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It is the easiest thing that Xie Lian has ever done.
In the work of a moment, every choice he's made since his first failure, every burden born of his own incompetence, is lifted by a ghost whose name he now will never know. He tried to take it himself—he would have taken it himself, dying once, twice, a hundred thousand times until he paid for the rage he harnessed. But Wu Ming—
In the moments after, he could not tell you what he said to Jun Wu. Whether he pleaded for him to take vengeance or bargained it or begged for the punishment he clearly deserved. All he knew was the light of heaven on his face and the guilt like an anchor round his neck. Body in abyss, soul in paradise, was it? Body in paradise, now, and soul…
Whether his dues are pleaded, bargained, or begged, Xie Lian is still granted better than he deserves. The light of heaven surrounds him and he flies through its streets with the saber that killed him and the silk that killed his parents and his power locked away. He feels the edge of every cobblestone against his feet. His arms ache and bones ring with each of Jun Wu's blows. His face is warm where the hat does not shade it. He has never felt less divine. He has never been more thankful for it.
Xie Lian remembers the pride and awe of his first ascent. He remembers first seeing the golden streets and radiant light and Jun Wu himself and feeling pure, untainted satisfaction. He remembers the itch of a thought, too well-suppressed to ever be voiced— this is what I was born for.
What a fool he was.
Xie Lian's saber flicks again, striking true to the right side. The other god is old, strong, armored, and overflowing with spiritual power. Once, Xie Lian might have rivaled him in the latter three. Now, he has none, and nothing to his name but persistence.
Well, what worth is power, strength, or armor? Xie Lian has ascended twice, and both times were made possible by ghosts with neither name nor reputation.
There is a peace to the martial gods' flurry of blows, to this dance too fast for any other eye to follow. There is peace in the certainty of Xie Lian's loss. As much as he longs to rejoin heaven, what is there that heaven can teach him? Entitlement? Security? As much as he longs to be a god, what good could a god like him do?
No, this is for the best. He decided as much when he bared his blade against the Emperor. Xie Lian ruined his kingdom, defiled its dead, and killed the one worshipper whose faith he had not lost. He made himself a calamity for the people of Yong An; he had already been a calamity to Xie Lian.
There is something blistering on the inside of his throat, something seeping from his spine to the soles of his feet, something dragging his chin to the earth, and something keeping his eyes fixed on the flicker of Jun Wu's sword. Is this anger? Rage? Impotence? Guilt? Disappointment? Despair? His second life has taught Xie Lian more emotion than his first one ever had, though he often lacks the labels for it still. He is a creature of movement, sensation, and devotion only—what use are words for such a creature? He deserves the ache across his legs, across his arms, across his back. He deserves the whip-light stinging cuts across his arms and ribs. He deserves the coming fall.
He has pierced a hole in Jun Wu's armor.
Across the way, he sees Feng Xin and Mu Qing. The latter has a slack grasp on the former's arm—both are watching with too much on their faces to parse. From what he once thought he knew, Xie Lian would describe Feng Xin's expression as concern and Mu Qing's as grief. From what his last life has taught him, he will venture no guess.
For the first time, he questions the decision to fall. He has already struggled. The saber in his hands is heavy, and the silk is tight around his wrists. He had people who cared enough to teach him, once. Is suffering truly the way to learn?
No. No. This bout has taught him something already. Xie Lian is selfish. He is self-centered. His fall will not be educational—it will be penance. Life in any form is a gift, but this life will show him what he had missed in his gilded halls and blameless history. Perhaps not everyone can be saved, but perhaps he is the one who can be lost. He can give, to pay back what he has already taken.
He strikes again—Jun Wu blocks. Over his shoulder, Xie Lian smiles, eyes on the two officials he once called friends. I'm sorry , he thinks. He is not so presumptuous as to ask for their forgiveness, even in the privacy of his mind.
The Heavenly Emperor is driving him back, as he has been all this while. Xie Lian cannot stand against him. He never expected that he would. He has learned by now that there are forces he cannot deny. Jun Wu is one. Good is another. Fate may qualify. Evil does not.
Maybe , he thinks, eying the chink in Jun Wu's armor, maybe one day. Spiritual power roils against the damming shackle, and something of his habitual arrogance must linger, because even as he prepares for his second fall, Xie Lian wishes for one more force he could deny.
The thought echoes in his mind as the last blow fells him. The thought rings like his ears as his knees hit the cobble and he is forced down. Jun Wu tips his chin up with the end of his sword and it takes everything that Xie Lian has not to laugh. Because even here, even now, as the Crown Prince of Xian Le is forced to kneel, opposed against a pride he has no right to possess, as the greatest god prepares the banishment that the victim engineered, even now, Jun Wu's eyes hold nothing but pity and gentle understanding.
"Xie Lian," he sighs. "I cannot let you stay."
It is an act, and bitter satisfaction coils in Xie Lian's chest, alongside the rage and loss which he doubts time will ever salve. It is an act, and he has emotion enough to play his part.
"So?" He coughs, winded, and smiles a mirthless smile. "Send me back."
