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Blood had made Lan Wangji’s hand slippery.

It gathered in the narrow space between his palm and Wei Wuxian’s wrist, hot where his fingers had locked around bone, and ran in thin lines beneath the torn edge of his sleeve. The muscles in his forearm trembled visibly with the effort of holding Wei Wuxian’s entire weight over the cliff. His other hand was braced against the fractured stone, searching for purchase on a surface already crumbling beneath him, but the hand around Wei Wuxian did not loosen. Every time the blood allowed Wei Wuxian’s wrist to slip another fraction through his grasp, Lan Wangji tightened his fingers and dragged him back from the final release.

Wei Wuxian was not helping. His free arm hung toward the ravine, his hand open to the wind, while the remains of the battle continued somewhere above them. Steel struck steel beyond the narrow ledge while men shouted accusations and orders that became indistinguishable beneath the wind. The sound reached Wei Wuxian as though it had traveled an impossible distance, emptied of meaning long before it found him. None of it mattered now. Shijie was dead. Jin Zixuan was dead. The Wen remnants he had tried to protect were dead. The people still fighting above them had already decided what he was, and nothing he could say or do would return any of those he had lost or make the living believe him worth saving. The cultivators who had come to Nightless City demanding his blood would still believe that every death belonged to him, and perhaps they were right. Wei Wuxian no longer possessed enough certainty to argue with them.

He had stepped into the emptiness but Lan Wangji’s hand had closed around his before gravity could finish what Wei Wuxian had begun, and now Lan Wangji was injuring himself to hold someone who had already chosen not to be held.

Wei Wuxian had already brought too much suffering into Lan Wangji’s life. He had ignored every warning Lan Wangji tried to give him, rejected every attempt to draw him away from the path that had finally led them here, and answered Lan Wangji’s concern as though it were judgment. Even now, he was forcing Lan Wangji to choose between releasing him and being dragged over the edge with him.

Wei Wuxian looked up at him and felt another thread of pain work its way through the exhaustion.

Lan Wangji’s face was bloodless beneath the soot and grime of the battle. Several strands of hair had torn free around his temples, moving wildly in the wind while he strained across the ledge, and the white sleeve covering his injured arm had gone red. There was something fundamentally wrong in the sight of him like this. Lan Wangji should not have been bleeding because of Wei Wuxian. He should not have been lying half over a precipice while his shoulder shook beneath a burden Wei Wuxian had deliberately given him. The wrongness of it lodged beneath Wei Wuxian’s ribs and sharpened each time Lan Wangji’s grip slipped and tightened again.

He expected anger when he forced himself to meet Lan Wangji’s eyes. Perhaps some part of him even wanted to find it there. Anger would have made this easier. Hatred would have meant that Lan Wangji understood what Wei Wuxian had become and would eventually accept the necessity of letting him fall.

Lan Wangji did not look angry. He did not look at Wei Wuxian as if he hated him, nor as if the hand trapped in his grasp belonged to the enemy the cultivation world had declared Wei Wuxian to be. Determination had stripped the usual reserve from his face, leaving every line of his body fixed upon the single purpose of keeping Wei Wuxian alive. Beneath that determination was something more difficult for Wei Wuxian to understand. Lan Wangji’s eyes were wide, his breathing ragged with more than physical strain, and his fingers tightened in immediate answer to the slightest movement of Wei Wuxian’s wrist.

Lan Wangji looked frantic. He had spent so long believing that Lan Wangji disapproved of him, that every attempt to take him back to Gusu had been another demand that he surrender the path he needed to protect the Wen remnants, and that the growing distance between them had hardened into disgust. Yet there was no disgust in Lan Wangji’s face now. There was only the terrible fear that he might fail to hold on.

Wei Wuxian could not understand why. He could only understand that Lan Wangji was bleeding, that the ledge beneath him was breaking, and that Wei Wuxian was the reason for both.

“Lan Zhan, let me go.”

Lan Wangji’s expression contracted around the words as though Wei Wuxian had struck him. His body shifted farther over the ledge, bringing his shoulder perilously beyond its edge, while his blood-slick fingers closed more tightly around Wei Wuxian’s wrist, “No.”

The refusal held none of the cold authority Wei Wuxian remembered from their youth. It was too immediate for composure and too raw to be mistaken for judgment. Lan Wangji was not rejecting an argument. He was refusing the possibility of a world in which his hand opened and Wei Wuxian disappeared beneath it.

Blood dripped from Lan Wangji’s arm onto Wei Wuxian’s wrist. Wei Wuxian could feel another tremor pass through him. Yet Lan Wangji continued to hold him. He continued to look at him as though him disappearing into the abyss was not an acceptable answer to everything going on around them. Lan Wangji was going to hold him until his arm was torn from his socket. 

“You have to let me go.”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji’s voice was strained by the effort of holding him, but the command within it remained unbroken, “hold on.”

Wei Wuxian had nothing with which to obey. His hand remained limp, his body suspended entirely from Lan Wangji’s grip. He could have reached for the cliff or tried to catch Lan Wangji’s arm, but doing so would only prolong the struggle and pull Lan Wangji farther into danger. There was no rescue waiting at the end of that effort. There was only the battle behind them, the bodies on the stone, and a world in which Wei Wuxian had finally become precisely what everyone feared.

Movement above Lan Wangji drew his attention. Jiang Wanyin stood several paces from the edge with Sandu in his hand. Grief and fury had transformed the face Wei Wuxian had known since childhood, but they had not made it unfamiliar. Wei Wuxian could still see the boy who had chased him through Lotus Pier and complained whenever Wei Wuxian climbed into Shijie’s lap first. He could still see the brother who had once promised that they would lead Yunmeng Jiang together. That brother had been buried beneath the destruction of Lotus Pier, beneath the war, beneath the pressures of rebuilding and running a sect too young, but some remnant of him remained in the agony with which Jiang Wanyin looked at Wei Wuxian now.

Wei Wuxian wanted to apologize. He wanted to tell Jiang Wanyin that he had never meant for any of this to happen, although intention had become meaningless beside the number of people who were dead. He wanted, with a suddenness that nearly broke through his resignation, to see Shijie step between them one more time and tell them both to stop being foolish.

Jiang Wanyin advanced and drove Sandu downward. Lan Wangji flinched over Wei Wuxian. The blade struck the stone beside their hands with a crack that shuddered through the ledge, scattering fragments into the open air. One struck Wei Wuxian’s cheek before vanishing below him. For a moment, no one moved. Jiang Wanyin’s face twisted around something Wei Wuxian could no longer name, his sword embedded near enough that Wei Wuxian understood its target.

