Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sizhui has arrived at the door of a sorcerer. Scared, but steadfast. 

However, he still can’t quite make himself go inside.

A decision should be made fast, though. For one, Sizhui has been walking most of the day at increasing elevation, and he is nearing exhaustion. These high reaches are bitter with snow and howling wind. Not to mention, there must be ghouls and demons about.

Perhaps there is never a good time to go tracking down a renegade sorcerer in the Wilds. But winter is, perhaps, the worst timing possible.

He thinks of the little riverside town below and its excitement around New Year festivities, coming up in just a few months. Decorations are already being made, cheery and bright despite the war plaguing their kingdom's border. He thinks of the scent of steaming dumplings and fragrant rice, the red paper, and the thick, woolen shawls and fleece-lined coats…

His stomach growls. His frozen toes ache, standing in the snow. Even beyond a sixteen-year-old’s limited ability to withstand such exposure… his curse poses an even more vulnerable scenario. 

And still, he stares at ‘Ghost’s’ moving castle. He’s witnessing the fruits of sorcery, here.

It’s towering and strange to someone used to the compact, earth-bound homes of human beings. It’s currently still, standing on the legs of a giant rooster, like a dragon might. Starlight blazes out here, silverishly illuminating a beautiful, meandering mess of what look like many temple towers, complete with sloping tiled eaves—but in the different sizes and heights he associates with a clump of mushrooms growing out of something dead. 

Sizhui gulps, seeing now why the orphanage monk-mages say sorcerers like Gui—Ghost—were more demon than human. 

Gui, for the demons and ghosts he is said to command. Gui for the dark magic he wields.

Mages deal in the light, harnessing the natural strengths from physical training, meditation, diet and herbs, and deeply devoted art practices—orthodox qi cultivation. 

But sorcerers… Gui’s dark magic is everything Sizhui has been taught to abhor. He’s also the only person in the world Sizhui can think of who can maybe help him…

Suddenly, the castle’s wall closest to him lets down a hatch. Wooden stairs appear, unfolding for him to use. They reveal a blood red door, illuminated by a torch that flares to life.

When Sizhui does not approach, the moving castle actually moves. Creaking and groaning, it rises—and then sets off. Those cockerel legs are walking the castle away!

Each great stomp shakes the Wilds and rattles Sizhui’s teeth. Still, he dashes forward, not wanting to lose sight of that vivid door. He can feel the curse creeping up on him—if he transforms now, he’ll die. So he sprints through the snow, despite the pangs in his transforming body. His legs are definitely growing shorter, but he’s still very fast.

“Wait!” he calls (voice high and sweet, to his dismay). “Are you letting me in? Please let me in!”

Ahead, the stairway hangs like a turtle tail behind the great magical dwelling. Each one of those dragon leg steps are fifteen of Sizhui’s. He can’t keep up—

But then the castle moves itself in a way that scoops him right up on those stairs, and the door opens inward—and he tumbles right through, sprawling on a set of recessed indoor stairs.

He’s little again. As little as he gets. So now, having landed in a strange place all alone with a lot of new bumps and bruises, he simply starts crying.

Where are my parents? he’s thinking—and he finds he can’t remember them, not at all—

“Oh hey now, who are you?” Another child, dressed all in black and gray and who seems his age, has appeared next to him. They look strange, with big eyes, one wild tuft of inky hair on top of their head, and a wide, almost toad-like face. “Are you hurt?”

He ages enough to say, “No… no I’m alright. Thank you.” He stands, feeling wobbly but relieved. It’s warm. Palming his tears and snot away, he cranes his neck to look around. 

There’s a big, dim room up beyond the stairwell, which his head only barely reaches over while standing at his current height. All he can make out are the beams of the ceiling, the shadows beyond, and the warm glow of a fire. 

He turns back to the other person—who is gone! Someone else is standing there now—an androgynous teenager around Sizhui’s true age. Somehow, Sizhui just knows this isn’t the master of the castle. Could they be an enslaved soul? They’re gaping at him with the widest, black-lined eyes. “ No way! Me too!!”

Sizhui frowns in confusion, and also hugs himself. He’s shivering mightily. “You’ve got the same one? From who?”

The other person contorts their expression in confusion—but is interrupted by a low, male voice from somewhere above. “Xuanyu. We have a guest.”

Gui, Sizhui thinks with foreboding. That voice doesn’t sound friendly.

Xuanyu jumps as if shocked, looking very abashed. “Oh, my apologies! No social skills, heh heh, I’m working on that… Please come inside, I’ll put the kettle on…”

Xuanyu dashes away, seeming very healthy for a teenager enslaved by dark magic. Sizhui follows more slowly. Tall and strong enough now that he’s confident in his curse’s remission, he climbs the polished wooden stairs, looking around what seems to be a kitchen and common area with stacks of books and big, cushy furniture. It’s surprisingly… cozy, feeling ‘lived in’ (what the monks call their rooms when they get very messy). Standing at the top, he slips off his shoes at the tiled entryway and accepts soft, fleece-lined slippers from Xuanyu. They’re mysteriously cute, for a sorcerer’s home. Where is Gui?

Once he slips them on, Sizhui gets his second taste of sorcery: Xuanyu summons two slices of crimson paper etched with spells in the air before Sizhui as if it were nothing—catches them between two bony fingers—and plants one on each of Sizhui’s slippered feet. Strange symbols mark the magical paper in shining silver. Lingfu, they're called.

The lingfu flare, then disappear: and Sizhui’s fleece warms immediately. The relief in his frozen toes is exquisite. 

Now on the wooden floorboards, he bows. “Thank you. I have barged in here uninvited.” He’s never seen lingfu magic like this… and used in such a cavalier way, just to make him more comfortable…

“Oh, it’s alright,” Xuanyu sighs, rolling their eyes and traipsing over to the kettle, swishing their escaped bangs from their eyes. “Strange things are always happening in this castle. Although we don’t often get wandering mountain boys.”

“I’m from Alpine Town below.” A huge, creaking yawn interrupts Sizhui’s words, as Xuanyu hurries past him again, leaving the water pump with a sloshing kettle for the large, handsome hearth. “I came looking for help…”

That low, serious voice sounds again. “You’re cursed.”

Sizhui has been yearning to move toward the fire, but now he freezes up. That man sounds like he’s in the room… but there’s no one else here…

“Hanguang!” Xuanyu exclaims. ‘Noble Bright One.’ Is that an exclamation sorcerer’s use? Stranger and stranger, this place is…  

Xuanyu sets down the kettle on brass grills over the fire, and looks down into the flames to speak. “How bad is it??” 

And now Sizhui sees… The flames are alive.

Golden eyes—long, slender, achingly beautiful golden eyes are blazing in the fire as if it were someone’s head. There’s the line of a mouth also, and this is even less human, lipless and rippling in the movement of the flames. 

Those elemental eyes are looking right at Sizhui, and he feels pinned in place by their power and allure. He could be compelled by them, he’s quite sure. They say Gui’s heart was stolen by a demon of some kind… 

The fire speaks again, and Sizhui shivers at the mirage-like mouth moving in the flames. “His curse could be deadly. But it is fresh.” Though he speaks the same tonal language as everyone else, his voice is just almost flat. Cold, despite his fiery nature. As if he were a distant star, neutrally observing.

Xuanyu starts pummeling Sizhui with questions that Sizhui doesn’t understand, pushing a mug of hot water in one of his hands and a piece of bread in the other. 

All of this has Sizhui reeling. Before he can think to eat or drink, he bows to both of them (hands full, it’s awkward). 

“Humbly—my name is Sizhui. I know it’s a lot to ask, and I apologize for my rudeness, but… do you have a place I could sleep tonight, in exchange for work? I’ll work hard, I promise. I must speak to Gui to learn how to break my curse, but… it’s too cold out there for a toddler, and I can’t control my cursed transformations.”

“It is too cold for any human.” Hanguang’s eyes are hard on him, and he feels a little foolish. “You will stay.”

“My deepest gratitude. I’ll do whatever tasks are needed in the castle,” Sizhui vows, bowing again to the face in the fire. 

“Sit here,” Xuanyu says, loudly pushing one of those modern sitting furniture pieces—a chair, Sizhui remembers—right up next to the stone and tile hearth, just a mere reach from the fire demon.  

A sound comes from the fire that makes Sizhui jump: Hanguang hisses, eyes narrowed at Xuanyu. “Noisy.” 

Sizhui is even more frightened than when he sat down, despite the warm relief, but Xuanyu doesn’t seem to be—they’re fussing with a curtain under the stairs, asking that otherworldly being in the hearth about mundane things like bedding and pillows…

Careful, Sizhui observes the supernatural face in the flames. Hanguang’s supervising Xuanyu, but notices him watching and looks back. Again, there is something pure and elemental to his gaze, but Sizhui gets a little flicker of something else. He’s not sure what. But his fear does recede. It’s like dropping a heavy burden he’s been carrying, once finally reaching home.

Bread and hot water rounding his stomach, warmth blanketing him… Sizhui’s focus is fading fast. An avalanche of exhaustion slams into him. He also notices that, frustratingly, he’s slipping into a younger body yet again. 

But, then… what better time to transform than now, secure and sleepy in front of the most perfect fire? Maybe he’s falling under this demon’s spell, but he feels… safe.

Embodying a three-year-old again, Sizhui curls up in the chair and swiftly falls asleep.

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Chapter Text

Sizhui wakes up to daylight and the sweet scent of woodsmoke. And warmth. He is very, very cozy. Any night without nightmares is a blessed one. Daylight strokes the cherry wood floor boards beside his face…

Ah, he lays on the ground before the hearth. In Gui’s moving castle, amongst the mountains of the Wilds. Because he’s cursed.

Someone (Xuanyu?) must have set his body down on this pallet of layered blankets. He hopes he was a toddler at the time, for their sake. The glazed blue tiles on his other side radiate heat. 

Hanguang’s hearth, he remembers, sitting up fast. Looking right, he finds himself face-to-face with the fire in its wide, grand hearth. But it looks ordinary, now. 

Could he have been a dream, Sizhui wonders, staring hard at the faceless fire, or does his magic allow him to transform and leave? 

Ah, those are mature enough thoughts. He hums, assessing his voice—yes, he’s his age. More or less, anyway. 

“Rice cake?” someone says with a full mouth.

Sizhui looks left, out over the room: Xuanyu is hunched over a dining table and eating while they paint… directly onto the table. 

“Humbly, thank you,” Sizhui responds with perfect monastic manners, slowly making his way across the most wondrous, chaotic room he’s ever seen. The walls are entirely made of shelves like a library. But instead of neatly stacked scrolls, everywhere he looks is an entirely unrelated assortment of occult and magical items, and also maybe random junk: 

Herbs, notebooks, stacks of golden coins, shards of pottery, fanged animal skulls, bolts of silks in every color, flutes crafted in every wood, thread-bound books, paint sets, brush sets, ancient scrolls with script that moves, more notebooks, sparkling jewels and crystals, crow feathers, living plants growing from chipped cups, dead plants emitting gray motes of light, stringed instruments, chisels made from bone, evilly glowing talismans in glass jars with iron lids, too many children’s rattle drums to count, strings and strings and strings of scarlet chilis and garlic—

He’s a bit dizzy when he sits down, but also, undeniably curious. He knows the monks would say this is a very, very bad place to be. Still, Sizhui’s chosen to cultivate an open mind since a young age. 

Laid on the smooth stone tabletop—which is covered all over in esoteric scripts and characters, not to mention some bizarre doodles—is a slightly dirty platter bearing slightly misshapen rice cakes, steamed in leaves. There are also mis-matched ceramic cups contrasting a handsome brass pitcher. “Xuanyu, did you make these cakes?” 

“Yep. I live off these.” They stuff another one in their cheek, not looking up from their ink brush. Today, their eyes are lined in red paint that comes to dramatic points, and they’ve chaotically layered varying shades of gray for clothes. Adding to asymmetry, they sport several brass earrings in only one lobe. Sizhui’s plain white uniform must look a stark contrast. 

Selecting a cake, he takes a chewy, hungry bite. It’s not good, but he’s famished. He pours lots of water too, downing two cups straight away. Surreptitiously checking the look of his hands, he thinks his curse must still be in remission. “Xuanyu, last night, you said ‘me too.’ Are you also cursed?”

“Um, not exactly…” they reply, looking anywhere but him.

Just then—there’s a knock at the door, from down that recessed stairway where Sizhui tumbled in last night. 

Gui? Sizhui thinks, nervous—

“Coast,” Hanguang announces, suddenly present in the flames. Sizhui’s heart races, seeing a fire demon again. Hanguang has vertical slit pupils, he realizes, like a snake or cat.

“The chores begin, then.” Xuanyu stands, then freezes, looking at Sizhui with an expression he can’t read. “Well.”

And in the next breath—they turn into a woman. 

Their features settle even prettier, into an arrangement that is very similar but slightly different, like twins might be, and they’ve aged themself to their twenties. Their dark brown hair is out of its messy bun—now hanging in cascades of long, thin, shiny braids, partially curtaining their face. 

“Oh.” Sizhui blinks, eyebrows very high (hopefully, he’s not blushing). “You’re a shapeshifter. Hey, wait—you were that little toad kid who greeted me last night!”

Across the room, there’s a crackling in the logs.

“Hanguang!” Xuanyu cries, as if betrayed. 

Sizhui feels slightly abashed, but he can’t tell if Xuanyu is actually upset or not. Sizhui suspects that that crackling was a subtle expression of humor… He may have just amused a demon. What a thought.

“‘Toad kid’… Pah.” Woman Xuanyu scrunches their lips at Sizhui. “I’m working on it! Shifting younger or older is hardest of all.” Huffy, they hurry over to the door, throwing on a rich scarlet cloak and pulling its hood up. It flows around them like blood made into silk.

As they reach up over the door's threshold with their skinny arm, Sizhui sees a glazed ceramic dial at the top of the door divided into four colors like a perfectly cut pie: green, gold, blue, and black. There’s a compass arrow fixed to the center, currently pointing to green.

Xuanyu swivels it to blue—

And the light outside the windows changes. In a mere second, it’s overcast. Did Xuanyu just enact the most sophisticated weather magic Sizhui’s ever seen, in a blink? Gui’s castle is far, far beyond what the monk mages can do!

They open the door, and Sizhui expects the Wilds outside. But it is very much not the Wilds.

Hopping down from his chair (for he has shrunk to seven or so), he races over to the top of the stairwell, gaping down as Xuanyu (in a lower, slower-paced, very womanly voice) greets a weather-grizzled man with red, chapped hands and a wide hat, breath clouding around him. 

He says, “Hello again, little sister. Has Mystic Ying finished my spell?”

That man stands on brick streets, not alpine meadows of snow… and there’s a cacophony of urban sound behind him, in briny, humid air…

Sizhui races to the window next, bare feet drumming the wood floor—and for the first time in his life, he sees the sea! Just beyond the hilly, tilting city of clay tile rooftops frosted with snow, there is an unending wall of glittering blue.

“One moment,” Xuanyu says in that affected voice, and walks up the stairs in an attempt at elegance. But their awkwardness shines through, and Sizhui finds himself grinning under his hand. 

Selecting a sachet of herbs from a cluttered shelf, Xuanyu returns to the man below. “Fare thee well, sailor.” They pass the sachet and raise their other hand in the good luck sigil. “May you avoid the warships at sea.”

Once the door closes, Sizhui leaps onto the stairwell’s brass railing, practically hanging over it in eagerness to talk to Xuanyu. “I recognize that sigil!” he cries, voice very high. They eye him as they climb the stairs, amused. He’s full of energy in his seven-year-old body. “It's Buddhist! The monks use it too!” He gasps. “Are you pretending to be a cultivation mage?”

“We’re helping people,” they sniff, settling back as a teen but staying feminine. They're still much taller than child Sizhui, but the red cloak now looks oversized on their slight frame. “And we aren’t lying. We never say we aren’t sorcerers.”

“Xuanyu, you’re still a girl,” Sizhui points out, youthfully curious and blunt.

“Oh I’m always a girl, and I’m always a boy, so I’m always both, which I guess also makes me neither, so whatever,” they sigh, rolling their eyes and shrugging so big that their many small braids slip over their shoulders. “So? Do you hate me now?”

He’s fully sixteen again, after that, now with a few inches on them. “I don’t see why I should,” he replies fairly. “I’m not so different, with this curse.”

“But I choose to change. I can look however I want.” And with that—they transform into Sizhui, eye to eye and glaring with challenge.

Sizhui blinks in surprise a few times, then smiles. “Wow. Is it fun?”

They pop right back into themselves in surprise. For the first time, they smile back. It’s surprisingly sweet, if not a little stiff. “Sometimes.”

Hanguang’s deep, resonant voice fills the room again. “Shapeshifters face mistrust and persecution.” 

Now Sizhui understands. “Oh… I’m sorry, Xuanyu. You don’t seem like a bad person.” 

Xuanyu’s cheeks are like ripe autumn apples in their blush—belying the following bravado. “You don’t know me yet, Sizhui! You don’t know what I’m capable of!”

And he swallows, suddenly remembering—he’s in a sorcerer’s castle, having this conversation with that sorcerer’s apprentice… He really doesn’t know what Xuanyu is capable of.

Just then, the threshold compass slides to black.

The windows darken in turn. As if thrust into the dead of night, the common room is lit only by Hanguang. The door flies open on its own, revealing a… void. A rippling, formless blackness, with a sound like a distant snowstorm’s roar. Sizhui shivers.

And appearing out of that void is a man in a long, flowing black cloak, its hood shielding his eyes. All Sizhui can see of his face is a pointed chin and a smile.

Sizhui is shot through with electricity. Gui! The infamous Ghost has come home. He knows it in his bones.

“Master Gui!” Xuanyu cries, expression lighting at the sight of him. They sprint to the top of the stairs, overlong scarlet cloak trailing. “Our client just paid! We can finally go grocery shopping!”

The moment Gui is through the door, it closes, and the windows beam seaside sunlight as quickly as the color compass flicks back to blue. 

Stony, Hanguang intones, “Xuanyu. Caution.” 

Coming up the stairs, Gui chuckles. “Go ahead, Xuanyu,” he says in a rich, musical voice, surprising Sizhui with its friendly timbre. “I was someplace nice, this time. My cloak is safe to touch.”

They gracelessly gather the billowing black cloak from him. “Ooh, where?”

“The Khmer Empire!” he cries, and Xuanyu squeals delightedly as Gui passes them some foreign treat from his pocket. Now Sizhui can see Gui fully: handsome in his mid-thirties, he’s a striking figure, lithe and tall in humble robes of black and red. He hasn’t stopped smiling, and certainly doesn’t look evil. 

But… this is the most powerful sorcerer in the entire kingdom. A man who resorts to twisted, dark magics. No one can practice proper cultivation magic without a heart. And they say he’s been raising the dead to terrorize the kingdom. There are 'wanted' posters for him everywhere, even in a remote place like Alpine Town. 

Sizhui finds himself staring at Gui’s chest, trying to comprehend how it could really be empty.

Gui’s battling with his boots, as if his fingers don’t work very well. “The jungles over the southern mountains have turned Hindu! They’ve got temples you wouldn’t believe. The art is incredible! And their naga weather magic? Unparalleled.” Free of his boots, he’s hurrying over to the hearth—where he actually hops up onto the stone to sit with the cinders, leaning his back against the decorative lapis tiles.

Holding his hands out toward Hanguang and scooting his socked feet as close as he can, Gui sighs so deeply, it’s as if Sizhui sees each of his muscles relax. Hanguang flares, bigger and fuller than Sizhui’s seen, and Gui “Mmmm”s in response. With the fire this size, Sizhui notices a dark, pulsing, fist-sized mass at the blue base of Hanguang. The demon seems tethered to it. Perhaps it is his source, and the wood is only fuel…

“Oh what a good fire you are…” Gui’s eyes are closed in relief, head tilted back. He has a very expressive face. Suddenly, he straightens—looking right at Sizhui, fully alert. “So where did you come from?”

Finished with hanging their cloaks (and ferally devouring their treat), Xuanyu races back up the stairs. “Hanguang let him in from the Wilds!”

“Did he, now?” Gui’s gaze slides over to the living fire. Hanguang looks back inscrutably.

