a terrace. As Lan Wangji watches, it draws up slowly to standing. He recognizes Wen Ruohan from description alone.

"Has the Yiling Laozu come to try and kill me?" he asks, his voice carrying over the battlefield. Soldiers on either side of him scream.

Wei Wuxian stands below him on the stairs, eyes red. His hands are limp at his side. The Stygian tiger demon swirls in the air above him, dark and pulsing. He doesn't answer, staring at Wen Ruohan, head tilted slightly to one side. With his eyes blazing it's impossible to tell what he's looking at, if he can see anything at all. The soldiers's screams of defiance fade, as the moment draws on too long.

Wei Wuxian blinks, one low, slow blink, and his eyes closing is like a powerful light being turned off. Murmurs erupt from the soldiers on either side of Wen Ruohan.

"No," Wei Wuxian says, suddenly, opening his eyes again, fixing them on Wen Ruohan. "I think they should."

The soldiers begin muttering again, moving, but Wei Wuxian reaches to his belt and pulls the black dizi, the red tassel swaying from the end. He raises the flute to his lips and begins to play.

Battlefields are not silent. Lan Wangji shouldn’t be able to hear it, the moment that Wei Wuxian puts the flute Chenqing to his lips, and that high, wild note drips over the battlefield.

It picks up slowly, like a wind gathering speed. It curls among the Wen cultivators, the dead bodies strewn across the stairs and terraces. Their bodies fallen, bloodless and pale, start to move. Limbs twitch, in response to the dizi tune. Under the note he hears the living cultivators start to yell as corpses rise, slowly, jerking, from the ground.

They move in unison. Like a dance. Dead arms, swinging from shoulders in wild arcs, in imperfect control, uncaring to the forces of swords that slash at their bloodless flesh. When impaled, they grip the wrists of the soldiers on the other side of the swords, using the leverage to pull the soldiers’ faces closer to their teeth. When they bite down blood drips from their mouths.

 "Wen Ning," Lan Wangji says, his eyes fixed on Wei Wuxian. Wen Ning's eyes are wholly black and the smoke pouring off his body is thicker than before. His eyes are fixated on Wei Wuxian, like he can sense his own limbs, somewhere near the Yiling Laozu. "Can you get me to Wen Ruohan?"

"Yes," Wen Ning says.

Lan Wangji reaches into the qiakun pouch, hands shaking. He grips the lantern, holding it in his right hand, and Chenqing's flames are bare flickers in the metal under his hand. "Do it," he says, and Wen Ning is grabbing him them, catching him in demonic energy that burns and freezes his skin at the same time, holding him unable to move. They hurtling fast toward Wen Ruohan, the red figure standing in the midst of the corpses, sword out, unmoving. "NOW," Lan Wangji shouts, at Wen Ning, and drops onto Wen Ruohan from above, his free arm gripping the cultivator tightly. Wen Ruohan only has time to turn his face to him, expression cold, before Lan Wangji turns his face towards Wei Wuxian.

It all happens in one moment, like time has stretched out. Lan Wangji looks past Wen Ruohan's face, tightening in cold fury. Wen Ning has flown to Wei Wuxian's side, resentment gathering at his hands, suddenly attached to his body, but Wei Wuxian ignores him. Wei Wuxian's eyes have opened wider, staring at Lan Wangji, flute dropped an inch from his lips. Lan Wangji catches Wei Ying’s eyes, meeting that blazing crimson glare. “Wei Ying!” he shouts, and time speeds up again. He feels Wen Ruohan twist in his grip as Wei Wuxian drops the flute, holding it to one side, his mouth opening as if he would call to Lan Wangji. But he gets no chance. Lan Wangji reaches and hurls Bichen, as fast as he can, and he knows the moment that the flute splits from the wild flicker in Wei Wuxian’s eyes.

