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Someone is screaming.
There are always people screaming when battles are fought. It shouldn't stand out, shouldn't drain the blood from Lan Xichen's face like it does. But his brother had arrived to the Nightless City against all better judgment just half an hour ago, and now someone is screaming, and the screaming voice sounds like Lan Xichen's voice.
Lan Xichen whirls in place, desperately searching the white forms around him for his brother's face. If any of these men have had the gall to injure him further, no austere Lan rules will prevent their immediate slaughter. Some part of his brain notices that the cultivators around him are pausing in their fights as well; opponents give each other wary glances and look together to find the source of the sound. Awful. Like someone's heart has been ripped out.
Wangji.
A white form crumpled on rock like a bedsheet escaped from a laundry line. Jiang Wanyin stumbling away from him, sword drawn but not bloodied. Wei Wuxian is nowhere.
Lan Xichen knows what has happened. His brother howls into the stone beneath him, his grief so vast and violent that no words, no rules can hold it. The whispers begin as the battlefield stills.
"Is that… Hanguang-Jun?"
"Did Sect Leader Jiang injure Hanguang-Jun? Why is he crying like that?"
"Where is the Yiling Patriarch?"
Lan Xichen flies to his brother's side. When he passes Jiang Wanyin, he tries to catch his eye, but Jiang Wanyin stares resolutely at the ground. He, too, is crying, huge fat tears filling his eyes and slipping silently down his face. Lan Xichen lets him pass and kneels beside his brother.
"Wangji," he says gently. "Calm yourself. You'll make yourself sick."
His brother ignores him. His hands are clenched into bloody fists. The wounds on his back are still open and weeping; they were never going to heal perfectly, but this activity has ensured that when they heal they will be ugly and painful still. If they heal. Lan Xichen begins passing him spiritual energy. His brother wails again. His throat is audibly sore already; this boy has never shouted before, has never used the whole great power of his lungs. Now he is tearing himself apart. Lan Xichen estimates that he will hyperventilate himself into passing out within minutes.
But those are minutes that they do not have. He could vomit; he could be misunderstood as the Yiling Patriarch's conspirator; he could go into qi deviation.
Lan Xichen reaches down and gently, so gently, places his hands over his brother's nose and mouth, and his brother doesn't even struggle. It takes only ten seconds for him to stop screaming and only another ten to go limp, and Lan Xichen removes his hands immediately, continues to pass spiritual energy to him. He looks up to see the eyes of every living cultivator present.
"Wei Wuxian is dead," he tells them. His voice, bolstered by spiritual energy, echoes on the cliff face across the battlefield, brings his words back at him. Even unconscious, his brother seems to seize at the sound. "Honored Sect Leaders, I believe this discussion conference may be postponed."
He lifts his brother and leaves without another word. He trusts Mingjue and A-Yao to resolve things here. His brother is dying in his arms; he cannot possibly bring himself to care who gets the Yin Tiger Seal. "Wangji," he whispers into his brother's hair as he flies from the Nightless City. "Oh, Wangji, my little brother, my second self. Have I doomed you?"
His brother's only answer is the blood soaking slow and hot into Lan Xichen's ceremonial robes.