Jiang Wanyin withdrew his sword before pulling back to strike again, his gaze locked on where Lan Wangji’s hand gripped Wei Wuxian’s. Fear tore through the numbness that had held Wei Wuxian since Shijie fell. Lan Wangji was already injured. He was already bleeding because Wei Wuxian had chosen to step from the cliff, and still he had given no thought to his own safety. If Sandu struck the hand holding Wei Wuxian, the blade would cut through flesh and bone before Lan Wangji willingly released him.

Wei Wuxian could not allow Lan Wangji to be hurt again for refusing to abandon him, “Lan Zhan—”

He twisted hard within Lan Wangji’s grasp. Recognition flashed across Lan Wangji’s face. His fingers convulsed around Wei Wuxian’s wrist, but the blood coating their skin made the hold impossible to secure. Wei Wuxian wrenched his arm downward with all the strength he had withheld from saving himself. For one suspended instant, Lan Wangji’s fingers caught across his palm. The contact dragged painfully over Wei Wuxian’s knuckles, and some instinct buried beneath his decision urged him to close his hand and hold on. He forced his fingers to remain open and the last point of contact slipped away.

“Wei Ying!”

Lan Wangji’s voice followed him over the edge.

The cliff rose above Wei Wuxian as he fell, carrying Lan Wangji and Jiang Wanyin away from him. Wind seized his hair and robes, tearing at him with a force that should have been frightening, but the fear did not come. His body reacted without him, his breath caught, his hands opened as if searching for something to grasp, but inside, there was only a vast and exhausted quiet. The figures along the cliff blurred against the dark sky. Soon there would be no more accusations, no more blood on the ground because he had failed to control what he had created, and no more faces joining the dead each time he closed his eyes.

He had thought Lan Wangji would remain the final thing he saw: white robes against the stone, one bloodied hand still outstretched after him. Instead, Lan Wangji disappeared from the edge before reappearing, a white figure breaking through the darkness above him, descending too quickly and too deliberately to be falling by accident. 

Lan Wangji had thrown himself from the cliff. 

He forced his body downward, his arms held close to reduce the resistance of the wind. His forehead ribbon streamed above him, a white line reaching toward the ledge he had abandoned. There was no sword beneath his feet and no hand extending from the cliff to catch him. He had not jumped because he possessed some hidden means of carrying them both to safety. He had seen Wei Wuxian fall and followed.

Wei Wuxian reached for him before he could stop himself. The distance between them closed with terrifying speed, and then Lan Wangji struck him hard enough to drive the remaining breath from his lungs. One arm caught Wei Wuxian around the waist. The other came across his back, gathering him against Lan Wangji’s chest until there was no space left between them. Wei Wuxian clutched at his chest, stunned by the solidity of him, by the violent beat of Lan Wangji’s heart against his own, and by the absolute finality of the arms enclosing him.

“What are you doing?”

The words vanished into the wind. Lan Wangji gave no answer. His hold only tightened as he twisted them together, using the force of their descent to turn his own body beneath Wei Wuxian’s.

Understanding struck with greater force than Lan Wangji’s collision had. Wei Wuxian felt the wind flatten Lan Wangji’s robes against the back that now faced the approaching ground. Lan Wangji had arranged them so that his own body would take the impact while Wei Wuxian remained sheltered within his arms.

“Lan Zhan, no!” Wei Wuxian tried to wrench one shoulder free, desperate to reverse their positions, but Lan Wangji’s embrace gave him no leverage, “Let go of me!”

“Never.”

Wei Wuxian caught the front of Lan Wangji’s robes in both fists and pulled with all the strength left in him. Lan Wangji did not move. His arms remained locked around Wei Wuxian with a strength that seemed impossible after the injuries and blood loss he had already endured. Wei Wuxian twisted again, attempting to force his own weight beneath them, but Lan Wangji countered every frantic movement by drawing him closer. There was no hesitation in him, no instinctive struggle to save himself. He had chosen the position of their bodies with the same terrible certainty with which he had answered Wei Wuxian on the cliff.

Wei Wuxian had released Lan Wangji’s hand so that at least one of them would live. Lan Wangji had answered by making certain that, if death could not be prevented, Wei Wuxian would not meet it first or alone.

“You were supposed to stay,” Wei Wuxian tried to say, but the wind stole the words before he knew whether any sound had emerged. 

The ravine rushed upward beneath them, its darkness resolving into stone. There was no time left to argue, no spiritual energy answering Wei Wuxian’s desperate reach, and no way to break the embrace that held him. He could do nothing except grip Lan Wangji’s robes and feel the body beneath his preparing to absorb the force meant to kill them both.

The terror he had not felt for himself flooded him now. Wei Wuxian buried his face against Lan Wangji’s chest, not because he wished to hide from the impact but because he could not bear to watch it take Lan Wangji. His hands gripped Lan Wangji’s robes with the same desperation he had fought moments before, and he held on until he could no longer distinguish Lan Wangji’s heartbeat from the frantic pounding of his own.

Lan Wangji’s cheek settled against his hair. The embrace changed almost imperceptibly, losing none of its strength but gathering Wei Wuxian closer with a tenderness so profound that grief opened through him. Wei Wuxian lifted his head. Lan Wangji’s eyes had closed, his expression emptied of everything except the quiet certainty that had carried him from the cliff.

“Wei Ying.”

Wei Wuxian heard his name beneath the roar of the wind, spoken with the reverence of a final word.

Lan Wangji’s back struck, the impact coming with a crack beneath Wei Wuxian’s ear. Lan Wangji’s body jerked around him, his arms tightening hard enough to drive the remaining breath from Wei Wuxian’s lungs as his back struck something solid. The force snapped Lan Wangji’s head backward and threw them sideways, but it was not the annihilating collision Wei Wuxian had expected. There was no stone breaking bone, no final burst of pain before everything ended. Wei Wuxian heard tiles shift beneath their combined weight, their edges grinding together as one slipped free, and then they were falling again.

This fall lasted only an instant. Lan Wangji twisted around him before Wei Wuxian could understand that the world had changed, taking the ground against his shoulder and rolling with the impact until they came to rest in cool grass. Wei Wuxian remained trapped between Lan Wangji’s arms, his cheek pressed against a chest that still rose beneath him. The heartbeat under his ear was rapid and uneven, but it continued. Each beat struck against Wei Wuxian with impossible insistence.

For several breaths, he could do nothing except listen. Lan Wangji was alive. The ground beneath them was soft. Nightless City had vanished so completely that even the sounds of battle had gone with it. No swords rang against one another. No one shouted Wei Wuxian’s name as an accusation. The only noises around them were the wind moving gently through the trees, the faint scrape of disturbed roof tiles settling overhead, and Lan Wangji’s breathing as he recovered from an impact that should have shattered his body. Wei Wuxian did not understand how there could still be breath enough in either of them to make any sound at all.

