Work Text:
It would be easier, perhaps, if the grief weighing down all present would ease the ominous air that lingers. Shen Qiao kneels before the elders, heart stilled, muscles perfectly loose. The only sign of anything amiss: his reddened eyes, the wrinkles of his robes.
“Shizun left his final words to me,” he recites the words he had rehearsed walking up the path.
“Qi Fengge made the wise choice,” an elder says. Shen Qiao says nothing, does not even swallow or blink. The world is clouded in a haze.
“Rise, Shen Qiao,” he is told, “sect leader of Xuandu’s Violet Palace.”