Sizhui needs to speak for himself. "I—I’m here to ask for your help, Sorcerer Gui.” He stands tall, not looking away.

Brows furrowing, Gui peers at him for a moment. “Do we know each other?”

“N-no, Sorcerer Gui…”

“My my, just ‘Gui’ is fine, come now! Hmmmm…” He’s tapping a finger on his chin. “That’s a powerful curse you’re dealing with. That’s why you’ve come, isn’t it?” Sizhui nods, gulping. “Poor boy. The curse must be bad, to come all the way out here looking for me. Hah! Aging backward, wow… How did you get it? Do you perceive a pattern yet?”

Sizhui’s heart lights with hope, that Gui can read magic so well. “It doesn’t make sense… Often it happens when I’m frightened, but then, not always.” Like right now, he thinks—still sixteen, but in the presence of an infamous sorcerer.

Gui stands, and Sizhui thinks his color looks better than when he arrived. There’s more sparkle in his eyes, too, and fluid movement to him. “It’s been a while since someone had the moxie to seek me out.”

Sizhui balls his fists, then bows. “Sorcerer Gui. I may not be worthy, but please, break my curse. Whatever price, I shall pay.”

“Watch it.” For the first time, Gui sounds very serious. Sizhui rises to see he’s gone still. “You shouldn’t make such offers so freely. You don’t fully understand what you may get into.” What felt like sparkling in his eyes now feels more like lightning in ominous clouds. “You don’t know what you might be giving up.”

The willies race up Sizhui’s spine. “The thing is, all I can offer is my labor. I have no money, no land, no social standing. I’m nobody.”

I can’t even do cultivation magic anymore, with this curse. He’s worked very hard all his life, living under caretakers who were also his teachers. And overnight—it’s all gone.

“Hmmmm…” Gui peers at him curiously again, smile returning. “We’ll see about that last bit. What labor?” Sizhui explains all chores and cooking he does at the orphanage, supervised by strict monks and mages, and Gui’s brows raise. “Sounds good to me! Look around! My my, we clean all the time, yet messes seem to spawn on their own!”

“You clean once a moon cycle,” Hanguang corrects, and Xuanyu snickers behind their hand. Unruffled, their master throws his head back and laughs, hands on his hips. 

Xuanyu wears an abruptly casual look. “Master Gui,” they say sweetly, “I can help Sizhui—”

“NOPE! You need to train, slovenly apprentice.” Grinning wickedly, he leans down closer to their level—they’re scrunching their lips again, looking at the floor. “You’ve been slacking.”

“Yes, Master Gui,” they grumble, softening in acknowledgement. 

“Good.” He ruffles their hair and pushes them toward the stairway to the rest of the castle, laughing. It’s a bright sound. “If you slack off again, I’ll add more arm exercises to sword practice.”

Zapped with urgency, Xuanyu’s a blur up the staircase. “Master Gui, I’ll focus, I promise!”

“I know!” he calls back. Sighing, now he turns toward the fire.

And something in his gaze shifts. His expression doesn’t change, but rather… becomes richer. 

“Hanguang.” A purr. “You’ve let a stranger into our house. You haven’t done that in nine years.”

“Mmn.” Those eyes, set on Gui, have not yet burned this beautifully.

Just another few heartbeats go by, as they lock eyes in a meaningful silence. Then Gui hums a laugh, setting a shrewd smile on Sizhui. 

Something is suddenly piercing, in those gray, cat-like eyes. Sizhui gets the sense he’s never met someone anywhere near this brilliant and cunning in his life. “Hmm. Something is definitely up with you, Sizhui. More than just this curse.”

“How did you know my name?”

“Hanguang told me. We’re very close.” He beams down at the face in the fire—who can only withstand this a moment before looking away, sparks and cinder flying everywhere.

“Gui…” Hanguang growls.

“Hahaha! Sizhui, my first offering is this: in a curse or bargain, there are always rules. These manifest not just in obvious magic—like your transformations—but as things you can’t talk about, can’t think about, or can’t remember.”

“I can’t remember before I was three!” Sizhui says, hopeful at these dots connecting. “I never turn younger than that. I’m trying to remember something when I'm three, but can’t. Any older than that, and I can’t remember what I can’t remember.” 

Gui’s eyes widen over his smile. “Fascinating!”

This is the first time Sizhui’s curse has had any positive kind of light on it. It feels nice. Sizhui realizes that he likes Gui. He liked him right away. “That’s when the curse came, actually… I was supposed to take my vows as a cultivation mage. However, on the morning of my initiation, I had a nightmare about my past and woke up cursed. I knew I had to leave before the monks found me. So, I set out to find you. I didn’t know where else to go.”

“This next piece may not make you happy, Sizhui. But for a curse this strong, there is no quick way to fix it. The key to breaking curses is figuring out what their rules are. Those rules usually lead you to the root. Then—you can figure out how to break those rules.”

From the spark in his smile at that last bit, Sizhui suspects he very much enjoys breaking rules. 

Gui flits over to his many shelves, selecting an assortment of odd and colorful items as he explains the rest. He drops each one into a tiny, red velvet pouch, despite their impossible size in relation to it. “You’d have to commit to staying here while I figure it out—if I can. And even if I do, you may have your work cut out for you. Usually, these things are up to the cursed person to break, regardless of whether they’re teaming up with a legendary demonic practitioner—Look at this!”

Excited, Gui whirls around to brandish what looks like a rabbit skull carved out of ruby, but flickering with something inside. Awed, Sizhui accepts it—it’s cool and smooth, and surprisingly heavy, and surely the most valuable thing he’s ever handled. “Will… will this help me break my curse?” 

“Oh, hah, no, I just wanted to show it to you.” Pocketing his impossible velvet pouch, he arches one feathery brow. “Anyway—Sizhui, are you up to this task?”

Clutching the red rabbit skull, Sizhui takes a deep breath. There is a possibility that the way this place feels, the way it looks… the obvious happiness and ethics and care in these strange people, already as clear as Alpine Town’s snowmelt river… There is a dreadful possibility that all of it is an extremely complicated illusion. A glamor. They say demons and sorcerer’s can cast them, after all.

But Sizhui’s heart doesn’t believe that. And he must break his curse. “I am up to it.” He bows again. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet! Who knows? I may not figure out your curse for fifty years. Or ever!”

“Still, it’s generous of you to try, and house me. I’ll do my best, too.”

Gui is almost at the wooden stairway where Xuanyu disappeared, when he looks back to Sizhui one more time. “Well. Show me what you can do, kid.” He winks. “Welcome to our castle.” 

Then he sweeps away up the stairs, fast and light on his feet. Hanguang is watching him go.

As Sizhui sets the jewel skull back on the shelf, shrinking to a younger age, he realizes… the entire time Gui was here, he didn’t transform once.

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For the rest of the day, Sizhui works hard. Judging by the state of the castle, he suspects that neither Gui nor Xuanyu actually know how to clean. Each task contains its own skills, after all. 

But cleaning is a form of meditation, one Sizhui has always taken to. He stays teenaged almost the entire time, only shrinking to about ten once when he encounters a horrendously large, colorful spider in the kitchen cupboard. Xuanyu suddenly appears at his elbow, begging him not to kill the creature: shapeshifter traps spider in a jar, then scurries away up the stairs, holding it close and murmuring things to it. 

Sizhui smiles, endeared. Most people would condemn this place as evil… and then turn around and kill the spider simply for existing. 

By lunch time, he’s swept and mopped the common room, the stairwell and landing, and the first flight of stairs leading into the castle. Encroaching deeper made him nervous… but curious. All he could see of the second story was rows of dark doors in red walls; a long, lush green rug; dim, buttery lanterns; and a painted ceiling. Like the common room hearth’s tiles, the artist chose a spectrum of blues. It swirls with stars, moons, and a sinuous, luminous dragon. 

Tired but satisfied, Sizhui tries to make lunch. Cooking on a fire demon seems wrong for a number of reasons, and he shrinks to age six in uncertainty. But Hanguang reassures him with a few words, transforming into low, blue-hot flames under the wok. Sizhui sets his shoulders, growing tall enough to work. Xuanyu’s excitement over a fresh, nutritious meal flares Sizhui’s heart.

Then he tackles the rest of the stairway, which branches and climbs in seemingly impossible directions. Each of the many floors contain yet more doors and painted ceilings, in new aesthetics. Xuanyu explains that the rooms are all for experiments or training. The fifth story's hall has wild-eyed demons painted floor-to-ceiling, very ominous qi, and just one door at the very end, painted black. Turning smaller by the heartbeat, Sizhui hurried past this floor.

By the end of the day, it’s all he can do to plop down in a chair by the common room fire, resting his aching muscles. Outside, the seaside town’s sunset bleeds blood orange over sloping hills. A great spiked serpent breaches not far from shore. Despite that front room view, Sizhui had quite a shock earlier dumping mop water out a window, to discover the freezing, roaring wind of another steep mountainscape. Portal door and front window aside, the castle still roams the Wilds with them inside.

Xuanyu finally emerges, dragging their feet down the stairs—they’ve been going between floors all day with talismans, weaponry, scrolls, and musical instruments. Gui came home to be a training master for a while, and Xuanyu is still looking bedraggled from that. 

They pull up a chair next to Sizhui to collapse, flopping their feet onto Hanguang’s hearth. “I did it all.”

“Me too.”

“You got the whole stairway? Nice.”

Feet also chilly, Sizhui surreptitiously presses them against the warm tiles below—

“Hearth is acceptable,” Hanguang says, flat. He does not sound inviting.

Slightly nervous—but not wanting to turn down someone’s hospitality—Sizhui puts up his feet. And then sighs. 

“Isn’t that the best?” Xuanyu murmurs, eyes closed and sagging in their chair. “Hanguang is too good to us.”

Sizhui puzzles, consistently surprised. Hanguang really doesn’t seem evil either. There’s a strict, monk-like voice inside reminding him to stay vigilant. But even after just one night and one day inside Gui’s castle, the voice sounds ever less like his own.

Just then, Gui reappears to drop off Seaside City street food for supper, with much cheering from Xuanyu—but he does not eat. He soars off into blackness again. For the entire dinner, Hanguang stares wordlessly at the door.

As Sizhui finishes cleaning up, he says, “Good night, Hanguang. Thank you for keeping us warm today. Is… something the matter with Gui? Is it about his missing heart?”

Hanguang’s golden eyes finally swivel away from the door—to glare powerfully at him. It feels like a zap of electricity. The demon doesn’t say a word.

Xuanyu is pulling on Sizhui’s elbow. “Ummm... Come upstairs a second?”

They stop in the dim hallway, Xuanyu nervous. “Any room with a fireplace, he can potentially hear you—I've always wondered about the lanterns, too—anyway—Sizhui, Hanguang can’t speak about ‘matters of the heart,’” they whisper, big eyes flitting from the glowing stairwell to Sizhui again. “It’s a condition of the curse. Master Gui’s is that he forgets we exist.”

“What??”

“He always remembers later! It’s not that he doesn’t care! It just… happens sometimes. Anyway, neither of them can speak about the nature of their curse, and Gui can’t even hear you if you try to ask, so don’t bother.”

“How terrible…” He also looks down at Hanguang’s flickering orange-gold light on the stairs. Hanguang… the source of this curse. “Are some fire demons good and others bad?” 

Xuanyu shrugs. “Hanguang is a person. So, what do you think?” And they walk away, slipping into their room down the hall. Sizhui glimpses a sliver of purplish, ghostly glow through their doorway before it clicks shut. 

As Sizhui lies down to sleep on his servant’s pallet, tucked under the castle stairway… he realizes the answer to his seemingly simple question is not so simple at all.

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It’s almost dawn when Wei Wuxian finally returns to his wandering castle of bricked chimneys and stacked temple towers.

He’s not returning from a place of horror—not tonight—so no intensive purification needed. Just rinsing and warming up, after using sorcery to portal himself to the most distant place he’s searched yet. It was a clean, hilly river city several oceans away, a diverse metropolis with over 150,000 people, teeming with animist magics so different and yet so similar. Cahokia, they called it. 

It was incredible, and the people were wonderful, and their magics were amazing… but the trip was a failure. Yet again. For he returns alone. His empty chest feels like ice. 

He knows he can only do this for so much longer.

The common room fireplace is currently just a fire, with no golden eyes in its flames. Of course, that fire is always connected to the powerful demon who resides here. Every fire in the house, even lit wicks and lanterns, are made of him. Wielded by him. 

Wei Wuxian always loved fire, ever since he was a child. It was the first natural magic that came to him, in fact.

He never knew he would be unrequitedly in love with it, though. 

Still—much like playing too close and getting burned—it’s such a wondrous, magnetic thing, he can’t seem to stop, despite the sting. Using dark magic, being heartless? Well, that makes it impossible to stay away for long, anyway. His fingertips have been numb for an hour.

Wei Wuxian traipses upstairs, tired and aching. He gazes up at the starfire dragon he lovingly painted across the ceiling ten years ago, his sore, freezing feet padding gratefully on the soft rug. It’s thick and green enough to remind him of moss. He wonders if there are divine moss demons too, and what their titles are like. Are they as grand as ‘Hanguang?’ 

Pondering things like cursed bargains and the titles and true names of spirits has been his pastime for over a decade, now.

Here in his own lands, there are divine Shenjing, earthly Yaojing, and many more—and across the world, he’s found the Djinn, the Sidhe, the Nunnehi, the Nymph, the Abatwa. There are countless more he’ll never know, for they are everywhere. Each being is as distinct as their lands and peoples. But, as with all magic, there are certain similarities. 

All of these fey folk contain great, mysterious power. They can take a life as easily as save it. Only they are required to reveal their names in bargains, for it’s only with their name that you can control them. Likewise, if one of them knows a human’s name, they can easily compel that human.

Wei Wuxian steps into his cluttered, cozy, beautiful bedroom, walls covered in his murals and spells and crystals and floating jars of witch fire. It’s the one place in this castle that’s his and his demon’s alone. 

He looks toward his bedroom’s hearth. “Lan Zhan.”

Lan Zhan appears right away, with a flare of indigo blue. “Wei Ying.”

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Chapter Text

One week after agreeing to live in a castle of demonic magic, Sizhui wakes very small. For a moment, he’s not sure how old he is, where he is, or why he’s there.

At least he still hasn’t been having nightmares. He’s just a little disoriented, is all.

He’s lying in an alcove beneath a stairway, with just enough space for a sleeping pallet on the wooden floor. Everything is wood-paneled. He sees the emerald green curtain that shelters his sleeping area from a bright space, and sees some boxes stacked against the wall beyond his little feet. He sees the colorful quilts over him in several layers of cotton, with bright hues and strange, foreign patterns… 

Tamil, he remembers—Hanguang told him—and he remembers where he is. His fear melts away; he watches his legs grow longer and stronger.

Peeling back the curtain to the warm common room, he first spies the great sorcerer Gui, who he’s barely seen this past week. Gui’s dozing on the warming stones of Hanguang’s hearth, most likely having just returned from another night of portal travel. He’s under a pink knit blanket patterned with rabbits, eyes closed. Hanguang burns next to him, looking out over the room as if in meditation.

Across the room, Xuanyu is eating at the dining table while they tinker with that puzzling geometric item. Gui brought it from some foreign place, and they haven’t put it down in days. It’s made with cultivation magic; Xuanyu can perform that as well as sorcery. Unlike Gui, who is cursed. 

Sizhui has also lost what Gui has. He misses elemental magic, and music magic especially. He misses being a student, as Xuanyu is. It’s all he’s ever known. 

He bows in greeting to Hanguang, who stares back with his golden eyes, unreadable. Beside him, Gui looks peaceful but ashen. 

How long can someone live without a heart? Sizhui wonders—or, maybe, worries. 

Speaking and moving softly, he uses the washroom upstairs, pours himself water from the warm kettle by Hanguang’s grate, and joins Xuanyu. They’ve set out the leftovers Sizhui packed in the Wilds’ snow last night. 

They’re also looking different… “Oh. Xuanyu—is this your boy shape?” 

As in the feminine, they’ve adapted their own proportions rather than change into someone else. Hair in a high ponytail like Gui, they also wear their outer robe open as Gui sometimes does, showcasing their flat chest. 

Xuanyu absently tugs at a wispy hint of facial hair on their chin, focused on their tinkering. “You don’t even have one of these, mountain boy.”

Sizhui laughs, helping himself to some food. “Maybe I will someday. It looks like you’ll have a nice beard. And your hair is…” Well. It’s the exact texture, length, and color of Gui’s. It’s especially obvious, styled the same way.

Black-lined eyes flash up. “What about it?” They square their wider-than-usual shoulders.

Sizhui does his best not to giggle. “It looks nice.”

After eating, Sizhui sits on the window bench to meditate in the winter sun; Gui sighs in his dozing state, adjusting his legs. Xuanyu tinkers away, and Hanguang’s fire crackles. Sizhui has experienced a few chaotic mornings here, as the live-in cleaning boy—much hurrying about to finish spells or herbal mixes, with Mystic Ying’s door receiving multiple visitors before noon… and once, ominous scratches and rattling at the Wilds’ door, which Hanguang fiercely defended with fire (Sizhui heard horrible screeches outside). 

But most mornings were just like this… peaceful, warm, content. And today, Gui is here, too—

Disrupting this very suddenly, Xuanyu sits bolt upright, clattering the table. “My nose is clear!”

Mostly-asleep Gui twitches on the hearth. “Mmf?” Sizhui is also bewildered—is this something to do with Xuanyu’s shape? 

Xuanyu sniffs deeply, twice. Now the shapeshifter bangs a fist on the table (making Gui yelp). “Headaches! I haven’t had a headache all week… My sinuses are cured!!” They touch their cheeks and nose, bewildered. “What’s going on??”

“Air quality.” Hanguang is flaring white on the edges. Sizhui gets the sense that Hanguang’s fire crackles, flares, and changes color with his emotions, and has been paying close attention to try to decode it. “Less dust and mold.”

Now, Sizhui feels proud. As a cursed person, he may not always be reliable physically, nor can he use cultivation magic. But it seems he’s still powerful in meaningful ways. 

After a full week of work, he’s cleaned this place top to bottom. Not just with broom, mop, and cloth, but even a creepy invention of Gui’s. It uses trapped egui—‘hungry ghosts’—to suck up debris from fabrics and crevices. A small brazier with a soldered lid and long handle, it’s angled so one can stand and walk while passing the ghoulish chamber over surfaces.

“It’s just an excess of yin energies, really. Inward pull to the extreme!” Gui explained. When Sizhui was reluctant to touch it, Gui shook it around wantonly to prove its safety. “Don’t worry, this thing is solid iron—no ghost or fey can escape that—and these seals here can only be broken with my blood.” He winked at Sizhui’s aghast reaction, cheerfully shoving it in his hands before hurrying off to train Xuanyu in some cryptic art.

At first, Sizhui was nervous to wield it—the egui inside kept moaning, and left spectral illusions of drool wherever he used the thing—but once he got the hang of it, he revitalized all the rugs, ceilings, and furniture. The drool helpfully marked his progress. Now, the common room couch and cushy chairs no longer send up clouds when one sits on them. 

Hence Xuanyu’s cleared sinuses. They stare at Sizhui across the dining table with dawning understanding. Then, they dash over to hug him, jumping up and down, ponytail bouncing. “Sizhui! I thought that was just my lot in life! Thank you!!”

“I’m happy for you… But no need to thank me…” he manages to grunt through Xuanyu’s squeezing. This is sweet, but uncomfortably very much not like the monastery orphanage. Xuanyu smells nice, too.

Gui is making a sleepy smile at Sizhui. “Wow, kid. You’ve worked so hard already. I hate to say it, but I still haven’t cracked your curse. It’s hard when I can’t see you transform.” 

“Significant,” Hanguang interjects, and Gui looks at him. Sizhui thinks the word sounded like it took great effort to say…

There’s a loud, rhythmic rap on the door. Hanguang announces, “Capitol.”

Gui rolls his eyes, trickling wispy black vapors over his blanket with graceful fingers that turns it—and everything beneath it—invisible. “Rich people.” Fugitive that he is, he pulls the blanket over his head, tucks up his feet, and disappears.

