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With Mid-Autumn approaching soon, we, your humble servants of Yiling, would like to demonstrate our thanks by honouring the Two Violet Dragons in our lantern parade, from this year forward and every year afterward.

It would be our greatest honour to host the dual heroes of Yunmeng.

The Thirteenth Year. Yiling, Yunmeng.
Wen Qing

Neat purple robes, sparse silver ornaments, a sword by the hip: this was what he wore on most days. This was what he wore when he read through the letter, short and simple and typical as it was.

This was what he wore when he placed it aside with all the others.

Yiling was a small city at the foot of the Burial Mounds, which was undoubtedly an unfortunate landmark to have, but their soil had been improving by leaps and bounds. Their peaches were something of a delicacy, and nobody knew why or how or even when it happened.

Big, firm, white peaches with blossoms that bloomed early and died late. The merchants packaged them in fine oak boxes burned with the emblem of a tassel. It was always a pleasant surprise to receive one of those silk-blanketed boxes as a gift.

Yiling wasn’t so far.

The fine wood beneath his fingers was worn and smooth. Sharp edges ground away by his father, his father before him, and all their ancestors: memories lost to time. To late nights and aching backs.

Hmm. Peaches. They would make for a nice offering. He always liked peaches, didn’t he?

Ah, but—

So much to do. So many events to put in order, especially with Mid-Autumn coming up. Every lantern on the river would be lit for brighter wishes: health, prosperity, protection, lives stretched as long as time and even further. They would lower one together and pray for strength. Then they would forget their prayers and work with their hands. Prayers were things that lasted for a moment and were gone. That was why they set them onto the water. By morning they were gone, and the sun would rise on a place built by time, mistakes, quiet tears, shaking whispers over cold tea, and good, honest—mostly—hard work.

Yes, but—

Who on earth is he?

It took him by surprise. He stopped tapping on the table. He reached for the letter again. It smelled of dirt, the good, healthy kind, wet with rain and broken-down bits of organic stuff. The ink had long since dried, but each stroke seemed to glisten under light, like great big tears that stuck and grew into bulbs. Come spring and they would flower—

Who?

Lotus flowers, he thought. They loved lotus flowers. Everyone did. But his fondness was warm and strange. He loved them casually, even though he was a guest disciple, and he would address them with all the familiarity of someone who had spent their entire life here.

And then he left.

He had left for someplace, hadn’t he? Gusu? Lanling? Someplace far, perhaps even further than anyone in their country had travelled. Somewhere letters wouldn’t reach.

The thought was in his head now. He had left. He had been missed. But childhood memories had been buried under years of war and work, and now...

They’d be the same age. He would be a couple of months older. He never acted like it, for all his mischief. They were fifteen, sixteen, and then seventeen, going on seventy.

He left before the fires.

Had he pushed them into the river? He always fell in. He always said he was the fastest swimmer, sticking his head out between tall stems and round roots. They had hidden in the river, once. By the training grounds. Or—no, it was just an accident. Why would they need to hide?

And where did he go? Why did he leave?

He loved Mid-Autumn. He would be the first to pick the lotus pods, snacking on seeds and helping the servants grind the paste. They never let him do anything more than work with the mortar and pestle and mold. Wei Wuxian, they would say, your taste will be the death of us.

Wei Wuxian. Ah, so that was his name. Wei Wuxian.

He could almost hear it now, between all the sounds of the past.

Jiang Cheng!

“We should invite Wei Wuxian to Lotus Pier,” said Jiang Cheng, on a particularly rainy and humid night.

To be perfectly and particularly accurate, the man who spoke was not simply Jiang Cheng; he was a man who went by many names, though it seemed that nowadays people were able to stitch together any words involving storms or greatness into new appellations; these included the Revered Master of Lotus Pier, Sandu Shengshou, the First Violet Dragon, Harbinger of Storms, He Who is Blind and Deaf and Mute in the Face of Evil, The Tearing Gales, The Eyes of the Storm, Executioner of All Things Foul and Monstrous, the Proud Jiang Wanyin.

But he preferred to do away with the ridiculously long list of monikers when he thought of himself. Jiang Cheng would do just fine.

With a brush in hand, a splatter of ink on her ears from where she had brushed her hair back, and lightning-cracked scars on her fingers, Jiang Yanli turned to face her only brother. She thought long and hard.

“I’m not sure I know who that is,” said the Honoured Master of Lotus Pier, Flower of the Timeless River, the Second Violet Dragon, Guardian of Peace and Harmony, She Who Heralds Lightning, The Heart of the Storm, The Quiet and Calm in the Deep, Maiden of the Rain, Jiang Yanli, who always insisted you call her by that last title if you wanted to make things a tad less tense.

“Wei Wuxian,” Jiang Cheng insisted. “You know,” he continued, waving his own brush in the air as if writing out the name would help them remember. It didn’t. “He was here a while back. He was...”

“Bright?” Jiang Yanli suggested.

“Of course,” said Jiang Cheng, very sure of himself.

“And playful,” Jiang Yanli continued.

“Too playful, some would say,” said Jiang Cheng. He snorted. It was a snort that had meaning: memories were brushing arms with him, and a bit too warmly at that. The brush twirled between his fingers. “I would say,” he elaborated.

“And he had,” said Jiang Yanli, brows furrowed, “grey eyes and a sideways smile?”

“Always lopsided,” Jiang Cheng agreed.

The two cocked their heads a bit to the side, braids falling in the exact same way they had for the better part of sixteen years years. They couldn’t be bothered to keep their hair up this late at night; they couldn’t be bothered to pick the curls out of their hair, either. So the braids hung like vines, or climbed up like great brambles of ivy, and they followed the curve of a smile the two were fondly and accurately imagining. Or maybe it was remembering. It was all the same, anyway.

“My,” said Jiang Yanli, once the vision of cheerful lips had formed firmly enough in her mind. “It really has been a while, hasn’t it?”

“Sixteen years, give or take,” Jiang Cheng said.

“Then he’s missed a lot,” said Jiang Yanli, mildly disappointed, though she wasn’t sure why.

They spoke with confidence in themselves, and growing confidence in this Wei Wuxian. It was difficult to pinpoint one year out of the thirty-something they had lived: time was a fickle thing, tangible in the way water and sand were. A clap of laughter would resound in their ears, and it was a chorus of bells that rang like thunder one moment and left with the wind another. A red ribbon would flutter by, and it was a blinding bolt of lightning that faded from the back of their eyes in an instant.

Memories were waiting at the edges of things, beckoning to them. Had you told them they were fifteen-sixteen-seventeen again, they might have half-believed you, for a moment.

“I think,” began Jiang Cheng, “that he wouldn’t mind celebrating Mid-Autumn with us.”

“Yes,” said Jiang Yanli. “I think that would be nice.” She blinked once, twice, and by the third time, the image of a boy shovelling lotus-seed paste mooncakes into a water-logged, sun-dried, star-broken smile vanished. Yet it lingered, like low mist upon the river, and it made her feel uneasy.

But nighttime was always a deceiving thing, and they had been working at treaties and charters and contracts for so long that each new page felt like a personal insult. Turning the page was always accompanied with two things: a subdued groan or sigh, and a feeling reminiscent of pulling off a scab only for it to start bleeding over all your nice robes.

“I think we’ve done quite enough for tonight,” said Jiang Yanli.

Jiang Cheng yawned. It was a big, mighty yawn, like he could swallow the moon whole and still be hungry. “Tomorrow night, then,” he said.

“Every night, you mean,” Jiang Yanli corrected gently.

Like clockwork, or rather, like the methodical rise and ebb of the river, the two pulled their fingers through their fallen braids. Gentle hands washed the inkstones and flipped them onto clean cloth to let them dry. Jiang Cheng set aside their work for the night and laid out their work for tomorrow.

The two masters of Lotus Pier were busy people, dreadfully busy if they were to admit it, and it was something they held with pride and disdain. Work meant that they were productive and growing, always on the up and up, and work meant that they were driving themselves into the ground again and again.

Nobody said rebuilding a home and maintaining it would be easy. Nobody told the Two Violet Dragons, who weren’t anything close to dragons when the words could have been imparted unto them, that fixing up the place they so comfortably and deeply treasured around would take all the efforts of their ancestors combined.

It was the sort of information that would’ve been nice to know beforehand. But, the siblings decided, it wouldn’t have done them much good to know that their entire worlds would burn. It would’ve made them angry. Or sad. And it did, for a while.

“I wonder where Wei Wuxian is now,” Jiang Cheng said, after he had laid the new sheets out to dry.

“Knowing him, he’d be travelling the world,” was Jiang Yanli’s answer. “He’d be helping people, laughing, having fun, and...”

“Enjoying freedom,” they both finished.

And they stared a little while at each other, the two dragons of Lotus Pier.

Memories were turning. They were falling over each other, the right dragging over the wrong, and for a moment, the two wondered why they had imagined a boy with red eyes. Grey, they both decided, was the colour of ash, stormy skies, river stones, and Wei Wuxian’s entire being.

They parted, then, after all their matters had been cleaned and sorted for the day. Jiang Cheng went one way. Jiang Yanli went the other.

“Good night,” left their lips in a practiced open-and-close, and sleep came well after night did.

But before that, they thought. They wondered.

And the thing with thoughts is that if you think too hard, you dream. You keep thinking in sleep. You descend into your thoughts, and your thoughts become memories, and your memories—

Were back. Were here again. Had never left.

The thing by the river that had been covered by big, bright flowers and deep, wet scars didn’t look convincing at all.

No living person had hair that glossy and shiny or eyes that bulging and glassy. The thing was dressed like a person, all wrapped up in purple robes, but it didn’t feel or smell like a person. It smelled like bad fish, caught early in the morning and left out under the sun for too long. Its lips were bluish and its flesh was very round. The rain fell onto the thing in tiny splishes and splashes, water on water, round droplets on round cheeks and a round, swollen stomach that looked like it would pop if you jabbed it with a needle.

Jiang Cheng didn’t remember what he said then. They made him stand some ways away from the thing that looked like a person. He tried to get a better look, maybe make out a familiar face or an apology to give to the family, but the thing was quickly removed by the older disciples.

“Who could have done something like this?” they whispered. “How could this have happened?”

Well, it happened because he drowned, obviously, thought Jiang Cheng. And if it wasn’t water ghouls, then it had to have been another monster of some sort.

He told someone this and received a sad look for his efforts. He was frustrated, then, because nobody would tell him why they were so sure a monster wasn’t a fault.

“Please go inside, Young Master,” they said. “You’re going to catch your death out in this rain.”

Jiang Cheng refused. There was death on the riverbank where there hadn’t been before, and he wanted to know why.

And then there was an umbrella over his head and a voice by his side. It said, “There. He won’t be getting any sicker than he is already, so let’s all stay a little longer.”

He was about the same height, maybe a little taller, and around the same age. His hair was long and thick and loose over his shoulders, kept out of his smiling face only by a red ribbon. His features were fine, a bit gritty and dirty, maybe, but it was the good kind of gritty, like dirt on your shoes after a day of training or rough calluses on your fingers from handling a brush. His eyes were grey as stones. There was no purple on his robes.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be rude. I just saw Young Master Jiang in the rain and thought to offer my umbrella.”

