Chapter Text
The rumors have been going around for weeks now. Even Lan Wangji, who never pays attention to gossip, has heard it, filtering up through the rafters of the store to where he sits in the alcove, digging through the books of magic. The moving castle is back, they whisper, in low voices, in the bookstore his brother runs. On the hills above the city, there’s a castle that crawls like a centipede, made of black brick. Smokes pours from its chimneys. He’s here, they whisper. Wei Wuxian. The demonic cultivator, in his moving castle, roaming around the Yiling Wastes.
The rumors come on the heels of other, nastier rumors; rumors that Lotus Pier burned down, that the family was all slaughtered. Rumors that Wen Ruohan sent his son, Wen Chao, to do it. The war between Wen Ruohan and the sect alliance has been going for a year now, eating up all the young cultivators for soldiers. He attacked Gusu Lan first, after all, sending Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji fleeing the mountain, disgraced. Yunmeng Jiang is just the latest to suffer destruction. Lan Wangji can’t tell, from where he sits in his alcove above the rafters of the bookstore, what connection the two have. Wei Wuxian is attacking Wen Chao, the rumors say, though some disagree with this. He’s on the side of the sect alliance. No, he’s on the side of Wen Ruohan, terrorizing innocent villages with his moving castle. No, he’s on his own side, killing both the sect alliance and the Wens.
People talk too much, Lan Wangji decides, as he leafs through charred pages, day after day. All the pages that Lan Xichen saved from their library pavilion. All the history they have. Lan Wangji sorts them, marking which books are missing parts, re-binding loose pages together, trying to figure out what is too damaged to save.
The gossip keeps him company. As time passes there’s more and more gossip about Wei Wuxian, about the black castle lurking in the hills. He’s a shameless flirt, the women whisper, in low voices. And so attractive! A tall, thin man, wearing all black and red, who doesn’t use a sword but uses a black flute. Lan Wangji has to suffer their matchmaking schemes, listening to an auntie go on at length that demonic cultivation or no, he seems to be killing a lot more of the Wen-dogs than the Alliance soldiers these days, no matter how he does it…
On that subject, the rumors dip into whispers. He makes ghost puppets, some whisper. He stops the hearts of soldiers using black magic, others say. He fights using a single fierce corpse, with the strength of a dozen men. One day a soldier comes into the bookstore, his voice rough, the sound of his footsteps accentuated by a cane, and swears at Lan Xichen that Wei Wuxian is raising the dead to be his soldiers. Lan Wangji stops his sorting at that, his hands gripping the edges of a book too tightly. Raising the dead? Necromancy?
All the voices in the bookstore dip low. Nonsense, the consensus is, from the variety of voices that override the lone soldier. No one can raise the dead. That’s simply battlefield ramblings.
Lan Wangji, who spends all day staring at rare cultivation texts on the theory and practice of novel uses for spiritual energy, has a cold feeling in his heart that it might be possible, after all. He digs through the texts he’s researching, looking up passages, and makes notes that he should discuss with his brother.
Lan Wangji sits alone, working upstairs, while Lan Xichen does all the customer-interaction downstairs. From the alcove where he sits Lan Wangji can hear, if not see, the dim tinkle of the bell on the front door, the murmured conversation of people below. It makes him feel a little bit like a ghost, listening to stories and unable to reply. Some people would think it lonely, he supposes, and sometimes he finds himself wanting to share a segment of book he’s reading or putting together. Generally he feels relieved that he doesn’t have to interact with people. Sometimes as he works he makes lists of things he wants to tell Lan Xichen, as he goes through the burned books. But the days are long, and often by the time he descends from the tiny office to have dinner with his brother, he often feels it’s no longer worth talking about. Sometimes days go by and he realizes that he hasn’t said anything at all.
Lan Xichen is worried about him, he realizes, dimly. But it’s hard for Lan Wangji to make himself care very much. The days are very much the same. He listens to gossip in the store while he works, and reads cultivation texts, and gossip and magic blend in his head until one night, he dreams about Wei Wuxian, a man in black robes with a dark smile, who holds a hand out to him, and Lan Wangji wakes with a start, his heart pounding.
———
There’s a minor festival coming up, for the spring equinox, an odd thing to celebrate in the middle of a war. The town celebrations, according to the gossip Lan Wangji hears, are going to be toned down this year, nothing like they normally are. The tone of the gossipers is mournful on this.
