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He just wanted to prove something. Maybe to himself. Maybe to the disciples who still looked at him like a child too soft to belong in the sect.
His father had begun letting him attend lectures. Letting him train, carefully, under supervision. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
He had only wanted to do something worth noticing. That’s all. That’s why he left the path. Why he ignored the warnings his father had all but drilled into him. Why he kept going, even as the shadows stretched a little too long.
He saw the beast too late.
The creature burst from the thicket, snarling. Its fur was jagged, matted with filth, and its spiritual energy was twisted—dark, unstable. Not natural. Not tame. The moment it leapt, Shen Yuan’s limbs froze.
He managed to half-raise his sword, but it was a child’s gesture.
The beast slammed him into the ground with a guttural snarl. Claws tore across his side and shoulder, shredding his robes and raking red across his flesh. Pain exploded through him. Something cracked.
He didn’t even scream at first—just gasped, eyes wide, chest heaving.
Then: “F-Father—!”
The trees split apart in a roar of qi.
A sword slashed through the air, the blade colliding with the beast mid-lunge, slicing across its snout and sending it crashing into a boulder.
Shen Qingqiu stood between them.
His robes flared, his sword held in both hands. The pressure of his spiritual energy rolled over the clearing like a wave.
He did not look at the beast first.
He looked at his son.
“Yuan-er,” Shen Qingqiu said, voice razor-sharp with panic. “Where are you hurt?”
Shen Yuan, pale and shaking, tried to sit up. “I—I’m okay—don’t—!”
“Where?”
Shen Yuan whimpered. “My side. Shoulder.”
“Stay down. Don’t move.”
Then Shen Qingqiu turned, and the calm he showed his son bled away into something feral.
He attacked the beast like a man who had nothing to lose.
Sword and fan both flashed through the air—his blade cutting deep, his fan guiding waves of qi that cracked through the trees. The beast roared and lunged, managing a slash across his back, another to his thigh, but Shen Qingqiu didn’t flinch.
He moved with elegance. Precision. Fury.
Another strike of his blade pierced the beast’s shoulder.
A final burst of qi forced the creature’s body to rupture from the inside.
It collapsed, steaming and dead.
“Yuan-er.” Shen Qingqiu’s sword clattered to the dirt. He dropped to his knees beside his son, already pulling bandages and ointments from his sleeves.
“I’m okay,” Shen Yuan mumbled. “I can—”
“You’re not,” Shen Qingqiu said harshly. “Hold still.”
He tore the blood-soaked robes back, fingers steady despite the shaking in his arms. He cleaned each wound, smeared on healing salve, then wrapped them as gently as he could. He worked quickly, efficiently.
It wasn’t until the worst of it was over and his son was resting, eyes fluttering half-closed from exhaustion, that Shen Qingqiu allowed his posture to falter.
He exhaled—once—and swayed.
A trail of blood slipped down his spine.
He didn’t say anything.
He didn’t want to frighten him.
So he just smiled a little and said, “You’re grounded.”
Shen Yuan huffed and pouted. “Figures.”
Shen Qingqiu gathered him in his arms. He winced—but not from Shen Yuan’s weight. From something deeper. Inside.
“Let’s go home.”
——
Shen Yuan rested weakly in his father’s arms, half-conscious, lulled into a daze by pain and exhaustion. His spiritual energy felt like a flickering candlelight, barely sustaining him. But his father's presence—warm, strong, familiar—kept him grounded.
He didn’t realize that the warmth beneath him was growing wet.
Didn’t hear the stifled, irregular breath Shen Qingqiu was trying to suppress.
Didn’t see how tightly his father was clenching his jaw, willing himself to stay upright.
Shen Qingqiu moved slowly. Carefully. One hand around Shen Yuan’s back, the other dragging his sword along with every sluggish step. His robe clung to him, sodden with blood from gashes he had ignored. Deep ones—too deep.
His vision swam. The forest path blurred.
But he refused to stop. Not while Shen Yuan was in his arms.
He had held his son like this before—years ago, when he was a toddler and feverish, clinging to his chest. Shen Yuan had always been a sickly baby. He remembered how small and warm he had felt, curled up like a cub. Shen Qingqiu had rocked him through the night then, whispering reassurances he never spoke in daylight.
This time, he couldn't even find the strength to whisper.
His knees buckled.
He collapsed.