The older disciples were wary, but had more pressing concerns. They shuffled off toward the manor. Jiang Cheng wanted to follow, but found that the umbrella was quite nice. The rain went plip plop above him and drip drop before him; it went splish splash across the river and thunk thunk where the thing had been.

The boy stood with the same smile on his face, wavering a bit from side to side, as if he had a song stuck in his head.

“That was a dead man,” said Jiang Cheng.

“Poor place to die,” said the boy. “A beautiful river that lights up at night. It’s awfully rude to drown yourself among waterborne lanterns.” Again, he repeated, “Poor taste.”

“You think he drowned himself?”

“Oh no,” said the boy. He was still smiling. “Something killed him, of course. But it was still a bad place to die.”

Jiang Cheng chose not to ask where the freedom of choice came from if they had been murdered. “You have ideas,” he said.

The boy shrugged. “I always do.”

There was nothing more than could be done for the dead man. Still, the boy handed the umbrella to Jiang Cheng, knelt down where the body once laid, and dug his fingers into the wet dirt.

“It’s all cracked,” he said. He dug, dug, and kept digging. “The things are cracked, and it’s not good at all. There’s got to be a bump.” There was a sizeable hole now, and before Jiang Cheng could ask what he was doing, something round and shiny poked out of the soil. “Ah hah,” the boy declared, scooping the egg-shaped thing into his hands. “Just as I thought!”

“What is that?” Jiang Cheng asked, kneeling next to the boy.

“It’s what it looks like,” the boy answered. “An egg.”

He wasn’t wrong. It really did look like an egg, round and more pointed at one end than the other. It also looked a little like an eye, made of apple-red crystal that was perfectly smooth. There was something squirming inside, like a bug caught within molten glass, and its twitching was slowly fading. Scratch scratch, went the inside of the egg. The shell.

Jiang Cheng studied the egg. The boy lifted it, smiling all the same. “Do you want to see it?” he asked.

Surely there was no harm in it. “Sure,” said Jiang Cheng.

The boy took back the umbrella and deposited the egg into his hands. It was heavier than it looked and felt warm despite having been buried under wet soil. A faint pulsing echoed into Jiang Cheng’s palms, an almost inaudible tha-thump, tha-thump that felt like a too-quick heartbeat.

“It’s cool, isn’t it?” said the boy.

“What’s it for?” Jiang Cheng asked.

The boy thought for a moment. His brows furrowed, like he was trying to figure out a particularly difficult problem. Then he said, “This world is a tapestry. It’s woven wonderfully and masterfully, but it was laid over something bad. So the bad things fester and grow into eggs.”

It didn’t make any sense to Jiang Cheng. The boy was obviously strange and awful at explaining things, but he certainly wasn’t stupid. His grey eyes glinted every now and then like perfectly polished inkstones. He took the egg back, said a quick thank you, and slipped the egg into a pouch by his waist.

Jiang Cheng watched the apple-red eye-thing disappear. “What are you going to do with it?” he asked.

“Dispose of it, obviously,” said the boy. “It killed a man, didn’t it? So it’s dangerous.”

“You’re a cultivator?”

The boy laughed. The wind swept by suddenly, throwing the rain sideways for a moment. It was a belly-deep laugh that burst from his gut and plastered itself onto the low-hanging mist. “Don’t be silly,” he said. “I couldn’t be a cultivator even if I tried.”

“Then you should give it to me to dispose of,” said Jiang Cheng.

“Do you know how to destroy it?”

“No,” admitted Jiang Cheng. “But,” he continued, “I’m sure I could figure out a way.”

In the silence that fell between them, something tiny and young sprouted. Maybe a weed, or sapling, or something equally as plant-like and small.

The boy considered Jiang Cheng for a while. His hair was wet and plastered against his black robes in an inky mess, and his shoes were covered in mud. He opened his mouth, and Jiang Cheng wouldn’t have been surprised if flowers suddenly sprouted from his perfectly white teeth.

“I’m sure you would,” he said, as honestly as Jiang Cheng had from him so far. “But it’s my problem more than yours. So,” he said, patting the pouch, which looked flat and empty and devoid of any crystal eggs, “don’t worry about it. You should get back to the manor.”

That had to be a weird problem if he was going around collecting eggs. And there was another thing, too. He looked and sounded competent, but the edges of his robes were torn, and his umbrella was well-worn.

“Have you eaten?” asked Jiang Cheng.

“Some,” said the boy.

“Some of what?”

“Snacks and the like. Spicy peanuts, a bit of lotus cake, and some other things.”

That wasn’t a full meal. No wonder he was saying things that didn’t connect with reality at all: he must’ve been starving. “I’ll let you into the kitchen,” said Jiang Cheng. He took the umbrella and started marching toward the manor. “The cooks won’t mind. The others always steal food, and they don’t care as long as we don’t eat everything.”

“That’s very kind of you,” said the boy, smiling as wide as ever.

Their feet went splish splash across the training grounds. It was raining more than usual, a lot more than usual, and Jiang Cheng’s shoes were soaked in a matter of moments. They squelched over grass and dirt and then cold floors.

Jiang Cheng returned the umbrella. The boy propped it up by the great oak doors, saying that he would come back for it later, and slid into the halls with surprising ease.

“I’m Wei Ying, by the way,” said Wei Ying after a while. “I came from the old country to play. I’m not a cultivator, but I’m good with cantrips and the sort.”

So spells and prophecies and the like. He didn’t seem like an avid believer in gods, but appearances were deceiving at best and simply wrong at worst. It was hard to make heads or tails of him, but he was going to take care of whatever had drowned that man, so surely he was alright.

And Jiang Cheng didn’t know where the old country was, but it didn’t really matter.

Jiang Cheng led him into the kitchens, nodding at the cooks who gave them curious looks. Wei Ying sat down comfortably at one of the long tables, his face split into a wide smile at all the sounds and sighs and smells.

“Plenty of chilis,” he said brightly. “Good, good. Just how it should be.”

One of the cooks gave him a bowl filled with warm congee from a fresh pot, with a hearty serving of ground pork and a golden egg yolk that spilled into the rice. Wei Ying eagerly added half a handful of chopped scallions, a worryingly large pool of chili oil, and a couple pieces of youtiao. He mixed only half of it with his spoon before he ate it, making a swamp out of one side while digging through the other side like he had another egg to look for in the porridge.

Jiang Cheng ate a bit as well. He was soaked and liked being warmed from the inside out. Besides, Wei Ying ate like it was the best thing he had eaten in years, and it was hard not to be full on another’s happiness.

“Thank you very much for the wonderful meal,” said Wei Ying, to both the kitchen staff and Jiang Cheng.

“It wasn’t much,” said Jiang Cheng.

Wei Ying shook his head. “A meal is worth a great deal of time and heart,” he said, with all the certainty in the world. “I’ll be sure to pay you back next time we meet. For now, you ought to get back to your sister. She’s looking for you.”

“It’ll be fine,” Jiang Cheng said. He was an adult now. Fifteen, with the courtesy name Wanyin, the best disciple of Yunmeng Jiang, on par with his elder sister: he was all the makings of a promising sect leader. “She won’t be worried.”

“Hmm,” said Wei Ying, unconvinced. “She looks awfully worried to me. Normally, she’s more graceful. Her steps are lighter. They aren’t now. Look! She’s even asking the senior disciples if they found the thing that drowned the man, and where you went afterward.”

He was saying things that made no sense again, but where Jiang Cheng expected to see vacant eyes were two piercing grey stones. Wei Ying was seeing things that made sense, and the nonsense came from the fact that he was seeing them to begin with.

“Well?” prompted Wei Ying. He stood, and Jiang Cheng followed suit. “Go on then,” he said. “Don’t make your sister search all of Lotus Pier. It would be awful to leave her behind again.”

Then Wei Ying made his way toward the doors. There was nothing particularly strange about his gait, but Jiang Cheng felt that if he were to leave now, he would disappear into mist and fade.

“Will you be coming back?” Jiang Cheng asked, before Wei Ying could step into the halls again. Why didn’t he asked for directions? It was so easy to get lost in such a big manor.

“Oh, I’ll certainly be back,” said Wei Ying. He cocked his head to one side. He was halfway out the door and it already felt like he was mostly gone. “I like Lotus Pier very much,” he said. “I like this Lotus Pier oh so much. Next time, I’ll greet your elder sister. And after that, I’ll dig up the egg in your room. Then I’ll stay for Mid-Autumn, because the mooncakes are spectacular no matter which you’re in, and then I’ll have a look at the forge and make sure no wielders are ever indecisive enough to make something terrible...”

His words seemed to go on and on until Jiang Cheng looked hard at the door and saw nobody there.

Strange. For some reason, the door was open.

“Be a dear and close the door on the way out,” said the senior cook in that rumbly voice of hers. “Must be storming hard out there if doors are creaking open by themselves.”

And it was. It was storming hard, harder than Jiang Cheng had seen all year.

It was almost as if the world had folded on top of itself a hundred times, and all this rain was the result of a hundred layers of clouds pouring down at once. But that was silly. That wasn’t how the sky worked.

His sister would be worried because Jiang Cheng had decided to stare at the river for so long by himself. Hopefully she wouldn’t be too upset.

Jiang Cheng closed the door on his way out. He took the shorter way to the main hall, cutting through the training grounds, and wondered why he expected an umbrella to be waiting by the gates when he never brought one with him to begin with.

That night, Jiang Cheng dreamt.

He dreamt that he was standing on a boat on the river. It was dark all around him except for the trail of lotus lanterns that bobbed up and down with the river. He sat down.

It was the kind of dream that started from thoughts and memories and evolved into something weirder. The thought that started it all was an itch, the certainty that he was forgetting something important, and when he went to scratch that itch, it just kept on itching and blooming red dots all over his skin and breaking pools of blood underneath a rash he couldn’t see.

He kept itching, and he kept scratching. It was an awful pain, not a real pain, not like the unfortunate cultivators of their sect who met their ends slowly and agonizingly at the clutches of scars in their spirits that drove them mad, or infected gashes that pulsed sticky pus, or wet coughs that turned into red coughs that turned into breathless coughs. It was the sort of pain you got from standing under the sun for too long, when your skin feels like it’s on fire but isn’t.

Jiang Cheng knew that he shouldn’t scratch, and that his scratching was only making the pain worse, but he couldn’t help it. The itch was still there. It refused to go away. It hurt badly, and he felt helpless and breathless, like the people who had given their last breaths to hacking coughs because they just couldn’t stop.

The echo of his squirming shook the boat. Water lapped in; cold, dark water that splashed onto his legs and chased away the pain for a moment.

Jiang Cheng threw himself into the river.

The itch was still there, but it was lesser now. It was all quiet around him, as it always is in dark places. He breathed a sigh of relief in his mind and tried to kick upward toward the surface.

He tried, but something was grabbing at his legs. It wrapped around his ankle and felt like cold fingers, colder than death and laughing silently. It tugged down hard, and Jiang Cheng went down with it.

Jiang Cheng woke up and choked on a lungful of water.

He couldn’t breathe. There was water in his throat, in his nose, in his eyes, and it tasted like the river at dawn.

He bent over his bed, arms shaking so badly he could barely hold himself up. He was hurling up water, clear stuff that made his throat ache and nose sting. It spilled onto the ground in a silvery pool, where it reflected a full moon like a perfect and polished mirror.

Jiang Cheng wheezed. He gasped for breath. He knew that having water in your lungs was an easy way to die. He didn’t know how exactly, but he had seen people survive drowning only to die later because their lungs were sick with water.