Lan Wangji’s arms had not loosened. One remained locked around Wei Wuxian’s waist while the other crossed his back, the hand spread protectively between his shoulder blades. Wei Wuxian could feel every place their bodies touched, yet the blood that had soaked Lan Wangji’s robes was no longer warm against him. The fabric beneath his cheek was dry. Even its texture had changed. These were not the torn, heavy layers Lan Wangji had worn at Nightless City but clean robes that carried the faint, familiar scent of sandalwood beneath the freshness of mountain air.

Something rolled through the grass beside them. The object struck a stone with a hollow knock before coming to rest against Wei Wuxian’s elbow.

A wine jar.

Wei Wuxian stared at it without lifting his head. The pale ceramic was unbroken, its red paper seal still fixed beneath the cord tied around its neck. He knew that jar. He knew the exact curve of it, the characters printed across the seal, and the wine contained inside. Emperor’s Smile from Caiyi Town, smuggled up the mountain beneath the disapproving gaze of every rule carved into the Cloud Recesses.

That recognition was more frightening than the impossible survival of their fall. Wei Wuxian raised his head. Lan Wangji was already looking at him. For a moment, familiarity concealed what was wrong. The pale face beneath him was still Lan Wangji’s; the eyes fixed upon his still held the same fierce concentration they had carried over the cliff. Then Wei Wuxian saw the smooth skin at the corners of those eyes, the absence of weariness from his features, and the dark hair that had been restored to the disciplined arrangement Lan Wangji wore during the lectures. Only their tumble from the wall had disturbed it. Several strands lay against his cheek, but the silver ornament remained secured above his head and his forehead ribbon rested immaculate across his brow.

He was young. Not younger by a year or two, but young in the way Wei Wuxian remembered from a time when he had believed Lan Wangji’s greatest grievance against him was a broken curfew and two jars of forbidden wine.

“Lan Zhan?”

Lan Wangji’s gaze moved over his face, searching it as though he found an equal impossibility there. His arms tightened once before the tension in them eased enough for Wei Wuxian to breathe freely, “Wei Ying.”

His voice was younger too. The difference was slight, no more than the absence of years spent carrying grief in silence, but Wei Wuxian heard it. He pushed himself upright so quickly that dizziness passed through him, forcing one hand into the grass to steady himself. Lan Wangji followed him without attempting to prevent his retreat, although one hand remained at Wei Wuxian’s waist until he was certain Wei Wuxian would not fall.

Wei Wuxian looked down at himself. His robes had changed. The black fabric was clean, the red at his collar bright beneath the moonlight, and the sleeves falling around his arms belonged to clothing he had not worn since the lectures. His hands were bare of blood and younger than the hands he remembered raising against the cultivators at Nightless City. There were no fresh cuts across his palms, no bruises around the wrist Lan Wangji had gripped, and no mark where Lan Wangji’s fingers had dragged over his knuckles as Wei Wuxian tore himself free.

He touched his face. His fingertips found neither blood nor the sting of the fragment that had struck his cheek when Sandu broke the cliff. His skin was uninjured. When he dragged both hands through his hair, searching for some wound concealed beneath it, he found the familiar red ribbon still holding it in a high tail.

Lan Wangji sat up beside him. The movement should have been impossible after taking the force of their fall, but he showed no sign of the injuries Wei Wuxian had watched him sustain. His breath had steadied. The arm that had trembled while holding Wei Wuxian over the ravine moved without pain as he touched his chest and then reached cautiously behind himself. His hand passed over his back, searching beneath undamaged robes for broken bones that were not there. Wei Wuxian watched him flex the fingers that had been slick with blood only moments before. The skin was unbroken.

Another wine jar rested several paces away, half concealed in the grass. Beyond it rose a white wall roofed with curved tiles. One section had shifted where Lan Wangji’s back struck it, and a single tile lay on the ground near his shoulder, but the wall itself remained standing. Moonlight silvered the familiar stones and the trees surrounding them. Above the wall, rooftops climbed the mountainside in orderly layers, their pale surfaces undamaged and their dark beams untouched by fire.

Wei Wuxian knew this place. He knew the path hidden behind the trees, the distance from the wall to the disciples’ quarters, and the thousands of rules waiting beyond it. He knew how the mountain smelled during the night and the particular hush that settled over the Cloud Recesses after curfew. Nothing had changed since the evening when he climbed this wall with Emperor’s Smile and found the Second Jade of Lan waiting to prevent him from carrying it inside.

“No.” 

The word escaped before he knew that he meant to speak. Lan Wangji followed his stare. Wei Wuxian watched recognition move across his face as he took in the undamaged rooftops, the quiet mountain, and the moon hanging above buildings that had not yet been burned.

“The Cloud Recesses.”

“No,” Wei Wuxian pushed himself to his feet, nearly stumbling over the wine jar beside him, “it can’t be.”

The ground was real beneath his boots. Grass bent where he stepped, releasing the damp scent of earth, and the night air raised a chill across skin still expecting the heat and blood of Nightless City. Wei Wuxian turned slowly, searching for some break in the illusion. There was no ravine. No battlefield. No cliff crowded with cultivators. The Cloud Recesses surrounded him with the perfect stillness it had possessed before the Wen Sect came to Gusu and left fire in its wake.

Behind him, metal whispered against a scabbard. Wei Wuxian turned sharply. Lan Wangji had risen and drawn Bichen, holding it before him beneath the moonlight. The blade was flawless. No blood marred its edge, and there was no damage from the battle they had just left. Lan Wangji closed his eyes briefly, his expression sharpening in concentration. Pale spiritual light answered him at once, running along the sword with a strength Wei Wuxian had not seen from him at Nightless City. Lan Wangji opened his eyes and looked down at his uninjured hand, then across at Wei Wuxian.

Only then did Wei Wuxian become aware of the familiar weight at his own side. He stared at Suibian. The sight of its dark scabbard pulled him backward through years he had spent avoiding it, enduring questions about why he would not draw it and pretending that carrying a sword had become too great an inconvenience for someone of his importance. Suibian had sealed itself, becoming the physical evidence of a loss Wei Wuxian could never explain without exposing what he had done for Jiang Wanyin.

Now it rested against his hip as if it had never left him. Wei Wuxian wrapped his hand around the hilt. The familiar shape fit his palm with the ease of something that had once been part of him. He told himself that the sword would not answer. Whatever had brought them here might have recreated its appearance, but it could not restore what Wen Qing had cut from his body. He had made that choice. He had lain awake through two days of agony, feeling his golden core being removed piece by piece, and some things could not be undone merely because the Cloud Recesses stood untouched around him.