Lan Xichen closes the store and sends Lan Wangji out to buy osmanthus cakes, for the festival. Lan Xichen is going to Qinghe, for a few days, using the festival as an excuse to close his shop, hoping no one will notice his absence. “Go to the festival. Bring some cake home for me. Take your time, brother,” he says, gently, before giving Lan Wangji money and sending him out of the shop.
The day is bright, piercing sunshine and blue sky, wispy clouds that cast no shadows. Flowers are blooming, the air full of scents, and bees are buzzing around them. Lan Wangji wears blue robes, paler than the sky. Holding a money pouch from his brother, he feels like a child, sent on an errand by a worried parent. He makes his way through the paths of town to the center square, where the stalls selling cakes are set up.
The festival is loud, and in the city square it is dusty and hot. He can feel sweat trickling down the back of his neck. Lan Wangji hates crowds, and there are too many people here, too much noise, a crowd of riotous humanity in bright colors. Women in pastel dresses holding parasols are laughing and waving, flirting with young men holding swords, who are yelling and flirting back. In short, it is a perfectly ordinary festival, and Lan Wangji hates it. He misses his own sword like a phantom limb.
Something buzzes at the edge of his senses, hard to notice under the loud and distraction of the crowd. Something like an aura of evil. He can’t focus enough to chase what it is.
He moves through the crowds, trying not to touch anyone, to find a booth selling cakes. He stops at one, and is cornered by a trio of brightly-dressed young women, holding floral parasols.
“Ah, gongzi!” one shouts at him, winking. “What’s a handsome young lord like yourself doing alone on the equinox?”
“Oooh, he’s so handsome!” the second one squeals, laughing at the first one. “Pick him up quick!”
“Think he’s already married? Looks pretty single to me,” the third one says, grinning at Lan Wangji. He can feel the tip of his ears turning pink.
“Please excuse me,” he says, but the three laugh at him.
“Oooh, he’s shy,” the second one says. “You’re gonna have to toughen him up!”
“Look at his ears go pink like that,” the first one says, sounding amazed. “Gongzi, you’re so easily embarrassed!”
“I can think of a few other things that would embarrass him,” the third girl says, grinning. “Imagine if we were to—“
“I must go,” Lan Wangji says, his ears turning pinker then they were, but the group encircles him more tightly.
“Are we making you uncomfortable?” the first one says, laughing, and rests her hand on his arm. Lan Wangji stiffens, staring down at her hand.
A low, throaty laugh sounds from behind them, and the three ladies turn around. “Ah, ladies,” a new voice says, smooth and dark. “You’ve found my friend for me!”
“Sir, is this your friend?”
“Imagine, leaving this young specimen alone on the festival! He’s gonna get snatched up!”
The women move enough for Lan Wangji to be able to see the new voice speaking. He lifts his face, and catches sight of the stranger’s face.
He looks like a young man, maybe a little older than Lan Wangji himself. His robes are black, textured and with faint sheen in the sunshine, with crimson red underrobes that make his skin look delicate, framing a long neck, and a thin face. He smiles with a wide, practiced smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. His eyes are dark, and locked with Lan Wangji.
“There you are,” he says, and his voice is low, and directed straight at Lan Wangji’s spine. It sends vibrations down his whole body. “I’ve been looking for you.”
And then the stranger is just between the ladies, effortlessly pushing them out of the way, murmuring: “My apologies to these beautiful ladies,” and then his hand is on Lan Wangji’s arm, gently leading him away. Something on his hand flashes.
Lan Wangji hates people touching him. He suffers his brother’s touch only fleetingly. The touch of that woman in the market made his skin crawl. But where this stranger touches him, his arm feels hot, a searing flash of heat that radiates from that stranger’s palm up his whole arm, jolting into his chest. That must be why his heart is doing that thing, why the beats feel so funny. Lan Wangji stiffens under the stranger’s touch, but the man is already leading him into a shady alleyway.
The man ducks his head, turning it only a hair, then moves closer to Lan Wangji. His lips are close to Lan Wangji’s ear, enough so that when he speaks, Lan Wangji can feel the air from his breath. “They’re following me,” he whispers, his voice soft but insistent, and Lan Wangji’s eyes widen. The stranger pulls him deeper into the alleyway.
Lan Wangji sends out his senses and here, away from the noise of the square, he can feel those shadows of evil that he sensed earlier. Only now they’re much stronger. He turns his head to the side and sees shadows stretching into the alley where no shadows should be.
“Eyes straight ahead,” the man murmurs to him, grasping his arm more tightly. “Don’t let them know. Just follow my lead, all right?”
“All right,” Lan Wangji says, softly, his voice lower than he expects. The man smiles at him, now, and this smile does touch the corner of his eyes.
