Chapter Text
It was evening when a young man in mourning robes arrived at Jinlin Tai. The sun was a dying flame under the smoky, stratus clouds on the mountain horizon. His shadow trailed, long and skewed as he ascended the grand steps. It was apt to say he appeared not as a human, but a spectre of moonlight, rising with the dusk and preceding the eclipse.
No one approached to greet him, for no one but the venerable Sect Leader was qualified with that privilege.
The clarity bell at his waist chimed softly with his arrival at the square, a belated announcement of his presence, as the silence of the cicadas should have foretold enough. Nevertheless, all those present heard the sound as an augury of death.
Adjacent his wake, the ocean of sparks amidst snow seemed to gleam brighter, eerily pure under the palace roof's stern watch and belying the carnage within.
He crossed swiftly up the last flight of nine steps, past gilded columns and their ornate carvings, through decorated archways and the garden built in his name. He felt the ripples in the walls, faint and tremulous, a sign of discordance. The scent of incense and flowers intermingled with something sharp and metallic, creeping in intensity as he approached the Fragrant Palace.
There was a pull in his veins, single-minded and intent. The tide to the moon.
A deathly quiet greeted him inside, in lieu of warm silk and warmer skin. Layers of luxurious, gauzy curtains and opulent fittings, commissioned to the most exquisite of tastes and magnificent in their beauty. All were but idle decoration to the scene that lay before him.
Red. Deep and rich. It slicked the floors, dyed the golden silks on the bed, and dripped from its lacquered frame. It was the colour of luck and condemnation, adorned by both brides and names of the deceased. It was more Wen-crimson than Jin-vermillion, but the man knelt down and dipped his fingers lightly in the pool.
Blood was the mother of qi, an offering of which expressed submission to the divine spirits. As a result, the Lan teachings he was raised with did not take it lightly. Meanwhile, Qishan Wen believed in the eminence of the sun, how it ran through their veins, capable of being cultivated to the greatest radiance. Everything the sunlight touched could be gleaned, could be found.
And he told himself, he would find him, whatever it took.
He drew his guqin at once. Then, on his other, clean hand, bit open the tips of his fingers, where he was most ritually potent. Spiritual energy thrummed from the strings, as if wanting to stretch towards his touch. A simple law of attraction, purity to the impure. To the mortal.
They had picked a strategic time. Jiang Wanyin was preoccupied with sect business far in the south. Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji were on the road, north of Qinghe. There was only one other person Chief Cultivator Nie would have called for, had the news escaped the serene walls of the Fragrant Palace and reached him.
That person was already there, life dripping from all ten fingers, face bearing the ghost of his usual faint smile.
It had been an accident, too. He had intended his visit to be a surprise after a night hunt ended early. Perhaps one might call it luck, but he had stopped relying on chance the day he bound Sect Leader Jin's blood to his—many, many years ago.
The instrument siphoned off thirstily at his reserves.
And so, he began to play.
The young man was used to forgetting, and he was used to being forgotten. They forgot to kill him with the rest of his cursed family. They forgot to watch him when he began to slink away in the evenings, the vanquished sun tucked away in the pages under his pristine sleeve. They forgot to consider him when they reaped an orchid from the gardens of Jinlin Tai—when they took what was his.
He was indeed used to many things, but nothing quite like the urge to kill.
The tune cut through the tranquil air of the sect leader's chambers. Not corrupt, but not wholly right.
There was a beautiful amalgam between the techniques of the Lan and those of the Wen, both finding harmony in the intricate deltas of his meridians. Any experienced cultivator would say that straying from a single path would leave one stagnating at higher cultivation levels. Even worse, should they be incorporated without proper instruction, Qi deviation was the certain fate. That, or his mind would have enough and break itself.
Many times, the young man had been punished for his insolence in subverting these laws. Not that he had, of course, revealed much beyond the deviation in the style of his sword. With time, he had come to discover his lineage had given him dominion over the Wen style, and through careful, wilful study of Wen Qing's texts, had interwoven the compatible threads of the Lan style tightly within his Qi flows.
If something were to give, it wouldn't be his sanity. That, he had misshapen long ago, in the company of ashes in mass graves and the desolate ruins of Qishan watching over him like a bygone, ancient guardian.
A modest spark of Yunmeng Jiang was also present within him. When he was sixteen, it had been planted there, assimilated from paired sparring sessions, and years later, continued to be nurtured through dual cultivation with the one who had induced it. Its progression had been too far ahead to be trained out of him.
It was doubtful it would grow to be dominant, but it was there; a small piece of the other half of his soul, another tether to his one and only treasure.
He was distinctly aware of the time that slipped away like pollen carried by a breeze, like the trees in his periphery as he cut through the forest on his sword. It itched at him stubbornly, a bandaged wound he knew better than to pick at. He could only carry on, even as the wind stung high on his cheekbones.
The man had played Wèn Líng, imbued with a mix of their blood on his qin. Normally, he would not get an answer there, but the wards had been warped by malice. The draw of his life's essence, its strangely fused nature, beckoned them like moths to a flame. Then, the spirits had whispered a path, cold lips under the ribbon on his forehead. He had played, and they had cowered before his tones; thickened with something too warped to be called love, and too ardent to be anything but.
The disciple might have been born with the wrath of the sun flowing through his veins, might have been forged rigid by a fierce desire to belong to something of permanence, but he was terrifying precisely because he was a Lan, and because he loved.
Lans loved until they died. They loved until their fingers grew mangled, and their hearts bled dry, and they had nothing left of themselves but echoes of longing in a language only spirits understood.
Dusk arrived, and the sun no longer illuminated the sky. He came upon a wide glade, at the furthest point of which stood a building made of greyish-white stone. Sturdy and permanent, constructed to last instead of morph with generations. A crumbling, decrepit wall curved behind it in a broken concentric. He stepped, through the sorrel and stalks, and onto the single path. It was twisted and cracked under his white boots, almost half-colonised by nature, blooming life through the crevices. Above, the moon was an arc of a sword against the dark expanse, casting argent light off dewdrops on grass. It was still and supernally peaceful, but he knew all too well that peace was only a reflection of the face one made in the mirror.
His fingers throbbed, as if tugged by invisible strings, or perhaps, the shape of an archer's hands interlocking his.
I found you.