“I knew she’d come today,” Xuanyu murmurs, eyes on the door as they grow taller and broader. More facial hair shoots out of their chin into a sharp, short beard just as Sizhui predicted, and their cheekbones define. At the bottom of the stairwell, they select not their scarlet cloak, but a gray over-jacket with red flame patterns. 

It reminds Sizhui of something. More curious about the portal, though, Sizhui hurries to the window. The sweet metallic click of the changing compass makes the Wilds outside blur—then reveals the royal city. 

Growing up in a mountain town, Sizhui thought Seaside City was big. But these buildings jut five, six, seven stories into the sky with gold-glazed tiles, and all the snow has been swept away to reveal wide, finely bricked streets. Even on this one lane, there are so many people and horse-drawn carts… Sizhui would probably be three again, if not for Gui’s presence in the room. 

“Wizard Wuxian” is painted over their shop, here. At the door, Xuanyu greets a moon-faced girl in fine, Northern-style silk and fur. She’s asking after a protection talisman, which Xuanyu hands to her in exchange for a much larger bag of coins than the ones they receive in Seaside City. 

Not long after the door is closed to the loud capitol streets, a sound like an echoing wind chime fills the room. Sizhui looks for its source, confused—Gui pulls a twirling, shining garnet from his pocket. His feathery brows furrow.

Tiredness evaporating, he hops to his feet. “Off I go. You all be good.”

Xuanyu pouts at the top of the stairwell (looking especially childish, doing this in a thirties-aged shape). “Master Gui, you just got back—”

“Hanguang,” he says as if he didn’t hear, “please make sure our cursed guest doesn’t work too hard while I’m gone, hm?” He grins at Sizhui, right before his face disappears down into the stairwell.

“Mmn,” Hanguang hums. With what little Sizhui knows of demon bargains… he wonders if Hanguang must do as Gui says.

Gui flies into the frightening black portal again, and the door slams shut. He leaves often, often returning with art, artifacts, or tales from yet another of the world’s mystic havens or magical cloisters. Sizhui’s realized that the strangeness of the castle is often just foreignness—Gui’s taste is global. Xuanyu says he’s always traveled like this in the three years Xuanyu has lived here, in the pursuit of new magics.

But then, there are the other times he comes home. 

Sleeping under the stairs as he does, Sizhui sometimes overhears Gui returning late, late at night, speaking low with Hanguang at the hearth. He typically can’t make out their words… but once, he hears Gui say, “This war is terrible. They’ve tried using magic to shield their palaces, but the destruction falls on civilians instead. No matter what, I won’t just stand by.”

Heart thundering, Sizhui’d lain in silence. He still doesn’t know what to make of that. 

But he has enough on his hands, mastering his curse to tackle this sorcerous living space. Sizhui’s next target in the castle: organizing.

When Xuanyu hears this, they look terrified. “Save my room for last okay?!” they squeak, sprinting up the stairs. 

Sizhui starts with the kitchen, achieving an orderly gleam from which he can cook more easily. Many more creeping creatures are encountered than he would like. Hanguang points him to protective gloves.

After tackling the bathroom for an afternoon (deep-cleaning that, last week, had been the steepest challenge in the castle), he spends many hours of many days in the common room. Soon, half the floor-to-ceiling shelves have been wiped down, polished, and set up again with Gui’s collections. The items are re-grouped by color, while all the magic shops’ papers, herbs, and mineral powders are organized by type. He hopes this isn’t too disruptive.

It turns out Xuanyu wasn’t self-conscious about a mess, but rather the menagerie they’re keeping in their room. Stretching on every conceivable surface like the common room, it’s composed of all the special tiny creatures they’ve found living in the castle. Everywhere are vibrant vivariums that steam and crawl with fey bugs, reptiles, amphibians, and rodents. Each enclosure is lit with Xuanyu’s soft, purple-white witch fire.

“Making their homes is my favorite way to practice transformational sorcery, and I practice cultivation magic to purify and bind their cages,” they say, tugging on their sleeve. They’re watching Sizhui’s reaction with the kind of eyes he associates with begging puppies. “Sizhui, I know they're not pretty or cute, but all of these creatures are very healthy, I promise, and some of them even have friends now… and I swear they can’t get out and bite or sting like when they were loose in the castle, so it’s not a safety issue or anything…”

He’s awed. “This is incredible.” Sizhui spies the colorful spider from his first day cleaning—now in a glass space as large as a cabinet, spinning a glittering web of hexagons and sigils.

Xuanyu cracks a rare smile. Paired with those puppy eyes, it’s hard not to smile back. “They keep me company. And I think they have magic of their own, from living in this castle.”

“Do you have a favorite creature?”

“Oh! Well! So many! But…” Their eyes land affectionately on one wall—jars dangling with sparkling chrysalises, and vivariums for amphibians in every stage of life. “I love the shapeshifters most of all.”

Generally, the castle organizing goes well, though it takes several weeks to complete. Winter rages hard in the Wilds mountains, and Seaside City and Golden Capitol are blanketed in pretty snow on and off. Once the common room is finally finished, both Gui and Xuanyu seem less scatter-brained, and Hanguang states positive facts about the benefits of organized spaces whenever it comes up. 

Two months into Sizhui’s stay, though, and there’s still no luck on his curse… except that he seems to be transforming less often, and still somehow never transforms around Gui. Who asks him to focus on finding a pattern, which he still can’t. 

So much is still a mystery. But on that second full moon in Gui’s castle… Sizhui does finally get to learn more about the demon that lives here.

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Chapter Text

“Gui, Hanguang… is it alright if I ask more about demons? I haven’t learned much.”

“And what you learned was probably wrong,” Gui chirps cheerfully from his shelves. He’s just emerged from a long bath, which he always takes after travel. Pink-cheeked and wearing his wavy, wet hair down to dry, he’s reorienting himself to Sizhui’s organization. “Ah, I love the way you grouped these treasures! It’s like discovering them all over again!”

“There are many demons, and many kinds of us,” Hanguang says. “I am not merely a fire demon. I am of smokeless flame.”

Gui smiles over his shoulder at the teens, eyes alight. “Hanguang is Shenjing.”

Sizhui gasps, fighting the urge to prostrate himself before the fire. Shenjing are beings of legend—divine spirits, made of heaven essences, and wielding great, great power. The intensity of Hanguang’s golden eyes and the enormity of the magic wrapped up in this castle now make more sense.

“As for learning more about them,” Gui chuckles, “you’re about to get more information in an evening than I got in years, because I’m here to tell you. It took me ages to get Hanguang to tell me these things. Well, who knows if all Shenjing are as taciturn as this one—”

“We speak the truth,” is all Hanguang says. He’s looking at Gui intently, meaningfully.

“Yes, my darling fire, I know.” He feeds him another log as if in pacification—then leans toward the kids, conspiratorial. “Sometimes, I lie,” he stage whispers. “He doesn’t like that.” Hanguang frowns deeply, crackling and hissing.

Sometimes? Sizhui thinks, biting back a chuckle. Gui has two professional aliases, for starters. But for some reason… he gets the sense that disapproval is not what Hanguang is trying to get across. He couldn’t begin to guess why, though—nor would he dare try to speak for a Shenjing.

“My my, where to begin…” Gui sighs, sitting on the fireplace and crossing his legs on the hearth. “Encountering them is a very rare thing. It used to be that humans revered Shenjing, even worshiped them. But they’ve grown even rarer than they were in ancient times. Someday soon enough, I bet, they’ll be gone from our world completely. I imagine magic will die then, too.”

Sizhui gulps. Magic… dying? He can’t imagine such a world. “I thought they were immortal. As old as stars.”

Xuanyu looks suspicious, leaning back in their chair. “Hanguang, does that mean you’re, oh, say, actually really really really old? Are we just babies to you??”

Hanguang responds, “Misleading. While heavenly, we are purely essences, not conscious. I have only had a name for thirty-six years.”

“So,” Gui says, drawing designs in the hearth’s ash with one long finger, “Hanguang is my age, if we compare things properly. They’re immortals up in the heavens, zooming around like comets. But down here, they’re mortal with earthly bodies. It’s become very dangerous for them, in the world of men.”

“Why?” Sizhui asks.

Xuanyu scoffs. “Oh skies, nobody taught you anything about the real world—humans’ve gotten too good at hunting them. Just like they have with shapeshifters and yao and heavenly beasts, and everyone else magical. It’s probably why we’re at war—there are more fey beings over there than here, and this kingdom wants them.”

To Sizhui’s bewildered horror, Gui explains, “Shenjing’s earthly bodies have magical properties—their tears, their teeth, their hair, you name it. Some rich freaks imprison them to extract their essences, even though you’ll get cursed for such a heinous thing. Others just chop them up and select cuts for the black market as cure-alls. Their true forms are especially potent.”

Hanguang says nothing, but his flames are red—as dark and cool as he gets.

Gui also has a dark edge to him, gazing at Hanguang. “That’s part of why we keep this castle on the move, you know. It’s not only because I’m a fugitive. I will never let anyone get their hands on this Shenjing.”

Hanguang’s glare softens, looking up at him, and he flares white and blue.

Questions race through Sizhui. What happened when Hanguang came down? Why is he trapped as a fire? He formulates a way to ask without triggering the curse. Maybe he can figure out what happened to them. What happened to Gui’s heart. “How do Shenjing form earthly bodies?”

Hanguang answers, “We consume this world’s qi and its flesh to transform into our true forms as heavenly beasts. From there, our human form reveals itself. Once fully acclimated to this world, we are human or beast at will.”

“You can shapeshift?” Xuanyu whispers.

Hanguang’s gaze swivels to them, and Sizhui would swear it’s warm. Caring. “Mmn.”

Sizhui is still stuck on one bit. “This world’s… flesh?”

“Anything of the earth. Vital essences and organic matter.”

Gui snorts. “What our benevolent Shenjing finds too distasteful to say is: it could be a rock, it could be a tree, it could be a tiger—or it could be a human.”

“I would have consumed plants. Eating humans—” His voice cuts off. Finally, he continues, “That is for monsters. Not Shenjing. Plants only.” Now, he glares at Sizhui and Xuanyu, fierce. “Not all Shenjing follow this principle, and our ways are very different from yours. Avoid my kind. Take utmost caution if one ever finds you.”

“Yes, Hanguang,” the kids chorus. Their gazes shoot toward each other in a flash, spooked and thrilled.

Xuanyu turns back to the adults, scrunching their lips a little. “Why haven’t we seen Hanguang’s ‘true form?’”

“Hanguang didn’t get a chance to properly transform, so he had to bind his essence to something—to find an earthly house, just like our spirits are housed in our bodies. An essence is not a body, right? Hence being smokeless. Smoke is made of earth, don’t forget. When Hanguang arrived…”

They’re approaching the curse, in this line of talk… Sizhui can see Gui working his jaw and throat, trying to say more, but unable to.

Finally, he continues, “He could have possessed me, or just killed me—taken my body and lived more fully. But we came to an arrangement together. I wanted to do it, too.”

So it was mutual, then—Hanguang isn’t a heart-stealer. Sizhui is glad to know this. Still awed, he muses, “A smokeless flame…”

Hanguang looks to him, and his fire flares a rich indigo blue—his true color, maybe. “Pure yang. My essence. You have many elemental essences. Until I transform, I have one.”

Sizhui’s mind expands rapidly. And he realizes then that living here, in this strange place… at turns frightening, at turns delightful and wondrous… he could have another teacher. One with elemental wisdom unlike anyone he’s ever met, or likely will ever meet again.

After there’s silence for a long enough moment, Gui smiles lovingly down at his fire. “That’s the most you’ve said in some time, Hanguang.”

The fire demon looks like he’s trying to speak, with how much his mouth ripples. “Children,” he finally manages.

Gui beams. “You softie.” He waves his hand around in the fire too fast to burn, and Hanguang’s face is buffeted around a bit. It was like ruffling someone’s hair. Hanguang looks up at Gui with a sort of… fond irritation, in the way he’s smoldering.

“Now that I know more about Hanguang,” Sizhui says, turning to his new human friend, “How did you come to be here, Xuanyu?” Are you an orphan like me?

“I was studying to be a mage,” they say, “but then my shapeshifting powers showed up when I turned twelve. To protect themselves, my family made everyone think I was crazy and publicly kicked me out.” Xuanyu’s typically emotive face is very closed, as if bored.

“Hmph.” Gui is back rifling around in his shelves, wielding a hard kind of smile. “Bigots. Bullies. They can go to hell.”

Xuanyu blushes with pleasure, at this defense on their behalf. “Master Gui, I finished my independent study project, if you have a minute…”

It’s a pyramid of magnetic stone that can fit in one’s palm, with what look like little open doors all around its bottom edge. Shiny, dark, somewhat pretty yet somewhat foreboding. “It’s a live bug-catcher,” they explain.

Gui’s eyes light on the contraption like a cat’s on rustling grass. “Show me!”

Demonstrating its hardiness, Xunayu casually tosses it over. Gui’s impressed by this, too. After just a moment of inspection, turning it this way and that, Gui grins at Xuanyu. “This is ingenious! Where’d you get the idea?”

After some discussion of sorcerous theories that are beyond Sizhui’s comprehension (Xuanyu explaining, Gui exclaiming), Xuanyu looks more shy about it. “And well, you know… Sizhui doesn’t like killing things, but there are so many bugs around the castle… and I have my menagerie to feed. So why not?”

Touched, Sizhui beams at them. Xuanyu promptly studies the ceiling. The texture and style of their hair goes haywire for a moment.

Gui laughs delightedly at this interaction. He sets the invention on the hearth for Hanguang to inspect too. “Xuanyu, you’ve invented something perfect for a nonviolent monastery—using sorcery! Hahaha, oh, I love it!! Good work so far, apprentice. Let’s try it and see what happens.”

Their late night snack is rice pudding Gui made: a foreign style stewed in milk, sugar, rose, and green cardamom. Cardamom is something like lemon, something like honey, something like pine… Sizhui feels his suppressed curse fluttering inside him, trying to turn young at his wonder and joy. Hanguang likes the spice's essence, too—as Gui paces around the room deciphering an esoteric map, chattering here and there, he's tossing handfuls of cardamom into the fire whenever he passes by. Each time, Hanguang closes his eyes as his flames eat them to ash. The common room smells heavenly. Sizhui doubts, though, that Hanguang has any sense of smell or taste.

After, Gui is outside for time alone, playing flute in the snow and starlight. The kids watch and listen from the window.

Hanguang is looking toward the door. “Xuanyu. Sizhui. Call me should the need arise.” And he disappears.

Sizhui’s eyes must be very wide, because Xuanyu says, “Don’t worry, he’s never gone. I don’t think he can leave. The castle will stay protected.” They shrug. “He’s probably up in the highest chimney, staring around. Sometimes he just likes to do that.”

After Gui comes back in, he's had a breakthrough on his esoteric map. He flies into the void portal, and the teens bid each other goodnight at the bottom of the stairway.

Sizhui smiles. “Thanks for sharing earlier. I would feel alone here without someone my age, and you’ve been so friendly to me.”

Theirs is a crooked smile. Like it’s rusty. “I don’t like to talk about it much. Gui is the same way—oh, I still don’t know what happened, but there was some huge thing leading up to the curse… Anyway, he hasn’t forced me to talk, just accepts me as I am, so I do the same for him.”

“It must have been hard. I won’t ask more, I promise.”

“Ever since Master Gui took me in, I’ve been safe, and happy, too.” Suddenly, they’re fierce. “Sizhui, don’t believe all those things people say about him. Master Gui is good.”

His own instincts would agree. But Xuanyu is not always truthful, and there is so much happening around him he does not understand or has received explanations for. Sizhui is not sure what to think or decide.

Instead of deciding, he’s inspired to put what the monks say about truth and equanimity into practice. He finds himself imagining how Hanguang approaches every situation, too. Sizhui is no Shenjing… but Hanguang seems to live those principles, not just lecture about their importance. Judging people as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ was never Sizhui’s chosen way to operate, but these days—in this castle—it really doesn’t feel right anymore.

Sizhui could use a warm bath before bed, and Hanguang has been heating water for him and Xuanyu for a while now. Sizhui loves bathing here: Gui invented a chamber where the hot water falls like rain.

But before he enjoys this, he stops by the hearth with a question. Hanguang has returned.

“Hanguang—or, oh—may I address you as Hanguang, or is there something else you prefer?”

Hanguang blinks once. It feels like a nod of assent. “That is the only name by which you may call me.”

“Hanguang… Tonight, I realized how privileged I am to be in your presence. I’ve studied all my life and don’t want to stop.” He bows. “I would be honored if you would teach me more while I’m here.”

The demon’s golden eyes fly wide, and his fire roars bigger. Those vertical slit pupils are thin as lines. Sizhui’s not sure if he’s seeing surprise or anger.

But now, Hanguang gentles. A faint smile actually appears in the fire. “We start tomorrow.”

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Chapter Text

When Wei Ying returns wreathed in demonic mists and shadow, head hanging, Lan Wangji strains toward him from the hearth. “Wei Ying.”

A living cloak of black feathers shrouds Wei Ying’s humanity. It seems all he can do to just climb the stairs. His feet are still a great crow’s, marring Sizhui’s mopping with dropped black feathers and clawed footprints of blood. Lan Wangji vaporizes the blood to ash as Wei Ying leaves it behind, but the demonic feathers disintegrate on their own.

Wei Ying slumps onto the hearth, thudding back against the hot tiles and groaning, neck arced back. His beautiful face is patterned with feathers, too. With great strain, he transforms back into the man Lan Wangji loves more than life itself.

Lan Wangji’s emotions are a maelstrom inside. He wants to say how much he hates to see Wei Ying suffer. How he loves him for his principles, but knows one man can’t stop a war. How whenever Wei Ying goes beyond Lan Zhan’s protection and into that hellscape alone, every passing second feels like water leaking onto his hearth.

But all of these things… they pertain to the heart. 

“You smell terrible,” is all Lan Zhan can say. It is true.

“Hah. You hate dark magic so much,” he grumbles, unable to open his eyes and rise from the hearth yet. “But I did raise a whole army from the dead, tonight… I’ll be alright, Lan Zhan.”

No you won’t. He watches Wei Ying rub his sore body, watches him breathe in the aroma of woodsmoke. How Lan Wangji wishes he could access these animal senses. He’s never had a body, aside from the container of Wei Ying’s heart. Their heart, for over a decade now.

He watches Wei Ying drink water and wipe his soft, shining lips.

“My own kind attacked me today. Hack mages and sorcerers who turned themselves into monsters for the Emperor… Those poor mages,” Wei Ying’s sighing. “They’ll never be able to turn back into humans. After the war, they’ll forget they ever were.”

Tragic, Lan Zhan wishes he could say, empathizing from his own place of ill-fitting transformation. And loss. And the perversion of magic into mass death. He wills it into his eyes, but Wei Ying is avoiding his gaze.

A fact he can state is this: “Sorcery in your condition always has a price. Soon, you won’t be able to turn back—”

“Could I have a bath, please, Lan Zhan?” he whispers. Using his name, and looking right at him. 

Wielding a Shenjing’s true name, Wei Ying could compel Lan Zhan to do whatever Wei Ying wants. He could make it an order. 

In thirteen years, he’s never done so once. Even for the boon granted by their bargain, he asked.

Their heart flutters inside Lan Wangji’s flames. He quirks one brow at his ‘master.’ “Perhaps you shouldn’t shower before you go. Shower upon return.” 

“But isn’t one always returning from the last outing, in a way?” he grins. The sound of the water heater flares to life, and he chuckles, heading for the stairs. “Thank you, Lan Zhan.”

No need to thank me, Lan Zhan wishes he could say. I do this for you with pleasure. I infuse my energy into water for you eagerly, only wishing I could truly touch you. I am yours, far beyond the scope of this curse. I have fallen for the essence of you time and time and again, and the details of you too, and I will do so for eternity…

He watches Wei Ying tiredly amble over to Sizhui’s sleeping place, pulling back the curtain to check on him. Lan Zhan wonders when Sizhui will accept a real bedroom from them. Or, rather, if.

From his logs and brass grate, Lan Zhan can see teen Sizhui sleeping, but remembers his three-year-old face with its soft cheeks and perfect, tiny nose. 

A-Yuan, he thinks—wishing that dear boy could hear him. Wishing he could say his name out loud. You must hurry and remember. We don’t have much time.