——
The world jolted when Shen Yuan hit the ground, the impact sending lightning through his shoulder.
His eyes opened wide. “Father?”
Shen Qingqiu was lying beside him, face pale, jaw slack.
“No—no, no, no, no—!” Shen Yuan scrambled, ignoring the searing pain in his side, and pulled at his father’s robes. “Get up! Please—!”
Blood. Everywhere.
So much blood.
Shen Yuan’s hands trembled as he pressed them to his father’s wounds, trying to stop the bleeding. It was too late. The cuts had gone too deep. His father had kept walking—carrying him—bleeding the whole time.
“Why didn’t you say anything?!” he sobbed. “Why didn’t you tell me?!”
Shen Qingqiu’s eyes fluttered open for just a moment. They were cloudy. Unfocused.
His lips parted, dry and pale. “...Mnn… where...?”
Shen Yuan lurched closer, gripping his hand tightly. “I’m here. I’m here, Father—I’m okay—you saved me—please, just stay awake—!”
Shen Qingqiu blinked slowly, as if the voice didn’t reach him at first. Then his brows knit faintly.
“...Yuan-er?” he rasped, like he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming.
“I’m here,” Shen Yuan said, voice cracking. “I’m right here.”
Shen Qingqiu’s fingers twitched. He tried to lift his hand—tried to reach for Shen Yuan’s face—but it dropped, limp, to his chest.
His eyes flicked toward his son, dull with fading light.
“Good,” he whispered. “You’re… good. Safe.”
“Don’t—! Don’t say that! You’re going to be fine—you just have to stay with me—please, please—”
Shen Qingqiu blinked again. Slower this time.
His lips moved without sound. Then, faintly: “...Sleepy. Just… a moment…”
His gaze drifted—not to Shen Yuan, not to the trees, but somewhere beyond them both.
A slow breath left him.
And he didn’t take another.
“No,” Shen Yuan whispered. “No—no—wake up—!”
He shook him. Pushed at him.
“Please…”
The fan had slipped from Shen Qingqiu’s hold when he collapsed. Now it lay at his side, the tassels stained with blood.
Shen Yuan pulled it into his lap and clutched it against his chest. “You can’t leave me. You can’t. Please—!”
The wind stirred the trees above.
No one answered.
Only the forest.
Only the silence.
By the time people came searching—Shen Qingqiu’s disciples searching the woods with lanterns—it was already too late.
They found Shen Yuan curled up beside his father’s body, rocking back and forth and whispering a lullaby he barely remembered.
He didn’t cry when they pried him away.
He didn’t make a sound at all.
——
They buried his father the next morning. Shen Yuan stood in the cold wind, motionless.
The grass was damp beneath his feet. The incense smoke made his eyes burn. The sun was too bright for a day like this.
He held Shen Qingqiu’s fan in both hands, pressed against his chest. The tassels brushed his knuckles, still stained with dried blood.
He didn’t hear the words.
Not when they lowered the coffin.
Not when the last spade of earth hit wood.
Not when they told him it was time to go.
He didn’t go.
In the days that followed, he barely moved.
He stayed in his father’s rooms.
The bed was too big. The robes in the wardrobe smelled too much like fresh bamboo and citrus and home. So he slept on the floor beside the bed instead, curled beneath a threadbare blanket. The fan never left his grip.
——
His wounds healed, slowly.
Mu Qingfang came every few days to check them. Shen Yuan sat still through it, answering questions only with nods or short whispers.
But as his body recovered, everything else seemed to dull.
He stopped eating unless food was brought right to him. Even then, he only picked at it.
He stopped reading. Stopped sketching. He used to love drawing—his father had once found him up late at night copying patterns from nature into his notebooks. Now the pages remained blank.
The sword that had once rested beside his bed now lay untouched, buried beneath robes in his father’s wardrobe.
He didn’t touch it again.
Sometimes he stood by the open window at night, looking toward the woods.
He didn’t go near them.
But he stared for hours, unmoving, until his legs ached.
There were moments—brief and quiet—where he caught himself whispering things aloud. Not to anyone. Just to the silence.
“I should’ve known something was wrong.”
“I should’ve made him stop.”
“I should’ve died instead.”
The forest never answered.
He started spending more time outside, but only when the sky was grey.
He liked the cold better. The fog. The silence.