He pulled and Suibian slid free with a clear metallic note, smooth and eager beneath his hand. Spiritual energy surged along his meridians in immediate response. It came so readily that Wei Wuxian staggered, his body remembering how to direct a strength his mind had long ago learned to live without. Warmth gathered beneath his ribs and turned with steady, living power at the center of him.

His golden core.

The sword fell from his hand. Suibian struck the grass without sealing itself against him. Its blade continued to carry the faint shimmer of his spiritual energy, waiting for him to pick it up again.

“Wei Ying?”

Wei Wuxian barely heard Lan Wangji. He pressed his palm against his abdomen, although there was nothing his hand could feel from the outside. The core remained beneath it. Whole. Undamaged. Restored to the body from which it had been taken.

“My golden core.”

Lan Wangji was watching him. Wei Wuxian could feel the full weight of his attention, but he could not look away from Suibian. The core turned inside him with every breath, offering power as naturally as his lungs offered air. There had been a time when its presence meant freedom, possibility, and the certainty that Wei Wuxian could become strong enough to protect everyone he loved. Now its return brought back the smell of bitter medicine, Wen Qing’s white knuckles around the surgical instruments, and the knowledge that Jiang Wanyin would one day wake without a core of his own.

Wei Wuxian lifted his head and looked at the Cloud Recesses again. The wine jars, the unburned buildings, Lan Wangji’s young face, and Suibian’s answer could no longer be dismissed as disconnected impossibilities. He knew this night. He had crossed swords with Lan Wangji on the wall, wrapped himself around him when Lan Wangji refused to allow him inside, and used his own momentum to throw them both over the other side. Their bodies had returned to the exact moment when they should have landed in this grass together.

“We came back.”

“Mn.”

Lan Wangji’s answer held no uncertainty. Relief had begun to displace the horror in his face as he looked toward the rooftops above them. Wei Wuxian knew what he must be seeing. The Cloud Recesses still stood. Qingheng-jun was alive somewhere beyond those walls. Lan Xichen had not fled Gusu carrying the books entrusted to him. The Wen Sect had not yet brought the war to their door.

“All the way back.”

Wei Wuxian looked upon the same untouched world and found no relief waiting for him. Lotus Pier still stood because Wen Chao had not yet burned it. Uncle Jiang and Madam Yu were alive because Wen Zhuliu had not yet helped kill them. Shijie had not died in his arms because she had stepped in front of a blade meant for him, and Jin Zixuan had not yet received the blow that killed him. Wen Qing and Wen Ning were alive. Every person Wei Wuxian had lost had been returned to a world that was preparing to take them from him again.

Every one of those deaths was still waiting to happen.

The knowledge settled over the Cloud Recesses without altering anything Wei Wuxian could see. The moon remained caught above the white roofs. The trees continued moving gently in the mountain wind, and somewhere beyond the wall, thousands of rules guarded sleeping disciples who did not yet know that rules would do nothing to protect them from Wen Ruohan’s ambition. They would wake tomorrow believing the world beyond Gusu remained as it had always been. Lan Qiren would lecture them. Lan Xichen would smile with the quiet patience Wei Wuxian had once found so entertaining to test. Qingheng-jun would remain somewhere within the Cloud Recesses, in seclusion but alive.

Wei Wuxian could already smell the smoke. He could already see Lan Wangji standing before Wen Xu with one leg broken, refusing to bow despite the pain hollowing his face. Walking for miles during the indoctrination camp without pause all while knowing Qingheng-jun had been mortally wounded and having no certainty that his brother was still alive.

The night around Wei Wuxian seemed to contract. His restored core continued turning beneath the hand pressed to his abdomen, warm, strong, and hideously alive, “I can’t do it again.”

The words emerged softly, nearly lost beneath the wind, but Lan Wangji heard them, “Wei Ying.”

Wei Wuxian looked at him and found the face from the indoctrination camp imposed over the younger one before him. There was no exhaustion beneath Lan Wangji’s eyes and no careful stillness concealing the pain of a broken leg, but Wei Wuxian remembered all of it. He remembered Lan Wangji carrying losses he would not name while Wen Chao demanded obedience from him.

“I can’t go through it again. The Wens—”

He could not finish. The name opened too many doors at once. Wen Ruohan had not yet begun absorbing smaller sects under the threat of annihilation. The Wen had not forced the Lans to set fire to their own home. Wen Chao had not yet marched into Lotus Pier. Wen Zhuliu had not yet crushed Jiang Wanyin’s golden core. The Wen had not yet marched on Qinghe. They had not yet forced cultivators from each sect to act as bait for nighthunts. But they would. Because Wen Ruohan was still alive, reaching for power he believed should belong to him.

“Wei Ying—”

His gaze returned to Lan Wangji. The moonlight rested against his clean robes, turning the white fabric nearly silver. But Wei Wuxian had watched blood soak his robes after Xuanwu of Slaughter had closed its jaws around his already injured leg. Wei Wuxian had just watched those robes darken with blood at Nightless City. He had felt Lan Wangji’s injured arm tremble while holding him over the cliff and had seen Sandu descending toward the hand that refused to release him. The fact that he was uninjured brought no comfort. Wei Wuxian knew how easily the world could put every injury back.

“I can’t watch you get hurt again. I can’t watch—”

Lotus Pier burned behind his eyes. The shift was immediate and merciless. One moment he was looking at Lan Wangji beneath the undamaged walls of the Cloud Recesses; the next, he remembered the pier reduced to smoke and ruin, the familiar walkways littered with bodies wearing Yunmeng Jiang purple. He remembered the smell of blood beneath the smoke and the terrible stillness of disciples he had trained beside since childhood. Uncle Jiang and Madam Yu lay together in the ancestral hall, their hands close enough that they might have reached for one another before death. Jiang Wanyin kneeling over him in a field, grief lashing out, unaware that the Wen Sect had yet another loss to deliver him.

“Jiang Wanyin’s core.” Wei Wuxian’s hand pressed harder against his own, “He’ll have to lose it again. And my core, I’ll—”

The golden core answered the pressure with another strong pulse of spiritual energy.

He would have to give it up again. There had never been another choice. Jiang Wanyin without a golden core had ceased to be Jiang Wanyin; grief and the destruction of Lotus Pier had emptied him until even anger could no longer reach him. He would not eat. He would not speak. He would not hear Wei Wuxian promise that they could rebuild because he knew he could never lead Yunmeng Jiang without his cultivation. Wei Wuxian would have to find Wen Qing again. He would have to argue until she stopped saying it was impossible, accept the odds she gave him, and lie to Jiang Wanyin until Jiang Wanyin believed Baoshan Sanren could restore what Wen Zhuliu had destroyed. Then he would have to climb onto the table.