As Wei Ying climbs the stairs with heavy steps, Lan Zhan can see a demon's winged shadow on the wall in the place of a man’s.

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Later that night, Lan Wangji is moving the castle over some rocky, uneven terrain when he senses Wei Ying return to his bedroom after many hours of research in one of his experimental rooms. Through the fire, Lan Wangji hears, “Hey Lan Zhan.”

Lan Wangji travels to their fireplace in a blink. "Wei Ying."

They begin their usual bedtime ritual, in which Wei Ying sits on the hearth to brush out and dry his alluring mane, chattering about his day. He’s traveled a good deal of the world at this point, learning and finding many things—though never what he’s actually searching for.

And because of the curse, Lan Wangji can’t tell him where to look. Even though he has always known. The target of this search is very much a matter of the heart.

He’d thought that this bargain’s condition would only pertain to the physical, actual heart binding them together. But it ended up meaning far, far more than that. Lan Wangji is truly a curse upon Wei Ying, even without malintent. 

Neither of them had other options, that night.

Humans often say that the fey folk cannot be trusted, for there are tricks in their bargains. Everything they say is true, but it may imply or omit that which the human bargainer cannot yet comprehend until the consequences are upon them. Their ethics are not the same as humans’.

Lan Wangji is not deceptive in nature. And he never expected to be a victim of his own magic. He simply hadn’t understood, then, what it was to have a heart. 

Once—before he was Lan Zhan, Lan Wangji, Hanguang Shenjing—he could not speak at all. He was not even a him, for that matter. And now that he’s on Earth, there are still endless things he cannot say.

It wasn’t supposed to go this way. 

Had he been able to land and transform, he would not have had to bind himself to someone’s flesh to survive. He would not have initiated a curse. 

He will always remember that night as clearly as if it were yesterday. As clearly as he can picture the details of his beloved’s face:

Lan Wangji had someone to protect that night, and it was almost too late. At only twenty-two years sentient, he had no choice but to descend and enter the world of mortals for good.

The planet’s atmosphere was incredible, and horrifying.

Rocketing closer in the direction of his charge, he saw a vast, wet landscape, one made of nothing but pools of water and muddy grasses around them. He was still a raw and sinuous smokeless flame, and abjectly terrified. His essence could not endure landing here. 

His blue reflection was lighting up the pools below like a mirror of impending doom—

It was hard not to burn the young mage who caught him with gray eyes worried and hands outstretched freely, but the mortal’s fire magic helped Lan Wangji dance in his palms without incinerating him alive. 

And, the inner spirit he sensed, upon landing, gentled his flames far from burning. It would go against his nature to burn a person like this.

This young man gazing at him in anguished wonder was also… beautiful. Almost as beautiful as one of Lan Wangji’s own kind, but with a charming asymmetry and vividness that Lan Wangji had not perceived while observing humans from high above. 

He was so beautiful. Despite the fresh marks of battle on his face. “Who are you?”

The stars whispered to Lan Wangji in warning. “You may call me Hanguang. I am Shenjing.” 

“Skies…” Something desperate appeared in that beautiful face. One that harkened to the desperation Lan Wangji was also feeling, as a guardian. “I hate to do this to you right now, Lord Hanguang, I’m so sorry—but I must ask a boon of you.”

In response, Lan Wangji spoke ancestral words of power and truth, words he’d never heard nor learned yet rose in him like instinct. “Do that, and strike a bargain. You shall know my true name. You shall wield a Shenjing’s power. In return, I shall have your heart and make a home of it forever. There will be conditions we are both compelled to obey. Will you hear them?”

“I’m not asking for power,” he’d said, shocking him—

Distracting Lan Wangji from this memory, Wei Ying undresses for bed. 

So lovely. He is just as lovely as he was when they met—perhaps even moreso. He slides his house robe’s sash and silk away to his loose undershirt and pants, endearing on his lithe frame. He shakes out his wavy, silky hair, sighing. He will go to sleep chastely, without a lover or self-pleasure. He has never brought either into this room, for thirteen years. 

Lan Wangji suspects the bath is where Wei Ying cares for himself—the one place in the castle Hanguang cannot follow. Their heart will be languid at the start of the bath… then start to speed up… then thunder, before easing to calmer than the start. This sometimes happens while Wei Ying is away, too, so Hanguang jealously resigns himself to the possibility that Wei Ying takes lovers abroad. He could be touching himself at those times as well, of course… 

Regardless, Lan Wangji does not blame him. He and Wei Ying aren’t lovers. They can’t even touch. Lan Wangji can’t even say that he wants to. His beloved sorcerer is now thirty-five, and still goes asleep alone every night except for the demon watching from his fireplace. 

Wei Ying sighs, looking at the bed a moment before smiling at Lan Wangji. “Hammock again.” 

Strung right beside Lan Wangji, there is a hammock with pillows and blankets and a stuffed rabbit for cuddling. Wei Ying has a soft, sprawling bed covered in many patterns of red and purple quilts, but he only uses it during the doldrums of summer. Most nights, he seems to crave falling asleep as close to Lan Zhan as he can. At first, it was out of necessity: from the transformational shock of living with his heart outside his body, getting to know a cursed life, and reeling from what happened in Yiling.

But still… even with how hard things were between them, sometimes, in those first years bound together… every night, Wei Ying would lie down next to Lan Wangji, saying, “Good night, Lan Zhan.” 

And as time went on? Especially in recent years? Wei Ying seems to look forward to curling up next to him in that little hammock. He says that it’s not just for warmth. He says that it’s because he loves Lan Wangji, genuinely and truly, as his companion in life. His “cultivation partner of sorts.”

Well. Lan Wangji knows that man is capable of immense platonic love, despite great odds. How far that love extends into Wei Ying’s body, however, is another matter… For if Lan Wangji could leave this hearth to touch and pleasure Wei Ying’s body, he would do it in a heartbeat.

And, also… Lan Wangji has never known if he enchanted Wei Ying to love him. He simply cannot be sure, given the nature of their bargain and his own powers. He can compel humans, and he literally holds Wei Ying’s heart in his flames.

Curled up in the hammock, Wei Ying murmurs to his demon, “So tired from this last battle.” He sounds it.

“You need sleep,” Lan Zhan manages to say, because it is an objective thing. Still, even this was hard to get out, for Lan Wangji wants him to feel better in a very not objective way.

He watches his man’s eyes flutter closed. Watches his face soften, his hands curl close to his chin. He senses their heart slowing.

“Goodnight, Wei Ying.” 

Unable to sleep in this form, he carries them over the cold mountains unceasingly through the night, far from where anyone can touch them.

The memory of that monster shadow on the stairs follows him still, no matter how far he walks.

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Chapter Text

Sizhui wakes up from dozing off on a cushy couch while reading his new study materials, assigned by Hanguang—and for a split second, he’s fearful of a monk’s whack for slacking off. Napping instead of studying or working? He’s never done such a thing.

But then… with a gorgeous, purple-pink view outside the windows, he remembers… it’s evening in the Wilds. A heartily crackling fire roars nearby.

I’m free, he thinks—surprising himself. He’d been very dedicated to the monk mage path, he thought…

“Sizhui.” Hanguang’s voice. “They’re outside.”

Sizhui steps out—sunset showcases a snowball fight on a cliff in the middle of the wildest mountain range in their world. They’re the only humans for hundreds of miles, overlooking the most spectacular view of Sizhui’s life. Gui is gleefully pelting Xuanyu with one snowball after the other, and Xuanyu is shifting longer in leg or smaller in size to dodge and run.

Once Sizhui joins up with Xuanyu, though, the fight is more even, and a lot of fun. Hanguang watches them all cavort from a high chimney, and when Gui flirts with him, all the chimneys shoot sparks at once. 

Sizhui is smiling so big, his face is growing sore. His belly too, from laughing. He’s never played with such abandon, not even as a little kid. 

Soon, darkness reigns over the peaks in amethyst and indigo and black. Too cold and hungry to continue, the snow-crusted trio traipses inside, legs like jelly. They change into dry, soft wools, then Sizhui sets to work on dinner (alongside Gui!), while Xuanyu makes tea. Gui’s apprentice is cramming in a few more studious minutes with an iridescent scroll, eyes never leaving it as they tend the kettle and cups. 

They don’t join in Gui and Sizhui’s chat about cooking and farming. Which is well enough, as Sizhui hasn’t had a chance for a one-on-one chat with Gui yet, and he's enjoying it. But every now and again, Xuanyu will say something random in an entirely different voice: sounding like a burly man one moment, or doll-like the next. After each time it happens, their own crackling fifteen-year-old voice growls and groans with angst.

Gui chuckles. “Ah, youth!” He winks at Sizhui, chopping green onions. “That’s shapeshifter puberty: acquiring the skills to create other voices, often bursting out in very strange ways. It used to happen all the time, when they first got here.”

“Ugh, Master Gui! Don’t talk about it!”

“Why not? It’s happening! Haha!” Dumping his massive pile of scallion, ginger, and garlic in the sauce pot, he grins over his shoulder at his apprentice. “Would you rather him think you were just doing that for fun?”

Xuanyu’s cheeks are very red, and they hide their face behind their scroll. “MAYBE, you don’t know…”

Gui and Sizhui smile at each with shared affection for Xuanyu, before they focus on the ingredients again. Sizhui’s coming to love this little tiled kitchen, built just to the other side of the fireplace from where he sleeps. It’s like his and Hanguang’s own corner of the castle.

Gui laughs suddenly. “Ah Sizhui, you have such impeccable manners. You must find this castle insane!”

“I like how frank people are here,” he replies, pulling noodles. “It’s refreshing.” 

Soon, they heave the pot over onto Hanguang’s large cooking grates. Understandably, Hanguang does not like to be under pots of water. So, kettles and soups and noodle pots are set up to the side, and he extends his fire like a snake of blue flame to the cooking station—stemming from that dark, fist-sized mass cloaked in indigo fire. Sizhui only sometimes glimpses it. It seems to be some sort of living coal…

Orderly, blue-hot cooking flames coalesce under their pots. Aromas of vegetables and fresh noodles have Sizhui’s stomach growling in no time. They eat at the painted, doodled-upon table. Then, Gui plays flute on the hearth, warming up (still cold from being outside two hours ago), while the teens study together on the great couch. All the humans sip tea, while the Shenjing keeps refills warm.

Gui suddenly lowers his flute. “Oh, Sizhui! I finally found something that might help you with your curse.” 

Xuanyu looks up with shocked eyes. “Master Gui! Where were you?” they ask, moving to kneel beside him. Sizhui perches at the front of the hearth. Gui had been gone for almost two days, before this snowball fight.

Gui stretches greatly—making a very cute sound for a dark sorcerer. “Isauria! A faraway land at the other end of our Silk Road. I met up with a demon I know over there. A kind who breaks into your dreams, and can curse you that way.”

This statement lodges itself in Sizhui’s heart, shooting cold roots through his body.

Gui chuckles. “Dear cleaning boy, don’t let your face look like that, or you’ll never win a sweetheart! I’ve confirmed that’s not what happened to you.” He winks at Sizhui’s obvious relief. “This Isauria demon and I have an arrangement, allowing us to be allies—to an extent. Our values overlap enough that we help each other learn more about the other’s kind. I’ve learned that dream curses don’t fit Sizhui’s situation.”

Xuanyu is rocking side to side in their chair, intensely curious. “A dream demon… What does she look like?”

“Incredible.” Gui wears a rueful smile, and Hanguang’s fire hisses. “She looks like the most intriguing, fey kind of beauty you’ve ever seen. It takes intense willpower not to immediately lay down and sleep next to her—to see what she promises to show you.”

“A bargain with a psychic succubus.” Hanguang’s rippling fire mouth is sneering. “Reckless. She really gave you no trouble, Gui?”

“Oh she tried! She always tries, hah. And I always escape.” 

Hanguang shrinks to almost nothing but coals, glaring balefully at Gui. The teens make quick eye contact, biting back smiles.

Gui laughs. “Oh, my good Lord Hanguang, I’m sorry to parley with evil! I did it for Sizhui! It’s no big deal. Enough about her—she’s not the thing I discovered. Let me find it…”

He starts digging around in his sleeves, his many pockets, and his impossibly stuffed pouches. “Isaurians have amazing magics, and such gorgeous art! I visited a mystic enclave perched over this sprawling olive valley… There was a battle at my approach, but I convinced them to let me in peaceably. No one was too bruised up, haha!”

All these places… always on the move… Sizhui gets the sense that Gui’s searching for something, and these adventures and treasures are the silver linings of coming home without his true pursuit. Sizhui also gets the sense that Gui has never surrendered. To anyone. Gui is friendly and joyful at the surface—but when it comes to it, he is immovable. It’s intimidating, but it makes Sizhui feel very safe. He is under Gui’s protection, after all.

“What are ‘olives?’” Xuanyu asks, slurping more tea.

“Sacred trees with oily fruit! They live thousands of years and have light green leaves that shine silver-blue. In the roots of that valley’s olive trees, their mystics found this.”

He pulls an impossibly delicate piece of silver-blue paper from his sleeve, written up with glittering silver ink. Could it be made of olive leaves? Holding his hand over the strange, foreign script, he forms a sigil with his hands—and the script shines scarlet. Gui then says in their own language:

Time and Love are both circles 

Be nothing and everything to cross the fabric of time and sea of space

Find a fellowship, and sail into the light with them

To meet in the plain between right and wrong,

Past and Future should be regarded as one

Hanguang had closed his eyes to listen, as if bathing in something good. His fire roars large, rippling and blue-tinged. “A true teaching, from other folk of smokeless flame.”

Xuanyu’s eyes are wide. “Are they Shenjing??” 

Hanguang considers before answering. “Cousins.”

“Nothing and everything…” Sizhui muses. The plain between right and wrong. Much of the poem reminds him of what he’s learned. Even things he’s personally experienced, deep in meditation—time merging with space, self with surroundings. Past, and future. Mages use meditation as a powerful tool for cultivating and architecting magic.

Gui is tapping his foot on the stone, energized. “Sizhui, when I read this, my instincts just screamed your name. And my instincts are usually good. I’m suspecting your curse has something to do with time. Something to do with what happened before that point you can’t remember. And maybe a future it's keeping you from.”

Xuanyu adds, “Hanguang says the reason shifting farther away from my true age is hardest… is because time magic is the hardest magic of all.”

“Mmn,” the Shenjing confirms.

Hardest of all… Sizhui had a nightmare about his past right before he woke up cursed. Could he actually be seeing into the past, with those horrible dreams? He hasn’t forgotten Gui’s cryptic statements when they met, either, about Sizhui containing more than meets the eye. If he wasn’t cursed by a demon… then it would have to have been a sorcerer.

Gui is gazing softly at his fire. After some time, he says, “Many Muslim lands have a kind of demon called ‘qarin.’ Star guardians, spirit selves—born inside you the moment you take your first breath.”

Xuanyu makes a face. “Oh well, that’s kind of creepy. But I guess it also sounds less lonely.”

Sizhui is very moved by that idea. It doesn’t feel creepy at all, somehow reminding him of the gentle dragon he used to think about as a child. This dragon felt like a protector, in his dreams. Sizhui would often imagine the dragon as he’d lay on his cot struggling to sleep, and it would soothe him. He’d wished he had that dragon as a spiritual companion so badly that eventually, he had to stop thinking about him. Wishes can begin to hurt.

Gui adds a log to his fire. “A qarin is very different from my bond with Hanguang. Still, our powers can fuse, and we know when the other is in trouble. I can talk to him in his head, too, and sometimes, he even answers in mine.”

“I do not have a head,” Hanguang corrects. Gui sticks out his tongue at him. 

Sizhui has often puzzled over the nature of their bond. “Is that why you still have such powerful fire magic, Gui, even cursed?”

“Yes, I wield Hanguang’s, not my own—but I was born that way! You should have seen it!”

“That must be true…” Xuanyu mutters, rolling their eyes. “Who else would go chasing after a fire demon…?” 

Gui laughs and laughs. And Sizhui finds himself thinking that he could spend as many nights like this as there are stars in the sky, and he would be very happy.

He counts his blessings, to be here. He counts them like the first raindrops after a long, long drought. 

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Some time that night, Sizhui wakes to the sound of someone sniffling. The bath water heater is also on full flare; he knows its sound in the wall.

Carefully, and very small, he peels back the curtain between where he sleeps and the common room. Positioned as he is, Hanguang’s great hearth is the first thing he sees—specifically, its blue tiles marching up the wall, flickering with firelight. 

The green curtain peels back more reveals a faceless fire—Hanguang is not here—and, leaning against the tiles in his usual place after portal travel, is Gui. Weeping as quietly as he can.

Upon seeing him, Sizhui’s curse immediately slips into remission. “Gui…” he says, risking it because Gui seems very alone right now. His skin is streaked with soot or ash. 

“Ah… Sorry for waking you, kid.” He calms his crying, but he does not look ashamed.

Crossing slowly around the wide half moon of the hearth, Sizhui feels a nervous thrill to approach Gui now. Overarching that, however, is concern. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, well… There’s a war going on.” He hangs his head and squeezes his eyes shut.

Sizhui sits on the hearth, heavily. That really is all that needs to be said. “I’ve been lucky enough not to see it yet.”

Gui palms his last tear away, sitting up with his arms and legs crossed on the hearth. Regarding him. “Were you born in Alpine Town?” he asks softly.

They’ve never discussed each other’s pasts. Xuanyu made it clear early on that Gui does not enjoy it. “I don’t know.”

“Is that your curse talking?”

“Actually, I’ve never been able to remember anything before a certain age.” I don’t know my parents’ names. Or my own. 

“Hm. There’s about a year of my childhood I can’t really remember either.” Sizhui’s expression makes Gui chuckle. “Yes, me too. I lived alone on the streets for a bit when I was five… ah, I think I was five, I can’t say for sure. Anyway, I have memories of it, but they’re buried very deep. Sometimes they come out unexpectedly. This war, actually… Well.”

Now that Sizhui has left the orphanage, he realizes how very privileged the security and beauty of his childhood was. The monks were strict, but the world is something else entirely. 

A slight smile teases Gui’s face. “I’m glad the war hasn’t found Alpine Town yet, and that this wilderness is peaceful, still.”

But you’re not at peace. Worry uncurls in his chest. You’re portaling to the battles, aren’t you? “Where’s Hanguang?”

“Ah, elsewhere in the castle. We needed to put some distance between the castle and where we were earlier, and he can’t focus if I’m crying.”

Sizhui nods, remembering the sound of the water heater. “He seems like he cares a lot.”

Perhaps this was the wrong thing to say—Gui looks shocked, then starts crying again. Sizhui grimaces, reaching out a hand as if he could pull the words back in his mouth.

But Gui quickly masters his tears, saying, “You see him, Sizhui. You really do.” His expression phases wry. “It’s not always easy.”

And Sizhui wishes he could put into words how intuitive Hanguang has felt to him, and Gui too. He’s not sure how two people can be so mysterious, and yet also feel as if they’ve been known to Sizhui all his life. 

All he can say is, “It’s an honor, Gui. As is to be sitting here, right now.”

Gui lets out a watery laugh, getting to his feet with what seems like great strain. “Ahhhhhh, Sizhui, you really are too good for this world. I have to bathe now, and the water should be hot.” 

He ambles in a slow, ungainly way, as if sore in his very bones. But he ruffles Sizhui’s hair as he passes with an icy hand—it’s the first time he’s been so familiar, and it gives the boy great joy. “Sleep well and have good dreams, alright?”

“Yes, Gui,” he responds dutifully—eliciting another chuckle, from the shadow climbing the stairs. 

Did his shadow look strange, just then? No… no, surely Sizhui is just tired…

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A robed person in a windy nighttime field of mirrors, with long, flowing grasses studded amongst them. 

The mirrors are pools of water. This place is a valley of crystal clear pools, reflecting a fiery starscape above. The landscape is dark blues, dark purples, dark greens, all shadowed in black. The stars and their reflections are intensely bright.

Just beyond this otherworldly landscape, there is the red glow of a great, horrible fire. Not something natural, no—a tragedy. The swirling wind carries screams.