“Thank you, gege,” he murmurs, and his voice is dark and smooth again, but Lan Wangji doesn’t have time to think about it before the grip on his arm tightens. “And now, we have to speed up, hmm?”
“What—“ Lan Wangji starts to say, because the alleyway ends in a brick wall, and now they are almost running towards it.
The man grins again, eyes narrowing, and with his other hand reaches into his sleeve and pulls out a paper talisman, glowing crimson in the air. He throws it against the wall, and without breaking stride, Lan Wangji and the stranger run through the brick in time for the shadows to crash against it on the other side.
“Nice!” the man compliments him, grinning again. “But that’s not going to be all. These shadow-wraiths are going to keep following me, I’m afraid.”
“Shadow wraiths?” Lan Wangji asks, quietly, and the man smiles at him again.
“Even a young cultivator like yourself can’t be expected to know everything,” he says lightly. They’re still running, now, along a maze of bricked-up alleyways with slanted sunlight through the walls, taking random lefts and right. Lan Wangji can’t keep up.
“We’re in a maze array,” he says, looking towards the other man, who raises his eyebrows.
‘Oh, you are a talented young cultivator, hmm?” he says, voice playful. “Yes, gege, but no need to worry. I control this one. We just need to lose them, that’s all.” He looks up at the top of the brick walls, then looks over at Lan Wangji. “Trust me?”
Lan Wangji stares at his face, his mischievous smile. The other man’s eyes are dark, but—gray, he thinks, not black. Gray, and glassy, missing something of the spark that makes a person look alive. But still handsome. This man is….bespelled, maybe, Lan Wangji thinks, but doesn’t have time to think anymore. “Mn,” he hears himself saying, surprising even himself, and then the two are in the air, feet stepping on nothing, and then they’re running lightly along the top of the walls in the maze array, in the blinding sunshine.
“Excellent,” the man’s voice says, sounding very close to Lan Wangji’s ear. “What a high cultivation level gege has. If only you’d seen me in my younger days,” he says, voice teasing, but he’s looking over his shoulder, not staring at Lan Wangji’s face. His expression clouds. “And they’re coming again. Okay, gege, trust me one more time,” he says, turning to lock eyes with Lan Wangji for a second, and then they are in the air again.
The heat is less up here, skimming the rooftops of the town. Lan Wangji’s blue robes flare out in the wind, and the other man’s crimson under robes flash in the sunlight, vivid and bright. He hasn’t let go of Lan Wangji’s arm.
“Gege is a natural at this, hmm?” he says, his tone full of laughter.
Many responses flit across Lan Wangji’s mind, from you are too familiar to of course I am to who are you? to a small, plaintive Call me gege again, and he pushes them all down. “Who are they?” Lan Wangji asks instead.
“Oh, just some wraiths Wen Ruohan has sent out for me,” the man says, lightly. “But nothing we can’t shake.” He turns his head again, and this time Lan Wangji looks too, both turning toward each other to look behind them. The shadows are more obvious, up here, ten dark shapes leaping across the rooftops, trying to keep up with them. “Dammit,” the man says, almost too soft for Lan Wangji to hear. Their eyes meet as they turn their heads back.
“I’m going to let go of you,” the man says, softly, “and throw more talismans at them, all right? They’re not after you. They should leave you alone once you’re not with me anymore. But just in case, gege, take this,” he says, and reaches into his robe to pull a yellow talisman. He reaches his other hand over and places it on Lan Wangji’s chest, where it sticks to the front of his robes. Lan Wangji doesn’t realize he’s put his other hand up to cover it. The man meets his eyes again.
“Ready, gege?” he asks, and Lan Wangji, holding his gaze, finds himself nodding.
In the blink of an eye he is released, floating gently down, and turns his head in time to see the black-robed cultivator reach into his robes, coming out with talismans in both hands, and throw them towards the shadows in a flash of crimson light. Every shadow is hit with a yellow slip of paper. As the papers hit, they emit a crimson flare, and the shadows turn to smoke with a shriek. The man reaches for his belt, but Lan Wangji can’t see what it is as he drifts below the roofline.
Impatient and alarmed, he glances off the rail below and rises back into the air, coming to balance on a rooftop. But when he comes back up there is no one there. No black-clad cultivator or shadows, not even any used talismans littering the roof tiles. Lan Wangji balances on the edge of the rooftop, staring across the square, but there is nothing to see.