“Wei Ying’s core?”

Wei Wuxian did not hear him. The night air was cool, but sweat gathered beneath the hair at Wei Wuxian’s temples. His body remembered what had been done to it even though the body standing outside the Cloud Recesses had not yet endured it. He remembered the hard surface beneath his back and the restraints Wen Qing had insisted upon after he promised that he would not move. He remembered the bitter medicine that dulled nothing and Wen Qing’s hands shaking only before she made the first incision. Once she began, her hands were steady. They had needed to be steady. The golden core had to remain intact.

“Two days, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian heard the strain in his own voice but could not soften it, “I can’t survive another two days to remove my core.”

“Wei Ying—”

Something had changed in the way Lan Wangji said his name, but Wei Wuxian could no longer hold on to the present long enough to understand it. The familiar warmth beneath his ribs had become the memory of a blade, of pressure giving way to pain so vast that it swallowed the room around him. He had lain awake because there could be no anesthesia, listening to Wen Qing tell him to breathe while she cut from him the future he had once assumed would always be his. He had felt his core resist separation from the body that formed it. He had felt each connection severed and had remained still because one movement might ruin everything Jiang Wanyin needed to live.

“I was awake the entire time. Then I was defenseless when Wen Chao—”

Wen Chao had found him before his body recovered, when the absence inside him was still too new for instinct to understand. Wei Wuxian remembered the satisfaction on his face when he realized the feared first disciple of Yunmeng Jiang could no longer summon enough power to defend himself. He remembered the blows landing, Wen Chao’s voice, and Wen Zhuliu standing close enough to prevent any hope of escape. By the time they carried him to the Burial Mounds, Wei Wuxian had barely possessed the strength to lift his head. He had possessed enough strength to understand where they had taken him.

The grass beneath his boots seemed to give way. Wei Wuxian knew it remained solid, yet his body anticipated the endless fall into a place no living cultivator escaped. The mountain air became thick with rot, old blood, and resentment. The peaceful movement of the trees became the voices of the dead pressing in around him, hungry for the life Wen Chao had thrown among them. There had been no silence in the Burial Mounds. Not for an instant. Even when Wei Wuxian lost consciousness, the dead found him.

“I can’t go back to the Burial Mounds again,” the words came faster as his breathing shortened, “I can’t crawl my way out this time.”

He had survived because hatred gave him something to hold when hope could not reach him. He had torn power from resentment because there was no golden core left to answer him and no sword within reach. When he finally emerged, he had returned to a world already consumed by war. There had been no time to become the person he was before the Burial Mounds. Everyone needed what he had learned to do there, and Wei Wuxian had needed the Wens to pay.

He remembered battlefields darkened beneath clouds of resentful energy. He remembered the corpses that rose when he commanded them and the living men who understood, too late, that their dead no longer belonged to them. Each death had seemed necessary when placed against Lotus Pier, the Cloud Recesses, and every sect Wen Ruohan destroyed. Victory was supposed to end it. Instead, victory had merely changed whose killing was righteous and whose demanded punishment.

“I’m tired of killing, Lan Zhan,” the admission left him with almost no breath at all.

Faces crowded his memory without order. Jiang disciples lay dead in the home where they had grown together. Cultivators fell on the battlefields of the Sunshot Campaign, some by his command and others because he had failed to reach them in time. Jin Zixuan crumpled beneath Wen Ning’s fist. Wen Qing walked away from the Burial Mounds after returning Wei Wuxian’s hug, taking Wen Ning with her, knowing that they were going to surrender to people who intended to kill her and destroy her brother. Shijie stepped between Wei Wuxian and a sword with his name on it.

Everything inside him recoiled from the memory, searching for somewhere else to go, and found A-Yuan. A-Yuan had trusted him without reservation. He had believed Wei Wuxian’s presence meant safety even while living among the dead, with too little food and the entire cultivation world waiting for an excuse to destroy them. Wei Wuxian had promised to protect him. Then Wei Wuxian had gone to Nightless City and left him behind to die with everyone else.

“And A-Yuan. I promised he would be safe, but I couldn’t even keep him safe,” the words no longer felt as though Wei Wuxian had chosen to speak them. Once they began, he could not stop them, “And everyone will hate me. Jiang Wanyin will hate me. Worst of all, you will hate me because I can’t come back to Gusu. I’ll try so hard to save everyone, but they will all die anyway. Even you weren’t safe.”

He could see Lan Wangji bleeding over the cliff again. Lan Wangji had come for him despite everything Wei Wuxian believed stood between them, and Wei Wuxian had repaid him by placing him in the path of Jiang Wanyin’s sword. Even death had not ended the damage. Wei Wuxian had released Lan Wangji’s hand to save him and watched Lan Wangji dive after him instead.

The memory of falling merged with the mountain beneath his feet. The night tilted, leaving Wei Wuxian unable to tell whether he was standing outside the Cloud Recesses or still suspended above the ravine. He had already reached the end once. He had made the last choice left to him and accepted the silence waiting below. Now even that choice had been taken from him. He had been returned to the beginning with every wound intact inside a body that bore none of them.

“I can’t—I can’t watch that again. I won’t—”

Wei Wuxian turned without knowing where he intended to go. The Cloud Recesses rose before him, pristine and peaceful, while every path his mind offered led through fire, surgery, the Burial Mounds, and Nightless City. He took one step before something closed around him from behind and pulled him firmly backward.

Wei Wuxian’s back struck a solid chest. One of Lan Wangji’s arms crossed high over his ribs while the other settled around his waist, enclosing him so completely that Wei Wuxian could feel the shape of every breath Lan Wangji took. Lan Wangji bent over him, his face tucked against the side of Wei Wuxian’s neck. The restraint was not painful, but his body reacted before he could recognize safety in it. 

He twisted against Lan Wangji’s hold, his hands catching at the white sleeves wrapped around him as every instinct sharpened around the need to run, “Lan Zhan, let me—”

Lan Wangji’s voice caught against his skin, “Wei Ying.”

The sound stopped Wei Wuxian more effectively than strength could have. He became aware of Lan Wangji’s breath trembling against his neck and the uneven rise of the chest pressed to his back. Before Wei Wuxian could turn, something warm touched the skin below his ear and traveled slowly toward his collar.

A tear.

“Lan Zhan?”

Lan Wangji’s arms tightened around him. When he spoke, the words were quiet enough that Wei Wuxian felt them as much as heard them, “Wei Ying suffered.”

There was no accusation in the statement. Lan Wangji did not tell him that he should have trusted someone, that he should have accepted the offer to return to Gusu, or that different choices might have prevented what happened. He did not praise Wei Wuxian for enduring it. He simply held him and grieved over the fact that Wei Wuxian had suffered at all.