The person has their back to Sizhui, and is looking at the fire. They have long, unbound hair, and dark robes, and there is a bundle at their feet. Sizhui cannot see what it is, but knows that it is a precious treasure. 

And in the dream, Sizhui is moving closer and closer to that someone…

Someone whose wild hair flows and whips around them in the great wind, whose dark, sweeping robes are as majestic as they are cavalier. Someone whose hands seep black mists. Beyond them, rounded mountains frame the valley like waves.

Who are you? Sizhui yearns to know. 

And that person whirls around to look straight at him—their fierce frown is terrifying, with eyes of scarlet hellfire—above them, the sky flares blue, growing piercingly bright—

Sizhui wakes with a gasp, sitting straight up and breathing hard. He’s small, but just old enough to keep track of what’s going on. He learned young how to self-soothe from nightmares. They are not a symptom of the curse. They have been with him as long as he can remember. 

After padding over to the water pump past a faceless fire, he wishes the drink could be warm. He is always chilled to the bone, after nightmares about that landscape of stars and pools. And if nothing else, warm water would be soothing for his quaking limbs and quivering gut. But… he wouldn’t bother Hanguang, who always seems to spend the night elsewhere—

“Sizhui?” The fire demon has appeared as if summoned, tone calm. Really, his very presence is calming. Sizhui can’t say why, exactly. Perhaps it’s the primal comfort of a fire, and… and, perhaps, it’s Hanguang’s measured way of looking at life. His evenness, despite the raging inferno he’s made of. His… gentleness in wielding great power.

“I’m sorry to trouble you, Hanguang. It was only a nightmare.”

“Only?” Those golden eyes call on Sizhui to be truthful. Hanguang has never compelled Sizhui (he couldn’t if he wanted to, since ‘Sizhui’ is not his true name). But Hanguang has given him tiny tastes of the feeling. This is a way he communicates without speaking. 

“I… The thing is, I feel like I’ve had it before, and like it's important. But it’s alright, really I can go back to sleep now. I’m just fine.” Belying his words, Sizhui shrinks and shrinks as he speaks. Until he's three, looking up at Haguang with big eyes.

Hanguang is silent for a moment. Then he says, “Fetch the kettle. Warm water is better for your body.”

Glowing, Sizhui grows just big enough to do so, then pulls up a chair too. Hanguang stays present in the fire, flickering under the base of the kettle to ask more, or share teachings. 

Sizhui starts around the age of five or so, but steadily, surely grows back to sixteen over the course of an hour. It almost feels… like his curse was stretching his childhood across this experience, covering the years of his life. Giving a coating to each age he lived alone with his nightmares.

By the time Sizhui lays back down to sleep, his jitters are gone and his bones are warm. Still, he leaves the curtain open. He wants to see Hanguang as he falls asleep.

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The children are asleep, and dawn is not far off. It’s just Wei Wuxian and his demon, when Lan Zhan returns to Wei Wuxian’s hearth from tending to Sihzui. Wei Wuxian's reclining on the end of his bed, facing the hearth and chatting.

Or, trying to. 

The distance between them doesn't always bother Wei Wuxian, but after earlier… After an evening of, just, staying home, staying for dinner and spending time with the kids like that, and getting to be near Lan Zhan the whole time, too… He’s feeling things. Things are coming unearthed. 

I want to be close to you, he thinks, yearning in Lan Zhan’s direction. Physically sharing my heart is not enough for me, I’m so greedy, but please… share your heart with me, too.

“We met when we were so young,” Wei Wuxian purrs. Voice low. “What were you thinking, that night?”

Lan Zhan says nothing back. He doesn’t even smile.

Wei Wuxian gets up, moves away to fiddle with some crystals and crow bones. “Ah, sorry for bringing it up, it’s so insensitive of me to keep pushing. I know you don’t like to talk about things like this.”

”Wei Ying…” he manages to say, voice low and crackling. He seems so angry. 

But while the rejection does sting, really, Wei Wuxian can’t bear it for Hanguang’s sake. This is Wei Wuxian’s love—this is who his love is—and Wei Wuxian can’t accept him as such. How horrible. 

“I’m sorry, my divine, beautiful Lord Hanguang—let me make it up to you, hm? Our hearth is looking bad. This naughty sorcerer should have gotten to it sooner. How about…” He flutters his eyelashes, coy. “A deep clean?”

Lan Zhan huffs out his nose, closing his eyes… and a subtle smile curves his mouth. 

Wei Wuxian gets buckets and brooms and brushes. He gets pine soap. He gets sandalwood oil. Chattering as he goes, he cleans and then polishes Lan Zhan’s beautiful fireplace, from blue tiles to brass tools and grate—their private hearth. The one place where the two of them are always entirely alone.

To deep clean, he must pick up and move Lan Zhan. Handling his own heart has gotten to be easy enough (the first few years were rough). Each time, he reaches into the smokeless flame of Lan Zhan’s essence to scoop up their heart, as a shrunk-tiny Lan Zhan looks up at him trustingly. Lan Zhan does not burn him, and even if he wanted to, his flames would do nothing but burn away Wei Wuxian’s clothes, given their bargain.

Wei Wuxian once had a dream that Lan Zhan did just that. Burned all this clothes away. He awoke close to orgasm, and immediately scrambled out the door and to the bathroom. There, he is in range of no hearth. 

The fireplace and its brass tools are now gleaming and aromatic. Its blue tiles flicker in the blue-lit dim—for Lan Zhan has been in Wei Wuxian’s palm for a few minutes now, with no wood to eat. Hanguang is his raw, essential self: a beautiful indigo flame flickering with white. If Lan Zhan weren’t in his hand, he’d be extinguished without fuel, and Wei Wuxian would die too. But against Wei Wuxian’s skin, an exchange of qi occurs without even trying. Their heart beats slow and steady, at home in this dedicated time for just the two of them.

Now, to stoke their wood fire again, Wei Wuxian gets to do something he loves. He raises Lan Zhan close and gently blows onto him, raising his flames. Lan Zhan feeds him warmth and light; he feeds Lan Zhan air and qi. 

Their heart accelerates.

Wei Wuxian sets him gently beneath the grate’s dry, fragrant logs, and a warm light and comforting crackle returns to the room. He blows again and again, with slow, deep breaths. Each time, Lan Zhan closes his eyes to breathe him in. Swelling with roar and crackle and heat.

Once this ritual is gone, they gaze at one another a moment.

Desire spikes in Wei Wuxian’s body. “Lan Zhan—a bath?”

Those fey eyes smolder. The newly lit logs suddenly sparkle with embers. “Extra hot.”

Lan Zhan will tell him when he’s being wasteful with wood. He does not like polluting the mountains without good reason, and he keeps a vigilant watch over their stock of cut logs. Both their lives depend on it, after all. 

But he has never once said anything about heating water for Wei Wuxian’s baths. 

Even when Wei Wuxian takes two a day—undeniably an indulgence. But heartless sorcery is just so cold! And… whenever he raises the dead in those battles, the smell of evil reeks on his skin, wafts out of his voluminous hair. He just has to get it off, as fast as he can. His ‘bathing rain’ invention was largely for this: lingering dark magic and evil qi are gloriously purified by it.

Tonight, though, Wei Wuxian has already showered the evil away. This is not about purification.

Now, he eases himself into a very hot bath. No fire burns here, not even for a candle—he’s used witchlight flames in jars. Maybe it's not right of him to fantasize about someone who does not want him. But tonight, he wants to sip spiced wine while he soaks in flowers and herbs, and pours oil in his palm, and closes his eyes and touches himself to fantasies of Lan Zhan’s voice in his ear… of hot hands on his body, finally, finally… of hot, wet lips on his neck… of a hot, wet mouth slipping over his cock, which his hand imitates… 

He fully luxuriates with steaming hot water—in Lan Zhan’s heat —all over every inch of his body. 

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Chapter Text

After two months in the castle, more chores are shared. Hanguang says it's good for Gui, and Gui says it's good for Xuanyu. It’s a lot easier for the two sorcerers to keep up these days, with a baseline established. Sizhui is uncomfortable at first—for what else is he contributing, other than his labor?

But he’s reassured enough times to give in. And as such, he finds he has much more study time, and much more freetime.

Like today. Up in Xuanyu’s room, deep in the thunderstorming Wilds, Sizhui and Xuanyu lounge on a wide, nest-like bed. Floating and drifting about are small jars of witch fire, flames purple-white like a spring crocus. From what Sizhui can tell, that shade is Xuanyu's favorite color. There’s also the gentle glow of all the terraria. And, of course, there’s the warm-hued fireplace.

Xuanyu sits against a mass of pillows studying Tibetan scrolls, and Sizhui lays on his stomach nearby, drawing the fireplace. He’s also got a collection of folklore and fables with him for more inspiration.

This bedroom’s fireplace uses the practical big blue bricks, instead of the dazzling patterns of the common room—but it does feature snarling monsters, cast in brass on either side. And the brass grate is patterned like a honeycomb. Sizhui wonders how customized each room is to its inhabitant, since they were formed with sorcery… Does it interact with their essences…?

“What got you drawing?” Xuanyu asks, switching to another scroll.

“I never used my imagination, back home. I’m impressed by Gui’s ceiling art, so I thought I’d try.”

Xuanyu snorts. “Oh he’ll love that,” they say, rolling their pretty eyes all the way back. “New favorite kid on the way!”

“Hey,” Sizhui says, growing older and nudging them with his foot. “Don’t joke about that, it’s not funny. It also couldn’t ever be true, and you know it.”

They scrunch their lips at him—hiding a smile. “You’ve just got a boring sense of humor.”

He doesn't hide his. “I was raised by monks.”

They both laugh, then return to their quiet activities. The scraping and clicking of tiny living things layers with Xuanyu’s papers, the fire, and rain on the window. A great, deep wind is howling outside, too. Occasional thunder rumbles through the mountains, and Sizhui can see lightning in the distance. Some giant beast-spirit lumbers between peaks, as tall as them, only visible whenever lightning flashes: a looming black silhouette with glowing eyes. 

Aging to twelve at the sight, Sizhui reminds himself that he’s warm and dry and safe, rubbing his feet against the soft quilts. He’s glad he’s not too little, for he wouldn’t want to pester Xuanyu. Although, his friend manages child Sizhui pretty well. They’ve even had fun together, playing made-up games with Gui’s occult curios. Sizhui has always appreciated Xuanyu’s flexibility with him very much—his curse could easily have been a strain. 

Still, Sizhui simply doesn’t like turning small. Not only does it limit him, but he gets closer to the age when The Bad Thing happened. The one he can’t remember. Sizhui wants to keep that little three-year-old tucked in a forbidden box, deep, deep in his heart.

Xuanyu picks up their conversation again. “I never liked art, I prefer tinkering and designing. Master Gui and I enjoy that together, at least. Oh, and by the way—don’t worry about Master Gui, Sizhui. Sometimes he likes to go away for days on end.”

Four days have gone by without sight of him. “Thank you, that’s good to know.” Sizhui feels hidden tension seep from his shoulders. 

Just then, Hanguang appears in Xuanyu’s fire. Sizhui catches his breath—it’s his first time seeing Hanguang anywhere but the grand common room hearth.

“Coast and Capitol doors,” he announces. The teens look at one another, then trot downstairs. 

They come bounding back into the bed soon enough—carrying identical messages from each city, with one addressed to Mystic Ying, and the other to Wizard Wuxian. Neither missive opens at their attempts. Xuanyu wants to try magic to do so, but Hanguang forbids it.

They invite Hanguang to stay for the afternoon. He nods with approval at Xuanyu’s foreign scrolls (“From a dakini,” he confirms), then looks with full attention at Sizhui’s drawing. 

An idea comes to Sizhui. “Hanguang, you can read, right?”

Something almost haughty gleams in the demon’s expression. “In every written language invented thusfar.”

Over Xuanyu’s whoop of amazement, Sizhui asks, “Do you ever read books?” 

“For my first twenty-two years, I flew over your planet in observance. I learned what people were learning. I know the contents of most books.”

“Wow… Have you heard every story, Hanguang?” Suzhui asks. Xuanyu lowers their scroll, curious.

Hanguang blinks, flames rippling a few times. “… I have overheard many, but no. I sought information. Language, anatomy, history, mathematics, biology, astronomy, engineering, agriculture, medicine, and physics.”

“Stories hold knowledge of the human heart. Hanguang, would you like to read some?” 

Hanguang’s expression turns fully unreadable. Sizhui hopes with all his heart that he hasn’t offended him. “I can’t hold a book,” he eventually says.

“Here.” Sizhui opens his leather-bound book of folklore and fables to face Hanguang, standing it on the hearth. He borrows some of Xuanyu’s glittering black geodes to hold it open. “Can you read from there? I’m not sure if I can move it closer…” Paper is, after all, very flammable.

“Mmn,” Hanguang says, slit-pupiled eyes wide and flicking from the book to Sizhui several times. His fire is smaller than usual, but still bright and hot.  

“Let me know when you’re ready for the next pages,” he says, returning to his drawing. For the next hour or so, the teens take turns turning the page for him. He seems happy. Sizhui whips up a snack and some tea at one point, too.

But as afternoon fades to evening and Gui returns home, the mood changes.

Receiving the letters, his usual smile drops away. He opens each missive in a rush, reading silently. He is rigid, not breathing, and his eyes grow too wide.

“They know,” he eventually says. 

He shakes his head and squeezes his eyes shut, as if clearing his mind, and he seems much more himself when he opens them. “Hanguang, please move the castle as far as you can. Kids, don’t go outside.” He hurries to the door and casts a number of fascinating spells on it, winds and colored lights flying in many directions as he ups their defenses.

But then, as he crosses the room and climbs the stairs… he doesn’t look at the fire. He doesn’t look at Xuanyu or Sizhui, either. Frowning with his eyes too wide again, he runs upstairs without a word. 

Black mists stream in his wake, and Sizhui frowns… for a moment seeing something off in that shadow on the wall, he’s sure this time.

“We are in danger,” Hanguang growls. 

His voice thrums in Sizhui’s bones. “Let’s go talk to him, Xuanyu.”

“He’s not… easy to deal with, like this.” They tug their sleeve, looking to the side.

Something awful occurs to him. “He’s not cruel to you, is he?”

“No! No no, he’s just… When his curse is activated, Master Gui can’t hear or see me half the time, and when he can, and he’s really upset, but he barely knows me, so I can’t calm him down… He can’t see Hanguang or remember at all.”

Sizhui takes in a big breath, holds it, and then lets it out. “So he can be difficult. That’s alright. I won’t leave him alone.”  He knows what alone is. 

Hanguang flares white, blue embers dancing around him as he gazes up at Sizhui. He doesn’t say a word. Sizhui suspects he can’t, too filled with powerful emotions.

Both teens head up the stairs—Sizhui marching in the lead straight-backed, with Xuanyu scurrying behind him. The shapeshifter says, “Hanguang… maybe you should stay here—”

“I’ll be there,” he intones, resonant. His ferocity splits a mighty log beneath him in a stirring swirl of embers.

Once out of sight in the dark hall, Xuanyu lets a breath gush out of them. “He’s intimidating when he’s like this. Even though I know he would never hurt me,” they whisper.

Sizhui understands—just those eyes would be frightening, if Sizhui didn’t know him. 

But he does.

The dark hall’s plush, emerald rug leads to Gui’s room, all the way down on the left. Its frame is ringed with scarlet light. Sizhui hurries toward it. Like avoiding sitting when tired, he’s striding away from his fear too fast for its spindly claws to catch him.

Knocking on the handsome rosewood door for the first time, he calls, “Gui? May I come in?”

The scarlet light dies down, and then Gui creaks open his door with suspicion, dark magic billowing around him. Upon seeing them, his magic shrinks back, fearsomeness shifting to baffled short-temperedness. “Who are you, and how the fuck are you in my house?”

“I’m here to talk.” Suzhui has a feeling he’s going to be pushed away, so he strides in before Gui can do so. “I’m a friend.”

“Hmm…” Gui peers at him. “Yes, you are, aren’t you. But where do I know you from…?”

Sizhui barely takes in Gui’s private quarters—the gorgeous fireplace, the hanging crystals and talismans and art and paintings. He’s too focused. “You seem upset.”

“I can’t stand how scared I am,” he whispers, staring out the window. “But I won’t fight in their war. I also won’t stop interfering in it. And I’ll do whatever I have to do to protect him.”

“Protect Hanguang?”

He flinches, as if jolted with something. “Who? Look, I don’t know who you are, but this is none of your business. You should go now.” 

Gui is suddenly dark—everything about him is. The black mists are swarming the air. And somehow, Sizhui knows intuitively that these mists are the kind of dark qi that raises ghouls and commands hell demons. 

This is a taste of how Gui would treat someone he doesn’t trust, and it’s frightening. Gui is not cruel, he reminds himself. “We can help you.”

“No, no, I have to do this alone. This is my mess. I always make a mess, you see… Other people get hurt… Just stay away, kid.”

Sizhui rushes to the hearth, where dark magic is misting close to Hanguang, threatening to suffocate his flames. Being cursed himself, there’s nothing Sizhui can do about it. “Excuse me, Gui, but you’re smothering your fire.” These black mists… they really remind him of something…

“Am I…? I forgot I even lit one.” He waves a hand, pacing. “Whatever.”

Sizhui swallows, pained on Hanguang’s behalf. “This is the same fire that has always graced your hearth. If nothing else, it’s warming you and lighting your way right now.” Hanguang’s eyes and mouth ripple more quickly, as he gazes up at Sizhui with a complex expression. 

Gui halts. Then he turns, slowly, looking at Sizhui in a canny, suspicious way. “What are you really saying?” 

Don’t mention Hanguang directly. Don’t mention care directly. “I don’t want you to be cold.” It’s not a lie.

Gui’s eyes fly wide open, and he stumbles back a step. “You’re… you’re Sizhui. Sizhui! What—What’s going on? Where’s Xuanyu? Are they alright??”

“I’m here,” Xuanyu’s tiny voice says from where they stand near the door. Gui looks astounded at the sight of them.

Sizhui pulls from his own experience: when the capacity of his mind shrinks and expands, when he’s three and can’t remember anything because he’s too caught up in the moment, then aging up again and regaining only glimpses. He also tries to think like Gui—tries to invent a new path through this. He’s learned more about curses and spells, and about how language matters.

He can’t speak about how Gui’s curse works… But, maybe, he can still speak generally. “Curses are confusing. Like a bad dream, right?”

Steadying, Gui nods, looking down at him fearfully… but also with some clarity. He’s shivering.

“This confusion you’re feeling is normal. It will come and go, but it’s temporary.” He stands and walks over to him, glaring with purpose. “Even if you forget again, we’ll be here.” 

You’re not alone, he wants to say more than anything. But he suspects he’d trigger the curse in all its strength again, if he called out its root too directly. Because that’s what this is, he’s certain. It’s not as simple as Gui forgetting—it’s that he forgets he has others to lean on. Forgets he has people who care for him, who will see things through by his side. He’s convinced he has to do everything alone. His complete forgetting of Hanguang—his bound companion in life—makes Sizhui confident in this theory.

“Temporary.” Gui closes his eyes and takes a shaky breath, shivering harder. “And you’re staying. Alright.”

“Get him to eat,” Hanguang says in a voice like char.

“Master Gui,” Xuanyu says, creeping a little closer. “Come down and have some tea? And—and red bean cakes?” They’re wringing their hands.

Gui huffs a laugh. “I do like those.”

A while later, the three of them have pulled the long couch up to the common room fire, and they’re eating on it together under one huge, scarlet quilt. Its gold beads shift and glitter in Hanguang’s light—who flares hot and full, warming Gui as much as he can, eyes never leaving him. Gui doesn’t see him yet, but he’s keeping the teens in his mind pretty well, and is gently pulled back when he forgets.

“I was so cold,” he shudders, holding out his hands palm-out toward the flames and wiggling his socked feet up onto the hearth. 

If Sizhui really followed his heart, he’d want to tilt his head onto his shoulder in this moment. But that would no doubt be alarming for someone who only barely remembers they know each other. “So. These letters.”

Sighing with immense drama, Gui throws his head back against the couch. “They’re double drafting me. As both my aliases. Mystic Ying and Wizard Wuxian have received summons to the palace tomorrow, to pledge themselves to our ‘Chief Cultivator.’” 

