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Xianzhou Yuque is quiet this time of year, mellowed by ritual traditions that see all devout adherents and aspiring disciples meditating on history's most profound lessons. From the great battles won and lost to the plagues of wayward aeons, examples of righteous and terrible governance taught by prudence and necessity, these stories flow from brush to paper in the soft whisper of spring, held aloft in the citizens' collective consciousness.
It rains by way of magic and mechanisms, purifying waters that wash away the sin of ignorance to herald the dawn of enlightenment, and when the artificial clouds overhead clear to reveal a sea of stars, it is the scent of fresh dew and new beginnings that sweetens the sky.
Such is the environment that welcomes Yinyue-jun far from his home aboard the Luofu. An uncommon occurrence do ships of the Hexafleet meet, though when they do, it's natural for their inhabitants to seek their distant kin whether for leisure or more serious pilgrimage.
This time, on recommendation of several Preceptors, he travelled for some well needed rest, hoping the refined discipline and introspective nature of the Yuque's Divination Commission would prove a relaxing host. And right he would have been, basking in cool waters under the shade of twinkling jade trees, had the temptation to read his fortune not led him astray.
Now, kneeling before his scattered notes rendered in shaking lines, the open treatises marked by leaves and whatever else he could find, the yarrow stalks stacked in piles that spell his certain flavour of doom—he regrets only a few things in his long life, but meeting the Master Diviner quickly winds up on this list.
What a face the old man had graced him with upon consulting the Deca-Light Reflection Barrier Matrix to understand which hexagrams would direct Yinyue-jun's path. Calamity. Catastrophe. Misfortune. Ruination. He laughed and said the Master Diviner must have seen the end of the world with how white his face had become, but the solemn shake of his head and the heavy, placating hand upon his shoulder told him the end of the world is not something one should dismiss with humour.
Why had he asked such a miserable question? He could have inquired about his prospects in love, about whether his favourite childhood snack would make a resurgence in popularity, or something equally mundane that wouldn't have mattered. No, his foolish, curious, compulsive workaholic self had to instead seek answers to something he clearly wasn't ready to comprehend.
Like flying to the sun on wings of wax and paper, the Master Diviner minced no words, striking him from the sky with swift unequivocal terms.
What would be the fate of his lineage, the one given the name Yinyue-jun?
Tragedy.
Hubris.
Exile.
Despair.
Even the changing lines which normally promise wisdom and hope to those who commit to transformation all seem to say one thing and one thing only.
No matter what Yinyue-jun does, no matter what knowledge he learns, the precautions he takes, the people he warns—nothing will stop his descent into destruction, so long as he remains Yinyue-jun, the High Elder of the Luofu.
The Master Diviner left him five handwritten books transcribed by Xuan Yao, the Divination Commission's Founder and Grandmaster themself. "This old man has other obligations to attend to," is what he said to excuse himself politely from a rapidly deteriorating conversation. "Perhaps with enough study, Yinyue-jun can find his own answers."
Three sleepless days later and he thinks he should have declined the gifts of pity if the result is yet more confusion.
His hand curls over the most offending passage, something about tranquillity and innocence, suddenly possessed by the urge to throw the books and his whole table into the lake that stretches out around him like the vast sea his ancient memory remembers. He'd watch the waters drown his dreadful prognostication, cleansing the sin of his being, then seek out a trustworthy alchemist to strike the thoughts from his mind so that the Office of Deep Sources would never reveal his revelations to future generations.
It's an attractive idea, beguiling in its simplicity, but whether it is his pride or shame that stops him, he can't bring himself to forget what shouldn't be forgotten.
"Aiyah. How many hundred years has it been since you last visited, and here you cannot even bother to greet an old friend? What will my people say when they discover we've not even been given the chance to extend our warm hospitality to the Luofu's Yinyue-jun?"
Their presence like a shifting wind startles him from his pondering. He looks up from his misshapen fruits and pastries half eaten from hours ago, meeting an upturned eyebrow with his own.
"Kungang-jun," he says, flattening the creases in his long sleeves. He clears a corner of his low table with a sweep of an elegant hand, gesturing for his visitor to come sit. "You know I mean no offence. These days I find myself failing to care for decorum. It must be the sweetness of your ship, blinding me with nostalgia."
The successor of the great Terrestrial Dragon tilts their head, appraising him through long lashes, their painted lips curled in easy mirth.
"Oh, what flattery! To think the brutish Yinyue-jun would learn something after last time's catastrophe. It must be a miracle."
They couldn't have known the worries that plague his mind, keeping him from the rest his doctors so desperately prescribed to him, so he tries not to think upon the poor choice of words. As it turns out, the only thing he's worse at than breaking from his duties is hiding his heart from his face.
The expression he makes must be a miserable one, full of empty ache and bitter longing, as Kungang-jun, ever quick to tease, drops their usual raillery.
They sit across the small table before him, refreshing the tea leaves in a new pot of water. With a softness only a privileged few ever witness, the Yuque's High Elder lays their palm over his trembling fingers.
"▇▇▇'er, what did you see?" comes their gentle voice, warm and inviting, drifting past the iron armour he's constructed for himself out of bleak need to coax forward the fearful child within he thought the Preceptors' had beat out of him.
What hadn't he seen would have amounted to a far shorter list. When he opens his mouth to say as much, only a sigh as heavy as the ocean escapes his chest.
Kungang-jun pries his fingers from his tight fists one at a time, tracing the junction of each knuckle. When Yinyue-jun still refuses to speak, they fish out a paper-wrapped sweet from their sleeve, pressing it into his palm to bid him to eat.
"He told me, you know, on his way to lead a lecture on fate and free will. The Master Diviner is not one to disclose private readings, but neither is he able to suffer such woeful news on his own."