The enormity of that grief was unbearable. Wei Wuxian reached instinctively for the familiar shelter of levity, needing to make what Lan Wangji had heard smaller before it became something real between them.

“It sounds worse when I say it all together,” he attempted a laugh, but there was too little air behind it. “It wasn’t always terrible. There were good days. A-Yuan was there, and Wen Qing, and the others. I managed. You know me. I’m very difficult to kill.”

Lan Wangji did not loosen his embrace, “Wei Ying will not suffer in this life.”

The certainty in his voice frightened Wei Wuxian in a different way. He closed one hand around Lan Wangji’s sleeve, feeling the warmth of the uninjured arm beneath it, “You can’t promise that.”

“As long as I can stand, I will stand with Wei Ying. As long as I live, Wei Ying will not suffer as he did in our past life.”

Wei Wuxian became still. Lan Wangji could not promise that the Wens would never hurt them, that war would not come, or that they could prevent every death awaiting the people they loved. He could not remove the memories Wei Wuxian had carried into this restored body. What he offered was narrower than a life without pain and somehow more impossible: that Wei Wuxian would not be left to carry all of it alone.

The promise should not have mattered. Lan Wangji had already proven what his life meant beside Wei Wuxian’s when he threw himself from the cliff, and the memory brought back the terror of watching white robes disappear from the ledge above him.

He sighed, “It would have been better if you had let me go.”

“No.”

The answer came without even the pause of a breath.

Wei Wuxian closed his eyes, “Why? Why didn’t you let me go?”

Lan Wangji held him against the steady beat of his restored heart, “Where Wei Ying goes, I will go.”

Wei Wuxian had no answer. He could only stand within the circle of Lan Wangji’s arms and allow himself to be held while the words settled somewhere the horror had not reached. They did not restore anyone they had lost. They did not erase the future or guarantee that knowledge of it would be enough to save every person waiting inside it. They changed one thing.

When Wei Wuxian looked toward the path ahead, he no longer saw himself walking it alone.

The words between them faded into the mountain night, but his arms remained secure around Wei Wuxian’s body, one across his ribs and the other around his waist. He demanded no answer to the promise he had made and offered no further argument against the despair Wei Wuxian had laid before him. His face stayed tucked against the curve of Wei Wuxian’s neck, his breath warm where the tear had cooled against Wei Wuxian’s skin. The quiet surrounding them no longer resembled the silence waiting beneath the cliff. It contained the steady beat of Lan Wangji’s heart against Wei Wuxian’s back, the faint movement of leaves overhead, and the assurance of a body that had followed Wei Wuxian into death and somehow carried him beyond it.

Wei Wuxian did not know how long they stood that way. His breathing gradually began to follow the slower rise and fall of Lan Wangji’s chest, while the tension that had driven him to struggle ebbed from his arms. He loosened his grip on Lan Wangji’s sleeve but did not release it completely. The fabric remained gathered beneath his fingers, clean and warm over an arm that had been drenched in blood only moments before. When Wei Wuxian finally lowered his other hand, it came to rest over Lan Wangji’s forearm where it crossed his chest.

The gesture should have felt strange. In their previous life, they had touched most often in the midst of danger: Lan Wangji catching him, restraining him, carrying him, or pulling him away from some threat Wei Wuxian had been too reckless to avoid. Even kindness had arrived disguised as necessity. They had rarely possessed the time or honesty to stand quietly and allow a touch to mean whatever it meant. There had been one day when Wei Wuxian almost allowed himself to imagine otherwise.

“There was one day in Yiling.”

Lan Wangji’s hold changed subtly, not loosening but becoming less like an anchor cast around someone in danger of being swept away, “Mn.”

“Do you remember the market?” Wei Wuxian traced his thumb once across the white fabric beneath his hand. The memory returned with an ache gentler than those that preceded it, “A-Yuan grabbed your leg and called you Baba.”

“I remember.”

Of course Lan Wangji remembered. Wei Wuxian could hear it in the quiet certainty of his answer. A-Yuan had attached himself to Lan Wangji with the absolute confidence of a child who had decided that a stranger in expensive white robes must belong to him. Wei Wuxian had laughed until his stomach hurt while the people around them assumed the child clinging to Lan Wangji was his son and Wei Wuxian was the shameless acquaintance making the situation worse. For a brief afternoon, the world outside Yiling had seemed far away. There had been toys, food enough to fill A-Yuan’s stomach, and Lan Wangji seated across from Wei Wuxian as though joining them for lunch was the most natural decision he could have made.

“We ate together,” Wei Wuxian said, “you bought toys for him, even though I told you not to, and he sat between us as if that was where he belonged.”

“He belonged with Wei Ying.”

The answer tightened something inside Wei Wuxian. He looked down at the pale arm wrapped around him, remembering A-Yuan’s small hands reaching eagerly for the butterfly Lan Wangji purchased and the careful way Lan Wangji had held him later. Wei Wuxian had told himself that the warmth settling through him came only from seeing A-Yuan happy. He had learned to survive by refusing to look too closely at anything he could not afford to want.

“That wasn’t all I wanted.”

Lan Wangji became perfectly still behind him. His breath continued against Wei Wuxian’s neck, but he offered no interruption and no convenient misunderstanding behind which Wei Wuxian could hide.

Wei Wuxian turned within his arms. Lan Wangji released him only enough to permit the movement, his hands passing carefully over Wei Wuxian’s sides until they settled again at his waist. The young face before Wei Wuxian belonged to the boy who had fought him on the wall that night, but the eyes belonged to the man who had watched him fall. Nothing in them resembled rejection. Lan Wangji regarded him with the same complete attention he had given every broken confession in the spiral, waiting for Wei Wuxian to decide what he could bear to say.

“For one brief, crazed moment, I wished the world would simply stay away,” Wei Wuxian attempted a smile, but the confession had waited too long beneath too much grief to be disguised as a joke, “I wanted you to stay with us. I wanted to take A-Yuan home with you and pretend we were a family.”

Lan Wangji’s hands tightened slightly at his waist.

“I never let myself think about it afterward,” Wei Wuxian continued, “you belonged here, and I belonged in the Burial Mounds. There was no place in the world where the three of us could exist together.”

“There will be.”

The certainty of the answer struck Wei Wuxian with the same force as Lan Wangji’s promise that he would not suffer as he had before. Lan Wangji did not say that they might find such a place or that they could try to create one. He spoke as though the world would yield if it attempted to deny them again.

Wei Wuxian searched his face for some indication that he had misunderstood, “Lan Zhan, I think I loved you even then. I think some part of me loved you long before I knew enough to call it love.”

“Think?”