The courtyard is silent. The crowd around is still. Jun Wu stands, sword tip beneath his foe's chin, and the festering thing in Xie Lian's breast begins to boil.
"Send me back !" he snaps, lunging into Jun Wu's blade. He turns it aside too quickly for any significant wound, but it adds one more to the whispering cuts across his body. Xie Lian sees the generals once more, behind the emperor—stricken this time, the both of them. Mu Qing's knuckles whiten on Feng Xin's vambrace.
"Not like—" he pants, swallows. Why are these the difficult words? "Not like you've ever cared before."
Jun Wu strikes; Xie Lian falls, again, with weight like an anchor wrapped around his neck and ill fortune strapped to his ankle. Xie Lian falls for the second time:
It is the easiest thing he has ever done.
//
It is the hardest thing that Hua Cheng has ever done.
Not for the pain, no. He has lived one life and died many deaths, knowing everything from isolation to war to helplessness to rebirth to the precise feeling of your soul being rent asunder by the resentment of your homeland's fallen dead. Hua Cheng knows what it is to be unnamed and unaimed too, and he would choose pain over that every time. Point being—it is not the pain that burns the worst when he decides to pluck out his own eye, nor is it the bloodlust. It is instead the doubt.
What for? Hua Cheng wonders. A survivor somewhere shudders out one tremulous breath, and his fingers tremble with it. Why shouldn't I kill them ?
Not for the first time, but for the first time centuries, he wonders: is His Highness still alive? Would you like who Hua Cheng has become? Would he care?
Time is a strange and twisting thing and it has carried him closer and farther, closer and farther, like the ebbings of a particularly sadistic tide. Hua Cheng knows the stars of his birth, knows the misfortune that haunts him, knows that every supernatural turn of luck he has in death is owed to him for the one unending injustice that was his life before. He knows the stars of Xie Lian's birth too. He remembers scraping the records of history for every trace of the ascended prince that he could find.
A great savior or a great downfall. Hero or villain. Can fate really be decided in labels as clean as these?
Huab Cheng watches his hand approach his eye, and he keeps his eye level as it nears. The better his view, the easier this will be. His fingers find the eyelid. He catches the weight and shape of the eye from there. It will be swift. It will be ugly. The world demands nothing less.
Perhaps His Highness is dead.
Perhaps—
To hell with it.
Perhaps he lives. Perhaps he's dead and rotting, like the world around him. Perhaps he would bless Hua Cheng for his efforts. Perhaps he would hate the calamity he's become. Maybe he's like every other god up there, too distant to care, or like every other mortal, blind past their own suffering. Whether or not this deed is noticed, whether it is rewarded, it is right.
And suffering for what's right—isn't that what His Highness taught him, so long ago?
There are no words for the feeling of ripping out your own eye. There are only your senses screaming—red-black bright-flash then the flat empty lack, the blood pouring down your cheek and something cool and soft like jelly in your fingers. The violence roiling inside him is satisfied—dissatisfied? He cannot find it past the pain. He blinks, feels air wafting against the bloody roots of the dead eye—
He is in heaven.
A flash of lightning , they say, and the virtuous ascend. A great storm, an earthquake, and the hero rises.
Did the earth shake? Did the sky flash? In the stories, did the hero ever have blood on his hands?
His fingers loosen. He hears rather than sees his eye drop to the floor, sloughing off his fingers and leaving traces of viscous slime behind. There are faces around him, gods around him, staring with one sentiment upon their face. Hua Cheng knows that sentiment. He has seen it on every face he's ever known—well, every face but one.
Odd, isn't it? He had feared His Highness' revulsion, and he found the heavens' revulsion instead.
There is something sharp and twisting in his breast, scalding worse than the hollow of his eye. There is something aching, potent and acute.
Had Hua Cheng forgotten? He is a ghost, a creature born of and sustained by resentment. He lived for his love, yes, but he loved because His Highness was the first and only who didn't hate him, and the first and only he did not hate back. Third son of his family, first cast out. Cursed, reviled, mocked—the best he has ever gotten is this , the gods' eyes around him stiff with confusion and distaste. He drips blood and viscera on the golden tiles and it is good, it is right, a creature like him should leave this place defiled.
A martial god's hand flinches to his sword. The civil gods behind her gasp. Hua Cheng realizes, belatedly, that he is sobbing, breath raspy and reedy with pain.
Something flickers to life in his mind, some ounce of power previously untouched. A merit, he thinks. A prayer. A whisper of faith from the humans he hurt himself to save.
Hua Cheng would like to believe himself to be a ghost with morals, truly. He thinks of himself as a face of the downtrodden and overlooked. He has never been a hero, no. Heroism is hard with your own life to save. But he is loyal. He is strong. He protects himself, yes, but also his domain, his god, his people.
Those humans had been his people, below. He had claimed them, kept them, protected them in a land where the living had no cause to walk. Even as he grew wilder, raving, crazed with pain and the cauldron's call, they never came to harm, at his hand or any other's. He foamed at the mouth like a dog. He snapped at the bit like a horse. He growled and gored and simmered and stalked and never touched a hair on their heads.
