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The sky over Yunmeng glowed with floating fire.
Soft golden orbs drifted into the night, their flickering lights reflected on the surface of the water like a second, upside-down sky. The night air smelled like river mist and candle smoke, and the distant sound of laughter echoed from the docks where families gathered to release their lanterns together.
Jiang Cheng stood alone on the pavilion, hands clasped behind his back, the wind stirring the hem of his robes. His purple robes, stiff with formality, hadn’t changed in years—just like Lotus Pier hadn’t. And yet, everything had changed.
A small lantern bobbed beside him, its paper surface crinkled from the humidity, waiting to be sent up. He’d scrawled a wish inside it with a brush earlier. He hadn’t meant to, but his hand had moved before he could stop it. He didn’t know if he believed in wishes. He’d seen too much. Lost too much. But when traditions are all you have left, you hold onto them like lifelines.
Jin Ling had asked him to come. Said something about honoring old ties, remembering the past. Jiang Cheng had scoffed. He remembered the past just fine. It was the present he didn’t understand anymore.
⸻
Wei Wuxian had shown up earlier that day. He always did now, at least for official events. He stood with Lan Wangji, both of them in white and silver, serene like carved marble. He was older now—tired around the eyes, quieter than Jiang Cheng remembered. But that grin still surfaced when Jin Ling said something bratty, and it had made Jiang Cheng’s heart twist sharply in his chest, like it was still fifteen and hadn’t learned better.
He’d watched them—Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji—standing together as if they’d been carved from the same piece of sky. As if they belonged together.
Wei Wuxian had looked his way once. Just once. And Jiang Cheng had looked back, something ugly and aching pressing behind his ribs. Then Wei Wuxian had smiled, the soft kind, familiar and distant, and turned away.
No hug. No reunion. Just a smile. Like they were old acquaintances now. Not brothers. Not what they used to be.
⸻
Jiang Cheng picked up the lantern, fingers tightening on the frame. He didn’t light it yet.
He remembered chasing frogs in the mud. Stealing lotus seeds and getting scolded by his mother. Wei Wuxian always led the trouble, but he never let Jiang Cheng take the blame alone. They’d slept back to back on warm nights, shared rice bowls when there wasn’t enough to go around, shouted at the waves like idiots until they were hoarse. He had thought—
He had thought that bond meant something unbreakable.
But Wei Wuxian had chosen Lan Wangji. Chosen him and walked away, again and again, and Jiang Cheng—
He hadn’t stopped waiting.
Every time there was a cultivation conference, he looked for him first. Not Lan Wangji. Him. Every time the name Yiling Patriarch was announced, he bristled and listened closer. Every time Wei Wuxian smiled across the room and then turned away, Jiang Cheng felt a little more of himself hollow out.
He had once dreamed—selfishly, maybe—that one day Wei Wuxian would come back. Not to Yunmeng as a guest. But home. That they’d reclaim the years they’d lost, laugh again like they used to, spend the rest of their lives fighting side by side.
Brothers.
Not strangers at a table. Not polite nods and formal greetings.
⸻
Jiang Cheng knelt by the lantern and struck a spark. The flame caught. The lantern began to rise slowly, tugging against the wind. He let it go.
I wish you’d chosen to stay.
The words weren’t written on the lantern, but they were etched into the spaces between every stroke of ink. Into every breath he took when he passed the rooms they used to share. Into every glance across a courtyard during a meeting.
He stood there watching it disappear, the light growing smaller and smaller until it vanished into the sea of stars.
He didn’t cry. That part of him was long burned out.
But he stood a while longer, unmoving, until the wind carried the last lanterns away. Then he turned and walked back to the empty halls of Lotus Pier.
Still waiting.
Still hoping.
Even if he’d never say it out loud.