Emperor Jin Guangyao. Sizhui has heard his name spoken with either admiration or fear. Sometimes both.

The rogue sorcerer squeezes his eyes shut, groaning and sagging into the couch. “Soldiers will come for us at my storefronts. Most likely, Jin Guangyao has caught on about who ‘Ying’ and ‘Wuxian’ really are.”

Sizhui turns each name over in his mind. Ying: a baby girl. Wuxian: someone with no envies. Gui: a ghost. “How many aliases do you have?”

“As many as I need to keep my freedom,” he murmurs, eyes on the fire—where a demon he cannot see looks back. “That palace is full of murderers.” 

“Just don’t go,” Xuanyu shrugs.

“I took an oath, when I was studying. I used my true name. If summoned, I or someone from my family must go.”

Xuanyu winces. “What do they want?”

“For me to use my powers to kill innocent people, for the sake of their land-grab,” Now he glares at the flames. Sizhui would not want to be his enemy. “Not gonna happen. But they’ll never give up, no matter how clear I made myself last time.”

Last time? Sizhui frowns. “He’s our Emperor. He should want to hear what all his people have to say.”

Gui is shaking his head, dramatically despondent again. “You obviously don’t know what these people are like…”

An idea occurs to Sizhui. “What if… Mystic Ying’s and Wizard Wuxian’s apprentices went in their masters’ places?”

Eager, Xuanyu bounces on the cushions. “Yes! We're in your household, this should work!”

Gui is aghast. “WHAT?? I’m not sending anyone in there! Especially not my kids!” Both teens make quick eye contact, blushing happily at ‘my kids.’ “No, no—it’s too dangerous, and this is my mess…” His eyes are getting wide again…

“Master Gui, we can do it! We’ll convince them our masters are useless cowards,” Xuanyu invents, devious. “That they wouldn’t even want them in the war!”

Sizhui nods once, determined. “Isn’t Xuanyu your apprentice, and aren’t I working for you? We’re your people. We can do this.”

“Who are you again?”

Both teens grow alarmed—

But Gui cracks up. “Kidding! Just kidding, hahaha! Ahh, I suppose sending someone in my place is cowardly and humiliating in and of itself, so it fits… Maybe you two can pull this off…” Gui’s smile is wry. “But not without me. I’ll follow you in disguise. We’ll do it together.”

And with that—he gasps, suddenly seeing Hanguang again. A combination of shock, wonder, and anguish flashes over Gui’s face. “La—!”

“My name,” Hanguang cautions. But Sizhui’s never heard him sounding so warm. So soft.

Gui disentangles from the quilt to kneel, elbows on the hearth. His fingertips stroke the edges of Hanguang’s flames, darting away before they burn but returning just as fast. “Oh, my darling Shenjing, divine Hanguang, I forgot you, how awful I am…”

Hanguang can’t speak. Gui looks even more heartbroken. Xuanyu is wringing their hands again—

Sizhui cuts in. “You’re not awful, Gui—you’re cursed.”

Eyes wide and lips parted in shock, Gui looks over his shoulder at Sizhu. “Right…” 

Then, he laughs and laughs. “Ah Hanguang, where has this boy been all our life?”

Sizhui’s heart is aglow—and his repressed curse flutters more powerfully than ever. 

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Chapter Text

Satisfied with their plans, Gui finally turns the portal compass from green to gold.

The kids will create a diversion just long enough for Gui to technically report, but then escape, fulfilling his oath. Xuanyu is feminine and aged to their twenties as Mystic Ying’s shopkeeping witch. Sizhui is dressed far nicer than he ever has been in his life, as an 'apprentice' of Wizard Wuxian’s. Each of them tucks their corresponding royal invitation in their sash. 

Gui’s hair is unkempt, and he’s bundled in a quilted robe and wearing warm, fluffy slippers as if recovering from the flu. But he’s no less powerful a sorcerer. With an impressive show of magic that swirled all the papers in the room and even made Sizhui lose his balance a little, Gui materializes a tiny, glimmering lingfu. One that can suppress the most powerful curses. 

It won’t last forever, but should keep Sizhui safe for the day. The lingfu feels ice cold, when Gui hides it on the back of Sizhui’s neck—then it sears almost painfully hot—then, it disappears, taking the sensations with it.

“Wear your hair down,” Hanguang instructs from the hearth. “Otherwise, mages will notice.”

At Sizhui’s puzzlement, Gui explains, “Hair carries lots of your essence, enough even to curtain mine.”

He also outfits them with cultivator swords—magical weapons that have spirits of their own. “Xuanyu, this is Suibian. Sizhui, Bichen. Do NOT attempt to use them!”

Sizhui doesn’t need to be told this. He's heard tales of swords like these burning intruders to a crisp, just for daring to draw them. Accepting the spiritual steel weapon with respect, he gapes at the hilt’s fine blue and white jadeite. Once on his sash, Bichen hums at his waist as if in a solemn greeting, and for a moment, Sizhui sees an endlessly starry sky.

Xuanyu’s less reverent. Their braids fly as they twirl gleefully with Suibian on their hip, his black and brass hilt glinting merrily. “Oh Master Gui, he’s amazing! Where did he come from?”

Gui’s smile is fond. “Suibian was my own sword, back in the day. Bichen appeared when Hanguang and I bonded—just tumbled out of the air, along with a qin and a longbow. Gifts from Hanguang’s heavenly clan.” 

Sizhui is further awed by Bichen… but also sad, realizing Hanguang has never had the ability to wield his own sword. His resolve to not only break his own curse, but theirs, flares in his heart. Gui is clearly in danger. And Hanguang deserves to take his human form, and his true form too, whatever it may be. Sizhui is about to embark on his first-ever mission, but he already sees a larger one on the horizon.

Gui also has yaopei for them both: braided silk ornaments with stones and tassels to dangle from their waists. Xuanyu’s is red and black with a sweet little bell; Sizhui’s is blue and white, with a piece of jade carved into an endless knot. “These charms will guarantee your safe return. Xuanyu, yours summons me. Sizhui—yours links you to Hanguang to navigate home.”

Home. Sizhui bows to the fire, and Hanguang nods back, eyes warm. Gui laughs one more time, then shoos them out the door. 

The door closes, and suddenly, the teens are out in the world. The capitol’s snowy streets are busy and loud as ever, and the morning sun barely reaches past the tall buildings. They look at each other a moment, squaring their shoulders for this important task. 

Then, Xuanyu’s curious, awed eyes are on Bichen, and they reach out to touch the hilt. Equally spellbound, Sizhui reaches for Suibian (Gui’s mage sword ). They accidentally make eye contact doing this—stroking these hilts, on each other’s waists—and set off swiftly for their destination, looking elsewhere. 

Jinlintai, the famous tower of golden carp pools, looms on the horizon. 

“You’re really brave,” Xuanyu says suddenly, sullen eyes on the brick street.

They pass a busy square, full of voices and suona music and the braying of working animals. Sizhui knows he’d be turning small right now, if not for Gui’s lingfu. “Brave?”

“The way you speak to Master Gui, and even Hanguang… The way you went to his room to interrupt his curse… Sizhui, sometimes those episodes can last days, even a week.”

“How frightening. You’ve been putting up with this alone.” Although Xuanyu hasn’t overtly discussed it—Sizhui knows they experienced a lot of scary behavior from adults, before coming to the castle. “Don’t make comparisons between us, Xuanyu. The monks say that the comparing mind only leads to suffering.”

They smile at each other. It seems like Xuanyu’s smile is getting bigger and sweeter each week Sizhui lives at the castle. They loop their arm in his, too.

Sizhui huffs a laugh. “See, in this way, you’re braver than me. I can’t show affection so easily, growing up with monk mages. But it’s nice.”

“Well aren’t we a pair, then,” Xuanyu snickers, tucking their braids back to gaze at the tall, fine buildings around them. Sizhui feels a flutter inside that is very different from his curse. “Where is Master Gui, do you think?” 

“How about that police captain there?”

“Ugh, he would never! Oh hey, how about that fashionable lady with the flowery hat?”

“She’s too fancy, I think he’d call her a snob. Is he that fluffy cat, napping lazy on the sill in the sun with a big smile?”

“That could be him…”

They make a game of pointing out more and more ridiculous options as they go, passing the time. It’s a very long walk. Once they reach Jinlintai, Sizhui feels uncomfortable. The palace up on a hill and overly grand, its staircase cruelly high to climb. Some certain guests are lifted up by a magical palanquin, while everyone else has to walk.

Inside, the carp ponds, silk hangings, brass hardware, porcelain vases, and mother-of-pearl inlays are extravagantly numerous and beautiful. The carps really are golden, in these ponds: magic makes them look like liquid metal, glowing as if in the sun. Xuanyu is awed, but Sizhui can’t help but think of how all this wealth and magic could be better used.

Finally, a footman leads them to a giant climatron of tropical, steaming lushness, replete with shimmering butterflies and delicate songbirds. Their winter clothes are taken away. Across a wide, polished, starkly empty floor, they approach a man on a gilded throne. 

They brought us all the way to the Jin Emperor himself? The hair raises on Sizhui’s arms in alarm. 

Beside him, Xuanyu grabs the bell on their scarlet-tasseled yaopei, knuckles white.

Emperor and Chief Cultivator Jin Guangyao is not a man of large stature. However, his presence feels larger than life, and the way he’s arranged his dias and throne in the center of this open marble floor reeks of dominion. He sits high, layered with flowing, rich brocades in gold and cream, and he holds a Buddhist mage’s scepter—a vajra—studded with jewels of immense power. Sizhui can feel them.

Behind Jin Guangyao, beyond the glass walls, a black crow flies past.

“Welcome to Jinlintai, young cultivators.” The pink dian over Jin Guangyao’s third eye should be a mark of high wisdom. Sizhui thinks of Hanguang’s recent teaching: Power and wisdom are not inherently bound. “Those swords… However did your masters part with them?” His eyes linger on Suibian.

Sizhui and Xuayu bow and explain their presence as planned. They take care to speak of Mystic Ying and Wizard Wuxian as distinct people. Jin Guangyao listens politely, but when he speaks again, it’s as if they hadn’t said a word. “It is a shame that Gui is not coming.”

Both teens react in their own ways—Sizhui with a sharp intake of breath, Xuanyu with comically wide eyes.

“Do you know the difference between orthodox magic and dark magic, young ones? As cultivation mages, you know our powers come from the land and waters and sky. Elemental and pure. Sorcery comes from our inner demons. It is chaotic and perverse, transfiguring objects and warping space-time. The cost to one’s karma is great, for such unnatural evil.”

Sizhui does not speak. But his heart is beating faster from anger, now. Gui has explained that another way to think of sorcery is ‘natural magic,’ for it appears organically in people, places, and other beings. Sorcerous fey folk are just as natural as anything else. Shenjing are natural. 

The palace’s line of thinking reminds him of the monk mages… Hearing it again after living in Gui’s castle, it feels deeply manipulative. 

“Gui studied amongst us noble cultivators once, following the path of light. He even took his vows. But one day, his heart was stolen by a demon, and from that day forward, he has been using his magic for entirely selfish reasons.”

Sizhui’s hands are forming fists under his sleeves. War-mongering, a ‘path of light?’ Spelling medicines and protection talismans, ‘entirely selfish?’ 

Hanguang, a heart-stealer?

“Children.” The Emperor’s voice suddenly deepens; Sizhui feels pinned in place. “That man is extremely dangerous. His powers are far too great for someone without a heart. Our kingdom can no longer afford to turn a blind eye to sorcery. If Gui reports to me and vows to serve the kingdom, I will show him how to break his curse. If not, I shall strip him of all his powers, and slay the demon who cursed him myself.”

“That’s enough!” Sizhui cannot bear this poison in his ears another moment. Nor the impunity. “Now I understand what Gui said about this place. You lure people here to strip them of their powers or force them to fight in your war. Gui would never be so heartless. He may be hard to understand, but his intentions are good.”

Shaking and teenaged again in fear, Xuanyu stands beside him, balling their fists. “He just wants to be free!”

Smiling now—because Sizhui knows the truth, while this powerful, cruel man cannot even imagine it—he declares, “Gui doesn’t need your help. We can solve his problem with his demon together, and it won’t involve slaying him, either.”

The Emperor’s smile sharpens, in a way that makes Sizhui think of a viper having spotted a rabbit.

Just then—the glass behind Jin Guangyao goes black—and shatters.

Through the sparkling glass rain, a swarm of crows floods the fanciful greenhouse. With raucous cawing and screams, they flap chaotically in every direction. They blot out the sun entirely—there must be hundreds. The noise and cold, wintry wind of them are overpowering.

Jin Guangyao’s hair and headdress sway, but he does not react—other than to point his jeweled vajra at the teens. Its tip begins to glow. Sizhui grabs Xuanyu’s hand, and Xuanyu holds their other up to form sigils, preparing to cast a shield despite the odds—

But then strong arms are wrapped around them both, and someone solid and immovable is at their backs. 

Sizhui looks up to see Gui—who’s got a hard smile fixed in Jin Guangyao, scarlet-flame eyes glinting with challenge. “You think I’d fall for another of your traps? Tsk.”

Sizhui gulps. Gui is radiating dark magic… and there are black feathers erupting from his skin. The hands clasping Sizhui and Xuanyu grow wicked claws.

“Ah, but you are here, aren’t you? I knew you couldn’t resist facing me.” Jin Guangyao is drawing his vajra through the air, eager. It leaves a golden trail in its wake: he’s forming a complicated array, a mandala of power that hums with pent-up light. “It is time for you to show these children what you really are—Yiling Laozu.”

“My vow is fulfilled. We’ll be going now.” He sprouts great black wings and lifts the teens with him, leaving Jin Guangyao entirely unconsidered. His giant murder of crows casts an impenetrable cloud around them… but Sizhui thinks he can hear an ocean below, and strange chanting… 

Until they BURST through the glass roof. The shards sparkle in the sun.

Outside in the bright air, he realizes how cloying the Emperor’s atrium had been. He sucks breath with some greed, squinting as he watches the crows disperse. Ghosts drift out of them, dissolving in the sun. The birds revert to shiny black confetti, raining down on the creamy marble of Jinlintai’s palace like evil snow.

Guards are already below—but Gui zooms away, higher and faster, crying, “Hold onto me!”

The moment they do, his freed hands draw both swords. Their spiritual steel rings and shines. “Guess what, kids? You’re going to fly today!” he shouts cheerfully. 

“WHAT?!” Xuanyu squawks. 

The swords are now out of Gui’s hands and soaring beneath the humans’ feet, piercing the air in pace with Gui’s great wings. Sizhui’s legs hang heavily below him; it might actually be nice to stand on something. 

He did practice this a bit, in mage training. Though, it was only ever a few feet off the ground… He bobs his head in a bow to Bichen, then carefully steps on. “Gui, don’t let go yet…”

“Not yet, not yet,” Gui chuckles (or, Yiling Laozu? Sizhui has heard tales of that terrorist sorcerer). 

Sizhui feels marginally steady, Gui’s strong arm around his waist. But Xuanyu can’t settle their feet on Suibian. Meanwhile, Gui’s great wings rocket the renegade group away—with palace mages on their own swords in hot pursuit.

“My dear apprentice,” Gui calls over the wind at his panicked student, grinning affectionately, “stop looking down, look at the horizon instead. Trust Suibian. You did very well back there, Xuanyu, summoning me when you did. You saved Sizhui and yourself.”

Xuanyu can only respond with high-pitched noises.  

Gui laughs. “Sizhui, listen—we need to split up! I have to stay with Xuanyu, I don’t think they can fly on their own. But you can.”

“Ah, Gui, I’m not so sure…” Bichen does feel sturdy, but still… The capitol streaks by in blurry miniature below.

“We can’t lead them to our home! Someone needs to distract these guys, and that someone has to be me! All you need to do is hold onto that yaopei and summon Hanguang with your heart.”

Hanguang. Grasping the jade tight aginst the cold wind, Sizhui thinks of how Hanguang makes him feel. 

Bichen’s energy ripples beneath his feet—and from the blade’s tip, a blue line of light beams northwest.

“Fantastic! Align your hips with the line, let it guide you,” Gui encourages. “Keep your grip on that jade—Hanguang won’t let you fall. His essence is in Bichen, too.”

Hanguang is here with me? Sizhui’s flight fully steadies. He swivels his hips, Bichen aligns with the line… and he realizes that Gui has let go, yet he’s still flying straight and strong. It’s only now that he realizes how icy Gui’s clawed hands were—colder than the winter air.

The sorcerer is smilingly confident. “Alright, here we go!” As he veers away from Sizhui, he takes an illusion of Sizhui with him—while actual Sizhui is cast in invisibility. The palace mages only pursue Gui and Xuanyu, clearly fooled. 

But Sizhui can’t watch his mentor and friend fly off, for he must focus. 

Flying all the way back to the Wilds takes the rest of the day. The endless knot design of Hanguang’s jade must be pressed into Sizhui’s palm. His cheeks ache, as his hands and feet and nose go numb. He’s cultivated a good deal of qi, but still, the palace footman took his winter things…

At one point, he is so cold that he starts to lose focus… starts leaning to the side, making Bichen lilt. The sword lights up below his feet, singing in the way steel does. Like the strike on a tuning fork. Somehow, it felt like a beacon.

And the very next moment, Sizhui glimpses something moving up in the clouds. 

He gulps, watching the clouds warily. He’s not sure what he saw. But that wasn’t a human. 

And then, a voice asks, “Are you alright, young sorcerer?” RIGHT BESIDE HIM.

Sizhui falters, stomach lurching as he starts to fall—

Someone catches his elbow with incredible strength. It’s like leaning on a stone ledge. Instinctively, Sizhui uses them to right himself on a patient Bichen, catching his breath and gathering his wits. 

“Th-thank you,” he finally says, looking at them for the first time.

Soaring on a sword much like Bichen is an incomparably beautiful man with a kind smile. Close to Gui’s age, with some straight, jet hair up and some down, he wears shining aquamarine robes and a hair piece with silver antlers. He is fair, tall, and angular—with golden, slit-pupiled eyes.

Hanguang’s warnings flood Sizhui’s mind and body with a cold fire. “Mighty lord, what may I call you?”

The ‘man’ releases his elbow, smile unchanged. “Zewu.” At the word, Sizhui’s mind is filled with the luminous waters of a remote, high mountain lake.

Zewu does not ask for his name. Perhaps he is not looking to control Sizhui—perhaps Sizhui can make it out of this encounter alive. “Lord Zewu, it’s an honor to meet you. I go by Sizhui.” It’s not his true name, so there’s no harm in that.

Zewu’s hair flows behind him as if made of water or flame. A ribbon of black silk winding through the air. “Where are you heading on Bichen?”

Oh no. He cannot answer that question. Which means… he’ll have to be discourteous to a Shenjing. “You… you know this sword, Lord Zewu?”

Zewu’s eyes crinkle in amusement. “It would appear so.”

“Well, Lord Zewu… The thing is… I don’t mean to be rude, but I can’t tell you where I’m going. It’s not my secret to share, and I could endanger someone.”

“I see.” Zewu studies Sizhui closely, and Sizhui feels incredibly vulnerable. It’s all Sizhui can do to stay steady on his sword. He’s beyond grateful for Gui’s curse-suppressing lingfu right now.

After a moment of assessment, Zewu smiles more warmly than before. He reaches out two elegant fingers—directing qi toward Sizhui’s body. “You are loyal and brave, Sizhui. I am glad. Please tell Hanguang I await meeting him on Earth.”

For a terrifying moment, Sizhui watches and feels Zewu’s light touch at the center of his torso. Then, he floods pleasantly with warmth from the inside out. His frozen state is greatly improved, as if he just started out on this journey.

When he turns to Zewu to thank him, he finds empty sky. But some distance away… there are hints of some blue-green heavenly creature with silver antlers dancing away through the clouds. 

It’s dark when Sizhui finally sees the castle’s many-towered silhouette against black mountains and glimmering stars. Hanguang must be coming to meet him, for Sizhui only just entered the Wilds—he passed over the golden lights of Alpine Town not five minutes ago.

“Hanguang!” he cries, and Bichen rings like a struck bell.

