Chapter Text
The Fei family mansion loomed like a fortress of secrets under the gray Yan City sky, its high ceilings and polished marble floors swallowing every sound into echoing silence. Eleven-year-old Fei Du sat cross-legged on the heavy velvet chair in the private library, the room thick with the scent of aged leather bindings and faint incense his father burned to "clear the mind of weakness." The book in his lap was no child's story—*The Anatomy of Human Cruelty*, its pages dense with diagrams of pain responses and psychological fractures. Fei Chengyu had placed it there that morning with a thin smile that never reached his eyes. "Read it carefully, Du'er. Monsters are not born. They are sharpened. Fail to understand them, and you will be the blade that turns inward."
Fei Du's small fingers traced the text, his young mind already dissecting the words with unnatural precision. He was quiet by nature, observant, the kind of child who watched adults like specimens under glass. His father’s "lessons" had taught him that much: emotions were tools, pain was data, and silence was the sharpest weapon. Outside the tall windows, rain pattered against the glass, blurring the manicured gardens into a watery haze. The mansion felt alive with tension, as if the walls themselves held their breath.
Then it came.
A sharp, searing pain exploded across his ribs, hot as a fresh brand. Fei Du gasped, the book tumbling from his hands onto the thick carpet with a dull thud. It felt like invisible claws ripping through skin and muscle, followed by a crushing pressure that stole his breath. His vision blurred at the edges, and he doubled forward, clutching his side with trembling hands. Bruises—dark and angry—began to bloom beneath his crisp white shirt, spreading like ink on parchment. This was not his pain. It couldn't be. He hadn't fallen. He hadn't been struck. Yet the agony was real, vivid, pulsing in time with some distant rhythm he could not name.
Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, but Fei Du bit down hard on his lip, drawing a different kind of blood to stay silent. Footsteps in the hall could mean his father approaching, and Fei Chengyu did not tolerate unexplained weakness. "Monsters do not flinch," he would say, his voice smooth as poisoned honey. "They learn from it."
The door creaked open softly. Su Lan entered, her steps measured and graceful, carrying a tray with tea and light snacks as if it were any ordinary afternoon. She was elegant even in simplicity—a slender woman with sharp, intelligent eyes that hid depths of quiet steel. Free from open confrontation with her husband but forever navigating his monstrous shadow, she had become a master of unseen protections. Her gaze fell on her son immediately, taking in the curled posture, the pallor, the way his small hands pressed against his side.
She set the tray down without a sound and knelt beside him, her cool fingers gently prying his hands away. The bruises were unmistakable now, vivid against his pale skin. Su Lan's expression remained calm, but her eyes flickered with a mother's fierce knowing. She had suspected something like this for months—whispers of rare soul bonds in old family tales, the way her son sometimes winced at nothing. This confirmed it. Her only child was linked to another, feeling pains not his own. And in this house, such a vulnerability could be fatal.
"Fei Du," she whispered, her voice low and steady, like a secret shared between shadows. "Listen to me carefully. This pain... it is not yours to explain here. Do not speak of it to your father. Never let him see these marks. Make excuses if he notices—say you fell in the garden chasing a stray cat, or that you bumped against the old furniture in the east wing. Tell him nothing of it appearing suddenly. He must not know. Do you understand?"
Fei Du looked up at her, his young face etched with confusion and the lingering throb of the invisible wound. The pain was already fading to a dull ache, but the mystery of it clung to him like fog. Who was out there, enduring such violence? Why did it reach him? He nodded slowly, repeating her words in his precise, childlike tone, as if committing a lesson to memory. "Do not speak of it to Father. Never let him see. Make excuses... fell in the garden, or bumped furniture. Nothing sudden. I understand, Mother."
Su Lan's hand lingered on his shoulder, a rare warmth in the cold mansion. She helped him adjust his shirt, buttoning it carefully to hide the evidence, then pressed a cool cloth from the tea tray against the worst of the bruising. "Good. You are clever, my son. Sharper than he knows. This... this is a secret between us. Some connections in this world are not for monsters to touch. They would twist them into chains." Her voice carried a mysterious weight, hinting at stories untold—perhaps her own quiet research into soul bonds, or the rare tales passed among wary wives in their circle. She did not elaborate. She never did. No grand revelations, no decisions forced upon him. Only this: protection through silence.
Fei Du sat straighter, mimicking her composure even as questions swirled in his mind like the rain outside. The library felt heavier now, the bookshelves leaning in as silent witnesses. He picked up the fallen volume, smoothing its pages, but his thoughts drifted far beyond its diagrams. Was this pain a warning? A link to some distant fighter in the city's underbelly? The mansion's clocks ticked onward, indifferent, while outside, thunder rumbled like distant gunshots.
Su Lan poured tea for them both, her movements unhurried. "Drink. It will steady you. And remember—your father sees only what you show him. Show him strength. Show him nothing else." She sipped her own cup, eyes distant, as if pondering the invisible thread tying her son to an unknown soul. In the years to come, this moment would echo, but for now, it was simply survival.
Fei Du echoed her again softly, "Show him strength. Nothing else." The sharp pain had passed, but the mystery had only begun to unfold. He glanced toward the rain-streaked window, wondering who out there bled so bravely that an eleven-year-old boy in a gilded cage could feel it across the city. His father's monstrous lessons felt suddenly small against this new, unspoken shadow.
The afternoon stretched long and quiet. Su Lan stayed with him, reading aloud from a neutral text on psychology—not his father's choice, but one of her hidden selections slipped between the shelves. Fei Du listened, repeating key phrases under his breath, his young mind already weaving excuses and masks. By dinner, the bruises would be concealed under layers of clothing, and any flinch dismissed as a childish mishap. Fei Chengyu would suspect nothing.
But in the depths of the mansion, the bond had awakened. And with it, a thread of destiny that no monstrous father could sever. The rain continued to fall, washing secrets into the earth, while Fei Du's sharp eyes gleamed with the first sparks of questions that would one day unravel far more than pain.