Archive of Our Own

The bread was stale again. I tore off a corner, watching the crumbs scatter across the worn wooden table like tiny, defeated soldiers. Outside, the laughter of new disciples floated through the open window, bright and careless, as if the world hadn’t already chewed them up and spat them out once.

My brother stood at the edge of the training grounds, his posture rigid, fingers curling and uncurling at his sides. I knew that telltale twitch, the one that meant he’d found something, or someone, to resent. Following his gaze, I spotted the boy: small for his age, with eyes too sharp for someone who’d just stumbled into cultivation. He held his practice sword like it might bite him, and the other recruits had already begun to edge away, leaving him stranded in the center of the courtyard like a lone sapling in a storm.

"Another one?" I muttered under my breath, brushing flour from my sleeves. My brother had a habit of collecting grudges like others collected rare talismans, and this boy, with his too-quick reflexes and the way the sunlight caught on his dark hair like ink spilled across parchment, was already marked.

I sighed and stepped outside, the breeze carrying the scent of plum blossoms from the eastern gardens. The boy flinched when he saw me approaching, as if expecting a blow. Instead, I reached out and adjusted his grip on the sword, my fingers lingering just a moment too long. "You’re holding it like it’s a live snake," I said, softer than I intended. His hands were warm, calloused in all the wrong places, someone had worked him hard before he’d ever set foot here.

My brother’s stare burned into my back. I ignored it. Let him seethe. If he wouldn’t take this one, I would.

The boy introduced himself later that evening, when the courtyard had emptied and the other disciples had retreated to their quarters. His voice was barely above a whisper, as if he feared the wind might steal his name and carry it somewhere dangerous. "Luo Binghe," he murmured, head bowed. The way he said it, like an apology, made something twist in my chest. His fingers curled into the fabric of his robes, knuckles white. "This one is grateful for Shixiong’s guidance today."

I resisted the urge to sigh. Already, I could see the future laid out before him like a cruel joke: my brother’s disciples would sharpen their tongues on him, and Ning Yingying’s kindness would only make it worse. Ming Fan’s jealousy simmered beneath every glance he threw Luo Binghe’s way, and my brother, well. My brother had never needed a reason to hate someone.

Still, I reached out, brushing a loose strand of hair from his forehead. His breath hitched. Too trusting, too soft. "You don’t have to thank me," I said, softer than I’d intended. The night air carried the faint scent of the kitchens, charred rice and ginger, but beneath it, something else lingered. The sharp, clean scent of youth, untouched by bitterness.

Luo Binghe’s gaze flickered up, wide and dark. He looked at me like I’d hung the moon. It was unsettling. No one had ever looked at me that way before, least of not a boy who should have been sprinting towards greatness, not clinging to the scraps of attention I could offer.

I pulled my hand away before the warmth of his skin could seep any deeper into mine. "Come find me tomorrow," I said, turning before he could see the flush creeping up my neck. "I’ll show you how to hold a sword properly."

Behind me, Luo Binghe’s whisper curled around the edges of the night like smoke. "This one won’t forget."

I knew he wouldn’t. That was the problem.

The next evening, my brother gathered the disciples in the moonlit courtyard, his fingers tapping impatiently against the jade flute tucked into his sash. "Entertain us," he said, voice sharp as a blade. His gaze flickered to me, lingering with that quiet malice he reserved for moments when he wanted me to remember my place. "Surely even an expired omega can manage that much."

The disciples tittered, all except Luo Binghe, who sat rigid at the edge of the group, his fingers digging into his knees. I forced a smile, plucking the pipa from the stand beside me. The wood was smooth beneath my fingers, worn from years of useless performances.

I began to sing.

*"All the sparkles, the lands, they all should be right here in my hands."*

The words tasted like ash, but the melody curled sweet and false between the plum blossoms. The disciples' laughter died into uneasy silence. My voice carried, light and mocking, twisting the lyrics into something fragile. *"My life is a magic dream that came true."*

Luo Binghe's eyes burned into me, too intense, too knowing. He didn’t blink.

*"My wishes are a million stars in a sky of blue."*

I plucked the strings harder than necessary, the notes sharp. *"I collect fine diamonds, robes, jewelry, all this is mine."* The lie dripped like honey. What did I own? Nothing but the robes on my back and the bitter taste of my brother’s disdain.

*"Wine and meat buns,"* I sang, softer now, almost wistful. The disciples shifted uncomfortably. Even Ming Fan’s sneer faltered.

And then, a shadow moved. Luo Binghe stood abruptly, his cup tipping over, wine bleeding into the wood like a wound. His fists trembled at his sides.

I didn’t stop singing. *"Everywhere that I go, they all follow me, "*

His breath hitched audibly.

*", just the way that I know it’s me they come to see."*

The last note hung in the air, brittle as ice.

My brother’s smile was thin. "Charming," he said.

Luo Binghe didn’t sit back down.

The pipa strings hummed under my fingers as I began the next verse, my voice weaving through the courtyard like silk unraveling. *"Follow the way, the only way, cuz our traditions are strict."* The words dripped with irony, the same way my brother’s disciples bowed to his rules while their hands clenched behind their backs.

His shadow stretched long across the ground, reaching toward me like a plea. I plucked the strings harder, forcing brightness into the next line. *"But everyday we get to play, tea party, dancing music."* The disciples chuckled nervously, their laughter brittle as dried leaves. My brother’s fingers tightened around his flute, his knuckles pale.

Luo Binghe took a step forward.

I didn’t look up, but I felt it, the heat of his gaze, the way the air thickened around him like storm clouds gathering. *"How wonderful life is, Ma Vie en Rose,"* I sang, softer now, the lie curdling in my throat. Wonderful? My life was a borrowed robe, stitched together with silence and scraps.

His next step crunched on gravel. Ming Fan hissed something sharp, but Luo Binghe didn’t flinch.

*"Everything you see here is mine,"* I continued, the pipa’s melody trembling. Mine? The robes I wore belonged to the sect. The bread I ate was portioned by my brother’s grudges. The only thing truly mine was the weight of this boy’s stare, heavy as a blade pressed to my ribs.

*"My future is bright and all will be fine."* The words tasted like poison. Fine? He was sixteen, untouched by the rot of missed chances. I was twenty-one, a relic, a spinster omega trailing after a brother who’d long since outgrown me.

Luo Binghe’s breath hitched audibly. He was close enough now that I caught the scent of him, ink and crushed herbs, something wild beneath the starch of his disciple robes.

*"Yet something is missing here, deep inside,"* I murmured, the pipa strings sighing. The courtyard held its breath. Even the plum blossoms seemed to pause mid-fall.

His fingers twitched. I could feel it, the unspoken words lodged in his throat, the way his pulse jumped when our eyes met.

Too much. Too soon.

I plucked the final note, sharp as a slap. *"Everything you see here now is mine, a life full of joy, but nothing to hide."*

The silence that followed was thicker than blood.

Later, in the dim glow of my bamboo hut, the pipa strings trembled under my fingertips as I hummed the melody again. The scent of aged wood and dried ink clung to the walls, familiar as an old scar. *"Yeah, they will all follow me one day,"* I murmured, plucking the strings with more force than necessary. The notes skittered across the room like startled birds. Outside, the wind rustled through the bamboo grove, a whisper of something restless, something waiting.

My voice cracked on the next line. *"Yet I feel something isn’t right."* The admission curled bitter on my tongue. What wasn’t right? The way Luo Binghe’s gaze lingered too long after training, hot as a brand? The way my pulse stuttered when his fingers brushed mine passing a tea cup? Or perhaps it was the way my brother’s disciples had begun to whisper, their glances sharp as knives whenever I crossed the courtyard with him trailing behind me like a shadow.

The pipa slipped from my lap with a discordant twang. I didn’t bother to catch it. *"But nobody knows I feel this way,"* I whispered to the empty room, pressing my palms to my eyes until colors bloomed behind my lids. The lie tasted familiar now, worn smooth from repetition. Who would believe an unwanted omega could inspire anything but pity? Who would see the way Luo Binghe’s breath hitched when I praised him and think, no. Better to bury it beneath layers of denial, like the old robes at the bottom of my chest.

A knock shattered the silence.

I knew before I opened the door. The scent of crushed plum blossoms and something darker, fiercer, seeped through the bamboo slats. Luo Binghe stood there, his silhouette framed by moonlight, his fists clenched at his sides. His eyes burned. *"Shixiong,"* he breathed, and the way he said it, like a prayer, like a vow, sent heat crawling up my spine.

*"There’s an emptiness that I cannot deny,"* I’d sung earlier. Now, with his warmth bleeding through the thin fabric of my sleeve where he gripped me, I understood. The pipa’s melancholy notes still echoed in my skull, but beneath them, something new pulsed, insistent as a heartbeat.

*"But I believe in me,"* I thought wildly as his fingers tightened. His breath fanned across my lips. *"I can tell what’s important to my heart."*

The door swung shut behind us.

Luo Binghe's hands were steady as he helped me out of my outer robes, his fingers brushing against the nape of my neck with practiced ease. There was something terrifying in the way he moved, as if he'd memorized every knot and fold of my clothing long before this moment. His scent clung to my sleeves, incense and something darker, like charred sugar, long after he'd bowed and retreated into the night.

Alone again, I traced the rim of my abandoned teacup, the porcelain cold against my fingertips. The pipa lay forgotten in the corner, its strings slack. Outside, the wind hissed through the bamboo like a chorus of disapproving whispers. *"Everything you see here's mine,"* I sang softly, the words curling into the empty space between my ribs. The lie tasted different now, thicker, as if saying it aloud might make it true. My reflection in the window wavered, a ghost in borrowed silks.

Moonlight pooled on the floorboards like spilled milk. I pressed a palm to the cool glass, watching my breath fog the surface. *"Yeah, they all will follow me, I'm the star."* The disciples would, someday. They'd trail after Luo Binghe like ducklings, their adoration a given. But now? Now his footsteps still paused outside my door too long, his shadow lingering on the threshold like an unasked question.

The pipa's lowest string twanged when I nudged it with my foot. *"I pray that someone will see through the lie."* My voice cracked. Who would? My brother saw only what he chose to, a spinster omega, a wasted life. The other peak lords scarcely glanced my way unless my singing amused them. And Luo Binghe... Luo Binghe looked at me as if I'd strung the stars between my fingers instead of plucking cheap tavern tunes from worn-out strings.

A moth battered itself against the lantern, wings whispering *liar, liar, liar* with every frantic flutter. I blew out the flame. Darkness swallowed the room whole. *"I'm here alone and I don't know why."* The last note hung suspended, trembling. Somewhere beyond these walls, a boy with ink-dark hair and hands that burned through silk dreamed of conquest. And I? I pressed my forehead to the windowpane and wondered when my lies had started sounding like a plea.

The pipa's shadow stretched long across the floor, a noose waiting to tighten.

And then *it* appeared, a flicker of static in the air, buzzing like a disturbed hornet's nest. Words materialized before me, glowing an unnatural blue: **[SYSTEM ACTIVATED. USER SHEN YUAN, THIS LOWLY ONE HAS COME TO DELIVER A MESSAGE.]** The characters hung suspended, dripping like melted wax. **[DO NOT GROW ATTACHED TO PROTAGONIST LUO BINGHE. IN HIS FUTURE, HE POSSESSES A HAREM OF THREE THOUSAND BEAUTIES. YOU, EXPIRED GOODS AT TWENTY-ONE, WILL NOT, ]**

The characters exploded mid-sentence.

Something blacker than midnight uncoiled from the corners of the room, tendrils lashing out to *strangle* the glowing text. The air curdled with the scent of burning sugar and rotted plums. The System's blue light *screamed*, flickering erratically as the shadow *bit* down, shattering it into jagged shards that dissolved like ash.

A presence loomed behind me, breathing in ragged, wet gasps.

I didn't turn. My reflection in the window showed nothing but my own pale face, but the shadows at my feet... those writhed, forming a shape too massive for the room, too *wrong* for this world. A hand, clawed, dripping, pressed against the glass beside my head. The window frosted over where it touched.

**"Mine."** The voice was layered, a chorus of growls and whispers. **"No System. No harem. Only me."**

The words slithered into my ears, hot as brandy. The shadow's breath hitched, a sound eerily human, like Luo Binghe's when I'd corrected his sword grip that first day.

Then, silence.

The lantern flickered back to life. The moth, miraculously unharmed, resumed its dizzy circles. My hands shook where they gripped the windowsill.

Outside, Luo Binghe stood beneath the plum tree, his robes pristine, his smile sweet as ever. He lifted a hand in greeting, fingers still stained from where he'd spilled wine earlier. Innocent. Perfect.

But the shadows at his feet, those stretched too far, twitching like something restrained.

The pipa's last string snapped with a sound like a neck breaking.

I swallowed.

*"Yeah, they all will follow me,"* I'd sung.

Perhaps. But not him.

Never him.

The moth plunged into the flame.

Its wings curled black as the last remnants of the System's warning dissolved into the air, leaving only the scent of charred honey and something sickly sweet. Demonic energy. It clung to my robes, sticky as spider silk, but the realization settled cold in my gut, this wasn't aimed at me. Whatever had torn through that message like parchment, whatever had snarled *mine* into the dark, it hadn't come from within Cang Qiong's walls. No one here would dare dabble in demonic cultivation, not when the punishment was a one-way trip to the Endless Abyss, not when even whispering of it could get your tongue cut out.

I pressed a hand to my chest, feeling the uneven thump of my pulse. The shadows at Luo Binghe's feet had moved *wrong*, but that was impossible. He was just a boy, just a disciple with too-bright eyes and hands that shook when I praised him. Wasn't he?

The window creaked open without my touch. Night air rushed in, carrying the scent of plum blossoms and, beneath it, something metallic, like blood left to dry in the sun. Luo Binghe stood exactly where he'd been moments ago, but his smile had sharpened at the edges, the way a knife looks right before it cuts. "Shixiong," he called, voice smooth as silk. "This one couldn't sleep."

My fingers twitched toward the abandoned pipa. Its broken string coiled on the floor like a dead snake. "Neither could I," I admitted, and the lie tasted bitter. I hadn't slept properly in years, not since the night my brother dragged me from our master's house with our wrists still bleeding from the shackles.

Luo Binghe took a step forward. The shadows didn't move with him. They stayed pooled around his feet, too still, too dark. "This one thought he heard Shixiong singing," he murmured. His fingers flexed, as if remembering the weight of a sword. "A beautiful song."