He didn’t understand what was going on. All he knew was that he didn’t want to die, and that he knew someone who could help.

He coughed up the last of the water, or at least what felt like the last of it. His body no longer sloshed around as he moved. It was good enough. He wiped the waterlogged snot from his nose and made sure that, above all else, nobody would be able to tell he had been crying.

Then he ran quietly down out of his room. The halls were empty this time of night. Each step felt like a bolt of lightning, loud and violent with sound and light, and the the line of his brows deepened as his winced, and winced, and winced.

“A-Cheng,” came a voice from the darkness.

Jiang Cheng jumped. He knew that voice, of course, but he hadn’t expected to be caught so quickly.

Jiang Yanli peered out of the darkness. Her lantern swung around, illuminating the two in their nighttime robes.

“A-Jie,” said Jiang Cheng, sheepishly.

“Are you alright?” asked his elder sister. She studied the furrow in his brow and the dampness by his collar. “Where are you going so early in the morning?”

How could he explain? Jiang Yanli was kind, but she was further down the path to adulthood than Jiang Cheng, and adults rarely seemed to believe children even when they told the truth. How could he say that he had a dream where he drowned, and when he woke, he almost, truly did?

“I need to go find someone,” said Jiang Cheng.

“Who?”

“Someone who knows what’s going on.”

Jiang Yanli considered this in silence. The warm flame flickered, and their shadows jarred violently.

“I’m coming with you,” she finally said.

And that was that. Jiang Cheng nodded, and Jiang Yanli nodded back. They escaped the shadows of the manor and hurried down to the river. Even from a distance, it smelled of dying flowers and spoke softly with the occasional gurgle. The lantern showed the way in a swaying circle of light that bobbed up and down and grew bigger and smaller with each up-and-down.

Memories were itching at the back of Jiang Cheng’s mind. It wasn’t the same kind of itch. It was like a knocking that went, hello, I’m here every other moment.

Wei Ying. Of course. They had met only a few hours ago, hadn’t they? But Jiang Cheng had already forgotten. The more he tried to understand why, the more Wei Ying’s grey eyes and sharp smile became time-worn rocks and scars.

It was like dropping a sword into the river and nicking where it had fallen onto the boat. Jiang Cheng had no right to be surprised when the journey came to an end and he reached down only to find cold, clear waters.

The next time they met, it was all three of them together.

He appeared by the river, as he did before. Except this time, there was no fake-looking dead thing, and there was no egg to dig up. The sun hung in the sky. It dangled just above the river, and a shimmering strip of copper-red trailed up to the horizon.

Wei Ying was standing at the edge of the outdoor parlour, beneath a ginkgo tree. He tossed a seed up and down in his palm, rolling it across hard and bumpy calluses. He looked as if he had been waiting for a thousand years and could wait for another thousand.

Even when they were all here at the same time and place, Wei Ying felt like a memory.

“Gotta keep moving,” he seemed to be singing to himself. “Keep searching, keep digging, ‘till the old country goes crack…”

A great gale swept by. Its whistle threw the autumn-yellow leaves into the air and onto the ground. Wei Ying caught them out of the corner of his eye. He said, “Hello.”

“Hello,” said Jiang Cheng. “What are you doing here?”

Wei Ying smiled. He said, “You were having bad dreams, weren’t you?”

“You knew?”

“Sure,” said Wei Ying. He bowed to Jiang Yanli then, low and deep and respectful, like any well-mannered person would. “Maiden Jiang,” he greeted.

“Good morning,” said Jiang Yanli. “Are you A-Cheng’s friend?”

“I’m Wei Ying,” said Wei Ying, who was very much Wei Ying. He dug through the pouch by his hip and extracted two large peaches. They were big, round, and firm, just barely blush-pink ripe. “Here,” he said, offering them to the would-be dragons. “It must be hard being up so early. You should eat something.”

Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli took the peaches. It was rude to refuse gifts from someone who seemed like he knew everything.

“I saw what happened,” Wei Ying said, before Jiang Cheng could swallow his first bite. “The river’s been jumping into people’s lungs, hasn’t it?”

“People have been drowning by the river,” Jiang Yanli said in words that made more sense.

“By the river, outside of it. Yes,” said Wei Ying. “The river’s trying to make the itch go away and doing a horrible job of it.”

“The itch?”

“The itch of dreams,” said Wei Ying. “Thoughts become dreams, and if those thoughts shouldn’t exist, it makes your dreams itch. Leave it for too long, and you start seeing things. Other lives, or other places, or other times. And the river tries to help by making the itch go away.”

Jiang Cheng thought of the fish-eyed man and how his belly had been round with water. “What sort of thoughts?” he asked.

“Oh,” began Wei Ying, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, “egg thoughts. You know. The tap, tap of things that shouldn’t be and aren’t. Life. Death. The old country. The sort.”

“This is the egg’s fault?” said Jiang Cheng.

“Yes,” said Wei Ying.

“But you said you would take care of it!”

Wei Ying raised a single brow. “There’s more than one egg,” he said, slowly so he could be heard clearly.

“I haven’t heard about any eggs,” Jiang Yanli said. “What’s this about?”

Jiang Cheng felt a little embarrassed. He was fifteen now; he didn’t want to run to his sister every time something went wrong and he didn’t understand why.

Wei Ying explained the situation in almost the same words he had used before. Jiang Yanli listened with rapt attention. It felt like a conversation between adults simply because Jiang Yanli was so calm and accepting of all the strange happenings.

Jiang Cheng watched a stone roll under the strange boy’s shoes. It was round and smooth. It was hard to tell what colour it was in the muted light: pomegranate-red, mandarin-orange, or plum-purple. But it was shiny and looked like it had been resting at the bottom of a warm river forever.

Only after Wei Ying finished speaking did Jiang Yanli let out a short sigh.

“Wei Ying,” she said. “How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

“How long have you been fifteen?”

Wei Ying thought for a bit. Then he smiled. “Young Miss,” he said, “it’s hard enough to pick the right now and here to begin with, so may we please keep personal questions in our hearts?”

With that, Wei Ying started upstream. He beckoned them to follow. They did.

The sun rose a little higher as they walked. Scattered murmuring turned into lively chattering and clattering as vendors set up shop for the day. Carts bursting with colourful fruit hurried by, scattering loose leaves and blossoms into the grooves made by all the carts before them. The earliest stalls set up food and snacks. Wei Ying smiled at the vendors, who were always eager to gift him candied sesame crackers (cracked between his perfect teeth), doupi (stuffed with sticky rice and mushrooms and meat), and fish cake (bouncy and tender with a bit of soy sauce).

“Beautiful city,” Wei Ying said, once he had his fill of street snacks. “It never changes too much. You’re very lucky.”

“Thank you,” said Jiang Yanli.

“The river’s a gentle soul as well. She’s been here for a long time. She sings you all to sleep. Did you know?”

“No,” Jiang Cheng said. Then he stopped, remembered how the river gurgled and churned no matter how dark or lonely the night was. “Oh,” he said a little bit after.

“What do you plan on doing?” asked Jiang Yanli.

Wei Ying looked back over his shoulder and smiled like a scar on a boat. He said, “The river’s not at fault. It’s the itching that’s making all those poor people wet with death.”

“And the egg’s doing the itching,” said Jiang Cheng.

“Right,” said Wei Ying. “So we need to dig up the worst of all the eggs and destroy it.”

“Hang on a moment,” Jiang Yanli said all of a sudden. “A-Cheng had those horrible dreams as well. Will he be alright?”

“He’ll be fine as soon as we make him a remedy,” Wei Ying answered.

He sounded perfectly relaxed, so Jiang Cheng felt relaxed, too. There was no reason to worry if someone who knew everything said it would be alright.

Jiang Yanli pursed her lips. She didn’t look as convinced. It was the maturity of knowledge that her extra years gave her. But Wei Ying was... old, ancient, maybe, and he was at peace. Maybe it was all a matter of perspective. Still, she said nothing as she followed after the strange boy.

As they approached the hustle and bustle of the main market, Wei Ying said, “Don’t look at the mirrors too long. Especially you, Jiang Cheng.”

There was a vendor selling polished silver that looked like mirrors. “Are those alright?” he asked, trying not to let his eyes wander too fiercely.

“Anything that isn’t a plane of glass or water is alright,” Wei Ying answered, but didn’t explain why.

Then the strange boy took off into the crowds, slipping in between the cracks like a shadow. Jiang Cheng hurried to keep pace, and Jiang Yanli followed as well, suspicion still heavy in her eyes.

Wei Ying stepped from shop to shop, stall to stall, fluidly enough to not be hurried, but elegantly enough for him to fit in perfectly with all the other early morning shoppers.

Jiang Cheng watched the strange boy’s hands closely. The things he bought made no sense and had no relation to each other, or at least none that Jiang Cheng could make out. A hearty slab of turquoise that was speckled throughout a scratched black crystal; a tea cup with faded blue flowers and a small chip on the lip; a pair of old slippers with worn, tooth-shaped trimmings at the top; a paper doll that had been stained by rain and bled red from its eyes; a pinwheel that wobbled from a loose pin; a satchel of tea that smelled like chestnuts and bluegrass with a broken tie string; a peony made from cuts of white silk that was fraying at the edges; and, last but certainly not least, a bamboo basket to store it all in.

There was a mirror in the shop where Wei Ying bought the basket. For a moment, Jiang Cheng forgot himself and met eyes with his reflection.

His eyes were so colourful. They were so round and shiny, not glassy like fake things or dead fish. That was the sign of life: bright eyes. Big, sparkling eyes that looked like they could pop if you pressed down on them with something sharp. You could knock them out of someone’s head by slapping them on the head, like pomegranate seeds.

Red. The mirror was red now. Red was the colour of tarnished copper, rich sunsets, apples, lips, spider lilies, blood, lifeless eyes closing in a dying body—

“Don’t look,” said Jiang Yanli, suddenly and sharply. She nudged Jiang Cheng away and raised her sleeve to block the mirror from his sight. “You really mustn’t look,” she repeated. “You’d best wipe your mouth, A-Cheng.”

There was water trailing from the corner of his mouth. It wasn’t spit or drool. It was like his lips were crying.

He cleaned himself as quickly as he could, embarrassed to have been caught so off guard, and made sure to keep his eyes on his hands until Wei Ying finished paying.

“That took a bit longer than I expected,” Wei Ying said. He shifted the basket around in his arms. “I have all the ingredients now.” Proudly, he added, “It’ll be the grandest feast the folks down there will ever have.”

“You chose such strange things,” said Jiang Cheng. “Everything’s broken or bad in some way or another.”

Wei Ying shook his head. He said, “It’s because they’re broken that they’ll work so well. Eggs hatch into broken worlds and try to make them whole. But they can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” said Wei Ying, “how can you fix something if your first act in this world is breaking?”

They followed Wei Ying to the edge of the river. He chose a quieter spot away from the pier, opting for a patch of cold land underneath a ginkgo tree.

He set the things onto the ground, one by one. He took his time to carefully inspect each one, making sure it was broken just right and just enough, before he sighed and pulled a small knife from his pouch. The hilt was bone and the blade was whiter than snow. It cut through the satchel of tea like it was peeling the skin off a bull.