Yinyue-jun levels them with a grimace, though he nevertheless eats the proffered snack. It's tart in the way some complain of his personality, spicy and numbing on the tongue, ending with a hint of sweetness, just the way he likes. He doesn't want to admit it, but when he holds out his hand again, Kungang-jun builds a small pyramid of confectionaries between his heart and life lines.
"If you knew, why ask?"
The High Elder of the Yuque has always had the reputation of an enigma with their quiet ponderings of palpable, congealed silence. In this way, with their eyes lowered beneath the wing flutter of eyelashes, their painted lips curved into a secretive moonbow, who can say whether the rumours were true that Kungang-jun can see the future?
"Because, ▇▇▇'er," they say, fingers pressing and folding until his discarded paper wrappers become a line of waxen cranes, "in asking, we find solace and the truth. The Master Diviner is only one man. What you believe matters, too."
Perhaps it is how they peer at him with such gentle, open knowing, their thumb rubbing soothing circles into the back of his free hand, that the first of his fears come tumbling forth, and once begun, the words roll down hill, one after another.
He tells Kungang-jun of warfare and perseverance, of preparations generations in the making. Yinyue-jun historically has never been the strongest of the five, but stubbornness and discipline see him rising into great power, enough to protect his own from dangers without.
Herein lies his shame and folly, a hubris so deep not even the light of his achievements could hope to uncover its true depths. Whilst the Luofu worries about the monsters knocking on their door, no one would anticipate the most despicable monster lives amongst them.
Bitterness. Betrayal. An ego unwilling to accept the call of destiny. He spent the last couple of sleepless days denying even the possibility that the fortune could be true until, at last, at the end of his books and rituals and his shaken wits, he realised—who is it, exactly, fighting his fate tooth and nail, unwilling to accept the call of destiny?
"There is a place of darkness," he says, a whisper of promised malediction, his fingers caging three paper cranes, "mired by the clag of regret. It's cold and lonely, painful beyond measure, and yet—"
His palm strikes the table, scattering loose sheets into the wind. When he lifts his hand, only crumples of trash remain in the epicentre of his chaos, mutated and unrecognisable.
To their credit, Kungang-jun doesn't jump. They say nothing as their power sweeps the low island, picking up pieces of his fury and frustration to deposit a neat stack of handwritten notes beside them.
"Kungang-jun, there must be something wrong with me. Yinyue-jun will one day become the Luofu's greatest villain, yet this is not shame I feel," he takes a shuddering breath, eyes shut, teeth clenched. A hundred different thoughts flit between his ears, but it's clear what burns in his chest, seething in violet peals.
"It's rage."
He thought, at first, it must be anger at injustice. A crisis will challenge everything Yinyue-jun knows, and he will use his accumulated knowledge to break taboo. Necessity surely triumphs over propriety, so perhaps the anger comes from facing too rigid Preceptors too preoccupied with rules and social constructs.
In his heart though he knows the moral bearing of Yinyue-jun is second to none and is one of the primary reasons why his people stay their distance, calling him their bright guiding star, and why, through no fault but his own, he falls ill every other year worrying over right versus wrong.
So it cannot be injustice, and he knows it is not shame, so what then ties his stomach into knots, smothering him in choking flames?
There is something inevitable about understanding oneself so well. When he lifts his head to peer into the glass mirrors of Kungang-jun's gaze, he already knows his answers.
"This lineage is destined for destruction. When all are but ruins at his feet, Yinyue-jun will neither laugh nor cry. No amount of sorrow or remorse will ever change his mind that this was and is the only choice."
The hexagrams don't say what exact tragedy will befall the High Elder of the Luofu, but his imagination is as boundless as his ambitions, conjuring horrors from sedition to extinction.
In the heavy silence that follows his explanation, the artificial lake's climate cycle gathers grey clouds overhead before the sky opens up in spring showers. He's beyond caring about a little water, but these books in front of him were lent by another so he summons a barrier just big enough to cover them.
He may be miserable, but he has his honour still.
It's only when another sweet falls between his lips does he follow the arm down to Kungang-jun's slight form, their white robes soaked through to translucence. He goes to apologise, but the Terrestrial Dragon stops him with three fingers pressed against his mouth.
"Is this ending really so terrible?"
What a ridiculous question. In what world is total destruction not terrible?!
He wants to tell Kungang-jun there are limits to optimism called delusional insanity, but their silence weighs heavily upon his shoulders, tempering his tempestuous thoughts. Eventually, satisfied with his stillness, they peel their fingers from his lips and asks the question again.
"Is this ending really so terrible?"
Yes. Probably. Maybe. He's not so sure anymore. For scions of Permanence, is Finality not the greatest sin?
They stay like this for some time until the chill becomes intolerable even for two old dragons. When he stands, it is Kungang-jun lending their hand, fingers curling around his wrist. He doesn't need to be told twice, shrugging out of his coat to drape it over their slender body.
"You have always been my favourite," Kungang-jun tells him, their smile a soft, ephemeral thing.
As if broken from a solemn enchantment, he can't help but slip back into a childish ease only Kungang-jun will ever inspire.
"Aren't you saying that because I'm the only one who eats your treats? Is there anyone else brave enough to be hand fed by the fearsome High Elder of the Yuque?"
They both blink twice before laughter spills across ink, carried over ripples by a serendipitous breeze.
"When one day Yinyue-jun turns his back on the Xianzhou," Kungang-jun says, tilting their face to the sky, "he will be okay."
"How can you be so sure?"
For a moment, only the sound of rain echoes in their pocket of time.
"For Vidyadhara—for someone I hold dear—what is Finality but a chance at freedom?"