The moth's corpse smoldered in the lantern. I swallowed. "You shouldn't listen at doors," I said, aiming for lightness and missing by a mile.

His laughter was soft, dangerous. "This one doesn't need to." Another step. The scent of crushed herbs and something darker thickened the air between us. "Shixiong's voice carries."

And then, the flicker, his eyes, just for a heartbeat, pulsed crimson.

I pretended not to see it. Some truths are too sharp to hold.

The kitchen was quiet when I pushed open the warped wooden door, the scent of old smoke and dried ginger clinging to the rafters. My fingers traced the familiar path to the clay pot, the one with the crack running down its side like a scar. Milk would do. Hot milk soothed frayed nerves, or so my brother used to say before his heart frosted over and his smiles turned to blades.

Luo Binghe hovered in the doorway, his silhouette too large for the frame. The firelight painted his shadow monstrous across the floorboards. "Shixiong doesn't have to, "

"I know." The words came out too soft. The ladle clinked against the pot as I stirred, watching cream swirl into gold. Steam curled between us, dampening his lashes when he leaned too close. His breath hitched when I brushed past him to fetch honey, our sleeves whispering together like conspirators.

He accepted the chipped cup with both hands, his fingers lingering against mine. The heat should have scalded, but his skin was always fever-warm. "Thank you," he murmured, and the way his voice cracked on the second syllable made my ribs ache.

I watched his throat work as he drank, the line of it too vulnerable in the firelight. The milk left a pale mustache on his upper lip. My thumb moved before sense caught up, swiping it away. His breath stuttered against my knuckles.

Too much. Too familiar.

I busied myself with wiping nonexistent dust from the counter. "My brother used to make this for me," I said to the empty hearth. "When we were young. Before."

Luo Binghe's cup hit the table with a sharp click. "This one will make it for Shixiong next time." His voice had gone dark, the way it did when Ming Fan's taunts cut too deep.

The fire popped, sending embers skittering across the floor. Outside, the wind rattled the bamboo like bones in a gourd. Somewhere beyond these walls, my brother slept untouched by memories of milk pots and shared blankets.

Luo Binghe's hand found mine in the dark, his fingers twining through mine with terrifying certainty. "Shixiong isn't alone anymore," he whispered, and the vow in it made my pulse stutter.

The milk curdled in my stomach.

I should have pulled away.

The song, if it could be called that, clawed through the silence with teeth. The melody was jagged, raw, the kind of sound that scraped against your ribs until they sang in harmony. The device, MP3 player, the System had called it, lay shattered on my floor, its pieces glinting like broken teeth. Yet the music continued, warped, as if the air itself had been infected.

*"If I had to, I will put myself right beside you, "* The voice snarled, distorted beyond recognition. It wasn’t singing. It was *vowing*.

Luo Binghe’s grip on my wrist tightened. His pulse thrummed against my skin, erratic as a caged bird’s. "Shixiong," he breathed, but the word was swallowed by the next line, *"So let me ask, would you like that?"*, hissed directly into my ear by something that wasn’t there. The scent of ozone and burnt sugar choked the room.

The shadows moved wrong again. Not stretching, *uncoiling*. A tendril flicked the pipa’s corpse, and the broken string *twanged* in protest.

*"And I don’t mind if you say this love is the last time, "* The voice was inside my skull now, layered with static and something wetter, like laughter through blood.

Luo Binghe’s eyes bled crimson. Not a flicker, a flood. His free hand lashed out, snatching a shard of the MP3 player. Blood welled between his fingers, black in the lamplight. "No," he growled, but the song answered for him: *"NO! Something is getting in the way!"*

The window shattered inward. No wind. No warning. Just glass raining like diamonds as the shadow behind Luo Binghe *swelled*, its edges tearing at reality itself.

*"Something is just about to break, "* The last syllable cracked like a whip. The lantern exploded. Darkness swallowed us whole.

Cool fingers brushed my cheek. Luo Binghe’s voice, stripped of its careful softness: "I’ll try to find my place in the diary of Jane." The words were wrong, not his, not anyone’s, but his breath was warm against my lips.

Then light. Sudden, searing.

The System’s remnants sputtered in the air between us: **[WARNING: PROTAGONIST AFFECTION METER EXCEEDS, ]**

Luo Binghe’s teeth gleamed in the dark. He *bit* the message out of existence.

The song ended on a scream.

Silence pooled thick as blood between us. The System’s remnants flickered weakly in the air, its blue light dimming like a dying firefly. **[WARNING: TEMPORAL INTERFERENCE DETECT, ]**

Luo Binghe’s fingers twitched. The shadow behind him *lunged*, swallowing the message whole with a sound like bones snapping.

“Shixiong,” he murmured, sweet as poisoned honey. His thumb brushed my lower lip, smearing something wet, ink or blood, I couldn’t tell. “This one only needed it to deliver a message.”

The scent of burnt sugar clung to his robes. I stared at the hollow of his throat, where his pulse raced wild and rabbit-quick. That song, those words, *diary of Jane*, they weren’t just lyrics. They were a confession scrawled in knife strokes.

The System’s final gasp hissed between us: **[USER SHEN YUAN, THAT MESSAGE WAS FROM FUTURE LUO BINGHE. HE HAS ELIMINATED HIS HAREM OF THREE THOUSAND. THIS LOWLY ONE WAS FORCED TO, ]**

Black tendrils *wrenched* it apart mid-sentence.

Luo Binghe smiled. His canines glinted too sharp in the moonlight. “Only this once,” he said to the empty air, conversational, as if addressing a misbehaving dog. “Never again.”

The shadows at his feet trembled, not in fear, but in *anticipation*.

I should’ve run. Screamed. Done anything but stand there like a fool, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs. Instead, I reached for the shattered remains of the MP3 player, my fingers brushing a jagged shard.

His hand closed over mine, crushing the shard to dust. “Don’t,” he whispered, and the *hurt* in his voice made my breath catch. “This one… I only wanted Shixiong to know.”

Know what? That the sweet pup who’d clung to my sleeves was gone? That the future emperor had carved out his own heart to make room for me?

The moth’s ashes swirled in the dead lantern.

Luo Binghe pressed his forehead to mine, his breath hot against my skin. “No harem,” he vowed, the words raw as an open wound. “No System. Only you.”

Outside, the plum blossoms fell like snow.

And I,

I believed him.

That was the worst part, not the shadows writhing like living things at his feet, not the way his teeth gleamed too sharp when he smiled, not even the System’s shattered remains still sparking blue in the corners of the room. No, it was the terrible, gut-churning *certainty* that when Luo Binghe said *"No harem,"* he meant it with every twisted fiber of his being.

"You're insane," I whispered, my voice cracking like the pipa’s broken string. The words tasted like ash. "Three thousand beauties, Binghe. *Three thousand.* And you, " My throat closed around the rest. *And you chose this?* Me, a spinster omega with calloused hands and a voice worn thin from singing lies? Me, whose own brother couldn’t bear to look at him without disgust curling his lip?

Luo Binghe’s fingers tightened around mine, his grip hot enough to brand. "Shixiong still doesn’t understand," he murmured, and the *hurt* in it made my ribs ache. His shadow stretched long across the floorboards, its edges fraying like torn silk. "This one doesn’t want what’s *expected.*"

The last word came out mangled, raw as a fresh wound. I knew that tone. I’d heard it a lifetime ago, when a slave boy in tattered robes spat at his master’s feet rather than take the offered bread.

His thumb brushed my pulse point, slow, deliberate. "They were all *replaceable,*" he said, softer now, almost gentle. The shadows at his feet pulsed in time with his words. "Shixiong isn’t."

The moth’s corpse crumbled to dust in the lantern. Outside, the wind howled through the bamboo like a thing in pain. I should’ve recoiled. Should’ve screamed for my brother, for the sect elders, for *anyone* to tear this demonic shadow from my doorway.

Instead, I leaned into his touch.

Luo Binghe made a sound low in his throat, half triumph, half anguish. "This one waited," he breathed against my temple, his lips grazing skin. "Through the Abyss. Through the throne. Through *three thousand* empty beds." His voice fractured on the last word. "All for *this.*"

The System’s final flicker died with a hiss.

I closed my eyes.

And let the darkness swallow us whole.

The summons arrived with dawn, crisp parchment embossed with Cang Qiong’s crest pressed into my hands by a tight-lipped messenger. The National Conference, my brother’s crowning achievement, the event that would cement his legacy as the youngest peak lord in history. His handwriting, sharp as his tongue, slashed across the invitation: *You will attend. No excuses.*

I crumpled the note in my fist.

Luo Binghe found me in the training yard, fingers bleeding from where I’d hacked at a dummy with too much force. His shadow stretched long across the gravel, darker than it had any right to be. "Shixiong," he murmured, catching my wrist before I could swing again. His thumb smoothed over my split knuckles, the touch too gentle for a boy who’d just turned sixteen.

"They’re sending disciples to the conference," I said, watching his face carefully. A flicker, there and gone, of something hungry crossed his features before he schooled them back into that infuriatingly sweet expression.

"This one heard," he admitted, ducking his head like a chastised pup. The morning light caught on his lashes, casting delicate shadows across his cheeks. Too soft. Too young. Too *everything* my brother would despise.

I exhaled sharply. "My brother wants you there."

Luo Binghe stilled. His grip on my wrist tightened fractionally.

"He thinks it’ll be a spectacle," I continued, bitterness creeping into my voice. "Watching the ‘little beast’ humiliate himself in front of every major sect."

A slow, dangerous smile curled at the edges of his mouth. "Shixiong worries for this one?"

I should’ve lied.

Instead, I met his gaze head-on. "Yes."

His breath hitched. The shadows at his feet *twitched*.

That night, the first monster tore through the arena’s wards with a screech that rattled the lanterns. Elders shouted, disciples scrambled, and Luo Binghe *moved*.

I’d never seen anything like it.

His sword flashed crimson under the moonlight, a blur of motion too elegant, too *effortless* for a boy who’d only trained for a year. The beast collapsed in a spray of black ichor, its dying shriek drowned out by the sudden roar of the crowd.

My brother’s teacup shattered against the stones.

Luo Binghe turned, bloody and beautiful, and looked *right at me*.

And the worst part?

I couldn’t look away.

That was the problem. Not the way Luo Binghe’s sword gleamed with something darker than blood, not the unnatural grace of his movements, not even the whispers rippling through the crowd like a gathering storm. No, it was the way his eyes locked onto mine across the arena, pupils blown wide with something feral and possessive, as if he’d carved through the beast not for glory, but to prove something *to me*.

My brother’s fingers dug into my wrist like talons. "You see?" he hissed, breath hot with liquor and loathing. "That’s no disciple. That’s a *demon*."

I barely heard him. Luo Binghe was walking toward us now, the crowd parting before him as if compelled. His steps were unhurried, deliberate, each one bringing him closer to where I sat trapped between propriety and something far more dangerous. The mark on his forehead, crimson and intricate as a brand, glowed faintly in the torchlight.

Shen Qingqiu moved before I could react. His fan snapped open with a sound like cracking bone, the reinforced edges glinting silver as he lunged. Luo Binghe’s eyes widened, not with fear, but with *betrayal*, as my brother’s strike sent him reeling toward the cliff’s edge.

The Abyss yawned below, endless and hungry.

I screamed. The sound tore from my throat raw as a wound. Luo Binghe’s fingers scrabbled at the crumbling rock, his gaze never leaving mine even as the void beckoned. "Shixiong," he gasped, and the *hurt* in it shattered me.

My brother’s foot came down on his fingers.

The crack of breaking bones echoed louder than any beast’s roar. Luo Binghe fell without another sound, swallowed by shadows so thick they seemed to *reach* for him. The mark on his forehead flared once, bright as a dying star, before darkness claimed him whole.

Shen Qingqiu turned to me, his smile serene as a pond’s surface. "You’ll thank me," he said, brushing imaginary dust from his sleeves. "When you’re no longer trailing after beasts like some lovestruck omega."

The pipa string in my chest snapped.

I’d spent years bending to his whims, folding myself into smaller and smaller shapes to fit the spaces he allowed me. But as I stared into the Abyss where Luo Binghe had vanished, something in me *uncoiled*.

"You," I said, very softly, "are no brother of mine."

The words hung in the air like a blade unsheathed. Shen Qingqiu froze mid-step, his fan snapping shut with a sound like a breaking neck. Behind him, the two disciples he'd so generously "gifted" me, his precious Ming Fan and Ning Yingying, stood stiff as corpses, their faces pale under the lantern light.

Ming Fan's lip curled first. "Shishu should be honored," he spat, his fingers twitching toward his sword. "Shizun gave you his best."

I laughed. It tasted like bile. His *best*? These spoiled brats who'd spent their days tormenting Luo Binghe while their precious Shizun turned a blind eye? These *creatures* who'd laughed when the boy they called 'little beast' stumbled under the weight of their cruelty?

Ning Yingying reached for my sleeve with trembling fingers. "Shishu, we'll, "

I shook her off harder than intended. She stumbled back, her eyes wide with hurt. Good. Let her feel it. Let them both choke on the rot festering beneath their perfect cultivation.

My brother watched me with detached amusement, as if I were a particularly entertaining puppet whose strings had finally tangled. "Train them well," he said silkily, turning to leave. "Lest they end up like your last *project*."

The courtyard spun. The pipa's ghost strings hummed in my ears, that same cursed melody from the night Luo Binghe, No.

I lunged. Ming Fan's sword flashed between us, but I didn't care. My fingers closed around Shen Qingqiu's wrist with enough force to bruise bone. "You think," I hissed, my breath fogging the space between us, "that replacing him will make me forget?"

Something flickered in his eyes, not guilt, never guilt, but the barest hint of unease. Good.

Behind us, the first plum blossom of spring drifted to the ground. It landed softly on the bloodstained stones where Luo Binghe had fallen.

I tightened my grip. "Train them yourself."

And then I walked away, leaving my brother, his prized disciples, and the shattered remains of my heart behind.

The wind carried the pipa's last mournful note after me.

*Everything you see here's mine.*

Liar.

Nothing had ever been mine.

Least of all him.

The sword lay abandoned by the cliffside, its silver blade dulled with dust and neglect. Ning Yingying knelt beside it, her fingers trembling as they traced the engraved characters of Luo Binghe’s name. She had never called him ‘little beast,’ never laughed when Ming Fan tripped him during drills. Her love had been quiet, a stolen pastry slipped into his sleeve, a hastily mended tear in his robes before dawn. Now, her tears fell onto the steel like summer rain.