Wei Ying rummaged through the fallen leaves and picked the biggest one he could find. It was vibrant gold and perfect. Then he cut little slits into it, tapped the satchel over it, and rolled it up like an egg pancake.

“Open up,” he said to Jiang Cheng.

Jiang Cheng was silent for a long moment. “What?” he asked in disbelief.

“Broken things, be whole in snow,” Wei Ying recited. “Fall upon sharp things and make them round, give darkness so bright it’s dazzling, make things well and well and well again...”

Jiang Cheng was too young and too ignorant to know it then, but this was what Wei Ying was saying: broken things, be whole in death. Give peace to those who cannot find peace themselves, bury the worthy in brilliant silence, return things to whence they came. Blessed be the snow that holds all graves in her palm—blessed be the snow that makes all treasures equal at time’s end...

“That’s a hymn for winter,” said Jiang Yanli. “I’ve only ever read about it in the scriptures. We’re too far south to study it.”

“Winter’s everywhere if you want it to be,” said Wei Ying. Then he turned back to Jiang Cheng and repeated, “Like in you. Come on. Open up. It won’t hurt. I promise.”

There was nothing intimidating about the tea-rolled leaf, but putting foreign things into your mouth was usually a bad idea. But nothing about it was truly foreign: it was just a roll of ginkgo leaves, and tea, and the fading touch of a strange boy with river-stone eyes.

Jiang Cheng opened his mouth. Wei Ying tucked the bundle between his teeth and the flesh of his right cheek.

“There,” said Wei Ying, satisfied. “No harm done.”

It was like squishing a small satchel of perfume flowers against your tongue. The taste was awful, powerful and floral and herbal in all the wrong ways, driving a bitterness down Jiang Cheng’s throat and a stinging up his nose. He made a face, and Wei Ying laughed.

It was the sound of wind chimes in a mountain, ringing out from the hollowness somewhere inside that you couldn’t see but could hear, and there was a crack in the side of the great thing, seeping out darkness (or sucking in light), and they all stepped a bit closer to hear it.

Then his laughter faded. His teeth met in a smile. He said, “You look just like your father did.”

Jiang Cheng was taken aback. “You did this to my father, too?”

“Oh yes,” said Wei Ying. “I do it to everyone caught up in the brambles of time. Your venerable mother, as well.”

“Are they alright now?” asked Jiang Yanli. “Were they touched by the egg as well?”

“Yes and yes,” said Wei Ying.

“Oh,” Jiang Yanli said, and sighed, but the exhalation was relief.

Jiang Cheng was relieved as well. So this horrid egg didn’t always lead people to their deaths. It was simply that some people were more unfortunate than others. Perhaps their symptoms didn’t show in time, or Wei Ying could only do so much, like healers.

“Now what?” Jiang Cheng tried to say. His voice came out garbled.

“Now,” said Wei Ying, “tell me about your brother.”

“What?”

“Your brother,” repeated Wei Ying. His eyes were round stones. “What do you think of him?”

“I don’t have any brothers,” said Jiang Cheng.

Wei Ying sat beneath the ginkgo tree. They all did. He sat without moving at all. It didn’t seem like his chest was rising and falling. He smiled, and it was the smile of a slab of marble with the face of a boy and the smile of a boy and the eyes of a dead fish that had sat for so long under snow that they had frozen into diamonds.

For a moment, Jiang Cheng looked into those fragmented crystals and thought, maybe I do have a brother and I just can’t remember him.

“We’re the only children of Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan,” said Jiang Yanli, with conviction. “We have no siblings but each other.”

And again, the itch in his mind said, are you sure?

“Hmm,” said Wei Ying.

“Why are you asking me this?” asked Jiang Cheng. He hated how Wei Ying looked at him like he was expecting an answer, but his eyes were so blank and fake that it was impossible to tell what sort of answer he wanted to hear. Not that Jiang Cheng cared to begin with. But it was unnerving. It was like being prodded with a sharp stick and being told to make up your mind.

Wei Ying wanted an answer. It didn’t matter what sort of answer it was. What mattered was that he had results. This was all part of an elaborate recipe, and Wei Ying wanted to know if he ought to hurl it all out and start over.

That was what it felt like. Cold and smooth like marble. Warm and grooved like a bell. It didn’t feel like much at all. That was how childhood was.

Wei Ying said, “You’ll decide eventually.”

“There’s nothing to decide,” said Jiang Yanli. Her words were polite and clipped short.

“Everything in its own time,” was what the strange boy said. Then he smiled at them and returned to his half-broken items.

Half-broken, Jiang Cheng realized. They were only half broken. Broken things weren’t always not perfect. Nothing was ever perfect. Everything was born and made a little broken. Truly broken things were things that couldn’t be fixed no matter how hard you tried to stitch together the seams, plaster together the pieces, build together the foundations. A truly broken thing was a house without a door. A home without a family. Things... things that couldn’t be fixed because they simply weren’t there to fix anymore.

“One, I give for my mother,” Wei Ying sang under his breath. The notes caught onto the wind and scurried away from his lips. It was hard to hear. “Two, I give for my father. Three, for my sister; four, for my brother; five makes whole, and whole shan’t be...”

Whatever his next words were, they seemed to chip away at his stony eyes. His fingers kept moving. He spun the pinwheel once. It kept spinning even without his touch. It made rapid circles even with no wind to move it, and each round seem to light the ginkgo leaves aflame a bit more; their yellow become gold and their gold became aether, the liquid of stardust and gods and paint that had eaten sunlight for a thousand lives and longer.

Wei Ying asked the pinwheel, “How many times has it been?”

There was a squealing in the air. The leaves trembled.

“How many more?”

Another squealing. Whatever it said, Wei Ying sighed. His shoulders fell.

“Good,” he said, in a voice they had never heard from him. It wasn’t a sigh of relief or disappointment or anything of the sort. It was the sound of a full stomach, satisfaction after a good meal. “Good,” Wei Ying repeated.

It wasn’t good to be full on something you couldn’t see or sink your teeth into, thought Jiang Cheng. Those thoughts drove you mad. They made you believe in times and places that didn’t exist.

“He’s a spirit of some sort,” whispered Jiang Yanli, through the quiet spectacle. She didn’t need to keep her voice down. Wei Ying couldn’t hear them now. Still, she continued, “Or a god. Or something else divine. I don’t... I don’t think he means us any harm.”

Jiang Cheng looked at Wei Ying. He looked at the pinwheel, that spun and spun and whistled answers to sing-song questions. He said, “Me too.”

The questions and answers went back and forth. The siblings waited. It was like when important guests came over and spoke of matters to the masters of Lotus Pier, and they sat silently and rigidly with all the dignity in the world and none of the understanding.

Finally, Wei Ying grabbed a handful of golden leaves and let them loose over the pinwheel. The wind died like it had never been there at all.

“Alright,” said Wei Ying. “You can take that thing out of your mouth. Shall we go dig up that last egg?”

“Where is it?” asked Jiang Cheng, after he had removed the foul thing from his cheek.

“In your room.”

“My room? How’d it get there?”

Wei Ying considered his words. He thought for longer than usual. “It’s just there,” he said. “These things happen sometimes. What’s important is that we take care of it before it ends in something tragic. Don’t you think?”

It was good enough. Jiang Cheng didn’t think he could understand the answer even if Wei Ying had explained it in its true form. That was the nature of honesty.

Wei Ying packed away his half-broken items. He set the pinwheel down on top of the pile, then slung the basket into the crook of his arm.

“Let’s go grab some lunch,” he said.

Finding a nice restaurant was simple work. The streets were kind to the children of Lotus Pier. They turned and fell straight and wound back to the river no matter how lost you were. It was by the river that they sat for food and drink.

Lunch was wonderful. There was a pot of chicken stewed with chestnuts and mushrooms, fragrant with sesame oil and ginger; the meat slid off the bones and was tender to touch. There was a plate of crispy duck skin served alongside thin pancakes, scallions, cucumber, and sweet bean sauce that tasted magnificent no matter how messy you made your rolls. There was a fish cake, steamed to shiny perfection, garnished with wood ears and ground meat. And there was, of course, a great big bowl of pork ribs and lotus root soup; the lotus root was sweet and crunchy this time of year and the pork was soft and broth was light. Once they were all done, they stirred their spoons around in thick red bean soup and patiently waited as everyone scraped the last of the dessert from their bowls.

While they ate, Wei Ying said nothing more about the egg, his identity, or the whole truth. He rambled on about Mid-Autumn and how it was fast approaching, the lotus lanterns and how they were exceedingly effective, and the stray ghosts that he had banished with cantrips.

“I didn’t know you could exorcise them with prayers,” Jiang Yanli said curiously.

“Prayers!” said Wei Ying, laughing. “Oh, I don’t pray. I don’t need to. Nothing a god could do that I can’t do twice as quickly. Gods are beings that blunder always and leave mortal men to deal with the consequences.”

Jiang Yanli said, “Then what about your—spells?” She hesitated, then repeated, “Cantrips?”

“Recipes,” Wei Ying said. “The fabric of this world is hungry, you see. It hasn’t been full since it was made. Feed it right, and it’ll do anything you want.”

That certainly sounded very godly, but Wei Ying didn’t seem to think anything about gods. He spoke like what some would call a godless heathen, but his powers seemed divinely sourced; so maybe just a regular kind of heathen, then.

The walk to the manor was slow and relaxed. Wei Ying didn’t seem to be in a rush to dig up the last egg. His calm was contagious, and Jiang Cheng didn’t see the need to get in a panic when his lungs were light and his skin was clear of itch.

The disciples didn’t bat an eye at Wei Ying. They didn’t even react as Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli walked by. They didn’t ask where they had been, why they had left without a word, and most strikingly, they said nothing about their parents wanting to have a word with them.

“What a beautiful manor,” said Wei Ying, once they were surrounded by wisteria-purple banners.

“You walk as if you’ve been here before,” Jiang Yanli said cautiously.

“Oh, certainly not in this one, no,” Wei Ying assured her. He didn’t elaborate on what this one was. “I just have better eyes than most. See?” He pointed to his eyes. Stones. “Nice and round, not cloudy at all. Well and alive.”

He handed the basket to Jiang Cheng, who took it with some confusion. He stared as Wei Ying pulled out the items one by one, placing them down as they walked toward their destination.

When Jiang Cheng was young, even younger than he was in memories or dreams or right now, depending on which mirror you looked into, he had celebrated Mid-Autumn in Yiling. A legendary monster had been slain there by their disciples, so he had travelled to watch the victory parade. He watched in awe as incredible lantern floats marched by, flickering with reds and oranges and yellows, dragging a streak of unending light he was sure even the gods would see from up in the heavens. Yet he had been a little scared as the people of Yiling marched by, holding up paper dolls that were hideous and monstrous and burned at the first touch of flame.

There had been rituals to purify darkness and usher in prosperity. This was what Wei Ying was doing now, as he set down half-broken things in the middle of empty hallways. He was setting up the dolls to tease the flame. And Jiang Cheng watched in awe as the half-broken things began moving in their half-broken ways: the turquoise cracked, the teacup rolled onto its side, the slippers tapped, the doll sagged with weight, the peony bloomed nearly to the point of breaking its seams. When Wei Ying put the basket down onto the ground, the handle snapped apart violently.

He held the pinwheel in his hands. It spun, softly shrieking as its pin wore away the paper.

“There,” said the strange boy. “That should do it.”

