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The hall is alive with chatter, Foxians, Xianzhou natives and Vidyadhara alike all gathered together in one great assembly. Jing Yuan enters through a side corridor, quickly escorted to his seat past the throng of citizens pressing into the room. The Cloud Knights are efficient, parting the crowd and rows upon rows of people silently seated, judgemental and cold. All here for a single purpose. To watch the display that would soon unfold.
The seats are filled easily, with the sheer number of people jostling and pressing to enter. They’re quite reminiscent of the meetings that Jing Yuan had to attend at an increasingly frequent pace during the past months. This is the culmination of countless discussions and arguments, and today they have all come to serve as spectators for its end.
He is a witness, alongside the countless others lining the seats. As the general of the Luofu, Jing Yuan is given a balcony separate from the citizens. So he can sit comfortably, unlike those down below, and can easily see everything happening in the room. He was appointed a while ago, enough time for him to grow used to this sort of thing, but the feeling is new to him. It still feels strange, he half thinks to himself, it’s as if he should be standing below instead. But from here, he has a clear view of the wide platform that sits in the centre of the room. The site of what was planned for today.
Dan Feng kneels there, head bowed. Even while bound by chains and forced to the floor, he still carries an air of majesty about him, still every bit the ethereal high elder Jing Yuan saw when they first met. But clearly the others in the crowd do not feel the same, as they scoff at his sorry state. The Imbibitor Lunae, formerly so respected and admired, on his knees before the people that now scorn and condemn his very existence. Some bear expressions of varying hatred and disgust, others delight in the pitiful display. He deserves it, they hiss, voices grating and bitter. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
Jing Yuan had visited him the day before, deep in the hallways of the Shackling Prison. He’d not looked the best, and not much better today. He’d taken to calling upon Dan Feng in the days since his initial imprisonment, and the distaste the guards show towards the high elder is clear. Chained, starved and exhausted… it’s a wonder he even has any energy left. After one such visit, Jing Yuan had asked them to increase the portion of Dan Feng’s meals. He wonders if they had even taken heed to his request.
There’s a large gong set up on one end of the platform. Jing Yuan watches as the knight standing by at the side lifts his mallet, striking it. He does it only once but the effect is instantaneous, its ringing timbre plunging the hall into silence. Some sit straight. Others lean forward. The words remain unspoken, but they all share the same thought.
It is time.
The order is given. Dan Feng is caught and held by two knights, bent forwards till he’s practically hunched over where he kneels. His head is twisted to the side, a gloved hand roughly sweeping his hair out of the way, exposing his neck. His jugular bobs, pulse racing. His neck is pale, unmarred. Ebony spills a dark waterfall downwards, pooling on the tiled floor.
(From this angle, Jing Yuan has a clear view of his face. Even now, his eyes shine with fierce defiance. A tiny voice in the back of Jing Yuan’s mind reminds him of what Dan Feng had done to end up here, and clearly even when faced with punishment he does not regret it in the slightest.)
(The general says that it is his rightful penalty, given the weight of his sin. but Jing Yuan believes otherwise. Perhaps it's the lingering sentiment, the affection in him, but he manages to have Dan Feng’s death sentence changed to merely molting rebirth and exile. Signing and stamping the decree despite the disapproval and anger that follows. It’s an abuse of power, the general admonishes, it is wrong in every sense. How could he pull rank all for his personal feelings? He should be impartial. But Jing Yuan doesn't think he could bear it if Dan Feng were to disappear from his life forever.)
He returns his attention to the scene before him when a third knight steps up to the platform. Unlike the others, he carries a standard knights’ glaive. His purpose is clear, and his stance is firm as he takes his position beside Dan Feng.
Dan Feng’s shoulders heave, glare piercing from even so far away. His expression is scathing, pure and unbridled contempt. But his fate is sealed, signed and approved with the Ten-Lords Commission’s ink stamps, and there is nothing he can do even as the knight stands firm, hands sliding instinctively into the positions drilled into soldiers for generations.
It will be soon. The rows are silent, watching with bated breath. All eyes are fixed on the platform, on the sinner and his executioner.
Jing Yuan can’t watch.
But the general has to. So the Divine Foresight doesn’t move, face stern and impassive as he follows the gazes of the masses.
One second. One second, and it will be over.
The knight raises his glaive. He brings it down in a sweeping arc, landing a clean strike across that pale neck. Swift, merciless. And Jing Yuan is grateful for that. If the cut had been hesitant, unsteady.. Dan Feng would suffer even more than he already had to.
Blood spatters across pristine tiles.
In one motion, the knights release Dan Feng. The Vidyadhara collapses forward, heaving. He gasps for air, desperate, panicked— but his throat is slashed, and he cannot breathe. His eyes are wide and panicked, bright with terror, and something in Jing Yuan wrenches , painfully. But he forces himself to watch, steels himself as his love struggles for breath under the weight of a thousand judgemental gazes.