The quiet challenge startled a laugh from him. It emerged unevenly, still too close to the panic that had stolen his breath, but it was real. Lan Wangji watched him with unwavering seriousness, apparently unwilling to accept even this small retreat from what Wei Wuxian had admitted. He had spent years speaking around every truth that could be used to injure someone he loved. He had hidden his golden core behind jokes, concealed the Burial Mounds beneath arrogance, and transformed every attempt to help him into an argument rather than admit how little remained beneath the person everyone believed him to be. Even his love had been hidden from himself until there was no future left in which he might act upon it.

“Fine. I knew,” Wei Wuxian allowed his fingers to find the front of Lan Wangji’s robes, holding the fabric without pulling him closer or pushing him away, “I simply didn’t know that I knew.”

“And now?”

Lan Wangji’s hands remained warm at his waist. The distance between them was narrow enough that Wei Wuxian could feel each breath he took, but Lan Wangji did not close it for him.

“Now I know that I love you.”

Lan Wangji’s expression changed with painful slowness, as though the words had reached somewhere too carefully defended to open all at once. His eyes moved over Wei Wuxian’s face, searching for uncertainty, mockery, or regret. Finding none, he raised one hand and touched Wei Wuxian’s cheek. The contact was almost impossibly gentle for a hand that had held him against death with enough strength to bruise.

“I have loved Wei Ying for longer than I know how to measure.”

The confession should have shocked him. Instead, pieces of a life Wei Wuxian had misunderstood began settling into a shape that had always been waiting for him to see it. Lan Wangji had searched for him after the fall of Lotus Pier. He had worried over Wei Wuxian’s cultivation before anyone else believed there was reason to worry. He had offered Gusu not as a prison but as the only refuge he knew how to give. He had come to Yiling, sat with Wei Wuxian and A-Yuan, and remained until duty demanded he leave. At Nightless City, when the entire cultivation world turned against Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji had still reached for him. Even to the point of him following Wei Wuxian over the cliff.

“You wanted it too?” Wei Wuxian asked. The enormity of Lan Wangji’s confession made the possibility feel fragile despite everything that had already been said, “Yiling, A-Yuan—the three of us?”

“Mn,” Lan Wangji’s thumb moved once against his cheek, “our family.”

Wei Wuxian closed his eyes and leaned into the touch. For a moment, he allowed himself to imagine the life they had been denied: Lan Wangji returning with them to the Burial Mounds instead of walking away alone, A-Yuan climbing into his lap while Wei Wuxian complained that rich-gege was spoiling him, and a home held together by something stronger than Wei Wuxian’s desperation to protect it. The image hurt, but it no longer belonged exclusively to the past. A-Yuan had not yet been born in this restored world. They had time to reach him before he ever needed the Burial Mounds to become his home.

When Wei Wuxian opened his eyes, Lan Wangji was closer.

The movement stopped before their mouths met. Lan Wangji gave him every opportunity to turn away, his hand resting against Wei Wuxian’s face without guiding him forward. Wei Wuxian could feel the hesitation in the stillness between them and understood that Lan Wangji would wait as long as necessary for an answer.

Wei Wuxian gave it by closing the remaining distance.

Lan Wangji’s lips were warm and careful against his. The first touch was almost unbearably gentle, shaped by years of longing and the fear that Wei Wuxian might still withdraw what he had offered. His fingers curved along Wei Wuxian’s jaw while the hand at his waist held him without drawing him closer. Wei Wuxian felt the restraint in every point of contact, and something inside him rebelled against it. Lan Wangji had followed him from a cliff, listened to everything Wei Wuxian had never been able to tell him, and admitted to a love he had carried for longer than he could measure. Wei Wuxian did not want to be kissed as though he might break beneath the truth of it.

His grip tightened in the front of Lan Wangji’s robes, pulling him closer as Wei Wuxian pressed more firmly into the kiss. Lan Wangji inhaled sharply against his mouth. For one suspended moment, the careful pressure did not change; then Wei Wuxian caught Lan Wangji’s lower lip between his own, and the restraint holding Lan Wangji still gave way.

The kiss deepened with startling speed. Lan Wangji’s hand slid from Wei Wuxian’s cheek into his hair while the arm around his waist drew their bodies together, answering Wei Wuxian with an intensity that made the tenderness of the first touch feel less like uncertainty than the final moment of control. Wei Wuxian released Lan Wangji’s robes and wound both arms around his shoulders, one hand catching at the back of his neck. Lan Wangji followed each invitation immediately, kissing him with a hunger that had been buried too long to remain gentle once Wei Wuxian demanded more.

Neither of them seemed to notice when Lan Wangji began walking him backward. Wei Wuxian yielded each step without breaking the kiss, trusting the hand at his waist to guide him while his fingers tightened beneath the edge of Lan Wangji’s hair. The stone wall met his back with enough force to drive a breath from him. Lan Wangji swallowed the sound, pressing closer as Wei Wuxian pulled him forward again.

Wei Wuxian lifted both hands toward Lan Wangji’s face, but Lan Wangji caught his wrists before he could reach him. His fingers closed around them in a single firm grip and carried them above Wei Wuxian’s head, holding them against the wall while his other hand remained secure at Wei Wuxian’s waist. The position left Wei Wuxian enclosed between cool stone and Lan Wangji’s body, unable to follow when Lan Wangji drew back just far enough to change the angle of the kiss.

The hard surface against his back became rough bark.

The hand enclosing both wrists was no longer holding them against the Cloud Recesses wall but above his head against a tree. Wei Wuxian could almost feel the ribbon covering his eyes, shutting out the forest on Phoenix Mountain while an unseen stranger kissed him with fierce, nearly angry desperation. He remembered struggling in surprise and finding his wrists secured in a single unbreakable grip. He remembered the body pressed close enough to prevent escape and the kiss that had seemed to contain years of feeling he could not explain.

Lan Wangji was not kissing him in precisely the same way now. There was no concealment in this kiss and no resistance in Wei Wuxian’s body, every movement between them had been invited and answered. But the strength around his wrists was the same. The wall at his back, the hand at his waist, and the intensity Lan Wangji had released only after Wei Wuxian pulled him closer assembled themselves into a memory that suddenly possessed a face.

Wei Wuxian knew who had kissed him on Phoenix Mountain.

Wei Wuxian drew back. Lan Wangji released him immediately. His hand fell from Wei Wuxian’s wrists, and the sudden absence of contact nearly made Wei Wuxian reach for it.

“Wei Ying?”

“That was you. On Phoenix Mountain,” Wei Wuxian stared at him while the final uncertainty disappeared. Lan Wangji’s rigid posture did nothing to contradict the answer. If anything, the stillness confirmed it, “I was blindfolded, and someone kissed me.”

Lan Wangji did not pretend not to understand. His eyes lowered, “Wei Ying, I—”

“It was you.”