"Shishu," she whispered, pressing her forehead to the cold metal. The red peony in her hair slipped loose, landing atop the hilt like a drop of blood. "He always looked at you like… like you hung the moon."

The wind carried my ragged exhale away. What could I say? That I’d noticed how she lingered after classes, how her sleeves would brush his just a second too long? That even now, her grief was purer than mine, untainted by the knowledge of what he’d become, what he’d do?

She wrapped the sword in her outer robe with ritualistic care, the fabric embroidered with clumsy lotuses from her first embroidery attempts. "Rest well, A-Luo," she murmured, sealing the bundle with a fraying ribbon. The peony glowed against the dark cloth like a dying ember.

I turned away before she could see my face crack. Her devotion was a mirror held up to my cowardice, she mourned the boy, while I trembled at the demon he’d be. The disciple who loved innocently, and the spinster who’d let fear eclipse truth.

The peony’s petals scattered in the wind, catching on my sleeves like fleeing fireflies. Ning Yingying bowed once more, her whisper barely audible: "You were our light."

And wasn’t that the cruelest joke? She’d seen him clearly all along. While I’d flinched from his shadows, she’d cherished the brightness they cast.

Her footsteps faded long before I could force words past the stone in my throat. The bundled sword remained, a silent accusation. I reached for it, then stopped.

Let her keep this fragment of the boy we’d both failed. Let her remember him gentle.

I kept the petals.

They fluttered from Ning Yingying’s hair when she bowed, crimson silk catching on the courtyard stones like droplets of blood. I gathered them when she left, pressing them between my palms until the fragile veins crushed beneath my fingers. The scent lingered, not the cloying sweetness of cultivated blooms, but something wilder, earthier, like the first time Luo Binghe had shyly offered me tea leaves plucked from Qiong Ding’s forbidden slopes.

I sat by his abandoned sword and began to sing.

*"Sometimes I close my eyes and say a prayer,"* my voice cracked on the last word, raw as the blisters on my palms from gripping training swords too tight. The pipa lay broken in my lap, its strings snapped one by one during sleepless nights.

Wind carried the notes toward the Abyss.

*"That finally today would be the day."* A lie. I knew better than to hope. The System’s shattered warnings still haunted my dreams, *three thousand beauties*, *demon emperor*, *you expired goods*. Yet when I pressed my forehead to the cold cliffside, I imagined I heard answering static, the ghost of a voice snarling *mine*.

Ning Yingying’s peony wilted in my grip.

*"I watch the far horizon, no one’s there."* True. Only shadows writhed beyond the sect’s protective wards, darker and hungrier than they’d been before *his* fall. Disciples whispered of beasts with too many eyes, of rivers running black with ink. My brother dismissed them as superstitious fools.

I knew better.

*"But somewhere you’re safe and on your way."* Another lie. Safety had never been his destiny. Even as a child, his shadows stretched too long, his smiles cut too sharp. I’d pretended not to notice, just as I pretended not to see Ming Fan’s trembling hands or the way Ning Yingying’s stitches grew increasingly uneven.

The last petal disintegrated between my fingers.

*"Oh Luo Binghe, sometimes I wonder if you’re still alive."* The wind snatched the words away before they could fully form. Wise. Some questions shouldn’t be answered. Some truths would break me faster than the Abyss’s descent.

Behind me, a twig snapped.

I didn’t turn. The scent of burnt sugar and rotting plums told me all I needed to know.

*"Beware, my love, beware,"* I whispered to the gathering dark.

The shadows laughed back.

I wiped my hands on my robes, the phantom stickiness of sugar lingering between my fingers. The kitchen smelled of scorched honey and shame. Twenty-one years old, and here I was, drowning my grief in candied hawthorns like some lovelorn maiden from a third-rate opera.

The first skewer snapped under my grip.

"Shishu?" Ning Yingying’s voice wavered from the doorway. Her fingers clutched at her sleeves, dyed pink from berry stains, evidence of her own futile attempts at comfort.

I thrust a perfect tanghulu toward her without meeting her eyes. The glaze shone like frozen blood in the afternoon light. "Eat," I said. The command came out harsher than intended.

She took it with both hands, cradling it like something precious. The first bite crunched obscenely loud. "It’s...very sweet," she whispered. A lie. We both knew I’d forgotten the sugar twice, drowned the bitterness in vinegar instead.

Ming Fan lurked behind her, his usual sneer softened by something uncomfortably close to pity. I shoved a skewer at him too. The candied fruit glistened like a wound.

He stared at it. "Shizun says, "

"I don’t care what he says." The words dripped honeyed venom. My knuckles whitened around another skewer. "Eat it or don’t."

He ate. The way his jaw clenched told me everything, too sour, too hard, a failed imitation of comfort. Good. Let it choke him.

The last skewer remained.

I turned it slowly between my fingers, watching light refract through the cracked sugar shell. Perfect. The hawthorns plump, the glaze smooth as a frozen lake. The only one I’d made right.

Outside, the first snow of winter began to fall.

I placed it carefully on the windowsill, where the cold would preserve it. Where, if a boy with demon’s eyes and a thief’s hands ever returned, he’d find it waiting.

The sugar cracked audibly in the sudden silence.

Ning Yingying made a small, wounded noise. Ming Fan looked away.

I licked the sticky residue from my fingers.

Bitter.

Just like everything else.

The note crumpled between my fingers before I tossed it onto Shen Qingqiu’s desk. Ink bled through the cheap parchment where I’d scrawled my declaration, **Tell my good-for-nothing brother I’ll be cultivating for a year. Don’t bother me.** The brush strokes had dug deep enough to tear holes in the paper. Let him choke on it.

I didn’t wait for a response. The bamboo door slammed behind me with satisfying finality as I marched toward the isolated grove where no one, least of all my brother, would think to look for me. Frost cracked underfoot with each step, the morning air sharp as shattered glass in my lungs. Good. Let it hurt.

But the grove wasn’t empty.

A figure knelt between the frozen lotus pods, steam rising from his bare shoulders despite the cold. Liu Qingge, Bai Zhan’s War God, his usual impeccable robes discarded in a heap beside him, his fingers clenched around a meditation bead chain with white-knuckled intensity. Wrong. His qi pulsed erratically, flaring crimson at the edges like a dying ember.

I knew that particular brand of disaster, reckless overexertion, the kind that left meridians scorched and fools dead.

"Idiot," I muttered, already rolling up my sleeves.

His head snapped up. "Who, ?" Blood trickled from his nose.

I didn’t let him finish. My palms slammed against his back before he could protest, channeling stabilizing qi through his mangled energy pathways. He hissed like a cornered cat, muscles locking under my touch.

"Stop squirming," I growled. "Unless you’d rather explode."

His answering scoff turned into a wet cough. "Like you’d care."

Stubborn bastard. Just like my brother. Just like,

No.

I shoved the thought away and focused on the qi tangling like brambles in his chest. Hours passed in grim silence, my fingers cramping from the effort of unraveling the damage. When his breathing finally steadied, dawn had long since bled into dusk.

Liu Qingge wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, studying me with an unreadable expression. "...Thanks."

I shrugged, too exhausted for pride. "Don’t mention it."

He snorted. "Literally. My sister would never let me hear the end of it."

Something unfamiliar tugged at my chest. Not quite laughter, but close.

We didn’t speak of it again. Yet somehow, he kept finding his way back to my grove, sometimes with torn robes, sometimes with bottles of harsh liquor, always with that same infuriating scowl. And somehow, against all logic, the hollow behind my ribs hurt a little less when he was there.

The year passed quicker than I’d expected, marked by bruises earned during sparring sessions and the occasional shared meal eaten in comfortable silence. When we finally returned to the main peak together, Liu Qingge’s arm slung casually over my shoulders, his ever-present scowl softened at the edges, the whispers began instantly. Disciples froze mid-drill, their eyes darting between us like startled rabbits. Even the ever-composed Yue Qingyuan dropped his teacup.

But Shen Qingqiu, oh, his face. His perfect porcelain features twisted like he’d bitten into something rancid, his fan snapping shut with enough force to crack the bamboo ribs. "You," he hissed, the single word dripping venom, "were supposed to reflect on your failures, not fraternize with beasts."

Liu Qingge’s grip tightened. "Call him that again," he said, very softly, "and see what happens."

The courtyard went deathly still. I could see Ming Fan’s hand twitching toward his sword, Ning Yingying’s fingers tightening around her embroidery hoop. Even Qi Qingqi, who’d never spared me a second glance, was watching Shen Qingqiu with narrowed eyes.

My brother’s lips curled. "You never learn," he spat, but his usual icy composure had cracks running through it now. "First that demon spawn, now this, "

Something in the air shifted. The disciples closest to us took half-steps back, their faces pale. It wasn’t fear, it was something far more dangerous. Resentment.

I exhaled, long and slow. "He’s just a friend," I said, and marveled at how light the truth felt. "Unless you’d rather I stay alone forever?"

Ning Yingying made a small, wounded noise. Ming Fan’s knuckles whitened around his sword hilt. And Liu Qingge, dear, impossible Liu Qingge, let out a bark of laughter that echoed off the mountain peaks. "Too late for that," he declared, slapping my back hard enough to sting. "You’re stuck with me now."

The pipa string in my chest didn’t snap this time. It thrummed, low and steady, like the first notes of a song I’d forgotten I knew how to play.

My fingers closed around Shen Qingqiu’s fan before he could raise it again, the delicate ribs creaking under my grip. His perfect nails dug crescent moons into my wrist, but I didn’t flinch. Not when Liu Qingge’s shadow loomed at my back like a second skin. Not when Ming Fan gasped audibly from the sidelines.

"Did you know," I murmured, tilting his chin up with the folded fan, "that omegas bite hardest when cornered?" The scent of rotting plums clung to his sleeves, the same fragrance he’d worn the night Luo Binghe fell. "You lost all privileges to being ‘older brother’ the second you decided I wasn’t worth protecting."

His pupils constricted. A first crack in the ice.

Instead of recoiling, I stepped closer, pressing the fan’s edge into the soft hollow beneath his jaw. "A true brother doesn’t take what his sibling loves and break it." The words tasted of hawthorn seeds and winter. "A true brother doesn’t remind them daily that they’re ‘expired goods.’"

Liu Qingge’s knuckles popped audibly behind me. The disciples had gone preternaturally still, their breaths held like they were witnessing a sword dance with live blades.

Shen Qingqiu’s lips peeled back from his teeth. "You’ve grown bold," he hissed. "But boldness won’t, "

"Fight me." I dropped the fan. It clattered between us like a gauntlet. "Or shut up forever." The grove’s energy surged beneath my feet, alive and hungry. "Unless you’re afraid a spinster’s cultivation surpasses yours now?"

For the first time in a decade, my brother hesitated. His gaze flicked to Liu Qingge, who bared his teeth in a grin far too sharp for courtesy.

"Seconded," Liu said cheerfully, cracking his neck. "He’s improved in leaps and bounds." His thumb brushed the back of my wrist, a fleeting promise. "But by all means, Shixiong, test him yourself."

The silence thickened. Somewhere beyond the courtyard wall, a lone pipa string quivered in the wind.

I smiled. Let him choose. Let him choke on it.

The frost in his eyes had never looked so fragile.

"You forget, brother," I said, watching his fan tremble between us. "I was chained beside you in that cellar. I starved on the same scraps, bled from the same whips." The words came out softer than I intended, thawing at the edges. "Yet somehow, I didn't emerge believing cruelty was currency."

Shen Qingqiu's breath hitched, a tiny, broken sound I hadn't heard since we were children sharing a single threadbare blanket. His fan clattered to the stones, the sound echoing like a dropped guqin string.

"You used to steal extra mantou for me," I continued, stepping over the fallen fan. "When Master Chen broke my fingers for playing pipa too loud, you sang our mother's lullabies through the wall all night." My hand hovered near his sleeve, not touching. Not yet. "That boy still exists beneath the ice. I see him sometimes, when you think no one's looking."

His laugh was a wretched thing, more cough than sound. "That boy drowned in the well with our sister's body."

I caught his wrist before he could turn away, feeling the rabbit-quick pulse beneath paper-thin skin. "No. He just forgot how to swim." The scent of rotting plums clung to his sleeves, but beneath it, faint as a fading bruise, was the honey-and-pine fragrance of our childhood. "Funny, isn't it? You survived the monsters only to become one."

Liu Qingge shifted behind me, his shadow a warm weight against my back. The disciples had drawn closer, their murmurs hushed as dawn light spilled across the courtyard. Ning Yingying clutched Ming Fan's sleeve, her embroidery hoop forgotten in the dirt.

"You had such potential," I whispered, pressing my forehead to his rigid shoulder. "My brilliant gege, who could recite entire scrolls after one reading." His robes were damp where my breath touched them. "You should apologize to Luo Binghe. To all of them. Not because you deserve forgiveness, but because you, more than anyone, know how much it costs to starve for kindness."

For one suspended moment, the mountain itself seemed to hold its breath. Then Shen Qingqiu shuddered, his fingers twisting in my sleeve like a drowning man grasping at river reeds.

Somewhere beyond the peaks, a lone pipa string hummed in the wind.

"You think I don't remember?" My voice cracked like thawing ice. The scent of scorched sugar rose between us, his fear, thick and cloying. "That night you crept into Madam Lin's chambers to prove your devotion to Master Chen, did you ever wonder why he suddenly favored me afterwards?"

His fan clattered to the stones.

"I was fourteen," I continued, watching his pupils constrict. "Too young for mating cycles, too broken for proper cultivation. But not too young for his bed." The courtyard had gone preternaturally still, even Liu Qingge's breathing had stopped. "I screamed for you until my throat bled. Where was my brilliant gege then? Off polishing some mistress' shoes while our master made me into used goods."

Ning Yingying's embroidery hoop hit the dirt with a soft thud.

Shen Qingqiu's fingers twitched toward his discarded fan, the motion eerily similar to Luo Binghe reaching for broken sword shards. "You never, "

"Told you?" A laugh clawed its way up my throat, raw as the scars beneath my robes. "I spared you that particular humiliation. Though watching you break your own disciples now... perhaps I shouldn't have."

The morning light caught the silver strands at his temples, when had he aged? The great Shen Qingqiu, brought low by simple truths.