“Do it?” asked Jiang Cheng.

“Set a path. Or a boundary. It really depends how you look at things. Personally, I like to think of it as a path. A road.” He smiled then, but it was a mischievous smile that curved his lips high with a knife. “How wonderful it must be to have a road and anywhere in existence to go with it.”

Jiang Yanli looked as if she wanted to say something. She didn’t. She averted her eyes from the strange boy, looking instead at the half-broken things and their half-broken movements.

It should have felt like an intrusion, letting Wei Ying into his private quarters, but there was no awkwardness in the situation; only confusion as Wei Ying set the pinwheel onto the table and took a long, deep breath.

The ground bulged a little before his feet. It wriggled without breaking the surface at all, like a maggot or a worm.

“Ah,” he said. “Certainly smells like the last one.”

There were many things Jiang Cheng could have said. What jumped to the forefront of his mind was this: “Don’t ruin the floor if you’re going to dig. My mother’s going to kill me.”

“Don’t you worry about it,” said Wei Ying.

The strange boy knelt down. He knocked his knuckles against the floor. It knocked back.

“Time to go,” said Wei Ying to the ground.

It was impossible to predict what would happen in that strange time and place where Wei Ying existed, or where he was able to bring himself into existence. Half the light in the room—exactly half, that was equivalency and balance and making the scales right where wrong had wrought it loose, like a pinwheel—snapped into itself, eating itself alive,

And the ground spoke back in a voice that wasn’t a voice, maybe a chorus, or a whisper, or a trick of the wind:

in whose name in your name in their name why do you command us

“You don’t belong here. It’s terribly rude to loiter in someone else’s room, don’t you think? You can only expect to be evicted. Come on. Don’t make this difficult. Out you go.”

no no no we stay we grow we become whole

we are one we are many we were here before them all we will be here when they fall

Wei Ying sighed. He said, “You’re wasting your time. You know who you’re talking to. Get out, or I won’t be so kind otherwise.”

you said come and we came you said here and we were here

you called us you summoned us you made us be you made this be you made the world be not what it is

we are truth we are whole we are broken we are hungry

we will eat until everything is right again

“Getting cocky now, aren’t we,” said Wei Ying.

“You brought them here?” Jiang Yanli said, her eyes wide with disbelief. “You brought this upon us?”

The strange boy gave her a look of amusement. “I’m quick, and I’m certainly smart, Young Miss,” he said, “but these pests were here before I was.” He thought for a bit, then continued, “I suppose you could say I made them be. But the alternative would’ve been much worse.” He looked at Jiang Yanli, fixed her with a gaze that was cold and silent as a coffin. “You would’ve died.”

Jiang Yanli held his dead gaze. She was kind and soft but her will was unbroken. She said, “Please see to it that nobody ever dies again.”

“Of course,” said Wei Ying.

The bulging thing shifted and squirmed. It raised what looked like a thin, boney hand. Then there was a thin wrist, and a thin arm, and soon enough there was what looked like a thin body, naked and gaunt and covered in stretched stone. It was horrible. Jiang Cheng had seen people fall into swamps and find their fates in foul muck and sinking tides. The thing that crept out of the floor looked nothing and everything like the dead.

It opened its mouth. The half-light of the room made its teeth shiny black. It said:

this is your last chance to make things right

There was a silence that held for half a second and an eternity. Maybe somewhere in between.

“It isn’t a chance,” said Wei Ying. “It’s a decision. Go home. Let it be.”

you will lose everything

“Then I’m very sorry for my loss. Fortunately, I’ve mourned for long enough. Now,” said Wei Ying, making a flicking gesture with his hand, “shall we get going?”

The horrible thing’s jaw sagged and hung open. It looked as if it could swallow the moon and still be hungry. The sound that came out of its mouth was a thousand last words at once.

no no no

we have lost too much

we are hungry

we are lonely

WE WILL NOT LEAVE

And then the thing grabbed Wei Ying’s wrist with one thin, boney hand.

Light erupted from the touch between two things that should never have existed. The thing threw itself back, howling in a voice that felt pain and a thousand other emotions and didn’t know where to begin with them. There were ugly cries of triumph and thoughtless whispers of grief. There was the gurgle of a river and laughter from children that had the entire world in their hands and held onto it so hard it shattered.

A voice said, “Don’t touch me.”

It said, “On what authority do you believe yourselves worthy of this world?”

It said, “Leave, or I break everything you were.”

Jiang Cheng stared at him. Jiang Yanli’s lips were softly parted in wordless shock.

It was Wei Ying, but it wasn’t. It was undeniably him, but it was a different sort of him.

He shone darkness, as much as darkness can shine. It was the sort of darkness you see behind tightly shut eyes that try so hard to cut out light that they squeeze and turn in on themselves until something new is born. It was the aching sort of darkness of nothing and what came after.

Jiang Cheng tried to look into his eyes. He searched, and searched, but he was reaching for a single stone at the bottom of a timeless river.

The thing that looked like Wei Ying said, “Go to the river. Wait for me there.”

The children listened for an answer, but heard only the grinding of teeth.

“Go,” said Wei Ying, and the horrible thing collapsed into itself and fell into the ground.

There was a splash where it had been. Jiang Cheng ran his fingers over the floor. It felt cold, much colder than everything else, but there was nothing there anymore.

Half the light returned to the room. Wei Ying sighed loudly.

“Let’s get going to the river,” he said.

Jiang Cheng was a little scared of him then. This strange boy was beyond his understanding of the world, and the unknown was terrifying. It was everywhere beyond the warm circle of youth, and he had some understanding of the things he would meet whenever the winds blew one way and lit up the path forward.

Jiang Yanli reached for Jiang Cheng’s hand. She said to Wei Ying, “What are you going to do?”

“Don’t worry,” said Wei Ying. He smiled like stone, weather-worth and ancient.

There was a moon to show the way and a soft breeze to push them along. The sky was dark in places it hadn’t been before, like someone had taken an inkbrush to the clouds and made things wrong. The empty halls reflected the nothingness, taking silver light and cutting out sparkling shapes where their feet fell.

The half-broken things were there, but they were no longer broken. They were beautiful and whole: a piece of polished turquoise, a perfect teacup, new slippers, a charming doll, a shiny peony, and a sturdy basket.

Wei Ying bent down and collected the items. His eyes were red for a moment until they weren’t.

The three of them walked and walked in utter silence. They walked until the river was a few paces ahead of them and the lotus lanterns were no longer dancing flames.

The horrible thing had kept its word. It looked different with soil and water underneath its feet. It looked fuller, fleshier, with dark garnet for eyes and wet mud for limbs. Wisteria grew out of its open mouth. A single spider lily tangled between what might have been its hair.

Wei Ying put the basket down. “You look well,” he said.

The thing that no longer looked so horrible keened.

there is no going back from here

there will be no place to return

“Good,” said Wei Ying. “Nobody needs that place anymore, least of all us.”

The thing was silent. Its head drooped. It knew that Wei Ying’s words were true, but didn’t want to accept it. That was how it was with the truth sometimes.

The river swayed and shook. It shone brilliantly under the full moon. It shone even as the thing lowered itself into the water and Wei Ying said, softly, with the ghosts of memories scattering in his voice, “Goodbye.”

Jiang Cheng could feel the gentle touch of the river, their home from where all of creation was born and would one day return, and he knew Jiang Yanli felt it too, because she let out a silent breath and brought her hands together in front of her chest.

There was no end to the river in sight. It stretched on for longer than they knew, all the way to where warm waters became cold and ended altogether. It was an infinite looking-in of mirrors, one after the other and the other after one, back and forth and in and in and in until things became too small and too distant even though that was you, here and now, but also you, there and then...

The moon shattered into a thousand tiny dots around the thing’s familiar figure. There was no slow sink into the water; it was a fall between land and water, but the thing descended downward little by little.

It turned when the river had eaten everything but what rested on its shoulders.

It said,

will you come?

Wei Ying smiled. He did that a lot. “Who knows?” he said, like it was the funniest thing in the world.

The thing looked at him a little longer. Its garnet eyes seemed to be crying.

Then it turned. It stepped deeper into the river. Jiang Cheng expected the stars to fall out of the sky, or the moon to explode into pieces, or for them to all wake up.

None of that happened. The thing was just gone. Nothing had ever been there to begin with. There was just a river that stretched as long as time, that had given them life and meaning and silence, and it bore a thousand lights that would bring them home.

Wei Ying knelt down at the edge of the water. He peered deep into the glistening mirrors and nodded. “That’s the last of them,” he said.

“The egg’s gone?” asked Jiang Yanli.

“Gone forever,” said Wei Ying, with a wide smile. “You can always trust the river to finish up your scraps and drown your criminals. She’s infinitely kind.”

Jiang Cheng summoned up the courage to say, “And what does that mean for all of us?”

Wei Ying’s eyes softened. They were no longer stone. They were simply grey eyes that lived in a boy who could turn the moon around with one hand and draw silly paintings with the other. “It means you’re free to live however you want,” he said. “There’s nothing holding you back anymore. You can just... live.”

That was what they had been doing all along. But Wei Ying seemed satisfied, and Jiang Cheng felt satisfied, and Jiang Yanli did, too.

There was life before them, and it was an unknown country with roads in every direction and monsters around every corner. But it was fine. Because a great sacrifice had happened here, under the full moon, before a great river, and the only thing you could do to honour someone’s sacrifice was to do your best and make your life something worth living.

“Thank you,” said Wei Ying, as if Jiang Cheng had spoken aloud.

He breathed out through his nose. Then he tossed all the contents of the basket into the river. They sank like stones and disappeared into the silver veil.

“I should make it easier for you to keep going after this,” Wei Ying said, and jumped into the river.

It was sudden and unexpected, and also terrifying, because the siblings had just watched powerful things disappear in those waters without a trace, and Wei Ying was too precious a thing to lose.

They hurried to the water’s edge, peering down into ripples that were already fading into the horizon.

“Is he alright?” asked Jiang Cheng, worriedly.

“He can swim,” said Jiang Yanli, though she didn’t sound sure. “Nobody jumps into the river without being able to swim. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

They stared into the calm waters. Lotus lanterns ebbed up and down with the night. It was hypnotizing. It was calming. They bounced up and down, up and down, endlessly, forever, into the darkness, and then into the morning, and forever onward.

It wasn’t the first time they had snuck out at night, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. Not until they were adults. Then it wouldn’t be sneaking at all.

They were getting tired. It was awfully late, and the moon had been beautiful, but tomorrow would be another day of training to inherit a proud legacy. Strong cultivators needed rest. They could admire the moon another night.

“We should hurry back before any of the senior disciples catch us,” said Jiang Yanli.

“The moon’s nice tonight,” said Jiang Cheng.

They both looked up at the sky one more time. Then they turned with the intention of leaving the river behind for the night; come morning, they would return to collect the lanterns.

Something broke the surface of the water violently, with a hacking gasp of somebody on their last breaths.

Alarmed and a little more than surprised, the siblings hurried to pull the boy from the river. They held him by the arms, dragged him onto land, and knelt by him as he vomited up all the water he had swallowed. His arms were shaking, and Jiang Cheng did his best to hold the strange boy up. Jiang Yanli ran comforting circles on the boy’s back.

“Thank you,” said the boy, once he could speak again. His voice was hoarse and his eyes were red with lost tears. “You saved me from—” A cough rattled his soaked frame. “From an unfortunate fate,” he finished. “I’ll be forever grateful.”