Light erupts across the battlefield. The lantern in his right hand blazes as fierce as the sun, warm white light, so bright that he has to shut his eyes, and even the darkness of the Stygian Tiger amulet seems dimmed. In the split second of light, before Chenqing dissipates, he feels his own core shift, feels something cool and tingling flow into his hands. The demon kept the bargain, he thinks, but it takes him less than a heartbeat to plunge his hand into Wen Ruohan’s chest.

Across the battlefield corpses freeze and then fall to the ground, some still attached to the bodies of their victims. Wen soldiers scream defiance. But Lan Wangji cannot hear them.

He is standing in a dark room, with fissures in the floor, and golden cores are floating all around them. It feels like there are hundreds of them. Lan Wangji reaches among them. Touching one gives him a glimpse of a face, unrecognizable. He touches another, and another, and another, lost in the sea of unknown faces, unable to know who could be dead and who could be alive. The hall is dark, and empty, and Lan Wangji stares at the cores floating around him and thinks, and thinks. Eventually he stares down at his hands, then up at the floating lights, and makes a decision.

He takes the cores and begins moving them into his own body, shoving the balls of light into his chest. Every one feels like a bucket of cold water poured over his head, a shock that runs from his head to the soles of his feet, then added power surging, thrumming through him. After two his senses are tingling. After ten he feels like the sun itself, bursting with energy. But he keeps going, pausing at every face to see if he knows it, pausing to look for Jiang Wanyin, for Lan Xichen, for Wen Ruohan. When he finds Lan Xichen’s he pushes it next to his heart, immersed in its light, and feels his all the love for his brother beating in his heart. Lan Wangji continues until the number of floating points of light dwindles to one.

The last one is Wen Ruohan’s core, burning old and orange. It gutters in and out, like a dying flame. But why nurture your own core? Lan Wangji thinks. When you could use fresh cores from young, strong cultivators—an endless supply—

He takes it between both hands and crushes it until there’s nothing left, his hands shaking with anger. The righteous anger in his heart burns, physical and painful.

Lan Wangji closes his eyes, and then pulls up, pulling his hand out of Wen Ruohan’s chest. The light on the battlefield has changed, somehow. He doesn't know how long that took. Lan Wangji has never felt like this in his entire life. His hands are shaking. There are more people here, now, cultivators streaking out of the sky, landing among the Wen dead bodies. It's hard for Lan Wangji to see them, his vision unfocused and white, like he is staring through a fire. His gaze lands on the metal lantern beside him, lightless now, a small, pulsing lump in the bottom. Lan Wangji kneels, staring down at Wen Ruohan, coreless, gasping harshly, as if he can't breathe. Lan Wangji shuts his eyes, but the light that blinds him doesn't abate. He holds up his hand and Bichen flies to him. Without thinking he pushes Bichen through the center of Wen Ruohan's chest. Blood pours onto the ground. When Lan Wangji opens his eyes again, Wen Ruohan's face is still.

Lan Wangji grips the lantern, not trusting his hands to open it without crushing the precious thing inside. Standing is an impossible effort, his legs shaking. The light is so bright now. It seems to be coming from himself.

“Lan Wangji,” someone says. “Hanguang-jun!”

Lan Wangji is shining so brightly now that he is casting shadows, unable to control the cores inside of him. His curse is gone. Everything is gone. Lan Wangji is surprised that his body still exists at all. Maybe, having hundreds of years to get used to them all one by one, Wen Ruohan could handle this, could control them better, but Lan Wangji feels like he is being ripped apart. His self is expanding outward, stretching out from his body in waves he can barely control. He can see the waves of light bringing down soldiers across the battlefield, men falling to their knees, clutching their heads, screaming. He is hurting them. He stares over at Wei Wuxian, who has fallen to his knees, hand clutched to his chest. His heart beats in the lantern in Lan Wangji’s clenched fist. As he watches resentful energy swirls so thick around him that all Lan Wangji can see is his eyes. He is staring at Lan Wangji, his gaze resolute, unmoving, until the demonic energy covers him completely.