It’s all Jing Yuan can do to not break from the ranks and rush to his side. It’s all he can do to hold himself back, steadying his gaze with iron will. He cannot betray a single emotion.
Dan Feng convulses, bound hands twitching, eyes unseeing. He’s slumped sideways on the floor, blood still flowing sluggishly from the tear in his throat. His breath stutters, running on the last dregs of air it can muster. His broken gasps echo in Jing Yuan’s ears, hauntingly loud despite the distance between them. Almost unconsciously, Jing Yuan feels his hand clench against his side. He can hardly take it anymore.
It would be better if they had just killed him, Jing Yuan thinks. More of a mercy. But with this sentence, they do not aim to kill. For it is only through either old age or fatal wounds that Vidyadhara undergo the hatching rebirth, and so Dan Feng is left to struggle, instincts fighting fruitlessly for his own life while the knights draw back, merely watching. Waiting.
The breaths grow more frantic, frenzied. There’s barely any air left. Jing Yuan can only listen as their pace quickens, rabbiting, rising to a crescendo till there’s a final, straining gasp— then all at once, it stops. A few moments pass. Silence. Jing Yuan’s heart is thudding in his chest as he leans over the railings.
His love is gone. Gone. All that’s left where he once laid is a pearly egg. A beautiful shade of turquoise and teal, not one single colour yet not quite a blend either, and it sits innocently as if it had just been placed there. The pool of dark blood around it is the only indicator of what had transpired.
One knight bends, picks up the egg with careful hands. And he steps off the platform followed by the other two, disappearing into a dark corridor that Jing Yuan knows leads to the Shackling Prison. The other witnesses all stand, the spectacle over. Their expressions are clinical, detached. The general matches them with a piercing one of his own. They file out of their seats and away until only Jing Yuan remains, gaze still fixed on the platform.
He stands there blankly, gaze stiff yet unseeing. All he can think of is the scene of Dan Feng on the platform, wracked by spasms and flowing blood and the burning agony in his throat, and… he himself did nothing against it. He did nothing .
It takes a good while before he finally turns and leaves as well, walking in a daze up the stairs, down the halls, through the Exalting Sanctum and back to the Seat of Divine Foresight.
The sun is glaring. Too bright, too warm. The people around him are muted, blurred. His arms are numb. There is barely any feeling in his legs. Muscle memory is the only thing that keeps him moving still.
Dan Feng will return, the general attempts to console. It was a stroke of luck that Jing Yuan’s order to lighten his sentence was even approved. He’s sure that this has never happened to any sinner in the history of the Xianzhou. He should be grateful that Dan Feng was spared from true death, and merely sentenced to rebirth.
But that wouldn’t be Dan Feng, Jing Yuan protests.
Dan Feng is gone. Vidyadhara do not retain the memories of their previous incarnations. It will be a new incarnation that returns to him, bearing the face of his beloved but ultimately remaining an entirely different being, devoid of the memories they shared and Jing Yuan had treasured so deeply. He will wake behind bars, terrified and alone, with no recollection of why he had to be subjected to isolation and imprisonment. He will be faced with disdain, neglected and shunned for reasons he does not recall. Jing Yuan doesn't dare to imagine how he would feel.
The general’s resolve walks him up the grand staircase, through silent hallways and into his office. He barely spares a glance at the piled scrolls on his desk and Snowmoon napping on the floor. Qingzu sorts through papers on a side table, and people hurry in and out. just another day in the Seat of Divine Foresight. Jing Yuan ignores them all.
(It seems so terribly mundane, so ironic… someone has died today. But the world moves on, so does the general, and Jing Yuan is left to silently mourn the loss of one who will never return.)
Qingzu looks up from her work, moves as if to speak, but the general walks on, disappearing through a side door into the dark halls. She makes no movement to chase after him. Jing Yuan murmurs a word of thanks in his mind.
Through one hall. Down another. The general navigates the maze of corridors methodically, easily, tracing the path he has walked so many times before. He pretends not to notice the mask slipping, cracks in stiff indifference giving way to pure, unbridled grief. Not now. Not yet. He is almost there. Deeper, further within, where no one is there to see him fall apart.
The general manages to return to his private chambers before he crumbles. The door’s barely closed behind him before he slumps into a chair, boneless. Defeated.
The general is gone, and all that remains is a broken man. Jing Yuan’s fraying tenacity crumbles, the carefully crafted image breaking away till his true self is revealed in its entirety. Weak, powerless, and alone. He is in pieces, unsalvageable, and there is nobody to comfort him as he buries his face in his hands and finally allows himself to cry.