“Don’t worry about that now,” Jiang Yanli said softly. “Who are you? What happened?”

The boy coughed. Jiang Yanli patted his back. He said, “Water ghouls. Ah, they make for terrible company. I should have taken the warnings more seriously. My goodness, what a fool I am.”

They waited for the boy to answer the question in full. He seemed to realize this, and his face split into a smile that shone.

“I’m Wei Wuxian,” he said, pushing himself to his feet. He leaned a little on the siblings, and they couldn’t remember why it felt so familiar no matter how hard they thought. “I’m a rogue cultivator. I came here looking for work, with those terrible water ghouls stirring up such chaos, but I almost became a victim myself.”

Wei Wuxian laughed, and it sounded like the clap-clap-clap of lightning striking one bolt after the other.

“Let’s get you someplace warm,” said Jiang Yanli as they helped Wei Wuxian toward the manor.

“I’ll get a healer,” said Jiang Cheng. “She’ll check your lungs. You’ll catch your death if aren’t treated.”

Wei Wuxian let himself be guided along. “How fortunate,” he said, “that I should meet you unfailingly.”

They didn’t know what exactly he meant by that, but people rarely said coherent things after narrowly avoiding death. Some rest would do him well. It would do them all well, given how late it was, and how round the moon was.

The healer was quick to check over Wei Wuxian and declare him perfectly fine outside of needing to drink a medicinal tea three times a day. In the week he was prohibited from attempting large movements, he spoke eagerly to Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli. He greeted the masters of Lotus Pier with great reverence, bowing his head low and honouring their kindness with his service, at least for a few years.

Wei Wuxian was intelligent, but not talented. His golden core was mediocre. But his mind was brilliant, and so were his eyes and his smile. He was incredible with the bow. His prowess with the dizi was unparalleled.

Mid-Autumn came, and he stood behind the heirs of Lotus Pier as they lowered a lotus lantern onto the river. When the formalities were over, he gorged himself on mooncakes and laughed like spring.

They were three now, not two, as they had been for fifteen years. But Wei Wuxian slipped into the cracks like he had been raised alongside them. They snuck out in the dead of night to buy snacks, play by the river, or climb trees. Jiang Cheng yelled at Wei Wuxian like he was a brother. Jiang Yanli lifted them both over her shoulders when their arguments grew too heated.

One year, they had the option to study in Gusu. They declined it. Instead, Wei Wuxian took them on night-hunts over all kinds of lands, from wild and uncharted places down south to quiet and deadly places up north. The masters of Lotus Pier allowed it. It was a miracle. Nobody questioned it.

Jiang Wanyin and Jiang Yanli became renowned names in the cultivation world. They distinguished themselves in the archery competition at Qishan, and when they were forced to play under Wen Chao’s hands, they pushed back.

In those bleak, wet days in which they were trapped in flame-lit darkness with a cultivator of equal renown and a beast who saw them as no more than meat and blood, the siblings thought of Wei Wuxian and how disappointed he would be if their adventures ended there.

Each of the shadows had a name, and every single one was waiting for them to fall.

They didn’t.

Jiang Cheng was cut from the throat of the beast by his sister, who hauled him out of the water with strength she shouldn’t have had. The other one, Lan Wangji, pulled on guqin strings until his fingers bled. Jiang Yanli refused to let him go on in such a state and split the burden between the two of them. Jiang Cheng was too delirious with fever to understand what was happening.

Somewhere in the dark, Lan Wangji asked, “Do you remember Wei Ying?”

It was an unfamiliar name. It sounded like Wei Wuxian, but it wasn’t. And that made all the difference.

“No,” said the siblings, and then they were rescued.

The days flew by in a hurry. Wei Wuxian fretted over them, nursing them back to health even though the healers said he was going to worry himself sick. He told them, “You killed the Xuanwu, and at such a young age! I can’t wait to see what incredible people you grow up to be!”

Wei Wuxian tittered on, sitting by their sickbeds and telling them stories and fables he managed to dig up from his memory. There was one about a man who was stuck in time, and another about a man who broke the world into pieces, and yet another about a man who spent thousands of lifetimes fixing half-broken things. They all sounded similar. But they were stories. Of course stories would sound similar if they were told by the same person.

An act of creation... shaping new life... do you remember the spring when we were young?

They were happy, content, and warm.

Only after Wei Wuxian had run out of stories did he say, “Thank you for all you’ve done.” He bowed, low and respectful. His hair draped over his shoulders. It was impossible to see his eyes. “Everything you’ve done—all the joy you’ve given me—I won’t forget it. Not even if I die.”

“But you won’t,” said Jiang Cheng.

“We’re all cultivators,” said Jiang Yanli. “Let’s strive to live long lives and go on as many adventures as time will allow us.” She smiled softly at Wei Wuxian’s bowed head. “Lotus Pier will wait for us, A-Xian. We’ll always have somewhere to come home to.”

Wei Wuxian raised his head. His smile was broken in a few places. He said, “I’ll do my best.”

And then he disappeared.

They searched for him everywhere. His favourite places, from the tallest trees to the coziest corners; from the top of watchtowers to the stalls that saw his shadow every day. They found nothing but a letter on his bed that said,

The world’s calling. I have to go.

Thank you for everything.

May the river guide you home.

He was gone. He had stepped into a world outside their reach, and there was no calling him back.

They were angry for only a short while. It was in that raw, burning state that the Qishan Wen Sect attacked.

Wen Chao returned with a vengeance. His people attacked, but Lotus Pier was ready. They couldn’t have told you why. They would have told you that they simply felt it coming, especially after rumours of the haughty sun trying to set the river ablaze spread across the city in a single night.

There was no defeating Yunmeng Jiang there, not as they were, united as a family and a sect, all standing under the nine-petal lotus flower. The banner waved over the fires, and it waved over the river as well, and when the wind stopped howling and the invaders stopped screaming, people had gone, but the river had risen above it all. They were hurt, but alive. Lotus Pier stood. It survived not in its buildings, but in its people.

The message was heard by all who saw the fires that night: war has come!

War was a tricky thing when you were children. Jiang Cheng fought alongside Jiang Yanli across fields black with ash and lightning. They started to wear braids in their hair, and soon after, their mother bestowed Zidian upon them and said, “May you have fortune in war.”

Two violet dragons danced across cities, and mountains, and rivers, and they tore the sun to pieces. Their lightning summoned the storm. The storm washed away the chaos. Gentle rains healed the wounded, made whole the half-broken.

The war came to an end at the hands of others. The dragons returned home with victory in their steps and their breaths. There was perhaps a day’s worth of rest before they joined in rebuilding.

Jiang Yanli called for peace, and peace came. Her voice had power; it had weight and promise and ghosts of memories lost. Those who bore the sun motif were spared under the condition that they renounce their names and take to new ones.

Three years after Wei Wuxian had left, two years after the dragons first earned their titles, and a month after setting steady the first foundation with their own hands, a proper young man from Lanling Jin proposed to Jiang Yanli.

It was difficult to tell which moment Jin Zixuan had fallen for the Second Violet Dragon, but battlefields were wide and bleak, and any of those thousands of lightning-charged steps could have pulled him into her unfaltering dance.

Jiang Cheng found himself lonely without his sister, but he knew it in his heart: she would be back. The river would bring them all home.

She returned a year later with a child. Jin Ling, she called him. Courtesy Rulan. It sounded right. It was a name that belonged on their tongues and fit nicely between their teeth.

The Masters of Lotus Pier turned their positions over to their heirs after Jin Ling celebrated his sixth birthday.

The years passed quickly at times, slowly at others. They were always busy. There was always more to be done. Everything had burned, but everyone had lived. There were people to house, and to recruit, and to trade with, and to bring home, and it took time, far too much time, or just enough.

They moved through time, and time moved through them.

And they forgot the strange boy they pulled out of the river so many years ago. Little by little, adulthood swept away the loose ends, snipped away the frayed bits.

A story with no ending wasn’t a story at all.

So they forgot it.

And here they were now: thirteen years since the end of the war, sixteen since Wei Wuxian had left.

Only now did they remember the strange boy who ran wild across their childhood, laughing and smiling like a polished piece of marble.

They sat facing each other, on opposite ends of the same table, and they were concerned.

“We aren’t at the age where our memories are that bad,” said Jiang Cheng.

“Perhaps it’s the stress,” said Jiang Yanli. She nodded at the servant who brought them tea. Then she turned back to her brother and said, “Wei Wuxian was—is a strange person. He never stayed in one place.”

Or existed in one place, she didn’t say.

When memories come, they come all at once. They remembered Wei Wuxian, but they also remembered Wei Ying, and how both boys shared the same body and the same face but had different eyes and smiles; brilliant stars and crescent-moon grins became river-stones and knife carvings, and vice versa, and on and on and on.

That letter from Yiling sat on the table. Its ink seemed to glow under the early morning sun.

To the venerable dragons of Lotus Pier, it started.

It was hard to read the rest. Jiang Cheng felt like he had read it before, and he had seen it one way, but he couldn’t remember if it spoke of a lantern parade or trade opportunities. Jiang Yanli couldn’t get her eyes to read it at all. What they could read were the first and last lines.

Wen Qing, signed the steady hand that had written it. Wen. A survivor who hadn’t been assimilated. Not a rebel. Simply an other.

An anomaly, like Wei Ying. Wei Wuxian.

“I think we ought to go to Yiling,” said Jiang Yanli.

“We have time,” agreed Jiang Cheng.

The lantern parade was always a few nights before Lotus Pier’s Mid-Autumn celebration. The people of Yiling believed it was best to celebrate the harvest with all the members of your family, from the very beginning of your bloodline to the youngest child; the flame would draw them home, where you could be warm even if you were alone in the world, and it was a bittersweet thing, like almonds.

Besides. Yiling had excellent turnips, and potatoes, and peaches. It would be excellent if they could fix up some agreements.

Perhaps Wei Wuxian would be there. He always loved Mid-Autumn and peaches.

The days flew by in a hurry. Preparations were made. Guests were entertained and honoured. A letter was written to herald their arrival. The masters of Lotus Pier made plans for their departure. The old masters bid them safe travels as they left.

Yiling was a small city at the foot of the Burial Mounds, and their peaches were something of a specialty, and—

They knew. They knew all of that. What they didn’t know was why their hearts beat so loudly, or why the tug on their memories had brought them here.

They were welcomed with gifts and praise; they took all the things and words and put them elsewhere. The roads were bustling with early celebrations, stores and carts almost overturned with gifts and produce, and the occasional spider lily grew from cracks in the earth.

A grand dinner of fresh meats and vegetables and local specialties and peaches was presented to them; they enjoyed how bright and vibrant the colours were and how firm and crunchy the radishes were. They were a local crop, one of the servants had said. Now that the Burial Mounds had quieted and the earth was healing, plants could finally grow. Radishes and potatoes and peaches grew especially well, and they were rich with faintness, in the way that they were undeniably there, and you could sink your teeth into them and feel them break, but the taste neither lingered on your tongue nor in your memory.

If that meant anything, the servants didn’t elaborate. They smiled, bowed, and left.

Night had fallen overhead, brushing gentle silver over rows and rows of lanterns. They swayed in the breeze like wisteria trees, round and red like apples.