One evening, well into the fourth month after the burial, he sat alone on the stone steps in front of the training grounds. His hands were folded over the fan in his lap. His knees drawn to his chest.
Behind him, the peak was quiet. Everyone else had long since retired for the night.
He didn’t notice how long he had been sitting there.
——
When the sky to darkened further, he heard footsteps approach.
He didn’t look up.
A blanket was draped around his shoulders, slowly and gently.
“I thought you’d be cold,” said a quiet voice.
Shen Yuan blinked. It took him a moment to respond. “…Thank you.”
“You’ve been out here a while.”
He didn’t answer.
There was a long pause. Then the voice asked softly, “Do you want to talk about him?”
Shen Yuan’s throat tightened. His fingers gripped the fan a little harder.
“…I don’t know how.”
“That’s alright. You don’t have to.”
Another silence.
Then Shen Yuan whispered, barely audible, “I miss him. All the time.”
“I know.”
“I hate him for leaving.”
“That’s okay too.”
He looked up, eyes red-rimmed but dry. “He didn’t even tell me he was hurt. He just… held me. Like everything was fine. And then he died.”
Yue Qingyuan sat down beside him, carefully, like one might sit next to a wounded animal.
The wind passed gently through the courtyard.
“I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”
His voice broke on the last word. But still, no tears came.
Shen Yuan stared ahead, into nothing. “He bled all the way back. I didn’t notice. I didn’t even realize he was holding me so tight because he was… dying.”
“You were hurt,” Yue Qingyuan said gently. “You were a child in pain. It wasn’t your responsibility to notice.”
“But it should have been.” Shen Yuan’s voice sharpened—not in anger, but desperation. “If I hadn’t gone into the forest—if I had stayed put like he told me—I wouldn’t have been attacked. He wouldn’t have come for me. He wouldn’t have needed to fight. He wouldn’t have—”
His breath hitched. His hands trembled over the fan.
“I killed him.”
“No.” Yue Qingyuan’s voice was firm now. “No, Xiao-Yuan.”
“I did.” Shen Yuan hunched forward. “I didn’t mean to, but I did. I was stupid. I wandered off. He had to save me. He died because of me.”
There was a long silence. Only the wind, brushing through the courtyard, lifting the edges of the blanket.
Then Yue Qingyuan spoke again, soft but steady. “Your father would’ve given his life for you a thousand times over without thinking twice. Because he loved you more than anything in this world. You didn’t kill him, Xiao-Yuan. He chose to protect you.”
Shen Yuan didn’t argue this time. He just folded in on himself.
“I didn’t deserve it,” he said eventually.
“Yes, you did.”
They sat in silence again, the words lingering between them.
——
Later that night, Shen Yuan sat alone again on the floor of his father’s room.
The blanket still wrapped around his shoulders.
He pulled the fan close, rested his forehead against it.
“I’m trying,” he whispered. “I really am.”
But the silence that followed made it feel like maybe no one was listening anymore.
——
Winter came early that year.
The first snowfall arrived while Shen Yuan was still asleep on the floor of his father’s room, curled beneath two old robes that still smelled faintly like his father. He didn’t notice until he woke and saw the thin sheen of white coating the window frames.
He didn’t go outside.
He didn’t feel the cold.
He stopped answering when people knocked.
Meals were left on the doorstep. Sometimes he took them in. Most of the time, he didn’t touch them.
The fan never left his hands. When his fingers cramped from holding it too tightly, he simply held it tighter.
He stopped speaking entirely after the fifth month.
No one pressed him. There was nothing they could do.
Once, he caught a glimpse of himself in the polished bronze of his father’s old mirror.
He looked like a ghost.
His hair, uncombed. His cheeks, hollow. His eyes, sunken.
He stared at his reflection for a long time.
Then he turned the mirror toward the wall.
The sword remained untouched in the wardrobe.
He sometimes knelt beside it, staring at the hilt where it peeked out.
He didn’t reach for it. He didn’t move.
Just stared.
Sometimes for minutes. Sometimes longer.
Then he would rise, silent as mist, and return to the floor.
——
The dreams came and went.
Sometimes, they were good ones—his father waiting at the edge of the woods, smiling, fan open, arms held wide. Sometimes they were worse—his father carrying him, blood dripping between every step, until he collapsed.
Shen Yuan woke from those dreams with a quiet gasp. Not screams. Not crying.
Just silence.
Always silence.