The Stygian tiger seal floats over Wei Wuxian, high over their heads, pouring resentment onto the Yiling Laozu that billows like fog, falling down the stairs, filling the battlefield. The smoke veers away from Lan Wangji. Lan Wangji raises his head, staring into that dark sphere, still growing in size. It would take hundreds of cultivators to cleanse that resentful energy, hundreds of golden cores working in perfect unison. It would take hundreds of cultivators layering complex arrays on a scale that has never been done before, a display of magic so intricate that his uncle would say there would be no way to purify it, that it would have to be sealed up.

But he has hundreds of golden cores, after all.

Lan Wangji closes his eyes, and stops trying to hold back the energy. It feels like a relief to let go. It only hurts a little bit.

Light flares up from him, into the black sphere of the Stygian Tiger demon.

———

When the light fades, Lan Wangji stands on the white stone of Heavenly Nightless City, Wen Ruohan’s corpse at his feet. The air above them is empty.

“Hanguang-jun,” someone says. He can’t tell who. “Lan Wangji, Hanguang-jun.”

Lan Wangji feels fuzzy. It’s hard to concentrate after the surge of power, hard to even see with the after-images on his vision. All his nerves feel burnt out and quiet now, like ash left after a fire. How long did that take? Wei Ying’s heart, how long can it beat like this? His hand touches the cool metal of the lantern. He ignores the corpse of Wen Ruohan, and looks down. Wei Wuxian is lying the white stone, demonic energy still pouring out of his mouth, his chest. His eyes are closed. Jiang Wanyin crouches by his side, his face contorted with grief.

Lan Wangji walks to them, down the stairs, his steps heavy. His white robes brush the white stairs and where he walks there are no bloodstains. In his left hand is the lantern, dark and empty now, with Wei Wuxian’s heart beating weakly against the metal.

“What—what is that—” Jiang Wanyin asks. His eyes flicker up to Lan Wangji’s, but he blinks, then drops his eyes from Lan Wangji’s face. “Hanguang-jun?” he asks.

Lan Wangji ignores him, because Wei Wuxian is opening his eyes. “Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian chokes out. He looks like death, like he is dead. All the crimson is gone from his eyes and blood drips from his lips as he speaks. “You—you—”

And Lan Zhan says nothing, but drops on his knees next to Wei Ying. He reaches down and opens the lantern, dropping the casing on the ground, and lifts up the beating heart. It flutters, weakly, against his palm. It’s so easy now to bathe it in spiritual energy, the power that still flows through him. The heart beats faster, more strongly.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says, locking eyes with him, and then pushes the heart into Wei Ying. He presses his palms flat to Wei Ying’s chest, and energy radiates out of him, surrounding Wei Ying, pulling his heart back into him. Wei Ying gasps, shudders, then lies flat on the ground, eyes closed. His heart, through his robes, beats steady under Lan Wangji’s hands.

Jiang Wanyin stares at Wei Wuxian, then back up at Lan Wangji.

“What did you do to him—” he starts to ask, and then Lan Wangji grabs his shoulder and reaches into his chest.

If Wen Ruohan’s soul is a cave than Jiang Wanyin’s is a wide room. Lan Wangji has never been to Lotus Pier, but he supposes that this is what it would look like, with sunlight shining across pale wood flooring and purple silk on the walls. In the middle of the room, the golden core that was Wei Wuxian’s pulses, bright. Lan Wangji’s eyes fix on it as he walks. It seems to spin, bobbing a little bit. Lan Wangji reaches out and touches Wei Wuxian’s golden core.

It doesn’t feel like the other cores did, the ones that pulsed weakly, giving off memories of their former owners. It leaps into his arms, settling against his chest, fierce and bright, like it was waiting for him.

