Chapter Text
It’s too cold.
Xie Lian’s thoughts are scattered, broken fragments—nothing cohesive, just pieces slipping through his grasp like water between fingers.
He can’t remember where he is, or how he got here.
The silence feels suffocating, heavy, and there’s a constant sound—
drip, drip, drip—that echoes, almost rhythmic, yet maddening.
His body—does it even exist?
His skin feels numb, as though it has abandoned him, and he can’t tell if he’s standing or lying flat.
The sensation of weightlessness, of being caught somewhere between life and oblivion, makes it impossible to discern what’s real.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The cold gnaws at him. It feels like it’s in his bones, in his soul, creeping into the very core of him.
Is he even alive?
He doesn’t know.
His chest is tight, shallow breaths struggling to fill him with life, but it’s hard to tell if he’s breathing or if it’s just the echo of a long-lost sensation.
San Lang…
Where is he?
His name lingers on the tip of his tongue, but it’s a faint whisper, fading as quickly as it comes.
His thoughts swirl, hazy, fragmented, nothing solid to hold onto.
He tries to open his eyes, but they’re too heavy, too unwilling to obey.
The darkness presses down, and the cold digs deeper, gnawing at whatever remnants of strength he has left.
He’s slipping.
It’s so easy, so tempting, to let go, to fade into the nothingness.
His mind drifts, searching for an anchor, but it’s too far, lost in the fog of his thoughts.
The drip, drip, drip fills the void, and his body feels further and further away, as though it’s not his anymore.
The cold. The silence. The drip.
Where is San Lang?
______
His consciousness stirs again, weak, fragile. For a brief moment, there’s something—something more than the cold.
He thinks he’s wrapped in silks, soft but suffocating, or maybe he’s been buried alive.
The pressure around him feels wrong, too tight, as if the very air is too thick to breathe.
But no—no, it’s not the air.
It’s the cold, creeping deeper into his skin again.
The drip. Drip. Drip.
The sound never stops. It’s maddening.
It fills his mind, driving away thoughts, drowning him in its ceaseless rhythm.
He can’t tell if it’s real or just his mind breaking under the strain of whatever’s happening to him.
His breath is still shallow, a struggle, but it’s still there—he’s still here, still breathing.
A noise, faint but persistent, pulls at the edges of his awareness.
He can’t grasp it fully—his mind is too foggy, slipping through the cracks.
It could be chains, shuffling against the floor, dragging with a metallic clink.
Or maybe it’s nothing at all. His thoughts, too slow, too blurred to make sense of it.
Maybe he’s dead he thinks. Maybe he’s gone mad, as the chill consumes him.
Everything is a haze.
His chest aches, his limbs stiff and heavy, a dull throb that doesn’t let him forget.
His body hurts, far more this time than before, as though he’s been through something brutal.
The pain lingers, persistent and unforgiving.
San Lang. Where are you?
His mind reaches for that thought, for the familiar name, the warmth it brings, but it slips from him too easily.
His body trembles, reacting to the effort of reaching for the thought—just a thought—and it sends a jolt of agony through him.
But something, some stubborn part of him, still clings to it.
Focus. He has to focus.
With effort that feels like it might break him, he inches open one eye.
It’s a small victory, the first step towards something real.
The world around him swims into view, but it’s wrong—everything’s wrong.
The red… it’s everywhere.
Red like the blood he knows too well, but it’s not just the colour.
It’s like the world is bleeding out, stained in a way he can’t quite comprehend.
His eye barely opens, barely takes it in, before the weight of everything—of the cold, of the pain, of the endless drip—pulls him under again.
His mind is too tired to hold onto it. He fades.
San Lang… where are you?
______
The screams cut through the fog, sharp and frantic.
It takes him a moment to realise that the shrieks are his own, torn from him in a way that feels so foreign, so distant.
His throat burns, but it’s a slow, burning thing—everything is slow, like wading through a sea of thick, unrelenting fog.
The terror in the sound of his own voice makes him flinch, but it’s too late to stop.
The noise slips out of him, just like the rest of it.
It’s not cold anymore.
The air around him is heavy, suffocating, and there’s a heat, a scorching heat pressing in from all sides.
He’s drowning in it, feeling it sear through his skin, making it feel raw, as though he’s been thrown into the heart of a furnace.
He doesn’t know how to breathe in this heat, but his body doesn’t give him a choice.
His chest tightens, his limbs ache, but his mind can’t hold onto anything, anything but the overwhelming sensation of fire.
A jolt of clarity, fleeting and disorienting, crashes through his disarrayed thoughts, like a momentary glimpse through a foggy window.
He needs to focus—he needs to remember—something, anything.
But the words on the tip of his tongue slip away before he can catch them.
The name he craves to speak is there, just out of reach, a whisper caught in his throat.
But then, there’s something else.
A feeling, soft, warm, and steady.
A hand.
Cradling his head gently, a touch that’s familiar, that grounds him in a way nothing else can.
The heat is still there, suffocating, but the touch… The touch is everything.
It pulls him out of the chaos, makes him aware, even as his body screams with discomfort.
Death? Is it you? Have you come to take me?
He thinks the thought, distantly, like an echo in his mind, but it’s so easy to get lost again.
To slip back into the nothingness.
The idea of it as always is tempting. But he forces himself to fight it once more, forces himself to stay with the touch, to hold on to the warmth for just a moment longer.
With the effort of something desperate, he squeezes open one eye, and the world floods in.
Everything is so bright, so painfully white, that it blinds him.
He can’t make sense of it. His vision is hazy, unfocused, a blur.
His mind is too fogged to process anything.
Then, the world shifts—shifts beneath him, around him, but he doesn’t know how.
And before he can even understand what’s happening, the darkness calls again.
He fades.
______
When Xie Lian wakes up, the world feels clearer—sharper, yet still carrying that distant, unfocused edge.
There’s a strange calm that lingers, like the air has been cleared after a storm, and his mind is slow to catch up, still fuzzy in the corners.
His thoughts, scattered as they are, don’t bother him.
He can’t remember anything before waking up, but that doesn’t matter. It’s fine. It’s always fine.
He takes a deep breath, feeling the soft linens around him, the cool sensation of silk against his skin.
His body is heavy but comfortable, and the warmth surrounding him feels like a balm for his confusion.
The bed—this bed—feels familiar, even if he can’t place why.
The scent of incense, faint but present, fills the space, and he inhales it deeply, grounding himself further.
His eyes flutter open, and there, beside him, is someone. His husband.
Jun Wu.
A smile tugs at the corner of Xie Lian’s lips without thought.
There’s a strange peace in this moment, like it’s always been this way.
He doesn’t question it. He doesn’t need to.
The feeling of being here, in this bed, beside Jun Wu, is natural.
A gentle warmth fills his chest, curling into something like contentment.
He doesn’t know what happened before, or why he feels this way, but it doesn’t matter.
Not right now.
Right now, it’s enough to be here, with Jun Wu beside him, the silk sheets enveloping him in comfort.
He cuddles deeper into the warmth of the bed, into the soft silks, allowing the haze of sleep to linger a little longer. It feels right.
Everything feels right.