Soon a woman joined their company and sat down across from them. “Welcome to Yiling,” she said. “Thank you for coming. I know you’re very busy people.”

Her voice was firm and steady. She had a hairpin that looked like a wisp of flame in her hair. She wore white robes licked with flare proudly, casually, as if she had seen the world burning and thought nothing of it. Or maybe she did, and she simply walked into the fires that had destroyed all those before her.

She sipped her tea. Her eyes were singed. She smelled of fire. “I’m Wen Qing,” she said. “It’s been a while. You’ve both grown into fine cultivators.” Something softened in her eyes, and the white flame became a soft orange. “He’d be proud. Shame he can’t meet you himself.”

They had never met before, yet neither of the dragons could bring themselves to correct her. Jiang Yanli said, “Thank you.”

“How long has it been?” said Wen Qing, but it sounded like she was asking herself. “Thirteen since the war ended... sixteen years, then?”

“Since Wei Wuxian left?” said Jiang Cheng, though he couldn’t have told you why.

“Left,” repeated Wen Qing. “Yes. Since he stopped being.” She paused for a moment, then said, “Have you been well?”

“Very,” said Jiang Yanli.

“Is Wei Wuxian here?” asked Jiang Cheng.

Wen Qing looked at them with her singed eyes. She sighed, finishing the rest of her tea in one go. “We’ll make the hike tomorrow,” she said. “It’s too late tonight.”

“I’ll show them to their rooms,” said someone.

The person who said that was dressed in the same flared robes, had the same shy smile, and carried the same faint blush in his cheeks as he always had. The dragons looked at him in confusion. He was much healthier than before, even though they had never met. Somewhere in their memories, beneath the war and the fires and the river-stones, his skin was grey and dead. But he was flush with health now, and he looked, they were certain, just as he had last year, and the year before, and all the years before that.

“He’ll see you tomorrow,” said Wen Ning, and neither of the dragons could remember where or when they had first heard his name. “For now, please follow me.”

Wen Qing watched them silently as they rose and stepped after her brother. She looked old, older than the disciples who had seen the worst of war and aged a lifetime; she looked as if she had seen war tens of millions of times and had chosen to remain anyway.

“Sleep well,” she said, at the same time her brother said, “Good night.”

And night fell, true night, not just shades of dusk and darkness, but the vast silence and emptiness of being buried under snow forever and slowly falling asleep.

As Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli closed their eyes, they heard something that sounded like Wen Ning say, “When do you think it’ll end?”

And something that sounded like Wen Qing said, “It doesn’t. You know that.”

Silence. Then: “Do you think... do you think he’s happy, after all he’s done?”

“I don’t know.”

“I hope he’s happy.”

“After everything he lost? Yeah. Me too.”

It was a strange conversation, and even stranger was that they heard it. They were asleep. They weren’t. They were thinking. They weren’t. They were dreaming.

Wen Qing looked at them then, as their souls peered through the veil of sleep and into the true night. She said, “You’ll remember whether you want to or not. That’s how it is with these sorts of things.”

“He did a very big thing for you,” said Wen Ning, sadly. “Dream and remember, like always.”

“Always,” said the siblings, wreathed in flame that burned all the colours of time. Their eyes turned to clocks and watches and pendulums and hourglasses, and then to sundials and candles and bowls of still water and ancient obelisks, and finally, at time’s end, to the sun that dawned on the first morning of humanity and ate everything on the last day of life.

They were time. They had seen everything. Jiang Cheng knew it then, and so did Jiang Yanli: time was linear until it wasn’t. When you were time, it didn’t mean anything; the water of the river was all the same, and it existed at every place at once, flowing, watching as the children of the world lived and breathed and died...

And they fell.

Jiang Yanli held Jiang Cheng’s hand as they dropped through earth, then clouds, then water, then the world.

They hadn’t held hands like that since they were children.

And they dreamt of a place and a time that had been lost forever; a place that lived on in memories that no longer existed.

A place that had been destroyed in their world, their place, their time, by a boy who had eyes like stones and a smile like a scar on a boat.

The thing about memory is that different people remember things differently.

Two people could stand next to each other and be continents away, if that meant anything. You could yell at each all you liked, but there were things that simply wouldn’t be.

Perhaps where things began to get wobbly was at the very beginning.

The Wei Wuxian they knew was many things. He was curious and intelligent, but lacked talent. He was hardworking and bright. He was the sun and the clouds and the stones at the river floor.

The Wei Wuxian they didn’t know was many things as well. He was curious, intelligent, and talented beyond measure; he was a star that drew things into his orbit and ushered in the morning with his smile. He was the thorn in their family, for all their father loved him and their mother despised him. He was chaos and decomposition; he was the act of breaking and remaking.

In Gusu, he made a spectacle out of himself. In Qishan, he bloomed like a star in its last moments. In that dark, wet cavern lit by a dying fire, he ravaged a beast from the inside out; he slept away fever in the company of a ghost and a lullaby.

In Lotus Pier, he bore his punishment with dignity, for all the face he could show through his shame. They fled the flames and the carnage. Lotus Pier fell before sunrise. Survival was never a kind thing. It meant that everything else had gone except you.

What were you supposed to do with nothing?

They were half-broken. The events that happened after were a blur of anger-despair-sacrifice-brotherhood-regret that hurt terribly to dwell upon, and it was a horrible thing to think of all they had lost and given up, and by the end, two suns walked the earth and every single shadow knew their names.

The eclipse came three months later, in the shape of something that looked like Wei Wuxian and sounded like Wei Wuxian but had eyes the colour of pomegranates and skin as pale as winter. He was strong. He was strange. He was their brother. He marched all the men up a hill and tore them to pieces. He spun a dizi between his fingers and kept smiling no matter how much people feared or hated him.

Careless, reckless, living life like tomorrow wouldn’t come: Jiang Cheng was lightning, Wei Wuxian was death, and Jiang Yanli was home.

War carves out pieces and leaves the victors to pick at what’s left. Fear made men mad; they sent the sun to die in places they couldn’t see and only made the shadows longer. It was goodness of heart, naivety, fate, politics, all the things they couldn’t control.

Wei Wuxian paid his debts, and in doing so, gave up his little place in that world.

It was troubling to see him leave, and Jiang Cheng was so angry, angrier than he had ever been, and he realized then that Wei Wuxian was always the one to drive him to such anger, and that was broken but special. They were fractured from the start of all things, and now they had drifted apart. But they were fiercely upset with each other, and that meant they still felt for one another, cared enough to step in front of the world and demand of each other, “What are you doing?”

To say love was their downfall would be dramatic and inaccurate. They didn’t end because of love. They loved each other, and they loved the world, and they wanted to hold onto everything they loved and had worked so hard to reclaim, and it wasn’t something as simple as love that tugged it away from them.

Whatever it was, it took and took and took until things unravelled. Broke forever.

Until then, Jiang Cheng thought that right or wrong was something that other people decided for you. But as Wei Wuxian broke himself into flesh and bone and blood and breath, and they could do nothing but watch as their brother threw himself into a burnt field and tried to coax sprouts from dead earth, there was something that creaked beneath the grinding of teeth and the groan of thunder.

They walked their own paths, all of them, one step at a time. All they could do was what they were able to do. Live. Rebuild. Protect the people that were precious to them, in their own ways.

And the hearth was quiet. It was cold.

Wei Wuxian had gone. Jiang Yanli had found happiness elsewhere. Jiang Cheng refused to sit alone and wonder, where did our paths diverge? Because once he started, he wouldn’t be able to stop, and he couldn’t afford to stop. Time was linear, and the pieces of their childhood they had traded for war had been costly.

They were tested, and pressed, and Wei Wuxian was smiling as he said, “How about Rulan?”

For a moment, it seemed as if they could still go on, could still be a family no matter how many miles stood between them.

But things that are half-broken break. It’s much easier to break something than it is to fix it. And things simply... snapped.

Things fell like snow. Slow, soft, and cold. They were breaking quickly, but the world was fine. It didn’t care. It was how things were sometimes. Slow, soft, and cold, burying everything in a quiet grave.

It was their Wei Ying that had told Jiang Yanli that she had died, in some faraway world and distant time.

The nature of death was that it happened to everyone. It simply came for her family early. Her parents, her husband, herself—hadn’t they all died at the hands of the same person?

But it was too cruel to say that. When did Wei Wuxian want all this? When did he ask for the world to turn on him, for every path ahead to be fraught with hardships? His heart was full but good, and it was that fullness that split open the seams.

Wen Qing and Wen Ning were there, in a time and place that hadn’t eaten them alive. They were like Wei Wuxian. They tried to protect the ones they loved no matter how much it hurt themselves and their people.

It... was just the nature of things, to die for things you love.

Rules were written because things happened over and over again to the point where people had to agree. Of all people, Jiang Cheng never thought that he would be the one to cement that into his heart as fact.

It was so easy to watch someone fall. Of the three of them, the children of the timeless river, only one was witness to the end of all things.

The fall came with barren hills fresh with death, a song that cried out to the smoke-filled skies until the lungs that sustained it could go no further, and a laugh between teeth stained with blood.

Crack, went the Seal.

Why? Jiang Cheng wanted to ask, then and there. But he couldn’t. There was no one left to ask it to.

And then it was dark.

There was no jolting up in bed, no sheen of cold sweat on their foreheads. They were dreaming one moment, and the next, they were sitting before the time-eaten siblings. There was a table full of food before them, and just outside, the sun had crept to loom over the Burial Mounds.

Wen Ning stared silently into his tea. Wen Qing sighed.

“Right,” she said. “Eat, and we’ll get going.”

There was no road up the Burial Mounds. Not back then, at least. Now there were fields scattered all over the hills, winding upward slowly but surely, damp with morning dew.

Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli followed behind the time-woven siblings. The path they took was one that had been flattened by farmers; a few greeted them that morning as they trekked upward.

“Before you ask your questions,” said Wen Qing, “let me answer the biggest one. Did it really happen? Yes. It did.”

“But it was another place,” Wen Ning continued. “And another time.”

“The old country, from where we came,” said Wen Qing. The siblings met eyes and seemed to sigh.

Jiang Cheng tried to say something. He was awash in memory, and he wanted to know what it meant. He said, “What happened afterward?”

“After Wei Wuxian died,” elaborated Jiang Yanli. She went pale saying it, as if she was remembering everything all over again.

Wen Qing studied their faces over her shoulder. “He ripped the roots of memory out from the world,” she said.

“When he died, he desired only two things,” said Wen Ning. “The first was to stop existing.”

“The second,” Wen Qing finished, “was for everyone who had the misfortune of crossing paths with him to live happily, freely, and without regrets.”

It was an impossible wish. Almost everyone who had any sort of meaningful interaction with Wei Wuxian had died, in a life so far and so distant that it no longer existed in any reality.

“The world broke for him,” said Wen Qing, though she didn’t sound particularly pleased about it. “It was a miracle and a curse. Everything just... stopped.”

“Only after he died?” asked Jiang Cheng.

“Of course. Wishes only come true once you’re dead. That’s why life is so unfair.”

“What did he do? Once everything just—stopped, what did he want?”

Singed eyes looked at him as if it were a trick question. “He wanted to make use of the miracle before it died,” said Wen Qing. “He studied relentlessly in a world without colour, sound, or warmth, until the day came and he created a spell that reworked the foundations of existence.”