"I could've been worse than you," I murmured, stepping over his fan like it was a corpse. "Every alpha in this sect should thank their ancestors I didn't turn their sons into playthings. That when Luo Binghe clung to my sleeves with worship in his eyes, I gave him milk instead of bruises." My knuckles brushed his sleeve, feeling the tremors beneath the silk. "Tell me, brother, what gave you the right to be cruel when you, of all people, knew the cost?"

A single plum blossom drifted between us, its shadow tracing the shape of a child's hand on the stones. Somewhere in the distance, a disciple began to weep.

Shen Qingqiu's knees hit the ground with a sound like bones breaking.

Luo Binghe watched from the abyssal mirror, his reflection warped by the hellfire flickering at its edges. His claws dug into his own thighs, black blood welling where the points pierced fabric and flesh alike. The scent of burnt sugar and crushed plums from the vision made his teeth ache.

"Again," he snarled, shaking the mirror as if he could rattle the scene back to life. His new shifu, that insufferable demon elder draped in shadow silks, sighed through his teeth.

"Patience, little emperor. Rushing your training now would, "

"I don't care." Luo Binghe's voice dripped venom. The mirror's surface trembled, showing Shen Yuan's hands, those elegant, scarred hands, reaching for his brother's slumped shoulders. The image flickered when his demonic energy spiked. "He was hurt. Before I could even, " The words stuck like hawthorn seeds in his throat.

The flirtatious demoness cooed from her perch on a stalagmite, twirling a lock of hair around her finger. "Aw, is the puppy jealous? Don't worry, virgin blood tastes, "

The mirror shattered. Shards embedded themselves in her throat before she could finish. She gurgled, more surprised than pained, as black ichor bubbled past her lips.

Luo Binghe didn't watch her slump over. He was already stalking toward the training grounds, where the air itself screamed with trapped souls. His shadow stretched unnaturally behind him, tendrils lashing at the rocks. "I'm leaving tonight," he announced to no one and everyone.

His shifu materialized before him in a swirl of rancid smoke. "You're not ready."

A pulse of energy sent the older demon skidding backward. Luo Binghe's eyes burned true crimson now, no flicker, no pretense. "Watch me."

Somewhere above them, beyond layers of torment and time, Shen Yuan was wiping his brother's tears with sleeves still sticky from abandoned tanghulu. Somewhere, a boy who'd once been called 'little beast' was tearing through the fabric of hell itself to reach him.

The abyss trembled with his rage. It would have to tremble harder.

Luo Binghe's claws scraped against the obsidian mirror's frame, cracking its surface further. That scarred old bastard, Chen something, had he survived the fire? Had he crawled from the ashes like the roach he was? The vision in the mirror showed Shen Yuan's fingers trembling as he poured tea, the way they always did when nightmares woke him screaming. His beloved hadn't screamed that night. No, according to the mirror's whispers, fourteen-year-old Shen Yuan had bitten through his own tongue to stay silent.

Wrong. All wrong.

The demon healer recoiled when Luo Binghe seized his throat. "Is he alive?" The question came out garbled, his vocal cords shredding under the force of his transformation. The healer's scales peeled back in terror, revealing weeping sores beneath. Good. Let him suffer for daring to touch this memory.

"Master Chen of the Golden Lotus Sect perished in, "

The healer's head hit the cavern wall with a wet crunch. Luo Binghe didn't wait for the body to slump before turning to the next trembling subordinate. "Find his grave." Blood dripped from his knuckles, black and bubbling. "Dig him up." The shadows at his feet writhed like impaled snakes. "I want to hear his bones scream."

Somewhere above them, Shen Yuan was smoothing his brother's hair back with those gentle hands, hands that should have been painting poetry, not scrubbing floors. Hands that should have been his.

A disciple whimpered as Luo Binghe's energy flared, cracking the ceiling open to reveal the human realm's night sky. The moon looked like a pale, unblinking eye. Judging him. Mocking him.

He tore it down with a snarl.

Chen Wei's grave wasn't marked by incense or offerings, only a crude mound of dirt half-buried under yellowed talismans meant to trap restless spirits. Luo Binghe's claws shredded the wards like rotten silk, his laughter echoing through the abandoned cemetery as the first bones surfaced. A femur, yellowed with age. Then the skull, its jaw still frozen in a silent scream.

"Master Chen," Luo Binghe crooned, cradling the skull like a lover. His thumb pressed into the hollow eye socket where Shen Yuan's fingers had once trembled in terror. "Did you think death would spare you?"

Demonic flames erupted from his palms, licking hungrily at the remains. The bones blackened but didn't burn, no, they *twitched*, reassembling with wet, meaty pops as Luo Binghe's resurrection curse took hold. Ribs snapped back into place around lungs that hadn't drawn breath in decades. The stench of charred flesh and old blood clogged the air as Chen Wei's reanimated corpse staggered upright, his lipless mouth gaping in mute horror.

Luo Binghe's grin split his face too wide. "Welcome back."

Chen Wei's first scream wasn't mortal, it was the shrill, grating sound of a ghost forced back into rotting sinew. Luo Binghe drank it in like fine wine, his shadows coiling around the flailing limbs to yank them taut.

"Let's begin," he purred, and *twisted*.

The snap of the spine was thunderous. Chen Wei's reanimated body convulsed, his spine knitting back together only for Luo Binghe to splinter it again, and again, each fracture more agonizing than the last. The demon lord hummed a lullaby Shen Yuan had once sung to him, off-key and sweet, as he peeled fingernails from bone with meticulous cruelty.

By dawn, Chen Wei's remains were dust ground into the earth beneath Luo Binghe's boots. By noon, Luo Binghe had resurrected him a second time just to drown him in his own liquefied organs. By nightfall, he'd grown bored enough to seal the wailing specter into a jade amulet, where it would scream eternally against his chest.

"Rest well, Shizun," Luo Binghe whispered to the amulet, his breath frosting the cursed stone. He licked the blood from his knuckles, savoring the iron tang. "We have all the time in the world."

Somewhere above the abyss, Shen Yuan shuddered in his sleep, unaware that the monster who loved him had just ensured no one would ever hurt him again.

Back in the courtyard, Shen Qingqiu's face had gone frighteningly blank. His fingers twitched toward his fallen fan, then recoiled as if burned. "I... I didn't..."

"Stop." Shen Yuan grabbed his brother's icy hands, pressing them between his own calloused palms. "I didn't tell you to make you suffer. I told you because you need to understand why I won't let you break Luo Binghe the way Master Chen broke us." The words came out softer than intended, thawing at the edges like spring ice.

Shen Qingqiu made a sound like a gutted animal. His perfect posture collapsed inward, shoulders curving around some invisible wound. "I should have, "

"You were fifteen," Shen Yuan interrupted, squeezing those trembling fingers. "Scrawny and starving and desperate for approval. What were you going to do, challenge him with your half-baked cultivation?" A bitter laugh escaped him. "Besides, you got your revenge when you burned down the Golden Lotus Sect. Pretty sure I heard Master Chen screaming from three li away."

Liu Qingge's sword clattered to the stones. The disciples had gone preternaturally still, their breaths held like witnesses at an execution. Ning Yingying clutched Ming Fan's sleeve with white-knuckled intensity, her embroidery hoop forgotten in the dirt.

Shen Qingqiu's breathing hitched, shallow, ragged gasps that made him sound like a dying man. His usually immaculate hair curtained his face as he slumped forward, forehead nearly touching the cold stone. "All these years... you never..."

"Because it didn't matter!" Shen Yuan caught his brother's chin, forcing him to meet his gaze. The ice king's eyes were red-rimmed and shattered. "Just like it doesn't matter that I'm an 'overexpired omega' or whatever bullshit you've been spouting. What matters is you apologizing to Luo Binghe before he comes back from the abyss and skins you alive."

Somewhere beneath their feet, the earth trembled faintly, as if in agreement.

The twins were pulled apart by rough hands, Shen Yuan stumbling forward first, his wrists already rubbed raw from the coarse ropes binding them. Behind him, Shen Qingqiu hissed like a cornered animal, thrashing against the guards who held him back. Their new master, Lord Chen Wei, watched with undisguised amusement, his silk robes whispering against the filthy auction house floor.

"Big brother," Shen Yuan whispered, barely audible, his throat tight with dread. He glanced back at Shen Qingqiu, whose eyes burned with a fury that would one day calcify into cruelty. The boy's fingers twitched, uselessly, helplessly, toward his younger brother.

Lord Chen's gaze lingered on Shen Yuan, slow and appraising, like a butcher sizing up a prized lamb. His tongue darted out to wet his lips. "Such delicate hands," he murmured, reaching to trace a finger along Shen Yuan's trembling wrist. The boy flinched violently, bile rising in his throat.

Shen Qingqiu snarled, lunging forward only to be struck across the face by a guard's baton. Blood splattered across the floorboards, dark as old ink. "Don't touch him!" he spat through split lips, his voice cracking mid-scream.

The lord chuckled, low and thick with promise. He cupped Shen Yuan's chin, forcing the boy to meet his gaze. "Oh, little one," he crooned, thumb brushing the omega's bottom lip. "Your brother doesn't understand yet. Some cruelties aren't done *later.*"

Shen Yuan's breath hitched. Behind him, Shen Qingqiu's struggles grew frantic, his screams dissolving into wordless, animalistic noises. The guards laughed, tightening their grip.

"You'll learn," Lord Chen whispered, pressing closer, his breath reeking of expensive wine and rotting teeth. "And when you do, you'll thank me for it."

Shen Yuan closed his eyes. Somewhere in the distance, a lone pipa string snapped.

The first lesson began at dusk.

"Number Nine," Master Chen's voice slithered through the dimly lit chamber, "behave, and perhaps I won't torture you too much." His fingers lingered on Shen Jiu's shoulder, pressing just hard enough to bruise through the thin slave robes. The boy didn't flinch. Not visibly. But Shen Yuan saw the tremor in his brother's clenched fists.

"Number Eight will be your guide," the master continued, gesturing to a hollow-eyed youth with scars encircling his wrists like manacles. Yun Qingyuan bowed mechanically, his movements too precise, too practiced. "He'll ensure you learn quickly."

Shen Yuan swallowed the bile rising in his throat when Master Chen turned to him. "Number Ten," the man purred, cupping his chin with fingers that reeked of incense and something fouler, "you'll be my personal hand boy. Behave yourself..." His thumb pressed against Shen Yuan's lower lip, "...and perhaps you won't leave this chamber with too many wounds."

The other slaves didn't meet his eyes. Somewhere deeper in the compound, a pipa played a discordant tune.

"Come along, Number Ten," Master Chen called over his shoulder, silk robes whispering like snakes against stone. "We have work to do."

Shen Jiu lunged, or tried to, before Yun Qingyuan caught him with an arm like an iron bar across his chest. "Don't," the older slave murmured, voice stripped of inflection. "He'll make you watch."

Shen Yuan didn't look back as the heavy doors closed behind them. The corridor stretched endlessly, lined with lanterns that cast monstrous shadows against the walls. Master Chen's footsteps were measured, deliberate, pausing before a door carved with lotus flowers in full bloom.

"Tell me, little one," the man murmured, tracing the wood grain with possessive fingers, "do you know why they call you Number Ten?" His smile showed too many teeth. "Because you'll scream ten times before dawn."

Behind them, the pipa's broken string twanged mournfully.

Somewhere in the darkness, Shen Jiu's screams began.

Shen Yuan didn't flinch. He'd learned not to. Instead, he counted the lotus carvings on the ceiling beams, eleven today, while Master Chen's fingers knotted in his hair like roots seeking purchase. "Good boy," the man crooned, breath hot against his ear. The scent of plum wine and sweat clung to him like a second skin. "Such a well-behaved omega."

He didn't react when the man's nails broke skin. Didn't whimper when his ribs protested under cruel hands. He simply stared at that eleventh lotus blossom, its petals warped by age and candle smoke, and let his mind go somewhere cold and quiet.

A year ago, he might have fought. A year ago, his fingers might have curled into fists instead of lying limp against silk sheets. But names were powerful things, and "Number Ten" tasted like ash on his tongue. So he endured. Endured the way Yun Qingyuan had taught him, with stillness that looked like surrender, with silence that wasn't submission but survival.

When it was over, Master Chen traced the fresh bruises along his collarbones with something almost resembling affection. "Soon," he murmured, pressing a chaste kiss to Shen Yuan's forehead that made his stomach lurch, "you'll earn that name."

The door clicked shut.

Shen Yuan waited exactly thirty-seven breaths before moving. He washed methodically, the water turning murky with blood and other things he refused to name. His hands didn't shake. They hadn't shaken since the third lesson.

The grapes were always perfectly chilled, peeled, and arranged on jade plates in the shape of lotuses. Master Chen liked them that way, liked how Shen Yuan's fingers trembled when arranging them, liked how the juice stained his fingertips purple like bruises. Today, he selected each grape with robotic precision, his mind far away in a place where the pipa's song didn't sound like weeping.

*Just until his next heat passes,* Shen Yuan repeated in his head like a mantra. The thought of carrying that man's child coiled in his gut like spoiled food. He'd seen the other omegas, how their eyes went dull when their bellies swelled, how they disappeared into the west wing and never returned. His fingers twitched toward the concealed needle in his sleeve, the one dipped in enough poison to kill a man slowly.

At least Master Chen never touched him during his cycles. Small mercies. The bastard preferred him lucid, preferred watching awareness drain from his eyes in real time.

Across the courtyard, Yun Qingyuan was teaching Shen Jiu how to hold a fan without breaking his wrist bones. His brother's face was carefully blank, but Shen Yuan saw the way his fingers curled, not in pain, but in promise.

*Soon,* those hands said. *Soon.*

Shen Yuan arranged the last grape just so. The pipa's song hit a discordant note. Somewhere, a door creaked open. He didn't look up. He wouldn't give Master Chen the satisfaction.

The plate was heavier than usual when he lifted it. Beneath the jade, a scrap of paper brushed his fingertips. Three characters, hastily scrawled in his brother's hand: *Tonight. West gate.*

Shen Yuan exhaled through his nose. The grape juice on his fingers smelled like hope.

Later, when Master Chen sprawled on the silk sheets, spent and sweating, he traced the omega's spine like a connoisseur admiring porcelain. "Such devotion deserves a reward," he mused, fingers lingering on the fresh bruises circling Shen Yuan's wrists. The boy didn't react, eyes fixed on the eleventh lotus beam.

Master Chen chuckled, reaching for the jade seal on the bedside table. "From tonight," he declared, pressing the cold stone to Shen Yuan's inner wrist, "you are no longer Number Ten." The brand seared flesh with elegant characters, *Yuan*, for resilience, *Shen*, for the family he'd never truly lost. Shen Yuan's throat burned with bile.