Still, the whole while, they had feared him, with fear so heavy he could smell it on their skin.
Now , they pray, leaving gratitude and relief to buzz between Hua Cheng's teeth.
Is this what they wanted?
Is martyrdom truly all he has to offer?
The first prayer trails out, and a chorus more join it, with thanks-praise-love as the general tone. Hua Cheng looks up again, and the heavenly officials have drawn closer, revulsion morphing to something like pity. Mercy, even. Care. There is recognition on the nearest god's face—Mu Qing, Hua Cheng knows, for he'd know that face anywhere—and still there is a hand outstretched.
The Ghost King, a worshiper whispers, The Ghost God.
Half-delirious, still dizzy with pain, Hua Cheng thinks I would die a thousand times for this .
He draws one slower, steadying breath, and takes one half-step forward—
His foot lands squarely on his eye.
What a fool he has been.
All this love, all this care—what is it for? For his merit? Or for his pain? For virtue? Or for suffering? Did they reward him when he was loyal, when he was kind, when he fought as a mortal with all the skill a street rat could find? No. Even this Mu Qing detested him then, dismissed him for daring to obtain His Highness' favor. Did the gods care even slightly any of the three times he scrounged himself together from the scraps of scattered devotion a ghost goes to in death? Even now, already, the prayers grow sour, stained with doubt and fear. Their ghost is a god—and gods leave people behind. What do they have to offer?
My daughter, a man pleads, my daughter if I can leave here alive.
There is blood and viscera under Hua Cheng's feet, across his face, strewn everywhere that he has touched. He is half-blind and seeing more clearly than ever before. He kneels again, reaching down, and finds the hilt of a saber at hand, eye etched on its hilt.
"Step aside," he chokes, too bruised to muster his proper arrogance. "I have to go back."
"You can't go back like this," Mu Qing argues, hand still outstretched. "Let's clean you up."
"Won't he wait for Jun Wu?" A scribe mutters.
"Would I look like this ," Hua Cheng snaps, "If it were something I could walk away from?"
"He's just confused—"
"—see, us gods have a higher calling…"
"Surely he doesn't mean to leave— "
Hua Cheng stumbles upright, to his own two feet. Things look different, wrong, flatter than they used to, but he can manage. He raises the saber before him. The eye on the hilt is narrowed. Determined.
"Step aside," he repeats, "or I will make you."
The power on his limbs is half foreign, half familiar, and the saber in his hands has a mind of its own, but all his strength inclines itself now to one end, and it burns in a way they would be fools not to recognize as threat.
Mu Qing finally drops his hand.
The crowd begins to part, and Hua Cheng paces slowly through the widening gap to the edge, measuring each step by sensation more than sight.
"...always is with the martial gods," someone whispers, "Why, remember when His Highness—"
"You!" A voice calls. "New guy!"
Hua Cheng whirls over his shoulder, lips drawn back. The face is more familiar than the voice, but he knows well those who His Highness once held in confidence. Feng Xin stops, just outside the saber's reach, and holds out a black strap of cloth.
"Cover that before you leave," he says. "It's unsightly."
Hua Cheng hesitates, considering the first honest kindness the gods have ever shown him, and steps off the edge to fall.
It is the hardest thing he has ever done.
//
"Gege should not concern himself with this."
"Ahh, San Lang," Xie Lian sighs. "If you truly do not wish to go…"
Hua Cheng curls his arm a little tighter around Xie Lian, which the latter catalogs with some satisfaction as not actually constituting a denial.
"You are a god as well as any other, yes? Better than many. This one should know. He is well acquainted with your spiritual powers."
"Gege…"
"San Lang, San Lang. You have had me in Ghost City. Should I not have you in the heavens?"
"Mm. Gege should have me wherever he wants."
Xie Lian taps his arm with a laugh. "Be serious."
"Your Highness deserves someone better by his side."
Tension rises in Xie Lian's shoulders, but he does his best to let it fall. Hua Cheng knows full well the esteem that his god holds him in—that does not make it any easier to believe.
"San Lang has as great a claim to the heavens as I do," he replies, squeezing one of Hua Cheng's hands where it drapes across his chest. "If we go by merits, perhaps even greater."
Xie Lian can feel the vehement shake of Hua Cheng's head, and hear the whip of his hair behind them.
"Never. None could surpass you, Your Highness, not even Jun Wu."
"Jun Wu could not surpass us ," he corrects. "San Lang, I would not have won without you."
The silence stretches long, this time, and Xie Lian cozies closer to his king. It is an old argument, and he doubts they will close it in full today. But time in peace has taught him the merit of these empty moments, the stillness that makes the fullness brighter.
"...I will go."
So reliable, his San Lang. Xie Lian presses a kiss to the line of his jaw.
"This one will be right by your side."
Two days later, transport array drawn, the pair stand arm in arm and side by side.
It is harder, Xie Lian thinks, to step into a heaven you know you cannot earn.
It is easier, Hua Cheng thinks, to step into heaven when someone does not think you need to earn it.
The king smiles at his prince. His prince smiles back at him.
Together, they step forward.
There are easier (and harder) things to have done.