Quietly, as if he didn’t want to speak at all, Wen Ning said, “He... he found us first and tried to make us whole again.” Silence. A pause that was thick with regret, like plum syrup over glutinous rice balls. “It didn’t work the way he thought it would. So he had to find another way for everyone else. And now...”

“Now we’re woven into time,” said Wen Qing. “Beings that can’t live or die. That’s the nature of time.”

Jiang Cheng didn’t know what to say. In his place, Jiang Yanli said, “I’m sorry.”

The sun seemed to rise a little higher. Both siblings turned, and their eyes were tiny stars that had touched the beginning and end of all things. Autumn was coming, the harvest would be prosperous, and they would watch humanity struggle to find their place forever and ever, until the light extinguished itself and turned everything to null.

“Don’t be,” said Wen Qing. Her voice was soft and melancholic in a way no mortal could ever understand. “He did all he could. He gave us a second chance, and we’re grateful for it.”

In that moment, she seemed very much like her brother: soft-spoken and gentle, with infinite kindness to spare.

The moment passed, and the siblings walked onward. “You met him in this life,” said Wen Qing. “And he destroyed the remnants of the old country.”

“The egg,” said Jiang Cheng. “He said that the egg was the cause of all those deaths.”

“He rebuilt everything by laying a blank canvas over the old country,” Wen Ning explained gently. “And then he traced along the edges. But he broke it in a few places. It’s hard to do things right when nothing’s ever gone right.”

As people grow, the words of their childhood grow and blossom; things are understood differently through the gates of time. Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli understood, then and there, the events that had played out before their younger selves.

A boy who had come from the old country, who existed as a half-broken memory, who threw the broken pieces of the home he had come from into the river to drown: his name was Wei Ying. Wei Wuxian. It was all the same.

Fields of radishes sprawled to their right. They tumbled down the mountain in slow slopes, sweeping over the city below, which was bright with coloured paper and apple-red banners.

“You can’t live two realities,” said Wen Qing. “The soul can’t handle that. It breaks like glass. He put a lot of effort into making sure everything worked out this time around. It wasn’t perfect, but it damn might as well have been.”

“He worked so hard,” Wen Ning said sadly.

There was a rising feeling in Jiang Cheng’s gut. Jiang Yanli’s hands were clasped together in front of her stomach. Jiang Cheng asked, “What did he do?”

The siblings exchanged a look. Wen Ning said, “He met everyone he had ever crossed paths with and took the old country out of them.”

“It took him so many lifetimes,” Wen Qing continued. She shook her head. “He wrote himself out of the story, watched it play out in full, rewound it all, and was never satisfied. He kept working, and working, and working—” She stopped there, biting her lip to stem the flow of words. “Until you two,” she finished.

They knew what her words meant, but didn’t understand. They did and they didn’t. It was a paradox. Everything they had lived up to this moment was contradictory.

“I think he wanted to end on you,” said Wen Ning to the violet dragons, who should’ve been three when two were all that ever existed.

Ahead of them, Wen Qing said, “He wanted to leave you for last. So when he said goodbye, it would be to you.”

“I think he was always scared of saying goodbye.”

“He was scared of a lot of things. Hell if he ever told us.”

“Then where are we going now?” said Jiang Yanli. “You said that he would see us.”

The siblings’ faces were unreadable with the sun glinting between the trees. Light split in every direction, dotting their features with shifting shadows.

In memories of an older time, they had been perfectly human. Unfalteringly so. Wreathed in flame even until death and beyond that. Now, in a place where they were time itself, everything converged in their hands, and they could do nothing but watch the radishes and potatoes and peaches grow.

Wen Qing said, “He’s gone, but not entirely.” She gestured in front of her, to the lip of a cliff that tumbled into darkness that hadn’t yet healed. “He sank into the earth, where nobody will ever remember him, in life or death or any reality.”

“I want to talk to him,” said Jiang Cheng. His voice shook. “I—need to talk to him.”

“He’s sleeping,” said Wen Ning. “He’s in a deep, deep slumber. It’s not the sort of sleep you can wake someone up from.”

Wen Qing heaved a sigh, then dragged her fingers through her hair. “But that idiot can feel just right, and he always wants to check on you. You come here every year, and you only stay a little while.”

Neither Jiang Cheng nor Jiang Yanli had any recollection of celebrating Mid-Autumn in Yiling, except for one fleeting memory of a parade of lanterns and burning dolls that never happened, not in the old country, but had happened unfailingly in the new one, and it was a strange place full of happiness and miracles and journeys that all led home.

“That’s just how memory is,” said Wen Ning, as if they had spoken out loud.

Before them was a fall that would, could, and had killed. It was a sheer drop into an abyss with no bottom, no matter how many rocks you threw in and how close you pressed your ear in. There would be no sound, because the person waiting at the bottom would catch everything soundlessly in his hands and whisper, it’ll be alright now.

There was a breeze up here, where the sun was just a little out of reach.

“He’s down there,” Jiang Yanli whispered. “He thinks it’s all his fault.”

“He’s everywhere,” Wen Qing said. She stood beside her brother, wearing a solemn expression. “He’s here especially, but he’s scattered all across the fabric of existence. And...” She trailed off, then looked away. “You can’t change someone’s mind once they’re dead.”

“These things happen sometimes,” said Wen Ning.

Jiang Cheng knelt down by the cliff. Jiang Yanli followed suit. Their shifting feet kicked some pebbles into the abyss. They waited for sound that would never come.

“A-Xian,” said Jiang Yanli, softly, like they were children again, and she was healing his wounds. “It wasn’t—”

You fault. She couldn’t say that. Not now, after everything he had done for them. It was a lie he had chosen to live again and again and again, until his light expired, until his eyes became river-stones and his smile became scratches on the side of a boat that never found land.

Jiang Cheng placed a palm on the ground. It was warm from sunlight. “You idiot,” he said, and it was unsteady. “You couldn’t have just... just... found your way back?”

There was nothing more to say. There was nothing that would ever be said again. They were adults now, one far older than the others, and they had learned what acceptance was, how hard it was to embrace.

“He’d be proud of you,” said Wen Qing, as her brother said, “He’d be happy.”

Silence was their ally and their worst enemy. It settled between countries split by time and fate and regret. It left spaces that could one day be filled again.

Jiang Yanli was the first to stand. She took a deep, rattling breath, like something was loose in her.

“Take a good look, A-Xian,” she said to the darkness. “We’re alright now. Everyone is. So when you’re healthy and strong again, come back to us.”

“And don’t you dare leave again,” said Jiang Cheng, standing beside their sister. “If you don’t know how to stay, we’ll teach it to you no matter how many times it takes.”

Perhaps they were expecting a tremble, or a quiver, or any reaction at all.

There was nothing.

The sky was bright with morning, and the sun rolled lazily above the clouds. It had risen without them noticing. It was warm against their skin and promised clear skies for Mid-Autumn.

“So what happens now?” asked Jiang Cheng.

“Same thing as every of the twelve time you’ve come,” said Wen Qing. “You go home.”

“Wei Wuxian isn’t there.”

“You get used to it,” said the siblings, together, with the same sadness and acceptance and ancient knowledge.

There was a fable they learned as children about a man who, while crossing a river, dropped his sword. At the very spot it had fallen into the water, he carved out a notch. And he searched long and hard for his sword when he reached land, fool that he was, and realized too late that he had lost it forever.

The violet dragons who were three but two didn’t know which side of the water they were on.

The four of them started down the Burial Mounds, which were no longer so aptly named. “You could be anywhere in time,” Jiang Cheng said to the siblings. “And you chose here.”

“It’s our way of saying thank you,” said Wen Qing.

“It’s hard to be alone,” said Wen Ning, softly. “It’s the least we could do for him.”

As they walked through rows of flourishing crops, farmers waved at them and hooted short greetings. The siblings smiled and waved back. The dragons watched time pass and become lost before them.

And time stopped, but only for a moment.

A boy jumped out of a tree a few paces ahead. He wore his hair up in a ponytail, tied with a single red ribbon, and donned black robes that looked like ash. Like dark stones. “Jiejie,” he said, greeting Wen Qing with a smile. “The organizing committee wants to speak with you.”

“Again?” said Wen Qing, with an exasperated huff.

“Unfortunately,” the boy answered. His smile was familiar. His eyes were grey, like stones.

Wen Qing rubbed her temples. It was unmistakably human and alive. “Tell them I’ll be there shortly,” she said. The boy nodded, taking the first quick steps down the mountain, before she shouted, “And feel free to knock them around for me, A-Yuan!”

The boy laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, and then his small back disappeared down the hills.

“He’s a kind boy,” said Jiang Yanli.

“He’s a one-man sect around these parts,” said Wen Qing. She seemed proud. “Children grow up so fast. Childhood’s a good time, even with all the parts you can’t control.”

This place was alive. This time was alive. Second chances were meant to be blessings, but only if you remembered the first time around. It wasn’t how things worked. Not always. Not ever.

“It’s a nice day,” Wen Ning finished, as their feet finally left the Burial Mounds.

Jiang Cheng said, “Well. It was kind of you to show us your harvest.”

“It looked very promising,” said Jiang Yanli. “We’d love to trade with you more often.”

Wen Qing and Wen Ning looked at each other for a moment. “Of course,” they said together.

It had been very kind of Wen Qing to invite them over to check on the Burial Grounds and how the soil had healed, how Yiling would become a hub of commerce and trade in a few years. But the Violet Dragons of Lotus Pier were busy people, and there was so much to do before Mid-Autumn.

The streets were busy now, but they parted easily for their party of four. “We’ll leave you to enjoy the city for the day,” said Wen Qing. “It’s a good city to explore. We’ll prepare for your departure.”

“Thank you,” said the dragons, like they were children again.

“If there’s anything you need, please don’t hesitate to call upon us,” said Wen Ning, bowing his head. He took one last look at his sister, saw something nobody else could see, and melted into the crowds.

“If Wei Wuxian ever writes from wherever he’s travelling,” said Jiang Yanli, “please tell him we said hello.”

“No matter how young he was, it was rude of him to leave without saying a proper goodbye,” muttered Jiang Cheng.

“A-Cheng,” Jiang Yanli scolded quietly, nudging him with her elbow. “We were all children once.” She smiled a perfect smile at Wen Qing, and said, “As long as he’s healthy and happy, that’s all that matters.”

Wen Qing smiled. “Of course,” she said. “He’ll be glad you thought of him.”

The Two Violet Dragons of Lotus Pier nodded their thanks to Wen Qing, who waved them off as they went their own ways. She stood there, politely, firmly, like a flame upon a stick of incense that would never burn away, until they rounded a corner to face an unfamiliar city.

They looked up at the Burial Mounds, and a trick of the light made it seem that it was ablaze; then the glare left their eyes, and the earth was healing, eager to bring out all sorts of life, though it had a preference toward turnips, potatoes, and peaches.

“It really is a nice day,” said Jiang Yanli.

Jiang Cheng stared a little longer. “Yes,” he said. “Perfect for Mid-Autumn.”

They wondered for a moment, and then dismissed it from their thoughts. Perhaps it was an afterimage, they decided, or a ghost: something that had stirred in their minds, for a moment, so powerfully that they believed it to be real, but now was gone, and faded into the past like a memory forgotten, or a shadow into the dusk.

A lifetime away, a man who bore light looked up to the sun.

And he began to remember.