Finally slowing and descending… finally approaching an open door, with warm light inside…

Sizhui topples onto the stairs, much like he did when he arrived here. Bichen keeps flying, until landing on the hearth before his master. “Sizhui?” comes that deep, comforting voice.

“Hanguang! I’m alright…” Stiff and freezing, for Zewu’s gift was several hours ago, he climbs the stairs with what feels like rickety bones. Pulling off his boots is a challenge. “My curse was in remission all day…” 

Once he crosses from the landing’s tile onto the wood floor of the castle, though, Gui’s lingfu sizzles away. He immediately shrinks to three, looking pleadingly at the fire demon.

“Come,” Hanguang says, golden eyes darting over Sizhui’s form, inspecting. Even as young as he is, Sizhui recognizes his concern and care. “Drink water.”

There’s a clay jar of water on the hearth, kept warm. Sizhui downs the whole thing, growing to seven or eight. “Hanguang, may I sit on the hearth as Gui does?” He’s so cold…

“Please,” Hanguang murmurs, surprising him.

The stone and the tiles are perfectly hot. “Hanguang… there was a Shenjing. Zewu. He helped me.”

Hanguang flares bright white, eyes wide. “You met Xiong-zhang??”

“Your elder brother, wow… He recognized Bichen, he wants to meet you… He was nice…” 

Small Sizhui drifts off to the crackling of Hanguang’s fire, head tilting against the blue tiles…

Until the door bursts open, and Gui and Xuanyu appear, red-cheeked from the cold and bursting with exciting tales of their escape. They jolt Sizhui to his true age. With an herbal paste and some Hanguang-channeled magic, Gui runs a fingertip along Sizhui’s chilblained fingers and the tip of his nose, and the sting disappears.

The big, long couch is still pulled up close to Hanguang, and the three humans have no desire to move it. Tea is brewed—lapsang souchong, smoky and grounding. Xuanyu fetches the pot of chicken and rice soup they’d stored in the snow. Soon, it’s thawing on the cooking grates with a hunger-paining aroma. They eat several steaming bowls each, curled up under quilts and rehashing the day. 

Soon, they’re dozing off—until Gui says, “Yiling Laozu is a mocking title, but I’ve grown to like it.”

Both teens perk up from the blankets and cushions immediately. Sizhui pours another round of tea.

Gui is gazing at the flames, expression soft. Forlorn. “Before I met Hanguang, I was protecting a group of people in Yiling. The kingdom attacked, even though they were innocent. I made a community there, and we all grew to love each other.”

“What happened?” Xuanyu whispers.

“I fell for a trap, and was outmatched,” he murmurs. “Never again, though.”

For a while, there’s nothing but the low roar of Hanguang on the logs. He’s watching Gui, expression hard.

Then, Gui chuckles. “Alright, enough moping—Sizhui, after today, you should know my true name. You actually already know both my true and courtesy names. My surname is Wei. You’ve never told me yours.”

“I don’t remember my surname. Are… are they Ying and Wuxian?”

Gui’s smile is like the sunset. “You got it.”

“Wei Ying.” He can almost taste the power in that name, having spoken it. He wonders how Hanguang’s would feel.

“Don’t abuse it, now, haha! You're undoubtedly a little witch, Sizhui, just like I was in my youth. You’ll be a mage or sorcerer someday. I don’t know what kind, though."

Xuanyu ‘hmph’s, burrowing down into the quilts. “I already knew your names… What’s my reward for zooming around on a frozen sword all day, ready to fall off?”

Gui slings an arm around their shoulders, half hugging, half shaking them. “And what does this greedy disciple of mine want, hm? More than a world class education and room and board for free?”

“I work in the shops! I’m not a freeloader—!”

“My my, come now! I’m just teasing.” He’s fishing something out from his sleeve. “Anyway, how about this?”

It’s a yaopei much like the one Xuanyu carried with them today, with the same style of bell. But it’s shiny and new, woven in lights purples and grays to Xuanyu’s taste—clearly, Gui made it specially for them. Xuanyu is very moved. So much, in fact, that they clutch it to their chest and hide under the quilts for a moment.

Gui yawns hugely, stretching his arms overhead. Then he looks at Sizhui, cat-like eyes canny. “You’re no apprentice, like them. You’re more of a disciple, aren’t you? You want to commit to a spiritual master someday.”

Sizhui finds himself looking at Hanguang, who gazes back. Something stirs in his heart.

Maybe they didn’t mean to, or maybe they did, but soon enough, they've all fallen asleep right there on the couch.

⋆⁺ ₊⋆₊⁺₊⋆⋆ ⁺₊⋆ ☾ ⁺₊⋆ ⋆⁺₊ ⋆⁺₊⋆ ⁺

Chapter Text

Magical alarms are going off all morning. 

Gui is energetic, gathering everyone in the common room. “Alright! The kingdom is hot on our trail. Get ready—we’re moving.”

“Ooh! Sizhui, come sit on Hanguang’s hearth and keep your feet off the floor,” Xuanyu says, taking his hand and hurrying him to the fireplace. Meanwhile, Gui draws an array on the floor in glittery black chalk.

Xuanyu is knocking their dangling feet together in excitement. “We’ve moved only once in these two years,” they whisper to Sizhui, watching their master’s methods closely. “To set up Wizard Wuxian’s. This castle’s based on its floorplan.”

“This time we’re leaving Seaside City and Golden Capitol,” Gui says cheerfully, carefully scooping Hanguang into a shiny brass shovel and walking him to the array. “Where we set up next, well, I’m not crazy about, but it’s our only option, and today is the Winter Solstice, after all, so I figure—”

Hanguang interjects from his shovel. “I have a location.”

Smile unchanged, Gui simply raises his brows. “Wow, we’ve never done it like this! Take us away, then, Shenjing.” 

And Sizhui wonders what it would be like, to trust a partner in magic that much.

On the floor, the array—a great mandala of calligraphy and strange symbols and clean geometry—flares to life, suddenly teeming with both scarlet and indigo fire.

Xuanyu leans in close to Sizhui. “The castle magic is Hanguang’s,” they whisper, thrill in their voice, “but it’s all wielded and shaped by Gui’s imagination.”

“And my will,” Gui adds, hair raising around him in a spellcasting wind—and his feet begin to rise from the ground! “Just as important, tiny apprentice. Now shush!”

Suddenly, Hanguang FLARES with a deep roar, growing huge and blue and bright—sparks of every color fly—the blue fire forms a long, pointed face, and horns, and fangs—

The rainbow sparks shimmer their way over everything like oil spreading into cloth, until the entire space glows and blurs and… shifts. Walls shrink and expand—shelves turn into drawers or melt into the wall—wood changes color—the kitchen’s tiles scurry and rearrange like jewel-backed beetles—

And then… the blurry glow recedes, and Hanguang is a small flame with just eyes and mouth again, and Gui’s feet return to the ground. The mandala of power disappears as if never there.

Gui smiles over his shoulder at the teens. “Okay, you can get down now—go fucking EXPLORE!” 

The only thing that remains the same is Hanguang’s fireplace, which flares back to life as the demon is returned to it. At first, Sizhui thinks the room has wood-paneling, until he realizes it’s changed more dramatically than that. The common room still has one wall of shelves for treasures and supplies, but the longest wall is now composed of small, floor-to-ceiling drawers. A ground floor bathroom has been added, and the kitchen is bigger—sparkling with tiles in four distinct colors, colors Sizhui realizes make the palette of the entire room: wisteria, bright moss, scarlet, and indigo.

It is all so new. And yet, the wall of many wooden drawers, lined up so neatly, reminds him of something he can’t place. Regardless, he can’t wait to give them some care. Those handles deserve shining, and the wood a repolishing… He’ll use lemon oil, so the room will be fragrant, too…

“Wow, Master Gui—it’s smaller and I like it so much better!” Xuanyu says, running and twirling excitedly around the homey space. The new yaopei Gui gave them spins too. 

Sizhui hurries down to the front door, turning the compass. It’s become a pie of green, black, and two new colors: rust and teal. Rust reveals a wintery new city—one set in the hills with mountains all around, and charming canals flowing everywhere. Above the door reads “Herbalist Zhulong.” A painting of flaming dragon twines around the gold-etched characters, protecting their threshold with glaring, gold-etched eyes. 

“Those are apothecary drawers on the wall!” Sizhui cries, coming up the stairs at a run. “I recognize them now, Xuanyu.”

“Master Gui, oh, great idea!”

“It was Hanguang’s,” Gui says, smiling curiously down at his fire. “Hanguang, how did you come to choose this place?”

Hanguang frowns back, mouth rippling. Sizhui intuits that it’s something important to his heart, or perhaps to Gui’s, so he cannot speak.

Xuanyu is too excited to wait for a response anyway. They’re pulling open drawer after drawer, handling and smelling the contents. “Hanguang is too good to us!! We’ll have more customers, everyone wants spelled medicines. This set-up will make work so much easier! Oh, Sizhui—did you have these where you grew up?” 

Running his fingers over the wood and brass, Sizhui replies, "No…" Yet he feels like he’s been wanting to see them, waiting to see them… 

He looks at Hanguang. 

Hanguang flares white, meeting his eyes with urgency. 

Sizhui’s curse stutters in his chest, blocked by Gui’s presence—

Gui is at the door now, turning the knob to teal. “And look! I’ve added another portal. It’s a present for you two kids—come see!”

When Gui opens the door, somehow, it’s springtime outside. 

The teal portal leads to a little grotto, sheltered in the cradle of three big hills. Springwater trickles in from them to create a perfectly clear pool, and all around it are beds of thick, emerald moss—moss studded with ferns and flowers and mushrooms, mushrooms of every size and color. Some glow, others emit sparkling spore dust.

Xuanyu gasps and cheers. “Master Gui, you’ve created a microclimate! Did you have to use a lot of magic?”

“Just a little,” Gui chuckles, pointing to the ring of trees around them—connected by a red ribbon strung with glowing, sigil-marked eggs. Just beyond the trees, there is snow. “This place will always produce medicines for the apothecary, no matter the season. And tasty things for the kitchen, of course!”

They spend a while delighting in nature’s bounty, breathing deeply of the rich, green-scented air. Xuanyu is beyond thrilled. “This species is so rare… and so is this!.. Oh, oh skies, this too—and there are magical bugs here—!”

“We can come back,” Gui chuckles, pulling them away. “Let’s tour the new house!”

It really is sized more like a house, now, rather than a castle. And it feels more like one, too. More like a home, for a family. 

And this makes Sizhui’s curse fight Gui’s presence more powerfully. It’s less like a flutter and more like rumbling thunder.

All Gui’s many training and experiment rooms, which before had spiraled into seven winding floors, are now just one extra story: a wide floor for physical training with a ring of seven doors all around it. Clearly, Sizhui’s organizing and decluttering has rubbed off on the master sorcerer. The second floor still houses Gui’s room, but what as Xuanyu’s bedroom is another, new common room: a large, picture-windowed library and study, full of all Gui’s previously scattered books, maps, and scrolls. Xuanyu's shifted to the far side of the main common room.

As Xuanyu runs off to explore the third floor’s wonders, Gui turns to Sizhui, long ponytail flowing behind him. “I added another bedroom down here.” 

Now Sizhui’s heart is thundering, too, in addition to his curse. 

They’re greeted by a big, bright window, illuminating wood paneling and green-painted walls. Sizhui notices a meditation cushion in plain indigo cotton on the window bench and a stack of new clothes in light blue on the bed. He also sees a wooden hairbrush etched with Zhulong, a fresh pair of boots just like the worn-down ones he wears, and a sturdy leather hair tie, too.

I’m just a cleaning boy, he feels the urge to say, heart and curse surging like a typhoon. He’s an orphan. He’s a nobody. These generous people house him because they made an agreement… 

I’m just a cleaning boy. I have no family, but that’s alright. I'm fine on my own.  

The bedroom and gifts are still monastic in its simplicity, which Sizhui appreciates. If it had indicated a role beyond servant and temporary ward… Sizhui’s never felt his curse behaving so violently. It’s unsteadying his breath. “Why’d you… do this?”

Gui hovers in the doorway, leaning on the frame. He seems happy to offer this room, but also like he’s playing it cool. “I thought we should have a room that suited you… Do you like it?”

Mastering his wild heart, his surging curse, and his own inner demons, Sizhui lets out a deep breath. Then, he turns and beams. “It’s perfect.” 

Gui beams back, then seems a little shy, giggling and stepping out—and immediately, Sizhui tumbles onto his rump from the speed at which he turns three. 

Now, he suddenly feels very bad and doesn’t know why. And as always, he wants someone in particular. But he can’t picture his face. He begins to cry.

“Baba??” His little voice is tremulous. Where are you?? Where did you go??

He turns sixteen again as Gui’s sunbeam smile reappears in the doorway. “Hah, well… at least Gui is here for you, little radish.”

And even though Sizhui’s no longer three—is clearly someone who should be able to handle himself—Gui still comes to him, smiling gently, hand outstretched. His hand is shaking a little, for some reason.

All of Sizhui’s bad feelings melt away, as Gui helps him to his feet and wraps an arm around his shoulders. Although, it still feels like he’s flickering on the inside… As if his curse is trying to buck something off like an angry mare. 

Little radish, he thinks, pleased—and the cursed feeling intensifies.

In the common room, Xuanyu and Hanguang are brewing tea together. Gui keeps an anchoring arm around Sizhui’s shoulders as they sit at the hearth. Somehow, he knows to hold him just a little tight. Soon enough, Sizhui’s tremulous feeling calms down, and he’s making a garlicky, herby soup while Xuanyu reads a story out loud. Hanguang warms them all. 

Gui sits in the window with a foreign stele, decoding its swirling script with that complicated translation sigil. He’s very focused… but he notices Sizhui watching him. He immediately smiles and winks, warm as sunset colors, before refocusing on his mystic puzzle.

Sizhui sighs, focusing on his own task of sauteing wild mushrooms. He’s come to accept, over the course of this day, that while Gui blocks his curse from turning him younger, he does not always make the experience of his curse better. 

Yet still, he wouldn’t trade this. For Sizhui, being seen and held by Gui is like being a lantern that has finally been lit. Gui’s power and brazenness make him feel secure, yes. But maybe there is a deeper security to be had here. 

Sizhui is actually beginning to hope.

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By the following week, Sizhui has polished each brass handle in the common room, Xuanyu has cataloged over thirty fungi species in the ‘Eternal Spring Grove,’ Hanguang has moved the castle to a thick, icy pine forest on the foreign edge of the Wilds, and Gui has been away five days out of seven, and more long nights besides. He hasn’t been traveling as much, it seems. Rather, he's going to more battles.

Gui’s never confirmed this, but Sizhui’s sure of it. There’s a certain… change in the air, when he returns from those darker portals. Something ominous that doesn’t follow him home when he travels other lands. It reminds Sizhui of the acrid smell of fireworks—of gunpowder. Or, maybe the sharp tang of copper. Or, maybe, the rotten stench of carrion. It’s not a smell, not really. But that’s the closest way he can understand it.

He hasn’t forgotten the claws that grew from Gui’s hands, at Jinlintai.

Featherless and energetic and perfectly himself, tonight, Gui layers coat and shawl and gloves to run an errand in Pineslope. Both Sizhui and Xuanyu are at his heels.

“Oh you don’t have to come,” he chuckles, bundling a fluffy scarf around his neck like a cowl, “it’s nothing important.”

Xuanyu, a boy today, is still inching toward their cloak. “But Master Gui,” they say in a  deeper-than-usual voice, “you just got home, and, I don’t know… Since the move, you’ve been gone…”

Gui still doesn’t get it. Friendly, he’s flapping a hand, shooing them. “I’ve teased you for being lazy too many times! You’re really not! You’ve already done so many chores today—”

“But, no—we want to go with you. To, you know…” They wring their hands, looking to the side.

Sizhui takes over. “Just to spend time with you.”

Gui doesn’t understand even this for another second. Then his mouth opens, his brows raise—and he cracks up. The teens look at one another, bewildered. 

“Wow! Oh, my… You know… Loneliness really plays tricks on you. You can’t even imagine things that are already happening, right in front of your eyes! Sure, kids, let’s all go. It’s time I showed you around our new town anyway.” 

Pleased, Sizhui smiles at Xuanyu, who also seems very happy. But meeting Sizhui’s smile, they flush, eyes accidentally turning a lovely shade of green. Sizhui’s flushes too—confused again, but not in a bad way. Confusion has never felt good before.

Gui is disentangling himself from his winter things. “Well, if we’re going out—let’s go out! I’m changing into something more fun. Let’s go to the teahouse, they should still be open!” At the hiss in Hanguang’s fire, he laughs. “And, not entirely full of unsavory men, which every tavern will be by now. But a teahouse is fine for these two, good Hanguang. They’re almost adults!”

Hanguang doesn’t reply, but the quick shot of embers that fly up from him makes Sizhui think of a huff. Gui loves it, cackling away.

The two sorcerers seem to revel in assembling outfits. Xuanyu is a girl again, and dressed to match. Their falling braids and dangling jewelry remind Sizhui of a willow tree. Inspired, Gui returns dressed in jeweled earrings and matching necklace, thrusting a blue silk brocade jacket at Sizhui. Soon, they all set into town feeling like the glamorous new strangers in town. Sizhui’s certainly never felt glamorous before.

As they head down the evening street through a gregarious neighborhood, Sizhui can see an array of dark, rounded mountains beyond the valley’s farmlands. Those rounded mountains… he feels like he’s seen them before… He notices Gui gazing sadly at them too, interestingly. 

The three of them chat as they walk, pointing out pretty houses or interesting signs. Breath clouds around their faces like the steam from vendors’ great tea and noodle pots. This new hill town—Pineslope, Gui says—is a bit smaller than Seaside City, its sweeping streets making four long switchbacks down a great hillside. 

Everywhere, windows are lit with cozy lanterns, and elegant pines are sheafed with snow. People here seem to come from many places. As the trio turns one corner, there are temples from different faiths all on the same block, side by side. 

Sizhui thinks of how the Alpine Town monks spoke of their distinct magic and its religion as the only correct way to live. But ever since his curse drove him to flee their sanctuary, he’s seeing that there are many different ways to live, and think, and even to live magically. For the first time… he wonders if that monastery—as all-powerful as it had felt to its orphans—was, in fact, quite a small place, aberrant in its insistence that there is only one way to be. 

Sizhui is living a queer life, by their standards.

He loves it. It is good.

They were wrong, he finally, fully decides. He feels many times lighter, walking down the street.

After Gui picks up his errand—a few bundles of suede, fur, and wool, for magically crafting new coats after the teens lost theirs at Jinlintai—they make their way through fluffy flurries into a tall, handsome teahouse. Inside, it’s warm and lively, and the cooks and tea maidens are very talented. There is also a private section in the back with loud music and hired women, which makes Sizhui blush (this time with a not-good confusion).

“So you really never go to places like that, Gui?” Xuanyu asks, a naughty tilt to their jaw.

“No! My my, what kind of apprentice do I have, asking their elder such questions? Tsk.”

They roll their painted eyes. “You’re the one who gave me erotica to read for ‘educational purposes.’”

Sizhui chokes on his tea.

Gui pats his back as Sizhui coughs. “There’s a big difference between erotica and a real person, kids. A person who may not have a choice, in what they’re doing.” He shakes his head, sipping tea. “No way. For me to get up to such things, there would need to not only be love, but freedom.”

Sizhui and Xuanyu make eye contact, and he can tell they’re thinking the same thing—Hanguang is not only trapped in the hearth, but bound to Gui. It’s easy to forget.

They walk home through the brightly lit city square. Despite the cold, late hour, the square teems with people, food stalls, and red New Years decor. Sizhui checks the moon and remembers—it’s in just three weeks.  

But then Gui slows his pace, eyes to the side. Listening. “Stay here.” 

He slips into a thick crowd, and then, seemingly, does not emerge. He made himself invisible.

“... another serious battle!” a man says nearby. He’s crowded by others, all of them with varying styles of coats.

“When will this end?” another barks, shaking his shaggy head. “The enemy is attacking deeper and deeper into our territory! The borders are all in flames now.”

A younger man asks, “But Uncle, isn’t Emperor Jin Guangyao provoking it? Why did we attack their border?”

“Young master,” another man cuts in, angry, “you hold your tongue about our noble Emperor!”