——
In the seventh month, he sat again on the steps where Yue Qingyuan had found him.
It was snowing now. Late afternoon. No one was around.
He didn’t bring the blanket he'd been given.
Just the fan.
He clutched it tightly, pressed it against his chest, and sat perfectly still as the snow layered over his shoulders, his arms, the top of his head.
He looked like part of the mountain.
He didn’t shiver.
Didn’t speak.
Didn’t blink.
At some point, Mu Qingfang found him.
The physician knelt beside him, slowly brushing the snow from his shoulders.
“Shen-shizhi,” he said quietly. “Come inside. It’s freezing.”
Shen Yuan didn’t respond.
Mu Qingfang didn’t move him yet. Just sat there for a long while beside the boy, watching the snow.
“You’re not alone,” he said gently. “Even when it feels like you are.”
Shen Yuan’s eyes didn’t move.
But something in his jaw twitched.
Mu Qingfang placed a warm hand over his shoulder. “If you ever want to talk—if you ever want to not talk—just be with someone… I’ll sit with you. As long as you need.”
Still nothing.
But he didn’t pull away.
That was something.
A fragile, trembling something.
——
That night, Shen Yuan sat in the dark.
The room was still. The fan held in his lap.
He whispered into the dark: “I’m so tired, Father.”
His voice broke.
“I want to come with you.”
The room said nothing back.
He lowered his head.
The fan trembled in his hands.
——
Sometimes he forgot he had a body.
It didn’t feel real, not most of the time.
He moved through the room like a ghost—slow, floating, numb. He’d reach for a blanket and feel nothing in his fingers. He’d sit for hours and not realize his legs had gone numb until he tried to stand.
Everything was muffled.
Like he was underwater. Or wrapped in cloth he couldn’t claw through.
Sometimes the world drifted away completely, and only when the light shifted outside the window would he notice that an entire day had passed without him realizing.
When that happened, he started to panic.
Not loudly. Not in a way anyone else would see.
But it was there—the tightness in his chest, the desperate buzz under his skin, the wild thoughts.
He needed something to remind him he was still alive.
The first time, it was accidental.
He’d cut himself on a jagged edge of porcelain while rifling through his father’s desk. A shallow, sharp line across the base of his thumb. It hurt. It bled.
But more importantly, it snapped something back into place.
He inhaled so suddenly it startled him.
It was the first time in days he felt present in his own skin.
He didn’t tell anyone.
There was no one to tell.
But later that night, when his thoughts had begun to fray again—when the whispers started repeating in his head—he remembered the way that small pain had cut through the fog.
So he did it again.
Carefully. On the inside of his arm. Not deep.
Just enough to feel it.
Just enough to stop thinking.
He didn’t cry when he did it.
He never cried anymore.
But afterward, when he wrapped the cut in a strip of cloth from an old sleeve, his hands trembled.
Not because he was scared.
Because he was still here.
And that scared him more than anything else.
——
“I don’t want to die,” he whispered once, curled up in one of his father’s outer robes. One that still smelled like fresh bamboo.
His fingers clutched the fan beside him.
“I just don’t want to be me anymore.”
His body felt heavier these days. Eating still didn’t come easy, but he forced himself to take bites when he remembered to. Not for himself, exactly. But because something in him still clung to the memory of Shen Qingqiu’s hands—bloodied, shaking, arms curled around him, refusing to let go.
His father had carried him even while dying.
The least he could do was breathe.
Still, the thoughts came. Louder now.
It was his fault.
His father had died because of him—thrown himself into death just to keep him alive.
And he hadn’t even noticed the bleeding until it was already too late.
Sometimes Shen Yuan would press his forehead to the fan and whisper over and over, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Sometimes he’d draw his sleeve over his mouth and scream into it, just to keep anyone from hearing.
Sometimes he’d press his fingers to the inside of his wrist—where the blood pulsed—just to remind himself that he was still here.
Still real.
Still surviving.
He kept a small box under the bed now.
Inside: strips of clean cloth. A vial of ointment. A single shard of porcelain.
He told himself he didn’t want to keep doing it.
He told himself it was only if he really needed it.
But every time he reached for it, it was with a strange sense of guilt and shame and gratitude.
Like a drowning boy learning to breathe underwater.
One night, he sat by the window with the fan in his lap and the shard resting beside him.
He didn’t touch it.
But he stared at it for a long time.