Beyond the latticed windows, shadows moved. Yun Qingyuan's silhouette passed like smoke, followed by the sharper outline of Shen Jiu clutching something long and slender. The pipa's broken string twanged once, twice, a signal.

Master Chen sighed, rolling onto his back. "Fetch the wine, *Yuan-er*." The endearment slithered between them, sticky-sweet. Shen Yuan rose mechanically, reaching not for the carafe, but for the hidden needle in his sash. The poison glistened, distilled from the same grapes Master Chen loved so much.

Somewhere in the west wing, the first torch caught.

Shen Yuan's hands didn't shake as he poured the wine. Master Chen drank deeply, licking his lips. "Sweet," he murmured, eyelids already drooping. By the time the smoke reached their chamber, his breaths came slow and ragged. Shen Yuan watched dispassionately as the man's fingers spasmed, clawing at silks now stained with froth.

Outside, screams erupted, not from slaves, but guards. The distinct sound of Shen Jiu's laughter cut through the chaos, wild and unhinged.

Shen Yuan stepped over Master Chen's convulsing body, pausing only to wipe his stained fingers on the man's robe. The brand on his wrist pulsed like a fresh wound. He'd earned this name in blood and violation, while Shen Jiu would claim his through fire and fury.

The pipa's last string snapped as the ceiling beam collapsed in a shower of sparks. Shen Yuan walked toward the flames.

He woke gasping, fingers clawing at his own wrists where phantom brands still burned. The nightmare clung like sweat-soaked sheets, Master Chen's voice curling like smoke around his ears, the grapes staining his hands purple as bruises. Outside his window, dawn painted Cang Qiong's peaks in pale gold, but his pulse still hammered against his ribs like a caged thing.

Shame was a familiar weight. He pressed trembling palms to his face, inhaling the scent of medicinal herbs from his sleeves instead of lotus-scented oil and spoiled wine. *Twenty years*, he reminded himself. Twenty years since he'd sold his innocence for two characters seared into his skin. Twenty years since his brother had carved their freedom from fire and poison while he'd bought it with submission and silence.

The System's ghostly warnings flickered at the edge of his consciousness, *Original Goods Expired Omega, Plot Deviation Detected*, but he crushed the thoughts like grape skins underfoot. He wasn't that broken boy anymore, wasn't Number Ten gasping at eleventh lotus carvings.

A knock shattered the silence.

Ning Yingying hovered at the threshold, her embroidered sleeves clutched tight around a steaming bowl. "Shishu," she murmured, eyes darting to the sweat-damp sheets, the way his fingers still twitched toward hidden needles. She knew. Of course she knew. The whole sect whispered about Shen Qingqiu's damaged brother and the scars no cultivation could heal.

But she set the congee on his table with practiced ease, stirring in pickled vegetables the way Luo Binghe used to, Shen Yuan's breath hitched. The boy's ghost lingered everywhere: in the perfectly folded blankets at the foot of his bed, in the faint demonic energy humming beneath his skin since that night at the cliff.

"He'll come back," Ning Yingying said suddenly, fiercely, her small hands fisting in her skirts. "A-Luo always, "

*Always what?* Shen Yuan wanted to ask. Always fixed what his shizun broke? Always returned with blood on his teeth and vengeance in his heart?

But the words dissolved as a distant tremor shook the mountain, deep, insistent, like something vast stirring beneath the earth. The congee rippled. Ning Yingying's eyes widened.

And Shen Yuan knew, with terrible certainty, that the Abyss had begun coughing up its dead.

The tremor underfoot wasn't seismic, it was heartbeat. Slow, deliberate, the pulse of something ancient and hungry waking beneath their feet. Ning Yingying's chopsticks clattered onto the table, her face draining of color as the mountain itself seemed to inhale. Somewhere in the distance, disciples shouted, their voices thin as paper against the gathering storm.

"You should go," Shen Yuan said, pressing the bowl back into her shaking hands. His fingers didn't tremble now. Odd, how imminent catastrophe could steady a man.

She grabbed his wrist, the branded one, her thumb brushing the old scar tissue with unbearable gentleness. "Shishu, come with, "

Another tremor. Closer. The scrolls on his wall unfurled like dying snakes, ink bleeding across parchment. He heard his brother's voice then, not the ice king of Cang Qiong, but the feral fifteen-year-old who'd once set a slaver's compound ablaze: *Run first, burn the evidence after.*

Shen Yuan exhaled through his nose. The past wasn't a cage anymore. The ghosts could wail all they liked, he'd walked through fire before.

"It's going to be okay," he told her, or himself, peeling her fingers away with deliberate care. The lie tasted medicinal, bitter but necessary. "Go."

When she fled, he turned toward the cliffside window where dawn stained the horizon bloody. His reflection in the polished bronze mirror held his gaze, this face, older than an omega's ought to be, scarred in ways no one could see. But alive. Unbent.

He pressed his branded wrist against the cold glass. "You survived worse," he murmured to his ghostly twin. The mountain shuddered again, deeper this time. Somewhere below, rockslides roared like awakening beasts.

A day for demons, then.

Shen Yuan reached for his sword belt. Let the Abyss vomit forth its emperor. Let the sect tremble. He'd met monsters before, in silk sheets and auction houses, in the shape of men who called themselves masters.

The past could keep its claws. Today, he'd face the future standing.

Shen Yuan summoned them to the training grounds at dusk, male and female omegas, pups barely old enough to scent their own pheromones, gathered like nervous sparrows under the plum trees. Their fingers twisted in their sleeves, eyes darting to his branded wrist before flicking away. He let them look. The scar was ugly, raised flesh forming the characters he'd earned in blood and submission. A lesson etched in skin.

"First rule," he said, rolling up his sleeves to reveal forearms corded with muscle no slaver had broken. "Your body belongs to *you*." He demonstrated the wrist lock Master Chen had favored, how to twist free before pressure became pain. The oldest omega girl, Liu Mingyan with her veil and sharp eyes, mimicked the motion perfectly on her startled partner. Good. Let them learn early. Let them never kneel.

He taught them how to break holds when their heats made them weak-limbed and dizzy, how to jam thumbs into eye sockets when silk sheets turned to cages. Showed them where to hide needles in their hair ornaments, how to coat the tips with sleeping draughts stolen from infirmary stores. Little Xian Shu peak disciples practiced knee strikes on straw dummies while Qing Jing's bookish omegas learned to snap writing brushes into sharpened stakes.

"Endure," Shen Yuan told them as dusk painted the training grounds in bloody light, "but never accept." He pressed his branded wrist against a trembling boy's palm, let him trace the raised characters. "Numbers are chains. Names are weapons. Earn yours in daylight, not darkness."

The youngest, a doe-eyed thing no older than Luo Binghe had been, clutched his sleeve. "Shishu, what if...what if they're stronger?"

Shen Yuan knelt, eye-level with her, and placed her small hand over his pounding heart. "Then you fight dirty." He pressed a needle into her palm, folded her fingers around it. "And you survive."

Somewhere beyond the peaks, the mountain groaned again. The omegas didn't flinch this time. Their grips on practice swords tightened instead.

The past could keep its claws. These pups would face the future armed.

I noticed my brother first by the scent of bamboo ink clinging to his robes, subtle beneath the medicinal herbs he’d taken to wearing since the Abyss. Shen Qingqiu lingered at the edge of the training grounds like a disapproving shadow, his fan held too stiffly, his gaze tracking each omega’s movements with clinical precision. Not learning. Assessing.

"Shizun attends every lesson now," Liu Mingyan murmured during a water break, her veiled face tilted toward where Shen Qingqiu stood beneath the plum blossoms. The petals caught in his hair like pale bruises. "He corrects our stances when you’re not looking."

I exhaled through my nose. Guilt was an ugly look on him.

That night, I found him waiting outside my quarters with a pot of tea steaming between us, the blend too floral, Luo Binghe’s favorite. His fingers twitched toward my branded wrist before retreating. "You teach them to survive," he said finally, each word measured like a reluctant confession.

I poured without looking up. "You taught me the opposite."

The porcelain trembled in his grip. For once, the great Qing Jing Peak Lord had nothing scathing to say.

We drank in silence heavy with things unspoken. The scar on my wrist ached. His gaze kept flickering to the cliffside where shadows stirred unnaturally. Somewhere beneath our feet, the mountain trembled.

When he reached across the table, his fingertips barely brushing mine, I didn’t pull away.

"Yuan-er," he began, then stopped. The childhood endearment withered between us. Master Chen’s ghost laughed in the hollow of my ribs.

I slid the teacup back. "You don’t need to watch over me."

His fan snapped open, then shut. "I know."

But he kept coming anyway.

Let him. Let him see the omegas learning to break holds instead of bending. Let him hear them laugh as they coated needles in paralytic poisons. Let the guilt fester.

The past could keep its claws.

But forgiveness? That belonged to the Abyss.

The first raven came at midnight, its wings silent as it perched on my windowsill. Black eyes gleamed with unnatural intelligence, watching as I set down my brush. Ink dripped from my sleeve onto unfinished talismans, warding sigils that had grown increasingly frantic over the past week.

I knew better than to shoo it away. Ravens didn't visit cultivators without cause.

"Whose death do you herald?" I asked, though the answer curled like smoke in my gut. The bird cocked its head, a scrap of fabric dangling from its beak, blood-red silk embroidered with clumsy lotuses. Ning Yingying's handkerchief.

My fingers twitched toward my sword. The raven didn't flinch.

The second raven landed beside the first, then a third, until my window framed a parliament of shadows. They carried no more gifts, only stillness. Waiting.

Behind them, the mountain exhaled.

A scent slithered through the cracks in the floorboards, burnt sugar and rotting plums, undercut by something metallic, fresh. Blood. Not the stale copper of battlefields, but living warmth, the kind that pooled beneath fingernails when claws retracted too slowly.

The ravens exploded into flight as the door shattered inward.

Wood splinters rained like broken teeth. I rolled left, reaching for the poison needle hidden in my hair,

A hand caught my wrist. Warm. Human.

"Shizun," murmured a voice sweeter than fermented honey, "you kept my song."

Luo Binghe stood haloed by moonlight, whole and unharmed except for the new markings curling up his neck, demon sigils glowing faintly beneath his skin. In his free hand, he held the pipa's broken remnants, its strings somehow intact, humming with residual qi.

The ravens circled above us, their wings beating in time with my pulse. Death wasn't coming.

It had already arrived.

And it held my branded wrist with terrifying gentleness, thumb brushing the scarred characters as if they were poetry.

The past kept its claws.

But the future, it seemed, had teeth.

Luo Binghe’s grip tightened fractionally, his thumb tracing the raised characters of my brand with a reverence that made my stomach twist. His smile didn’t reach his eyes, black as the Abyss he’d crawled from. "Shizun asks who I’ve come to kill," he murmured, tilting his head like the ravens still circling above us. The pipa’s ghost strings hummed between us, that cursed lullaby he’d sung while shadows coiled at his feet. "But revenge is such a...small thing."

I booped his nose. Hard.

His eyes crossed comically. For a heartbeat, he looked sixteen again, the pup who’d flushed crimson when I ruffled his hair. Then the demon mark on his forehead pulsed, and the moment shattered.

"No killing," I said, louder now, as if volume could drown out the way his scent had thickened, burnt sugar giving way to something darker, hungrier. "Not the disciples, not my brother, not even the kitchen aunties who skimmed your congee portions. Welcome back, little demon. Now behave."

His laugh was a soft, dangerous thing. "And if I refuse?" Shadows pooled at his feet, tendrils snaking toward my ankles like living ink.

I yanked my wrist free and flicked his forehead. "Then I’ll tell everyone the mighty Demon Lord still wets the bed when he nightmares." A lie. He never had. But the flinch was real, raw, human. The boy beneath the bloodstained crown.

The ravens settled on the rafters, watching. Judging.

Luo Binghe exhaled through his nose, the sound exasperated, fond. "Shizun trains omegas to gut predators," he observed, catching my hand before I could retreat, lacing our fingers with terrifying care. "Yet asks me to sheathe my claws?"

"Yes." Simple. Final. Like the day I’d knelt beside his bloody practice sword and told him surviving wasn’t enough.

His grip shifted, palm pressing against mine. Not restraint. A plea. "And if the ones I want dead deserve it?"

I leaned in, close enough to taste plum blossoms on his breath. "Then you’ll live with it," I whispered, "like I live with Master Chen’s ghost. Like my brother lives with your scars." The pipa’s strings trembled between us. "No more blood, A-Luo. Not even the kind that smells like justice."

The shadows stilled. The ravens held their breath.

Somewhere beyond the window, dawn painted the peaks in tentative gold. Luo Binghe’s fingers flexed around mine, , not yet. But listening.

The past kept its claws.

But mercy, like love, was a choice.

Luo Binghe’s fingers tightened around mine, his pulse thrumming against my palm like a captured bird. "Shizun is cruel," he murmured, but his lips curved at the edges, the way they did when he’d stolen my last tanghulu as a pup. His shadows coiled restlessly around our ankles, whispering promises of severed limbs and screams. I stepped closer, close enough that the scent of burnt sugar and ink drowned out the lingering rot of the Abyss.

"No human sticks," I said firmly, pressing my free hand to his chest where his demon mark throbbed beneath silken robes. His heartbeat stuttered. "No torsos without consent. No, stop laughing, you little beast, no flaying people alive just because they looked at you funny last summer."

His laughter died abruptly when I dug my nails into his wrist, right over the scar where Ming Fan had once branded him with a hot poker. "And if I refuse?" he challenged, though his breath hitched when my thumb brushed the old wound.

I smiled sweetly. "Then I’ll tell every demon in your court how their mighty emperor used to cry when I made him eat his vegetables."

The shadows recoiled as if scalded.

"Shizun plays dirty," he accused, but his grip gentled, his forehead dropping to rest against my shoulder like a child seeking comfort. The ravens above us rustled their wings in disapproval.

"Dirtier than you," I agreed, carding my fingers through his hair, longer now, tangled with Abyss residue and the faint scent of blood. "You might be the Demon Lord, but I’m the one who taught you how to poison a man’s tea without blinking."

His shoulders shook, not with rage, but silent mirth. When he lifted his head, his eyes were still black as sin, but the edges crinkled in a way that reminded me of the boy who’d once sewn his own wounds shut with shaking hands. "No human sticks," he conceded, pressing a kiss to my branded wrist like a vow.

