They reached the mouth of Qingshui Gorge by dusk. The river cut through ancient stone, black with moss, its waters low from drought. Old lantern poles leaned over the banks like bowed priests. Here, among the ruins of what might have once been ceremonial grounds, Ziyan found the last of Duan Rulan's marks.
A tattered ribbon of phoenix silk fluttered on a broken post. Beneath it, carved in shallow strokes, were words barely legible through mud and age.
"The truth is not in the throne. It is in the faces left to die beneath it. Let her see them, so she knows what was promised in our blood."
Ziyan's throat tightened. She traced the grooves with shaking fingers. Feiyan and Shuye flanked her, eyes wary for any sign of pursuit. Li Qiang kept watch down the river path.
But the girl stood utterly still beside the post. Her doll hung limp, forgotten. In her eyes lay something vast, sorrowful—and waiting.
They didn't wait long.
Figures emerged from the gloom, stepping across the rocks with the patience of men who already owned the ground. Black cloaks, ceremonial scarves pinned with the crimson cranes of imperial sanction. Between them walked a figure draped in simple bronze-trimmed armor, his face pale and hard, eyes glittering with cold triumph.
Grand Commandant Zhao.
He did not carry a sword. His hands rested lightly on the hilt of a staff etched with that same spiraling language that had haunted Ziyan's dreams. Behind him, monks in cracked porcelain masks began murmuring words that curdled the air.
Ziyan stepped forward, pulling the girl protectively behind her. "So you couldn't let your hounds finish it. You had to come yourself."
Zhao smiled. It was almost gentle. "Of course. This is a beginning that deserves my hand, not merely my shadow."
Feiyan drew her blade, teeth gritted. "Careful, Ziyan. He's not alone."
But Zhao merely raised a brow. "Your loyalty is commendable, girl. Though misguided. Do you even know whom you follow?"
He turned his eyes back to Ziyan. "You look like your father when he was young. So eager to please. So terrified of falling from favor. Even he learned eventually—it is better to sacrifice others than be trampled yourself."
Ziyan's hands balled into fists. "My father let me be cast out for his comfort. But at least he didn't offer villages to monsters."
Zhao laughed, a soft, rich sound that echoed along the gorge walls. "You think that makes you different? I was born the son of beggars who starved in the shadow of your gilded houses. Your nobles never even noticed. Do you know what it is to watch your mother sell her hair for rice, only to watch her die before it could boil soft?"
He stepped closer. The monks chanted louder. The air thickened, heavy with the scent of crushed herbs and copper. "I made a bargain. So what if it cost a thousand peasants? Their lives bought a new empire. They will never be remembered otherwise."
Ziyan met his gaze. "So you fed them to the dark so you'd never be hungry again."
Zhao's mouth twisted. "And you wouldn't have done the same, if it were you? If you'd been born to my dust and filth, scraping worms from rotted bark to stay alive?"
For a moment, silence stretched. Even the monks faltered.
Ziyan's voice was low, but it carried. "No. I wouldn't. Because I was cast out by people who should have loved me, forced to beg on streets paved by my own house. And still—I never thought their lives were worth more than others. Or that suffering made cruelty my right."
Zhao's eyes narrowed. "Then you are a fool."
He lifted his staff. The monks' chant rose into a fever. The girl gasped, clutching Ziyan's arm. The phoenix mark burned so bright it hurt.
Zhao's staff cracked against the ground. Power unfurled from the circle, a wave of black that churned with shapes—faces, hands, screaming mouths. It slammed toward them.
Feiyan and Li Qiang surged forward. Shuye threw daggers into the mass, but the darkness swallowed steel like water.
Ziyan pulled the girl tight. "Hold on to me."
And the girl looked up, tears tracing clean lines through the grime on her cheeks. "You're not afraid of me."
"No." Ziyan pressed her forehead to the girl's. "Because even if you were made from darkness, you've never wanted to be alone in it."
Light burst from her mark. It was not the golden fire of war banners or ancestral torches. It was softer—like dawn breaking over frost. It poured through Ziyan, into the girl. Their hands clasped, the girl's small fingers gripping with desperate strength.
The darkness slammed into them—
—and split.
A tide of pale brilliance erupted outward. For an instant, the gorge was filled with quiet voices, laughter like children at play, mothers humming over rice pots. All the stolen warmth Zhao's pact had devoured burst free. The black shapes shrieked, shredding like paper in rain.
Zhao staggered back, eyes wide. "No—! That power was bound to me!"
Ziyan's voice came calm, but it was like standing in a sunbeam that refused to end. "No. It was bound to every life you stole to feed your own fear. It only needed to remember what it was."
The monks dropped to their knees, hands over their faces. Their chants twisted into strangled wails. One by one, they collapsed.
The girl's eyes glowed—bright, tender, sorrowful. She pressed closer to Ziyan, resting her small forehead against Ziyan's chest. "Thank you," she breathed. Not in the old tongue. In the language of any frightened child.
Then the light faded, leaving only the wind and the river.
Zhao fell to his knees, staff clattering on the stones. He looked up at Ziyan, face hollow. "You… you don't understand. Without it, I am nothing. I will sink back to the mud. To where no one speaks my name."
Ziyan's voice was quiet, exhausted. "Then maybe you'll finally be like the people you used to pity. The ones you trampled so you'd never be forgotten."
His eyes filled with something dangerously close to tears. Then he bolted, stumbling into the darkness beyond the gorge, fleeing like a rat when the torch is lifted.
Li Qiang lowered his spear. "Let him run. He's smaller than any peasant now."
Shuye knelt by the girl. "Are you alright?"
She nodded, burying her face in Ziyan's sleeve. Her voice trembled. "I'm still hungry… but it doesn't hurt so much when she's here."
Ziyan wrapped her arms around her. "Then we'll stay. Until it stops hurting at all."
Above them, lantern poles still leaned over the river, tattered papers fluttering. This time they sounded almost like applause, as if the old prayers finally approved.