“Mn,” shame entered Lan Wangji’s face. His hands dropped completely away from Wei Wuxian, withdrawing with the same discipline that governed every other part of him, although Wei Wuxian could see the effort the movement required, “I wronged Wei Ying.”

“You did.” Wei Wuxian had wondered about that kiss for years, returning to it at the most inconvenient moments and attempting to identify a person he had never seen, “You could have saved me years of wondering.”

“I am sorry.”

The solemn misery with which Lan Wangji accepted the rebuke made laughter rise before Wei Wuxian could stop it. Lan Wangji’s expression tightened at the sound, and Wei Wuxian caught his sleeve before he could retreat farther.

“I’m not sorry, Lan Zhan. You were my first kiss,” Wei Wuxian’s laughter threatened to return when Lan Wangji looked at him sharply, “and what a kiss—”

“Wei Ying’s first?” Lan Wangji searched his face in obvious confusion, “But you said—”

“You should have known better than to believe that crock of lies, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian attempted an offended expression, although relief and affection made it impossible to sustain. “It’s only ever been you. I’m deeply offended that you thought that of me.”

Lan Wangji continued looking at him as though this revelation required a complete reexamination of information he had carried for years. Wei Wuxian could almost see him recalling every boast Wei Wuxian had ever made about pretty girls and romantic experience, weighing each one against the confession he had just received. The sight softened Wei Wuxian’s laughter. He curled his fingers into the front of Lan Wangji’s robes again and drew him close enough that the retreat between them disappeared.

“You can begin making amends by kissing me again while I’m actually allowed to see you.”

Lan Wangji’s gaze moved from his eyes to his mouth and back again, “Are you certain?”

The question carried the full weight of Phoenix Mountain. Lan Wangji would not take another kiss under concealment, confusion, or the force of feelings he had not dared to name. Whatever happened between them now would occur because Wei Wuxian saw him clearly and chose it.

“Lan Zhan, kiss me.”

The restraint in Lan Wangji’s expression broke. His hand returned to Wei Wuxian’s cheek as he leaned forward, but this time Wei Wuxian met him without surprise. The kiss deepened slowly, each shift offering Wei Wuxian the space to answer. He did so without hesitation, sliding one hand from Lan Wangji’s robes to the back of his neck and drawing him closer. Lan Wangji made a quiet sound against his mouth that sent warmth through Wei Wuxian’s restored body, startling in its intensity after so many years in which touch had meant violence, restraint, or loss.

There was desperation beneath Lan Wangji’s control. Wei Wuxian felt it in the hand trembling once at his waist and in the care with which Lan Wangji held him despite that tremor. It answered the desperation Wei Wuxian had not recognized in himself until he was given permission to hold Lan Wangji and know that neither of them was falling. He kissed Lan Wangji until the memory of the cliff receded and the body within his arms belonged entirely to the present.

When they finally separated, neither moved far. Lan Wangji rested his forehead against Wei Wuxian’s, his breath uneven between them, while Wei Wuxian kept one hand behind his neck. The pale edge of approaching dawn had begun to gather behind the trees, revealing more of the undamaged wall and the path they would soon have to take.

“We still have to do all of it again,” his words escaped more as a sigh.

Lan Wangji’s hand rose, tracing a caress down his spine, “Not as before.”

Wei Wuxian wanted to believe that their knowledge would allow them to follow the same path while simply removing every tragedy from it, but too much had depended upon accident, timing, and choices made without understanding their consequences. Saving one person might alter where another stood when danger came. Preventing one attack might cause Wen Ruohan to choose another. The future they remembered had already begun to disappear simply because Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian now stood together outside the Cloud Recesses speaking truths they had carried unshared throughout their previous lives.

“Not exactly,” Wei Wuxian said. “The moment we change something, everything that follows may change with it.”

“Then we adapt,” Lan Wangji spoke as though changing the course of history were no more complicated than altering a sword form after discovering an opponent’s defense. 

Wei Wuxian felt something inside him ease at the quiet practicality of the answer. They would make mistakes. Knowledge of the previous life would not make them omniscient, but they would no longer be making choices alone and in ignorance of the dangers surrounding them, “We have our memories.”

“Mn. And we will protect the innocent and punish evil.”

The familiar principle acquired a different meaning after everything they had survived. In their previous life, the cultivation world had claimed the authority to decide who was innocent and which actions constituted evil. This time, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji knew how easily righteousness could conceal ambition, vengeance, and fear.

His eyes searched Lan Wangji’s, “Together?”

“Together.”

The answer settled between them with the weight of a vow.

They retrieved their swords first. Wei Wuxian lifted Suibian from the grass, and the blade answered his touch with a faint pulse of spiritual energy before sliding into its scabbard. Lan Wangji gathered Bichen and inspected the displaced roof tile, ensuring that nothing would fall after they left. The wine jars remained where their younger selves had dropped them, absurdly ordinary beside everything that had changed. Lan Wangji collected both and held them out to Wei Wuxian.

Wei Wuxian looked between the two jars and Lan Wangji, “Lan Zhan. Shouldn’t you destroy them?”

“If Wei Ying wants Emperor’s Smile, Wei Ying can have Emperor’s Smile.”

Wei Wuxian took them both and tucked them securely beneath one arm, “What about the rule regarding alcohol in the Cloud Recesses?”

“Mn. I know where Wei Ying can hide them.”

Wei Wuxian laughed. It was bright and youthful, the first in a long time. The first in this lifetime. Neither of them had become young merely because their bodies were. Wei Wuxian could feel the years he had survived in every choice waiting ahead, yet the weight no longer pressed upon him with the certainty that it would eventually drive him back to the cliff. Lan Wangji moved beside him, alive and uninjured, carrying memories that would prevent Wei Wuxian from hiding the truth of what he endured.

They stopped beneath the wall. Beyond it waited the Cloud Recesses, the lectures, and a world that believed the future remained unwritten. Wei Wuxian looked at the hand resting beside Lan Wangji’s robes. He had last seen that hand bloodied and reaching after him. He remembered forcing his own fingers to remain open while Lan Wangji’s dragged across them, denying the instinct that begged him to hold on. At the time, release had seemed like the only kindness Wei Wuxian had left to offer.

He set the wine jars down long enough to place his hand in Lan Wangji’s. Lan Wangji’s fingers closed around his immediately. The grip was firm without pain, warm where Wei Wuxian remembered blood, and certain in a way that made the unknown future beyond the wall feel possible.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian looked down at their joined hands before raising his eyes to Lan Wangji’s, “don’t let me go.”

Lan Wangji held his gaze and tightened his fingers around Wei Wuxian’s.

“Mn. I will not.”