When it touches him Lan Wangji sees him. Wei Wuxian, fifteen years old, his eyes bright, running across a field and laughing. He sees Wei Wuxian, holding a sword, both eyes closed, power radiating from him. He sees Wei Wuxian pull back on a bow and arrow, arms taut and strong. He watches a flash of Wei Ying, his hair half up, turning and giving him a smile so bright he feels his heart clench. Lan Wangji blinks, and the image is gone, and he is clutching Wei Wuxian’s golden core tightly to his chest.

Lan Wangji takes a breath. He reaches inside himself, where those cores buzz like fireflies, muted now, exhausted from the cleansing. But will recover. He moves among them softly, running his hand over them, until he comes to one that gives off memories of Jiang Wanyin’s face. Lan Wangji lifts it and pulls, up, out of himself, into that purple-silk room of Jiang Wanyin, Wei Wuxian’s brother, a man he has never met. Lan Wangji lifts his left hand up, releasing Jiang Wanyin’s core back into his chest. When it settles the room looks different, the light on the walls a different color, like the sun is shining.

Lan Wangji pushes out of Jiang Wanyin, hand coming out of his chest. Jiang Wanyin stares at Lan Wangji. “What the fuck was that,” he says, his voice hoarse, breathless.

“Restoration,” Lan Wangji says.

Wei Wuxian has staggered up to sit on his elbows, staring at Lan Wangji. His eyes fall to the golden core in Lan Wangji’s hands, pulsing brightly. “Lan Zhan,” he says, helplessly, staring at him. His eyes look alive, no longer glassy, even through the dirt of the battle. Lan Wangji’s heart in his chest beats, and beats, and his eyes trail down to the pulse at Wei Wuxian’s neck, at the junction where his throat and his shoulder meet.

“This may hurt,” Lan Wangji says, staring at him, and then, hands shaking only slightly, he presses the golden core down into Wei Wuxian’s abdomen.

———

It doesn’t feel like anything else. It’s not a dark cave, or a sunlit room. It’s the Burial Mounds. It’s jagged trees rising from the ground, stagnant ponds full of rotting water, resentful energy rising from the ground like smoke. Lan Wangji holds the core tightly, helpless, overwhelmed, that this is Wei Ying’s soul—and then he lets go.

Something happens, in those few seconds, something that feels like feathers brushing over Lan Wangji’s skin, and then a gentle, contented sigh. Wei Ying’s core, warm in his hand, flies home, leaving his palm curled and half empty.

Before him, the sun comes out. Grass spreads out green from the center of that place, the trees exploding in blossoms, then leaves, sending flower petals flying through the air. Before his eyes the water runs clear, plants curling upward to the surface to burst into lotus flowers. The resentful energy curls in the shadows, hanging close to the trees, but makes no moves to stop the explosion of life and color that surrounds him.

Strong, he thinks. Wei Ying must have been so strong, to have this taken from him, to create such a void, to give such a change. Lan Wangji closes his eyes, feeling the warmth on his face, and then feels Wei Ying tugging him back, back up, and his vision clouds again.

———

“Lan Wangji,” Lan Xichen says, when he can hear again, “you found Bichen, you found me—”

“Wei Wuxian! You didn’t say you had the missing prince in your castle the whole time!” a cultivator in Nie robes is saying.

"Nie Huaisang, you bastard, you didn't tell me you were in communication with Wei Wuxian the whole time!" Jiang Wanyin yells at him.

“You mean that for decades, the Core-Melting Hand was giving the stolen cores to Wen Ruohan?” Nie Mingjue is yelling.

“And you! Wei Wuxian, you asshole, how could you not talk to me for six months after you disappeared!” Jiang Wanyin is yelling. “Jiejie and I were so worried about you— ”

“Wen Ning!” A-Yuan is shouting, running to them, throwing his arms around Wen Ning.