His voice was barely a breath when he spoke.
“I want to stay,” he whispered. “I do. I think I do.”
He paused.
Then softer:
“…I just don’t know how.”
——
It was eight months, now.
Eight months since Shen Qingqiu died in front of him.
Eight months since Shen Yuan last felt safe.
The days were grey, even when the sun was out. He barely noticed anymore.
Light passed over him like it didn’t see him.
Qing Jing Peak moved around him, but not with him. Disciples walked in silence when they passed the bamboo house. Meals were still left, but no one knocked.
They had stopped trying.
So had he.
He stopped cleaning himself. He no longer noticed the smell of old sweat and damp clothes. He no longer felt embarrassment. Nothing embarrassed him anymore.
His old sketchbooks gathered dust in the corner. The spine of one had begun to warp from the moisture in the air.
He hadn’t touched a brush in months.
He hadn’t touched a sword in longer.
The box beneath the bed became part of his routine.
A ritual, almost.
A shard. A strip of cloth. A small balm. Quiet moments of pain—tiny reminders that he was still here, still real, still bleeding.
But even those moments began to lose their edge.
Even the pain stopped helping.
The buzzing in his head returned stronger than ever.
The voice in his chest grew louder, whispering things he couldn't ignore.
That it should've been him.
That his father had traded something precious for nothing.
He still slept on the floor.
He still kept the fan close.
He never let it get dirty. He never let it touch the blood.
The fan was clean.
The only thing left in his life that was.
——
One night, he woke up gasping.
He had dreamed it again—that forest, that sound, the beast ripping into him. But this time, his father didn’t come.
No one came.
He had screamed for his father until his throat tore.
But no one came.
And he wondered if that might've been for the better.
He sat up in the dark, trembling.
The pain in his chest was unbearable. It burned.
He tried to breathe. Couldn’t.
He dug his fingers into his arms.
Couldn’t feel it.
He grabbed the shard.
His hands were shaking too hard to hold it.
He dropped it.
Sank to the floor.
That was the night he realized he couldn’t keep doing this.
Not for another month. Not for another week.
Not for another day.
He needed something to hold onto.
Anything.
But there was nothing left.
No one left.
——
He sat down at his father’s desk.
Lit a candle with clumsy fingers.
Pulled out a piece of paper.
And began to write.
“I’m sorry. I tried. I really, really tried.”
He sat there for a long time, brush still in hand.
Then, slowly, he wrote again.
“I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”
The ink bled in places where his tears landed.
He didn’t even realize he was crying until the paper began to wrinkle beneath his fingers.
“Please don’t be mad at me. I just want to see you again.”
He folded the letter slowly.
Pressed it flat.
But he didn’t stand.
Not yet.
The candle beside him flickered lower.
The shadows in the room grew longer, then softer, then still.
He sat there, listening to the faint sound of his own breath.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
——
He remembered how his father used to hum when brushing his hair—
not a song, just something low and steady.
A sound like a heartbeat.
Safe.
He hadn’t thought of that in months.
He remembered the warmth of his arms.
The calluses on his hands.
The way he always held Shen Yuan like something fragile—
but never like something weak.
He remembered his voice—sharp with the world, but never with him.
He remembered the words his father never got to say.
And the ones he never said back.
——
“I’m tired,” he whispered.
No one answered.
His eyes drifted to the corner of the desk.
An old sketchbook sat there, spine warped and curling.
He reached for it.
Opened it.
The first few pages were full of birds and flowers, drawn with a careful hand.
The last page was blank.
He picked up the brush.
Dipped it into ink.
And drew.
Just one thing.
A small fan.
Closed.
Unopened.
Held gently in a child’s hands.
——
When he finished, he left the sketchbook open.
Placed the folded letter on top.
Set the fan beside both, like a quiet offering.
The candle burned lower.
He stood.
Moved to the wardrobe, quiet and steady.
He reached beneath the robes that hadn’t been worn in months, hands brushing past forgotten sashes and silk.
His fingers closed around the sword.
Untouched since the woods.
He carried it with both hands.
Not dragging.
Not shaking.
He crossed the room and climbed onto the bed—his father’s bed—placing the sword down beside him.
Then he lay back.
The blanket pulled over his chest.
The window open just slightly, letting the night air in.
Moonlight caught the blade's edge as he lifted it.
From outside, the wind shifted.
The candle flickered once.
Then went out.