I flicked his forehead again. "Good puppy."

The shadows sighed in defeat.

Ning Yingying barreled through the door like a runaway carriage, her silk slippers skidding across splintered wood before she launched herself at Luo Binghe with a shriek that could shatter glass. He caught her on instinct, his demon mark flaring crimson as her momentum sent them both crashing into the wall. Scrolls rained down around them like startled doves.

"A-Luo!" She beamed, crushing him in a hug that would suffocate lesser men. "You're back! You're really back!" Her scent, plum blossoms and ink, drowned out the lingering Abyss stench as she peppered his scowling face with kisses.

Behind her, Ming Fan stood frozen in the doorway, his mouth opening and closing like a landed fish. His fan slipped from numb fingers. "Sh-Shizun will, "

"Report this?" Luo Binghe finished sweetly, peeling Ning Yingying off with one hand while the other flicked a tendril of shadow toward Ming Fan's throat. "Go ahead. Tell him how his precious head disciple wept when I branded him with his own poker." The shadow tightened. Ming Fan gagged.

I sighed and snapped my fingers. "No killing," I reminded, plucking Ning Yingying from Luo Binghe's arms like a misbehaving kitten. She pouted but settled against my side, her fingers tangling in my sleeve. "And no corrupting my disciples," I added, flicking Luo Binghe's nose again.

His answering grin was all teeth. "But Shizun," he purred, catching my wrist before I could retreat, "I learned from the best." His thumb stroked the inside of my pulse point, right over Master Chen's faded brand. Ming Fan made a noise like a stepped-on flute.

Ning Yingying gasped. "A-Luo! You can't just, "

"I can," he interrupted, leaning in until his breath ghosted across my lips. The shadows coiled eagerly at his feet. "Unless Shizun stops me."

I rolled my eyes and shoved a tanghulu into his mouth. "Eat your candy and behave, little beast."

The sugar cracked between his teeth. Ming Fan fainted.

Somewhere beyond the window, a raven cackled.

The past kept its claws.

But some idiots, it seemed, never learned.

Ming Fan scrambled to his feet with all the grace of a gutted fish, his face purpling with rage as he jabbed a finger at Luo Binghe. "You, you vile beast! I'll tell Shizun exactly what you're planning to do to his brother!" Spittle flew from his lips, his scent sour with panic and misplaced righteousness.

I moved to block him, but he shoved past me with a snarl. "Stay in the gutter where you belong, used goods." The words struck like a blade between ribs.

The room temperature plummeted. Shadows surged from the corners like living things, coiling around Ming Fan’s ankles before he could take another step.

Luo Binghe didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. "Ming-shixiong," he murmured, sweet as poisoned honey, "do you know what happens to flies who buzz too close to the spider’s web?"

Ming Fan’s bravado cracked. His throat bobbed as Luo Binghe’s shadows slithered up his legs, tightening with each syllable.

Ning Yingying clutched my sleeve. "Shishu, he didn’t mean, "

"He meant every word." My hands shook, but not from fear. The old brand on my wrist burned as if freshly seared.

Luo Binghe stepped forward, his demon mark pulsing crimson. Shadows mirrored his movements, creeping higher, tendrils brushing Ming Fan’s trembling jaw. "Shixiong is so...eager to report." A smile, sharp as a gutting knife. "Let me give you something worth telling."

Ming Fan’s knees buckled. Piss darkened his robes.

I grabbed Luo Binghe’s arm. "Enough."

He paused. The shadows froze mid-strangle.

Ming Fan sobbed.

I exhaled through my teeth. "Drop him."

For a heartbeat, I thought he’d refuse. Then the shadows dissipated like smoke, dumping Ming Fan onto the splintered floor in a heap.

Luo Binghe tilted his head, watching his former tormentor whimper. "Shizun is merciful," he mused. "I would have peeled his tongue out through his throat."

Ning Yingying gagged.

I flicked Luo Binghe’s forehead. "No flaying."

His grin was all teeth. "No promises."

The ravens cawed their approval.

Some graves, it seemed, were dug with stupidity alone.

I turned to Ming Fan with the same disgust one might reserve for spoiled meat left too long in the sun. His robes reeked of piss and panic, his fan lying broken beside him like his dignity. "Have you forgotten who my brother assigned you to?" My voice dripped venom colder than any Abyss wind. "He spent an hour in the Room of Reflection. Then you were right, ten lashes each time you failed to respect your Shifu."

Ming Fan's throat convulsed as shadows licked at his ankles anew.

"I will report to my brother," I continued, stepping close enough to watch sweat bead along his hairline, "about what you said regarding my place in the gutter." My smile felt sharp as Luo Binghe's claws. "You're very lucky I convinced this little puppy to obey me." Behind me, Luo Binghe made a wounded noise that might've been laughter. "Because he's quite keen on killing you. And my brother. And really, at this point, I'm the sole barrier preventing a massacre of the messiest variety."

The ravens cawed their agreement from the rafters.

"Do not," I pressed my boot over Ming Fan's trembling fingers, "dig your grave deeper, idiot." The crunch of bones would've been satisfying if not for Ning Yingying's muffled gasp. "And if I ever hear such disrespect from you again?" I leaned down, close enough to whisper, "I'll be the one to take your tongue. Slowly. With my embroidery scissors."

Silence. Even the ravens held their breath.

Luo Binghe's shadow tendrils retreated with palpable reluctance. "Shizun is too kind," he murmured, though his eyes burned black with promises of future violence.

I straightened, brushing nonexistent dust from my sleeves. "Do I make myself perfectly clear, little fool?"

Ming Fan nodded so vigorously his forehead struck the floorboards. The resulting whimper was almost as satisfying as the stench of his terror.

Ning Yingying exhaled shakily. The pipa's ghost strings hummed a dissonant chord.

Some graves, I reflected as I strode from the room, were best left unfilled.

For now.

The pipa’s strings hummed a warning as I turned to Ning Yingying, her hands still clutching my sleeve like a lifeline. Her scent, usually so sweet with plum blossoms, carried the sharp tang of panic now. I caught her chin, forcing her wide eyes to meet mine. "Little flower," I said, slow and deliberate, "you’re the only adult in this room right now." Behind us, Luo Binghe’s shadows slithered across the floorboards toward Ming Fan’s prone form. "Keep the puppy from murdering the idiot while I’m gone. Can you do that?"

Her lower lip trembled, but she squared her shoulders with a resolve that belied her youth. "Shishu trusts me?"

"More than these two lunatics," I muttered, flicking a glance at Luo Binghe, who smiled back with terrifying innocence. His shadows paused mid-creep, as if awaiting judgment. "If I return to a bloodbath, I’m revoking everyone’s tanghulu privileges for a month."

Luo Binghe made a wounded noise. Even Ming Fan whimpered from his puddle of shame.

Ning Yingying’s grip on my sleeve tightened briefly before she released me with a nod. "This disciple won’t fail Shishu." Her voice wavered only slightly as she stepped between the two boys, one a trembling wreck, the other a demon lord wearing the skin of her childhood friend.

I didn’t linger to watch the inevitable disaster unfold. The moment I crossed the threshold, the scent of lotus and blood chased me, Luo Binghe’s silent promise, his patience as thin as the shadows now curling possessively around Ning Yingying’s ankles. A warning, or perhaps a plea.

The ravens followed, their wings whispering of impending chaos. Somewhere behind me, Ming Fan’s choked sob cut through the morning air.

I didn’t look back.

The past kept its claws.

But some idiots, it seemed, deserved their fate.

The scroll crumpled in my fist before I tossed it onto Shen Qingqiu's desk, ink bleeding through cheap parchment where I'd scrawled Ming Fan's exact words about "used goods" and gutters. My brother's fan snapped shut with enough force to crack the bamboo ribs. His scent, usually so controlled, soured with something acrid, shame, perhaps, or the dawning realization that his precious head disciple had fangs aimed at his own brother's throat.

"He said this to you?" Shen Qingqiu's voice was dangerously soft, the way it got before he ordered someone flogged. "In your own hut? While assigned as your disciple?"

I leaned against the wall, arms crossed. The scent of rotting plums clung to his sleeves, the same fragrance he'd worn the day Luo Binghe fell. "Would I lie?"

His fan trembled. For once, the great Qing Jing Peak Lord looked...unsettled. "I'll have his tongue for this."

"Don't bother." I pushed off the wall, stepping close enough to watch his pupils constrict. "The demon currently sharpening his claws in my courtyard will do worse if you don't handle it first."

Shen Qingqiu went very still. "...Luo Binghe?"

"Alive. Angry." My smile felt sharp as Xin Mo's edge. "And very interested in how his old shixiong treats his shishu."

The color drained from my brother's face. For all his cruelty, even he knew some lines shouldn't be crossed. Ming Fan had dug his grave with my trauma as the shovel.

"I'll reassign you a new disciple," Shen Qingqiu said abruptly, his fan tapping an uneven rhythm against his palm. "One who knows to keep their tongue still regarding...past matters."

I laughed, short and humorless. "Little late for that."

Outside, a raven cawed. The shadows beneath the door writhed like living things.

Shen Qingqiu's gaze dropped to the creeping darkness. For the first time in years, he looked at me, really looked, and saw not the broken omega he'd failed, but the storm he'd unleashed. "Yuan-er, "

"Save it." I turned on my heel, the door slamming behind me with finality. Some apologies withered before they could bloom.

The past kept its claws.

But vengeance, it seemed, had fangs.

I found them precisely where I'd left them, Luo Binghe sprawled lazily on my bed like a pampered cat, Ning Yingying perched primly on a stool with embroidery hoop in hand, and Ming Fan...alive. Miraculously. Though the wet stain on his robes suggested he'd pissed himself a second time.

The moment I stepped inside, Ning Yingying leapt up with a chirped "Shishu!" while Luo Binghe's shadows coiled eagerly around my ankles like starved hounds. Ming Fan remained frozen, his face alternating between pallor and puce like a dying fish.

"Well," I said, snapping my fan open with a crisp flick, "color me impressed." My gaze slid to Ning Yingying, who beamed like she'd single-handedly tamed a typhoon. "What spell did you cast to keep these two from murdering each other?"

Ning Yingying giggled behind her sleeve. "This disciple merely reminded them how Shishu revokes tanghulu privileges for bloodstains on the floorboards."

Luo Binghe made a wounded noise, rolling onto his stomach to pout at me. The demon lord of the Abyss, reduced to a sulking pup over candy. Ridiculous.

I turned to Ming Fan, whose Adam's apple bobbed violently. "As for you," I said pleasantly, watching sweat bead along his hairline, "consider yourself demoted." The words landed like a guillotine blade. "Your new assignment is latrine duty until further notice. Though you should be thanking whatever gods you pray to that I convinced your Shizun not to take your tongue for disrespecting me."

Ming Fan's knees hit the floor with a thud. "This disciple begs, "

"Save it." I snapped my fan shut, tapping it against his trembling shoulder. "If by some miracle you develop basic decency, you may apologize. Might regain your position. Might." The emphasis made him whimper. "Now get out before I tell a certain demon emperor exactly what 'used goods' implies."

Luo Binghe's growl shook the rafters. Ming Fan scrambled backward like a crab until the door slammed on his retreating form.

Ning Yingying sighed. Luo Binghe licked his fangs.

And I? I reached for the hidden tanghulu stash, because some battles required sugar more than swords.

Luo Binghe’s eyes tracked the motion with predatory focus, his demon mark pulsing faintly as I withdrew a single skewer, perfectly glazed, the hawthorns plump and glossy under their crystalline sugar shell. His throat worked visibly.

"Since you’ve been a good puppy," I said, holding it just out of reach, "you may have one reward." His shadows quivered at my feet like eager snakes. "But it must not involve murder, disfigurement, or burning down the sect." I tilted the treat, letting amber light dance across its surface. "Name your price, little beast."

For a breath, the room held still. Even Ning Yingying’s embroidery needle paused mid-stitch.

Then, slowly, deliberately, Luo Binghe lifted his hand, not toward the tanghulu, but to the frayed ribbon tying back my hair. His fingertips brushed the sun-faded silk, his voice dropping to that dangerous, honeyed register that made my spine prickle. "This."

I blinked. "My hair ribbon?"

His nod was infinitesimal. The shadows coiled tighter around my ankles, not restraining, just...clingy. "Shizun wore it the day you first gave me tanghulu," he murmured, thumb rubbing the worn fabric. "When I was still small enough to hide behind your sleeves."

The memory surfaced unbidden: a scrawny boy with tear-streaked cheeks, clutching my robes after a beating, my hands sticky with sugar as I pressed the skewer into his palms. The ribbon had come loose during the scuffle, half-tangled in his fists.

Ning Yingying made a soft, wounded sound into her embroidery hoop.

Luo Binghe’s fingers tightened imperceptibly. "Let me keep it," he said, and for once, it wasn’t a demand. It was the barest hint of that orphaned pup beneath the emperor’s skin, still starving for scraps of kindness.

I exhaled through my nose. Undid the knot. Let the ribbon slither into his waiting palm like a crimson snake.

He brought it to his face, inhaling deeply, not the perverse gesture I’d expected, but something quieter, almost reverent. The sugar crackled between his teeth when he finally took the proffered tanghulu, his free hand clutching the ribbon like a holy relic.

Ning Yingying sniffled. The ravens rustled their wings.

And I? I flicked his forehead, because some sentiments required violence to survive acknowledgment. "Don’t get sentimental on me now, beast."

His laugh tasted of hawthorn and homecoming.

I had only managed to untangle myself from Luo Binghe’s octopus grip around dawn, slipping out while he murmured possessive nonsense into my pillow. The slap came just as I’d settled back into my own bed, a crack so sharp it sent me tumbling onto the floorboards in a tangle of blankets and undignified yelps.

Silk whispered against skin as Luo Binghe materialized beside me instantly, his sleep-rough voice already thick with murder. "Who dies?"

The answer came in Ning Yingying’s crystal-clear voice from the courtyard below: "This disciple could never court someone who disrespects her Shishu!" Another slap rang out. "Especially not a coward who mocks assault victims!"

Luo Binghe went preternaturally still.

I peered through the window to see Ning Yingying standing rigid before a red-faced disciple from Zui Xian Peak, her palmprint blooming across his cheek like a shameful brand. The boy clutched a crushed bouquet of peonies, his scent gone rancid with humiliation.

"...Is that Liu-shidi’s nephew?" I mused aloud.