Wei Wuxian is kneeling in front of him, staring at Lan Wangji’s eyes, unable to hide the delight on his face. His hands are warm in Lan Wangji’s hands, and Lan Wangji cannot stop himself from gripping tightly, feeling Wei Wuxian’s heartbeats. “Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, Lan Wangji,” he says, then makes a tiny frown. “Oh no, that’s terrible, that makes it sound like I’m mad at you, oh Lan Zhan, my Lan Zhan, you—you made a deal with Chenqing, didn’t you?”

“Your eyes are back to normal,” Lan Wangji says, staring at Wei Wuxian’s face, and he can feel the smile on his face, the wetness at the corners of his eyes.

“Wei Wuxian!” Jiang Wanyin is yelling again, he never stops yelling Lan Wangji would think if he had time to think of anything besides Wei Wuxian's smile. Jiang Wanyin is pulling at Wei Wuxian's sleeves and complaining, “what the fuck did your boyfriend do to me—” and Lan Xichen is staring at his brother’s face and smiling softly.

“Your body is back!” A-Yuan yells at Wen Ning, his arms wrapped around the fierce corpse. Wen Ning hugs him back gently.

“You must be Wen Qing,” Lan Xichen says. “Your sect is in disarray. I think we should talk about what comes next for the Wens.”

“Can we get our cores back?" Nie Mingjue demands.

"I believe that Wangji has the cores now," Lan Xichen says, quietly.

“Jiang Cheng,” Nie Huaisang says, grabbing Jiang Wanyin’s arm, but he ignores him.

“Wei Wuxian! Stop making eyes at your boyfriend and answer me!”

Wei Wuxian ignores them all. He is still staring at Lan Wangji’s face, his face soft and smiling so widely it threatens to break. Light shines in his eyes.

“Stop it, all of you, I’m busy,” he says. “I’m an evil cultivator, remember? I’m going to kidnap this missing prince I found and steal his heart. ”

“Yes,” Lan Wangji says, softly, and Wei Wuxian laughs, a laugh that ends in a small sob, tears spilling from the corners of his eyes, his smile enormous on his face.

“I think they’re occupied, Jiang Cheng,” Nie Huaisang says, pulling Jiang Wanyin away. “Give them a moment.” Lan Xichen smiles and turns away. Neither Wei Wuxian nor Lan Wangji turns to look at them.

“Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, tightening his grip. They are kneeling and staring into each other’s eyes, kneeling on the white stone atop the Heavenly Nightless City, and overhead the clouds are starting to break.

“I wrecked the castle,” Lan Wangji says, staring at Wei Wuxian. Wei Wuxian laughs wetly, his eyes crinkling up, and Lan Wangji’s heart beats faster. “But I did want to sleep with you, in your bedroom,” Lan Wangji says.

“Oh my god Lan Zhan, you can’t say things like that, you’re going to destroy me,” Wei Wuxian says, squeezing Lan Wangji’s hands. “You just sitting there in the sunlight, telling me that you want to sleep with me, being the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life—”

“Come back to Gusu with me,” Lan Wangji says.

“You want me in Cloud Recesses?” Wei Wuxian says, his thumbs rubbing small circles on Lan Wangji’s hands. “Me, the evil and terrifying Yiling Laozu, demonic cultivator, chaos incarnate, who broke every rule that Lan Qiren ever made me copy out—”

“I want Wei Ying with me,” Lan Wangji says, and Wei Wuxian’s smile is as wide as it has ever been, as bright as day breaking over Qishan. “Will you come?”

“Yes,” says Wei Wuxian, and his smile is so lovely that Lan Wangji cannot stop his own smile, cannot stop the tears at the corners of his eyes. “Oh, Lan Zhan, you—!” Wei Wuxian says, blinking tears away from his own eyes, and then Lan Wangji kisses him, gentle and lovely in the sunlight. Wei Wuxian's lips are soft, and warm, and he can feel Wei Ying's sharp intake of breath against his mouth before he deepens the kiss. He can feel Wei Wuxian’s heart, beating wildly against his chest, for the first time. It is perfect.

And, then, eventually, they come down, hands linked together, and finish ending the war.