The maze array? He had to have entered the maze array again. Lan Wangji’s mind is whirling. He looks down, and realizes his right hand is still clutching the talisman against his chest. He peels it free and stares down at the yellow paper. The character is brown, and Lan Wangji realizes it is drawn in blood instead of the usual cinnabar. He stares at it for several minutes before he descends from the rooftop. He’s the best student in his sect, and talismans are no secret to him, but he’s never seen this one before.
He doesn’t get the cakes after all, and avoids the square as he goes back to the bookstore. He keeps his senses alert, but nothing more appears.
———
The next day it all seems like a dream. When Lan Wangji wakes to the pale light against his window, birds singing, the events of yesterday feel far away. Shadow-wraiths, attacking in broad daylight? He thinks, unbidden, of that person’s eyes, dark gray, glassy, like something missing from them. He reaches over to his bedside table, where the talisman still sits, the incantation as unreadable as ever.
For some reason, he tucks it into his robes before he goes to the bookstore.
With no gossip from below, no murmur of customers, it’s quiet in the shop. Lan Wangji always found it easier to concentrate, back at Cloud Recesses, when there was absolute quiet, when he didn’t have to try to focus over the background noise. But he discovers now that the silence is almost jarring. Every stray noise, every birdcall, every footstep passing by in the street, makes him tense up and lose his place in his reading. By the time the late afternoon sunlight is slanting across the shelves of the bookstore, Lan Wangji has given up on his organizing and gone down to sort through the list of book requests at the register.
The sun has just crept to the edge of the desk, all the way in the back of the shop, when the door of the shop opens, and Lan Wangji sets the list down carefully, all the hairs on his arms standing up. A cultivator in dark robes stands in the doorway, frowning at him.
“Our store is closed,” Lan Wangji says, his sentence short, and the man at the doorway grins at him. His grin has a manic edge to it.
“Oh? Is it? You filthy associate of the Yiling Laozu,” the man says, his tone syrupy-sweet, “I don’t give a fuck if it’s closed or not.”
“I don’t know who your Yiling Laozu is, but I am not his associate,” Lan Wangji says, voice a little louder.
“Nice try, but you can’t lie to me. I can smell it on you,” the man hisses, his eyes glittering. “I’ll kill him and every one of his associates. Now!”
Lan Wangji steps forward, hand raised, but the man has raised his hands, eyes gleaming, and a wave of magic speeds towards Lan Wangji, pushing him back against the desk. He gasps for breath, standing up, and stares at the man. His chest feels funny.
“What the fuck,” the man hisses, again, eyes narrowed. “You should be dust!”
“Get—get out,” Lan Wangji grunts, holding up his hand, readying his own spell, and sends an incantation flying towards the red-robed cultivator. It pushes him backwards, towards the door, and he bares his teeth at Lan Wangji.
“Fine,” he spits. “But even if you’re not dead, you don’t have long left. Tell that fucking Yiling Laozu that next time, it’ll be his life!”
“OUT!” Lan Wangji shouts, again, throwing another wave of power at the man, who is pushed against the door. He gives Lan Wangji a final sneer before leaving, the door slamming behind him.
Something is very, very wrong with Lan Wangji. His magic is wrong. Those blasts should’ve been powerful enough to break all the windows in the bookstore—not just push someone against a door. His chest feels funny, still, a tight pressure, and his heart is beating irregularly in his chest. He reaches a hand up to touch his chest, then reaches inside his robes. The talisman, tucked inside, feels different, and when he pulls it out, the paper crumbles to dust in his hand.
His hand. Lan Wangji stares at his hand. It’s not the hand he had this morning. The long fingers are twisted with age, looking arthritis, skin sunken and dry, veins and tendons prominent. There are age spots. He stares at them again. These—these aren’t his hands.
Something deep in Lan Wangji’s head is panicking. It’s a faint sheen of static that’s overlying his thoughts, making it impossible to think or concentrate. I have to stay calm, he thinks, looking at his hands, and then he walks to the stairs that lead up to their living quarters, above the bookshop. At the top of the stairs is a mirror.
The person staring back at Lan Wangji isn’t him.
Their face is wrinkled, eyes more sunken into their face. The nose is wrong, too. Their hair is long and wispy, all the way grey. Lan Wangji raises his hands to his face, and in the mirror the elder does the same.
The panic in the back of his mind is rising. I have to stay calm, he thinks, looking in the mirror, as this elder’s eyes widen in shock.
The sense of unreality is unmooring him. The room doesn’t feel like his room. His body is not his body. His chest still hurts, even if it doesn’t look like what he’s used to, but inside the heart beats at him still mine, still mine. Lan Wangji goes to his room, lays down, and hopes that in the morning this will all have been a bad dream.