Luo Binghe’s shadows surged toward the window. "He called you, "

"Expired goods, yes, I’m familiar with the refrain." I caught his wrist before the shadows could strangle the idiot. "Let the girl have her fun."

Below us, Ning Yingying drew herself up like a queen passing judgment. "You are scum," she declared, loud enough for half the peak to hear. "And scum doesn’t deserve pretty words." With that, she kicked over his carefully arranged gift basket, sending sugared fruits rolling through the dirt.

The disciple spluttered. "You, you omega bitch, "

Luo Binghe moved.

One moment he was coiled behind me, the next he’d teleported directly into the boy’s space, his claws already buried in the fool’s throat. "Finish that sentence," he purred, blood welling where his nails pressed. "I dare you."

The courtyard erupted into chaos. Disciples scrambled back. Someone dropped a tea tray.

I sighed and reached for my outermost robe. Some mornings demanded violence before breakfast.

The past kept its claws.

But justice, it seemed, had talons now.

I stepped between them in my hastily donned robes, one hand pressed to Luo Binghe’s chest where his demon mark pulsed like a caged storm. His growl vibrated through my palm, the scent of scorched sugar and blood thick in the morning air. The disciple, Liu Mingyan’s cousin, wasn’t it?, whimpered as shadows licked up his legs like rising ink.

"You," I said pleasantly, digging my nails into Luo Binghe’s collarbone until his focus snapped to me, "will unhand this idiot before I revoke your cuddling privileges for a month." His pupils dilated comically. "And you," I turned to the trembling boy, "will apologize to my disciple before I summon Liu Qingge to discuss how his nephew thinks it’s charming to call traumatized omegas 'expired goods.'"

Ning Yingying gasped behind her sleeve. The disciple paled further.

"Because let’s be clear," I continued, flicking open a fan painted with particularly venomous bamboo, "I’m the one stopping a demon emperor from skinning you alive. Not out of mercy, but because bloodstains ruin my courtyard’s feng shui." The fan tapped his chin lightly. "You’re lucky my brother didn’t catch you sniffing around his favorite disciple. He’d have your tongue before you could stutter ‘apology.’"

Luo Binghe’s claws retracted with audible reluctance. The disciple collapsed onto his knees, forehead thudding against the dirt. "This, this disciple begs Shishu’s, "

"Save it." I snapped the fan shut. "Your groveling is as pathetic as your courting skills. Leave before I charge you for my interrupted beauty sleep."

Ning Yingying giggled into her handkerchief as the boy scrambled backward like a startled crab. Luo Binghe’s shadows herded him mercilessly toward the gate, their grip just shy of breaking bone.

I exhaled, long-suffering, and turned to Ning Yingying. "Next time someone insults you, just stab them. I’ll fake the paperwork."

Her eyes sparkled. Luo Binghe preened.

Some mornings, I reflected as I dragged them both toward the kitchens, demanded sweets before sanity.

The trio of idiots followed obediently, Luo Binghe’s fingers knotted possessively in my sleeve, Ning Yingying humming as she skipped alongside, and the newly-christened "Hamster Disciple" shuffling behind like a man headed to his own execution. The scent of roasted chestnuts grew stronger as we rounded the corner...only to freeze at the sight of Tianlang-jun lounging against the courtyard’s plum tree, idly peeling a pear with his claws.

Beside him stood Mobei-jun, frost crystallizing the grass beneath his boots.

"Ah," said the traitorous Demon Lord, tossing his pear core into the bushes. "The expired goods arrives."

Luo Binghe’s growl shook the rafters. Mobei-jun’s glacial gaze flicked to him, then to me, and, impossibly, he inclined his head. "This one apologizes for his associate’s...lack of decorum." The words emerged like shards of ice forced through flesh.

Even Tianlang-jun blinked. "Since when do you, "

"Silence." Mobei-jun’s shadow stretched unnaturally toward Hamster Disciple, who squeaked and attempted to hide behind Ning Yingying. "Your nephew’s insults," he continued, addressing me with terrifying solemnity, "reflect poorly upon our shared lineage."

I stared. Luo Binghe’s grip on my sleeve tightened dangerously.

Tianlang-jun puffed his cheeks in outrage, looking for all the world like an overgrown hamster denied his wheel. "You can’t just, "

"Watch me." Mobei-jun’s clawed hand closed around the back of Tianlang-jun’s neck, hauling him forward until their foreheads nearly touched. "Apologize," he growled, "or I freeze your favorite scroll collection."

The ensuing theatrics, Tianlang-jun’s dramatic flailing, Ning Yingying’s poorly muffled giggles, Luo Binghe’s increasingly murderous glower, faded into background noise as I studied Mobei-jun’s expression. Beneath the permafrost, something unfamiliar flickered. Respect? No. Something sharper. Acknowledgment.

"Well?" I prompted, fanning myself lazily. "Mercy be, make him tolerable."

Mobei-jun’s lips twitched. Then, with the air of a man resigned to herding cats, he dragged his sputtering charge away by the scruff, ice crackling in their wake.

Luo Binghe exhaled through his nose. "I hate them."

Ning Yingying patted his arm. "Shishu has that effect on demons."

The pipa string in my chest thrummed, not with dread, but anticipation. Some alliances, it seemed, formed in the unlikeliest frost.

Luo Binghe's fingers twitched against my sleeve as Tianlang-jun sauntered back toward us, his grin far too wide for comfort. "Ah, my long-lost spawn," he crooned, reaching out as if to pinch those ridiculous cheeks. Luo Binghe's fangs snapped shut millimeters from his father's wrist.

Mobei-jun sighed, the sound like cracking glaciers. "Pathetic," he muttered, though whether to Tianlang-jun or the universe at large remained unclear.

I caught Luo Binghe's wrist before he could disembowel his progenitor. "Congratulations," I deadpanned, "you've met your father. He's exactly the disappointment I expected." The shadows around Binghe's feet writhed in agreement.

Tianlang-jun clutched his chest as if wounded. "Such cruelty! And after I brought gifts!" With a flourish, he produced a qiankun pouch, only for it to emit an ominous rattle. Several disciples flinched.

Mobei-jun snatched it midair. "Human skulls," he informed me flatly. "He collects them."

Ning Yingying made a noise halfway between horror and fascination. Luo Binghe looked seconds from spontaneous combustion.

I patted his arm. "Don't worry, you've got me." Then, gesturing to Mobei-jun's glacial disapproval and Tianlang-jun's theatrical pout, added, "And these two! They make wonderful friends, don't you agree?"

Silence.

Then,

"Absolutely not."

"Over my corpse."

Luo Binghe and Mobei-jun spoke in eerie unison. Tianlang-jun beamed like he'd orchestrated a grand symphony.

The shadows deepened as Luo Binghe pressed closer, his breath warm against my ear. "Shizun enjoys tormenting this disciple," he murmured, the words a velvet threat.

I leaned into his grip, smiling at the assembled chaos. "Someone has to teach you patience, little beast."

The courtyard held its breath. Somewhere, a raven cackled.

And thus, with demon lords and discarded fathers and one very smug omega between them, our peculiar family grew.

Hamster Disciple, now self-appointed "Minister of Frost" in Mobei-jun's court, had clung to the demon lord's robes with all the grace of a drowning man to driftwood. Mobei-jun, for his part, looked like he'd swallowed a particularly sour lemon. "Release me," he growled, frost creeping up the boy's sleeves.

Hamster only burrowed deeper. "Never! This servant pledges eternal loyalty to the most majestic, "

"Pathetic," Luo Binghe muttered, but I caught the way his claws flexed, jealousy simmering beneath his skin. Ning Yingying, ever the opportunist, was already sketching designs for matching ice-themed uniforms.

I sighed, snapping my fan open with a crisp flick. "Fine. But when he inevitably freezes your tongue to a flagpole, don't come crying." Stepping between Luo Binghe and Hamster's increasingly elaborate groveling, I added, "And if either of you start a war over this, I'm revoking dessert privileges for a decade."

Tianlang-jun, the bastard, cackled like a tipsy crow. "Oh, this is delightful! My son's rival has a rival! The drama!"

Luo Binghe's shadows lashed out, only for Mobei-jun to intercept them with a wall of jagged ice. The two demons locked eyes, one seething, the other impassive, while Hamster Disciple vibrated between them like an overexcited puppy.

"Shizun," Luo Binghe whined, pressing his forehead to my shoulder. "You're letting him steal my prey."

I patted his cheek. "Darling, if you wanted to keep him, you shouldn't have let him smell like cowardice and poor life choices." Behind us, Hamster let out an indignant squeak.

Mobei-jun exhaled sharply through his nose. "This one does not consent to this...attachment."

Hamster beamed. "Too late! I've already drafted our matching sigils!"

The ensuing silence was so profound, even the wind held its breath.

Then, chaos.

Ice spikes. Shadows whipping. Tianlang-jun's delighted screeching. Ning Yingying taking furious notes.

And me? I plucked a tanghulu from my sleeve, settling onto a conveniently placed boulder to enjoy the show. Some days, the universe delivered entertainment wrapped in idiocy and tied with poor judgment. Who was I to refuse?

Luo Binghe's aggrieved pout tasted sweeter than any candy.

"Shizuuun," he whined, fingers tangled in my sleeve like a sulking kitten. "Why does he get special treatment?" His glare could've frozen lava as it landed on Shang Qinghua, who currently had his face buried in Mobei-jun's robes, trembling like a leaf in a hurricane.

The so-called "Hamster Disciple" peeked up at me with watery eyes, his bottom lip quivering. A kicked puppy would've looked less pathetic. I flicked his forehead hard enough to leave a mark.

"You're the one who wanted to betray us for a hot Demon Lord," I reminded him, ruffling his hair until it stood on end. The scent of frost and panic rolled off him in waves. "Don't pout now that your brilliant plan backfired spectacularly."

Shang Qinghua sniffled. "But Mobei-jun was supposed to, "

", Toss you over his shoulder like a conquering warlord?" I interrupted, watching Mobei-jun's eye twitch. "Instead you got frostbite and a restraining order. Truly, the universe hates you specifically."

Luo Binghe perked up instantly, shadows curling possessively around my ankles. Ning Yingying muffled a giggle behind her embroidery.

Shang Qinghua made a noise like a stepped-on weasel. "This disciple regrets everything!"

Mobei-jun peeled him off with two fingers like removing a particularly persistent burr. "Pathetic," he declared, though the tips of his ears were suspiciously red.

Tianlang-jun chose that moment to materialize between them, his grin razor-sharp. "Oh, don't be shy! My nephew clearly enjoys your, "

A well-aimed snowball from Mobei-jun cut him off mid-sentence. The ensuing scuffle sent Shang Qinghua scrambling behind me, nearly tripping over Luo Binghe's lashing shadows.

I pinched the bridge of my nose as the headache brewing since dawn finally crested. Somewhere, the gods were laughing.

"Enough," I snapped, grabbing Shang Qinghua by the collar before he could face-plant into a snowdrift. "If you want to court an ice demon, at least have the decency to not look like a half-drowned rat while doing it."

The whimper he let out was answer enough.

Luo Binghe's fingers slid between mine, warm and claiming. "Shizun spoils him too much," he murmured, lips brushing my knuckles.

I sighed. The things I did for these idiots.

The shadows deepened. Somewhere, a pipa string hummed.

And so the circus continued.

I stood elbow-deep in flour, watching Shang Qinghua botch his seventeenth attempt at hand-pulled noodles. Dough clung to his eyebrows like some tragic culinary war paint. "You realize," I said, flicking a stray noodle from my sleeve, "that demons don't even digest wheat properly?"

The idiot sniffled, clutching his latest doughy abomination. "But Mobei-jun smiled when I mentioned longevity noodles! Well. His eyebrow twitched. Same thing!"

Behind us, Luo Binghe sulked by the hearth, stoking the flames with unnecessary violence. "Shizun should let him choke," he muttered, charring another log to ashes. "Natural selection."

I tossed a lump of dough at his head. "You," I informed him, "are banned from evolutionary commentary." The lump stuck to his forehead like a deranged third eye. Ning Yingying collapsed into giggles behind her embroidery hoop.

The kitchen door slammed open, admitting a swirl of frost and Shen Qingqiu's signature scowl. "Must you," he began, then froze at the sight of flour-dusted chaos. His fan snapped open with lethal precision. "Consort with traitors?"

Shang Qinghua squeaked and hid behind a noodle roller.

I wiped my hands on Binghe's stolen outer robe. "Gege, if bad luck were contagious, you'd have killed us all years ago." The barb landed with satisfying precision, watching his knuckles whiten around the fan's ribs. "Besides," I added, flicking dough from my nails, "someone has to teach this idiot survival skills before his demon devours him."

"Preferably literally," Luo Binghe added helpfully.

Ning Yingying gasped. "Shixiong! That's not romantic!"

Shen Qingqiu's eye twitched. The scent of scorched pride and rotting plums thickened the air. "You disgrace our lineage," he hissed. "First that beast, now this, this rodent, "

A snowball smacked into the side of his head.

We all turned slowly to see Mobei-jun looming in the doorway, ice crystals still falling from his claws. His expression remained glacial, but the way his cape twitched suggested satisfaction. Behind him, Shang Qinghua's abandoned dough slowly slid off the counter with a wet plop.

Silence.

Then, "Marry him," I declared.

Ning Yingying clapped. Luo Binghe groaned. Shen Qingqiu looked seconds from spontaneous combustion. And Shang Qinghua?

The idiot fainted directly into the noodle dough.

Some days, the universe delivered miracles wrapped in idiocy. I'd take it.

"Gege," I sighed, flicking flour from Shen Qingqiu's shoulder with the ease of someone who'd dodged his tantrums for decades. "I made it. You're just jealous because the guy you like is the person you have the biggest grudge on for abandoning us in our time of need." The scent of scorched plums intensified as his fan snapped shut with a sound like breaking bones.

Behind us, Luo Binghe choked on his tea. Shang Qinghua, still half-buried in dough, made a noise like a dying rabbit.

"You should just confess to Liu Qingge already," I continued, nudging my brother's boot with my own. His glare could've frozen hell itself. "It's getting annoying watching you two do that boorish mating dance. Frankly, gege, you're giving me a headache."

The kitchen door creaked open. Liu Qingge stood framed in sunlight, his scent, winter pine and lightning, cutting through the flour-choked air. His gaze locked onto Shen Qingqiu's rigid spine.

Shen Qingqiu's fan trembled.

I leaned in, whispering loud enough for the entire peak to hear: "He already loves you enough that he's willing to put up with your nonsense. I'm pretty sure he'd take an arrow in the back for you any day."

Liu Qingge's ears turned scarlet.

Silence.

Then, explosions.

Shen Qingqiu's qi flared, sending noodles sailing through the air like vengeful spirits. Liu Qingge caught one midair with reflexes honed by decades of war. They stared at each other, the noodle dangling between them like some absurd bridal veil.

Shang Qinghua whimpered.

I patted Luo Binghe's thigh as he vibrated with barely-contained glee. "See?" I murmured. "Romance."

Liu Qingge's grip tightened on the noodle. Shen Qingqiu's knuckles whitened around his fan. Somewhere, a pipa string hummed.

The standoff lasted precisely three breaths before Liu Qingge yanked, pulling Shen Qingqiu forward into a collision of lips and decades of pent-up longing. Flour poofed around them like wedding rice.

Ning Yingying squealed. Luo Binghe cackled. Shang Qinghua fainted again.

And me? I leaned back, savoring the chaos I'd wrought. Some matches needed lighting. Others required an entire fireworks factory.

My work here was done.

"Well," I drawled, dusting flour from my sleeves with a smirk, "that worked out perfectly." Liu Qingge's ears burned scarlet where he'd tangled his fingers in Shen Qingqiu's hair, the two of them frozen mid-snarl like an illustration from one of those trashy romance novels Shang Qinghua hoarded.

I tossed my best friend a thumbs-up over the wreckage of dough and dignity. "I'll spar with you later," I promised, stepping over Shang Qinghua's prone form with the ease of long practice. "But thanks for finally ending that boorish mating dance."

Liu Qingge made a sound like a teakettle exploding. I took mercy, sort of, by ruffling his ponytail as I passed, sending his hair ribbon askew. "Try not to break him, shidi. I'd hate to explain to the sect leader why our strategist can't walk straight."

Shen Qingqiu's fan snapped toward my throat. I caught it between two fingers without breaking stride, tucking it into my belt like a trophy. Behind me, the sounds of spluttering and poorly concealed giggles faded as I stepped into the sunlight.

Luo Binghe materialized at my elbow, his fingers slotting between mine with possessive ease. "Shizun enjoys meddling," he observed, nuzzling my flour-dusted temple.

I hummed, squeezing his hand. "Now I don't have to worry about either of them." The weight that lifted from my shoulders had nothing to do with flour and everything to do with decades of watching those idiots orbit each other like doomed stars. "Can finally focus on my life instead of their disaster romance."

Binghe's laughter vibrated through my ribs. "They were annoying," he agreed, far too cheerful for someone who'd threatened to feed Shang Qinghua to a pack of hellhounds not an hour prior.

The mountain path stretched before us, dappled with sunlight and the occasional fallen plum blossom. Somewhere ahead, Ning Yingying's excited chatter mingled with Mobei-jun's glacial monosyllables. Behind us, the distant crash of pottery suggested Liu Qingge had finally snapped and pinned my brother against the pantry.

Perfect.

I tipped my face toward the sun, breathing in the scent of warm earth and Binghe's quiet contentment. No more matchmaking. No more idiots pining louder than a pipa with broken strings. Just this, peace, and the promise of mischief yet to come.

The pipa string in my chest hummed approval.

Shen Qingqiu's grip tightened around Liu Qingge's wrist, his knuckles white as winter frost. "No," he hissed, voice cracking like thin ice over a frozen pond. The scent of scorched plums and lightning-charged pine thickened the air between them. Liu Qingge's nostrils flared, his pulse jumping under Shen Qingqiu's fingertips.

I rolled my eyes, shifting uncomfortably on the silk-draped divan. The feverish throb beneath my skin had nothing to do with embarrassment and everything to do with the damn heat cycle Big Brother had conveniently forgotten about until now. "Gege," I drawled, flicking a stray plum pit at his forehead. "I lost my innocence years ago. To a monster. Remember?" The words tasted like ashes and hawthorn seeds, bitter and familiar.

Luo Binghe's growl vibrated through the stone floor from his adjacent cell, the sound more demonic beast than human. The wards lining the walls flared scarlet in response. "Shizun," he purred, a velvet threat wrapped in honeyed poison. "Should I remind your brother what happens to those who cage what's mine?"

Shen Qingqiu's fan snapped open with enough force to send a gust of qi rippling through the room. "Accidental bastards," he spat, as if the words themselves were venomous. Liu Qingge's ears turned an impressive shade of crimson, his grip on Cheng Luan tightening until the scabbard creaked in protest.

Ning Yingying chose that moment to burst in with an armload of cooling talismans, her cheeks flushed from sprinting up the mountain path. "Shizun! I brought, oh." Her gaze darted between the seething alpha in the cell, my sprawled form, and the two martial uncles locked in what appeared to be a silent battle of wills. She dropped the talismans with a squeak.

I plucked one from the air, pressing the chilled paper to my burning forehead. "Tell me, gege," I murmured, watching Luo Binghe's shadows writhe against the wards. "When exactly did you become the arbiter of my virtue? Was it before or after you let Master Chen break me?"

The pipa string hummed again, louder this time. The wards shattered.

Darkness swallowed the room whole.

Somewhere in the swirling abyss of demonic energy and familial drama, Liu Qingge sighed the sigh of a man who'd seen too much. Luo Binghe laughed, the sound rich with promises of violence and sugar-dusted revenge. And me? I stretched luxuriously as the shadows coiled around my wrists like living shackles, warm and familiar and mine.

Perfect.

Shen Qingqiu's fan clattered to the floor, his face draining of color faster than ink dissolving in water. "You," he choked out, pointing a shaking finger at the contract I'd just signed with flourish and bloodied thumbprint. The parchment glowed faintly with binding characters, my official blessing for Liu Qingge to drag my brother kicking and screaming into marital bliss.

Liu Qingge made a sound like a sword being unsheathed, all lethal promise and vibrating anticipation. I tossed him the small silk pouch of fertility herbs I'd spent three moons secretly cultivating. "Every third day," I instructed, watching my brother's eyes widen comically. "Steep them in tiger bone wine. Works better if you chant the incantation during, ah, cultivation."

Ning Yingying clapped her hands over her mouth, her muffled squeal echoing off the ancestral hall's rafters. Luo Binghe's shadows coiled tighter around my waist in smug possessiveness.

"You, " Shen Qingqiu's voice cracked like thin ice. His scent spiked, burnt plums and panic. "Traitorous little, "

"Six nieces," I interrupted cheerfully. "Minimum. I want enough babies to stage coup reenactments during family dinners." The pipa string between my ribs hummed approval as Liu Qingge pocketed the herbs with the solemnity of a man accepting a divine mission.

My brother made a noise like a stepped-on qin. "I'll disown you properly this time, "

Luo Binghe's laughter dripped like honeyed poison. "Too late, Shishu." His fingers tangled in my hair, tugging just shy of painful. "Shizun's mine now. Go make your own."

The way Liu Qingge's gaze darkened at that suggestion would've sent lesser men fleeing. Shen Qingqiu took one step back, directly into Liu Qingge's waiting arms. The ensuing scuffle sent scrolls flying, but I'd already turned away, my own demon lord's breath hot against my neck.

"Shameless," Luo Binghe murmured, biting the mating mark he'd left last winter.

I leaned into his teeth. "You love it."

Behind us, Liu Qingge's victorious roar shook the ancestral tablets. Somewhere, our drowned sister was laughing.

Perfect.

The pipa string between my ribs hummed louder as Luo Binghe's claws traced my collarbone, his breath hot against my mating mark. "Shizun," he murmured, the word dripping with honeyed poison and something darker, hungrier. Shadows coiled around us like living silk, pulsing in time with the feverish heat beneath my skin.

I turned fully toward him, catching his wrist before those wicked claws could dip lower. "Stay," I whispered, pressing his palm flat against my chest where my heartbeat stuttered like a trapped sparrow. His pupils swallowed the crimson of his eyes whole, leaving only bottomless black.

His growl vibrated through my bones. "You want pups." Not a question. A revelation.

I smiled, slow and knowing, as his shadows lashed against the bedposts. "Maybe." My fingers traced the demonic sigils marring his chest, feeling the power thrum beneath his skin. "We could stay up all night if you like."

Luo Binghe's restraint snapped.

The bedframe splintered as he pinned me to the wreckage, his teeth at my throat. "No more games," he snarled, and the raw desperation in his voice sent shivers down my spine. His claws shredded my robes like rice paper, exposing the scarred canvas of my torso, every mark he'd ever claimed, every wound he'd ever licked clean.

I arched into his touch, breathless. "Who's playing?"

His answering laugh was pure sin. Shadows poured from his pores, slithering up my thighs as his mouth found the hollow of my hipbone. The pipa string hummed a warning, then shattered entirely as Luo Binghe's fangs broke skin.

Somewhere beyond our tangled limbs, the world burned. Let it.

I clutched his horns as he moved against me, our shared breaths mingling with the scent of blood and hawthorn berries. The bed collapsed entirely. We didn't notice.

"Yours," I gasped as his claws carved fresh claims into my flesh.

Luo Binghe's eyes burned brighter than the sun. "Forever."

The first contraction hit at dawn.

By noon, our daughter had her father's smile and her mother's penchant for chaos. Perfect.

Shen Qingqiu stared at the bundle in my arms like it was a live grenade. His fan trembled against his thigh, the delicate bamboo creaking under white-knuckled pressure. The scent of scorched plums and ozone thickened around us, half his usual fury, half something brittle and wounded.

Liu Qingge reached over instinctively, fingers brushing the infant’s cheek. His calloused hands, usually so lethal, cradled her head with terrifying gentleness. "She has your nose," he muttered, as if accusing me of treason.

"Obviously," I said, adjusting the swaddle just to watch Big Brother flinch. The pipa string in my chest hummed smugly.

Shen Qingqiu’s gaze flicked to the doorway where Luo Binghe leaned, shadows licking at his boots like eager hounds. His expression cycled through horror, denial, rage, bargaining, ah, there went the depression stage. The fan snapped shut with a sound like a breaking neck.

"You," he hissed, stepping forward.

Liu Qingge caught his wrist without looking up from the baby. "Don't," he said simply. The unspoken *he'll kill you* hung in the air, heavier than the incense.

Luo Binghe’s grin was all teeth. "Shishu should be grateful," he purred, stepping forward to pluck our daughter from my arms. His claws retracted the second her tiny fist grabbed his thumb. "This one is *very* generous with family."

The way he said *family* made Big Brother’s spine lock. I coughed to hide a laugh.

"Gege," I sighed, stretching my legs out on the divan. "Stop looking at my husband like you’re drafting his obituary. You’re scaring the baby."

The infant in question gurgled, blowing a spit bubble directly at Shen Qingqiu.

Liu Qingge snorted. Shen Qingqiu looked seconds away from combusting. And me?

I laced my fingers through Luo Binghe’s free hand, grinning at the way his shadows coiled possessively around my ankles.

Perfect.

Shen Qingqiu's fan clattered to the floor, his murderous expression freezing mid-snarl. The scent of scorched plums soured abruptly as his gaze dropped to Liu Qingge's protective hand resting against his abdomen.

"All right, that's enough of that look," I chided, nudging the infant toward my brother's stiff arms. "Hold your niece. It's time to celebrate, not mourn." The baby cooed, tiny fingers grasping at Shen Qingqiu's trembling sleeve. "After all," I continued sweetly, "you get to spoil her now. Make sure what happened to me never happens to her."

Liu Qingge's ears turned scarlet where he stood guard behind my brother, his fingers flexing like he wanted to both restrain Shen Qingqiu and catch him should he faint. The scent of winter pine and lightning spiked sharply.

"Oh?" I arched a brow, watching my brother's throat work. "Did shidi not tell you? You're three months along." My smirk widened as Shen Qingqiu made a sound like a stepped-on qin. "Congrats, gege. Looks like we'll be staging those coup reenactments sooner than expected."

The silence stretched taut before Luo Binghe's delighted chuckle shattered it. He leaned in, pressing a kiss to my temple as our daughter gummed happily on Shen Qingqiu's jade pendant. "Six nieces," he murmured against my skin, fangs glinting. "Minimum."

Shen Qingqiu swayed alarmingly, his grip on the baby tightening instinctively even as his free hand flew to his stomach. Liu Qingge caught him by the shoulders, his usually stoic face alight with poorly concealed triumph.

"Happy occasion," I declared, clapping my hands together as Ning Yingying burst in with celebratory osmanthus wine. The pipa string between my ribs hummed in time with the baby's contented gurgles.

Somewhere beyond the laughter and scandalized whispers, our drowned sister's ghost clapped her hands in approval.

Perfect.

The pipa string between my ribs resonated as Luo Binghe curled our daughter against his chest, his claws retracting to blunt nails when she gummed at his thumb. "Shen Hua," he murmured, testing the name like a prayer. The way his crimson eyes softened told me he understood, honoring the sister we'd lost beneath frozen river currents decades ago.

Big brother made a sound like a gutted animal. His fingers trembled where they clutched Liu Qingge's sleeve, his usual porcelain composure shattered. "You, " His voice cracked mid-syllable. The scent of scorched plums turned cloying, thick with grief and something dangerously close to gratitude.

I reached over, booping the baby's tiny nose. "She deserves to carry Hua's name," I said simply, watching my daughter's dark eyes blink up at me with startling awareness. "Our sister never got to see spring. This one will see a thousand."

Liu Qingge's hand settled heavily on Shen Qingqiu's shoulder, grounding him as silent tears tracked down my brother's face. The war master's thumb brushed the nape of Shen Qingqiu's neck, a gesture so tender it made my own throat tighten.

Luo Binghe's shadows coiled around my wrist, warm and possessive. "She'll have everything," he vowed, pressing his forehead to the baby's. The demon mark on his brow pulsed faintly against her unblemished skin. "Palaces. Armies. The fucking moon if she wants it."

I laughed, swatting his arm. "No conquering celestial bodies before she can walk." But the pipa string hummed agreement, our daughter would want for nothing. Not protection. Not love. Not the childhood stolen from her namesake.

Shen Qingqiu inhaled sharply when little Hua grabbed his dangling hair ribbon, her tiny fist clutching the silk with surprising strength. For a breathless moment, no one moved. Then, with glacial slowness, my brother brought his shaking fingers to cover hers. "Stubborn," he whispered, and the word sounded like forgiveness.