But someone else says, “Now, Shu-xiong, don’t forget that entire clan branch was wiped out from here, at the start of this idiotic war… Good neighbors, and the best doctors in all the lands, they were, all they did was have the wrong blood—”

This conversation suddenly makes Sizhui feels strange... fuzzy in the head, like he has a fever.

But his attention is pulled away from the talk. For a big man now approaches the teens with a swagger. His eyes are set on Xuanyu. “Hey. Pretty little sister.”

Sizhui is not tall, but still, he squares up—next to a suddenly middle-aged, male version of Xuanyu, who glares back at the man.

The stranger looks shocked—then horrified—then very, very angry… 

But then, he suddenly spins around on his heel and marches away with an ungainly, ridiculous gait, drawing laughter from many Pineslopers.

Gui is beside the teens again, smirking as he tucks his arm under his cloak. “Never trust a guy like that.”

But he didn’t hide his arm fast enough—both teens gasp at the black claws, the bloody studs of emerging feathers. Just from using that tiny bit of sorcery??

“Gui.” Something cold darts through Sizhui’s stomach. He does feel some gratitude to the monk mages in this moment, because he fully understands the gravity of what he saw. That was… that was bad. Gui’s becoming something else. That’s not shapeshifting. Using sorcery without a heart, Gui’s evolving into something that will overtake him, mind and soul.

Xuanyu wears those puppy eyes of theirs. Sizhui’s never seen Xuanyu make them at Gui before. “Master Gui… Why did you plant all that expensive stuff in the wilderness?”

Gui seems too light, too cheerful. Sizhui senses something that feels like the scent of copper. “Oh, I just want to make sure you and Sizhui are taken care of no matter what! You two could run a stellar apothecary! I know you’d be good at it!”

The valuable bounty of that forest grove… Suddenly, Sizhui doesn’t like it. “But Gui, we need you, too.”

Those simple words seem to zap the coppery sense away. Gui brings out his arm again, mists and feathers and claws sizzling into nothing. He looks down at his abated curse, then at Sizhu. Then, he peers at him, just as he did when they first met. “Are you sure we don’t know each other?”

The teens’ fears are momentarily put to rest, on their walk home. Gui chatters away, seeming entirely normal. No more hints of a monster lurk on his skin.

But once home, he prepares to leave through the black portal again.

There have been times when Sizhui’s worried, when Gui leaves or stays away long. But this time… Sizhui feels dread.

That lovely security he’s found here… suddenly, it feels like sand in an hourglass.

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Chapter Text

Wei Ying has been so jubilant, so vivacious and electric, with his apprentice and ward in their new home these past weeks. He’d eaten well, he’d had color in his cheeks. Lan Wangji actually felt hope rekindle.

But then, tonight, Wei Ying went through the black portal to yet another battle. There, he saved many civilians, no doubt. But when he finally came back, he was… miasmic.

He'd trudged wordlessly straight to the bathroom, where he now showers away the evil he brought home. Lan Wangji is currently doing his best to burn so hot that he heats the water as it comes out without melting the heater or pipes.

After a long while, Wei Ying sprints panicked into his bedroom where Lan Wangji waits for him. “Lan Zhan!!”

Worry dampens his flames to red. “What happened?”

“It didn’t all come out…” He’s frightened, agitated in a way Lan Wangji hasn’t seen him in a long time. He keeps rubbing at his chest, his stomach. 

Being what he is, Hanguang can sense evil forms of yin inside Wei Ying's body like a foul smell invading their lovely home. He came back so tainted, the hot rain chamber couldn’t draw all the evil forces out.

It’s finally gone too deep, just as Lan Wangji has been warning him it would.

Urgency overrides worry. Lan Wangji’s fire rears high. “You need yang. Pour oil of sandalwood into a brass pitcher. Your skin will soak it up quickly after that hot water.” 

Wei Ying does so, shaking. How Lan Wangji wishes he could lay hands on him, nuzzle him, soothe him. He has no idea what having hands would feel like, but he wants them all the same. “Place it close to me. I will add more yang.”

He focuses, and the pitcher glows with light. Soon, the oil is very warm, its sandalwood magically infused.

Wei Ying’s making flickering eye contact, just like Lan Wangji’s flames. “So… what should I—?”

“Start with kidneys, then extremities, then limbs.”

Wei Ying lifts the shiny, pear-bellied pitcher in Lan Wangji’s light. With some clumsiness, for he’s trembling and frigid, he pours the oil in one palm. It resembles honey in this light, and emanates purifying, enlivening yang in Lan Wangji’s spiritual senses. He cannot smell sandalwood, but he knows it intimately by this sense alone.

Letting out a shaky breath in relief, Wei Ying brings his hands together, holding them as close to the fire as he can as he rubs in the spelled oil. His eyes close.

“Mmmm,” his throat hums, relieved, and Lan Wangji’s energy shifts to desirous in spite of himself.

Wei Ying only wears a single layer robe, having rushed from the bath. He loosens it, a lot, so that he can reach behind and oil his poor kidneys, then his arms… Then his feet, fully groaning at those. Then, his calves, clearly feeling better and better as he goes and looking to Lan Wangji for more direction.

“Your neck is important,” Lan Wangji says, barely daring to enjoy this as much as he is.

Wei Ying’s neck is indeed very important. Watching him coat it in sheen, closing his eyes with pleasure again as he does so… is a lot. And each time Wei Ying pours more oil, he holds his Shenjing’s gaze, unafraid and attuned.

“Now where?” he whispers, looking at him with hazy eyes.

Though Wei Ying is technically his master, they act as equals. But right now… Lan Wangji is feeling mastery. In a way he hasn’t since he soared through the cosmos like a comet of fire and spirit. “Collarbone.”

This part of him, from neck to breast, is full of angles that make Lan Wangji ache. The bow of his collarbone, in particular. Lan Wangji wants to be the arrow notched in it. Wei Ying’s lovely hands stroke glistening lines from one bow tip to the other.

“Your yang feels so good,” he purrs.

Their heart races, at that. Lan Wangji knows Wei Ying can't feel it, but surely he can see—see this clear evidence of how Lan Wangji feels in this moment, even if Lan Wangji can't say why.

Regardless, he keeps going. Wei Ying deserves this touch. “Nape of neck.”

Wei Ying is misted over with sweat, now, because Lan Wangji’s fire has grown hotter and hotter. It flashes all over with blue. If he could taste a bead of Wei Ying’s sweat, pearling on his amber chest, he would. The way Wei Ying keeps looking at him is going to undo him.

“Ear lobes.”

Wei Ying rubs Lan Wangji’s warmth into them. They look so soft. Lan Wangji wants teeth, for nipping.

“... Torso.”

Wei Ying drops his robe entirely, now only in thin, underlayer pants. Lan Wangji has of course seen Wei Ying shirtless, many times. But right now, it feels new. This energy between them is new.

Wei Ying coats his muscled shoulders, strokes himself from neck to arm. Then, Wei Ying looks down at his untouched nipples. Without raising his head, his eyes flash up to Lan Wangji’s. “I should probably get these too,” he murmurs, low. “Scandalous as it may be, Lord Hanguang. Can a noble Shenjing allow such an act performed before them, by this humble person?”

Flashing blue-white, Lan Wangji’s fire ripples. Vibrates. As if he were the surface of a struck bell. “Go ahead.”

“They must contract qi into the blood extra fast, right? I need this yang.”

I need you, Wei Ying’s eyes seem to say. I need you inside me.

Is he actually saying it, in their inner language? Lan Wangji can’t tell, which is excruciating. But his own unspoken feelings are too strong. “Be gentle,” he commands. Soft.

When Wei Ying’s fingers reach his chest, his breathing hitches. And while Wei Ying can’t feel it in his own body, Lan Wangji feels their shared heart racing… and he's not sure who is responsible for it anymore. Lan Wangji has long since turned entirely blue and has stayed that way. The light casts Wei Ying otherworldly, painted in indigo and sky and moon shadow.

Looking down at himself now, Wei Ying rubs his nipples with the sandalwood oil in slow, concentric circles. His hair slips over his sweat-sheened shoulder, and his lips part.

After Wei Ying had caressed his neck, Lan Wangji hadn’t thought that this yearning to touch him could somehow get worse.

As if he knew what Lan Wangji was thinking just then, Wei Ying dips his fingers for a fresh coating of oil, then extends his hands toward the blue fire again. There’s high color in his cheeks. “Oh Lan Zhan, I don’t think I’ve felt this warm since giving up my heart to you.”

That heart is beating so hot and fast. Lan Wangji gazes longingly at Wei Ying’s hands, outstretched beautifully before him in the indigo light, shining with oil. Sculptures of sapphire. Lan Wangji focuses again on how it’s his energy extracted into the oil, which Wei Ying’s taking back to his chest…

Wei Ying closes his eyes as that warmth reaches body again—as he smooths his oiled hands over each chiseled breast, from the muscled ridge at the bottom to the bird-winged collarbone above. Pressing hard, he sends his flat palms down his abdomen too, fingertips just barely slipping under the waistline of his pants. 

Lan Wangji’s gaze follows each stroke, ecstatic and arrested—willing his essence deep into Wei Ying’s blue-lit body. Willing Wei Ying’s hands to go further.

Torso fully covered, Wei Ying sighs, gazing at him as if hungry. Eyes foxish, he adds more wood. “You’re burning very hot, Lan Zhan,” he whispers.

“Mmn,” he is able to say, because it is true—and even this small thing feels like a miracle.

Fresh wood now crackling away, Wei Ying draws back just a little, his wide eyes asking something. His breathing is elevated, his pupils dilated. Their heart beats wildly.

Lan Wangji wants to say so many things. And Wei Ying has offered up so much already. Yet again, time is of the essence to tell Wei Ying that he loves him, and he knows he’ll hurt Wei Ying with his silence…

His fire cools in this anxiety, regaining orange plumage.

Wei Ying giggles, standing and turning around. “My back is so chilly compared to the rest of me. But it started to warm by the end.”

This is good. “It drew fresh energy in and through you, cleansing yin from your organs.” The foul sense of dark magic is gone, and he feels intense pride in vanquishing it.

Sighing, Wei Ying shows his back to Lan Wangji, now. Lan Wangji wishes the pants were gone, or at least tied lower so that he could see Wei Ying’s hip dimples. As he sits, the slow, soft rounding of his body fills the pant fabric like a taut peach, and it is divine . More than anything in the heavens ever was.

Lan Wangji is all blue again.

He pulls his hair over his shoulder in a slow, fluid motion, fully revealing all his textures and angles. This view of him is… stunning. Lan Wangji loves it as achingly as before. 

Wei Ying peeks over his shoulder at him, lightly laughs, and looks away again. If he’s feeling self-conscious, well, Lan Wangji understands. As a cleansing process, what they just did was not inherently sexual. It could easily have felt as detached as doctor and patient. 

It very much had not. 

But Lan Wangji can say nothing to reassure him. And, perhaps… perhaps Wei Ying hadn’t really wanted he cleansing to feel that way, and got carried away in how good the healing felt… The animal body is powerful, and Lan Wangji knows he cannot understand just how much… And of course, Lan Wangji has always been unsure where his Shenjing enchantment ends and Wei Ying’s true feelings begin. He knows it is easy to seduce humans, in any form. He’s not trying to…

Perhaps Lan Wangji went too far, revealing such beastly desire with his hot, blue flames. Perhaps he should have tried to control himself more.

He cannot ask.

“Bath?” he offers, fully marigold.

Wei Ying’s shoulders droop—in disappointment, or relief? “Ah, yes, I’m all oily, aren’t I? Hah.”

Without looking at Lan Wangji, he pulls his house robe on and makes for the door. Lan Wangji feels like a magical portal was opened here in this room, and it is now closing.

Before he leaves, Wei Ying pauses. Turns back. And his smile is deeply loving. “Thank you for that, Lan Zhan. You healed me so well. I appreciate you, so much.”

Lan Wangji wants to scream the words trapped inside him. Sparks and cinders and crackling resin fly around him.

Don’t thank me, I WANT this, I want YOU, I want nothing more than to make you feel good in any way that I can.

The curse holds, as always. He only crackles louder.

Maybe he can put it another way…

This is one of the ways I protect you.

Nothing.

Your body is precious.

Nothing.

You are so beautiful.

Nothing.

Wei Ying I’m so so sorry.

Nothing.

I love you like a divine spear in my heart.

At Lan Wangji’s prolonged silence, Wei Ying’s smile turns wry. And his eyes turn sad. He leaves, heading for the room where Lan Wangji cannot follow. 

After a moment, Lan Wangji does the thing he needs to do, whenever he feels this deeply alone. He rises through a bricked tunnel—up into the highest chimney. 

He flares out into the night above Pineslope, where he sees such a new kind of view. He does not prefer it; the Wilds are superior to any human place. But still, it has a certain beauty. Perhaps, under other circumstances, he could like this town. Certainly, he’s placed a lot of hopes on it, bringing Sizhui here.

He’s not up in the chimney for the town, though. No. He’s here for the stars. They’re not as bright here as they are in the Wilds. But he can still feel them. They whisper.

As Wei Ying bathes, Lan Wangji and Wei Ying’s hearth-bound heart does not speed up again. It only aches.

As Wei Ying bathes in something that would destroy Lan Wangji in this form, he bathes in his own essence's purest, coldest form alone. As alone as he was before coming to Earth. As alone as he clearly is Fated to be, until his end. 

Which, judging by how things are going with Wei Ying’s sorcery… is not very far off at all, anymore.

It’s a reversal of roles, but still, Lan Wangji sends another prayer up into the stars. To Sizhui.

Remember, he prays, with longing. Please, please, remember.

His longing is so bright, he feels magic in his prayer. It is unintentional; it is simply his state of being. Downstairs in Wei Ying's hearth, invisible energy emanates from their heart like a corona.

The world is a great ocean of such currents. There is no guarantee that any of them will make waves.

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Chapter Text

Two weeks after the move, and all the lands are in the icy grips of Major Cold. It’s a nasty, sleety day in Pineslope. Meanwhile, the Wilds’ blizzards are so intense, Hanguang has hunkered the castle down in a giant cave for a while. 

Sizhui isn’t cold, though. With a wooden sword, he works up a sweat in the third floor training room. Its wood panels gleam with his reflection in horse stance. Hanguang currently resides in this room’s fireplace, instructing him on breathing and forms. 

He thrusts the blade again and again, feeling his palms take on the raw work of callous-building. He is so happy to be training again. 

It’s especially incredible to have spent so much time with Hanguang, these past months. Sizhui’s made a study of him, in addition to the scrolls and incredible forms his demon teacher assigns. The boy now understands Hanguang’s nonverbal language of spark and color and texture very well. And there is more expressiveness in his eyes than Sizhui knew—even though they are only apparitions, and are clearly inhuman. Sizhui remembers the pride he felt when he finally learned to understand cats. It’s almost as if they were training for understanding a Shenjing.

Urgently, Hanguang says behind him, “Sizhui, go to the main hearth.” 

When Sizhui whirls around to the fireplace, Hanguang has already disappeared. He shrinks to preteen age.

Wiping his face with a towel, Sizhui hurries down. Just as he descends the stairs into the common room (ten, now), Xuanyu steps into it from their new ground-floor bedroom. “Was that a knock—?” 

Hanguang swivels a piercing gaze onto them, answering, “It is Jiang Wanyin.”

Xuanyu’s eyes go very wide, shoulders bunching almost to their ears. Their hair frizzes out like a cat’s poofed tail. “He found us already?! We just moved!!”

“You don’t have to answer.” Hanguang’s voice is so deep, it’s like a growl. Sizhui can imagine the roar of a forest fire in it.

“Hmph.” Xuanyu marches toward the door, aging and feminizing as they go. Their features change into someone else for once, too. Sizhui can still perceive Xuanyu in the pock-marked, middle-aged woman they’ve crafted, but only barely.

“Impressive, Xuanyu!” he says in his youthful voice as Xuanyu tromps past, determined frown set on the door. Time is the hardest magic, after all—this is advanced. 

Xuanyu throws on the floor-length coat Gui provided for their new shop role. It’s red matte silk with blue jadeite buttons, blue dragons embroidered at the collar and hems—adding an illusion of prestige. 

They open the door to windy, cold sleet—and to a powerfully-built man in a greased rain cloak, who pushes his wide hood back to reveal braids running temple to bun. Dressed in black and amethyst (with eyes to match!) and carrying a mage’s spelled sword at his hip, he seems around Gui’s age. But he’s slashed with deep frown lines and red-rimmed eyes that make him seem older. 

“You look familiar,” he says to Xuanyu. It’s rudely familiar—a taunt. 

From down in the stairwell, Jiang Wanyin notices Sizhui up above Xuanyu’s head. He notices, then looks away as if he saw nothing of importance, scanning the rest of what little he can see with those hard, purple eyes.

“What can I help you with, young lord?” Xuanyu answers in a gravelly voice completely unlike their own. Sizhui is further impressed.

“I think you know, auntie,” he mocks. “But I’ll play along. I’m looking for Gui, the heartless black magic fugitive. Do you know of him?”

“I have heard of Sorcerer Gui.”

“Better response than last time,” he sneers—and Sizhui gets a very bad feeling about the state of this man’s spirit. “Can I come in or not?”

“My master sets the wards on this place, not I,” they respond, gulping. 

“Cut the act—no he doesn’t. I know about his demon problem. You should be careful, too. Most likely, it resents being bound, and it’s biding its time until it escapes and kills you both in vengeance.” Jiang Wanyin hulks as close as he can without crossing the threshold, frowning ferociously. “That’s what happens, when you fuck around with sorcery—there are consequences.”

Xuanyu is stiff and silent with fear, but they don’t budge. 

“I’ve been inside this rathole before—I’ve seen the demon myself, in the fire. All it does is glare. It would burn this place down in a second, the moment it found a loophole in the bargain. This filthy ‘castle’ is a death trap.”

From the fireplace, Hanguang wears a look of acid in Jiang Wanyin’s direction. However incorrect Jiang Wanyin is about Hanguang, he’s not wrong about his deadliness… Sizhui can really see it. He has a sense that if Jiang Wanyin tried to force his way inside, it would not go well for him.

And as Hanguang looks daggers toward Jiang Wanyin… in Sizhui’s head… or perhaps the depths of his soul?… he hears Hanguang’s deep growl, distant and echoing: 

What else could I do but glare, in your presence?

Sizhui tries not to react, for fear of interrupting the face-off at the door. But he feels zapped with electricity. What was that??

“So this is it, then?” Jiang Wanyin shakes his head. His red-rimmed eyes are bugging with rage—ironically, he looks more a demon than Gui ever has. “Wei Wuxian’s just going to bum around from place to place, a traitor and a necromancer, lying and cheating and using demonic magic until it kills him? And you’re just going to let him?? How long can he keep this up?!”

Xuanyu is trembling, but their shape holds. “Master Gui’s heart is good.”

“He traded it for demonic power! We all saw! He should have died that day. Yet now, here he suddenly reappears on the battlefield—and to do this?!”

“You should go now.” Xuanyu does not look nervous anymore, though they tremble. They’ve fully returned to their teen self, and still glare up at this snarling tiger of a man. “We’ll stay by his side.” 

This really seems to strike a nerve. “Listen here you fucking brat—it’s Wei Wuxian’s way to endanger people who care about him. So consider yourself warned, because when he—”

Suddenly, the door SLAMS shut in his face—so fast and loud that it shakes the castle wall. Xuanyu jumps back, breathing quickly. 

Scowl frighteningly deep, Hanguang intones, “Enough. Ignore him. He is a bitter man.”

Tentative, slightly older Sizhui asks the Shenjing, “Who was he?”

“Gui’s adoptive brother. He hunts Gui, too.” At Sizhui’s alarm, he continues, “He stalks us for his own reasons. He won’t turn Gui in.”

“He’s actually worried about Master Gui,” Xuanyu mutters, still glowering at the door, “but he’s too messed up to realize it. Any time he talks to Master Gui, the curse flares up for days.”

Sizhui feels disturbed by the implications of all this. Shaken, he slumps into a plush chair by the curio shelves. “Hanguang, did you… say anything to him, while he was here?”

From across the room, those golden eyes narrow at him. “No.”

Furrowing his brow, Sizhui sets to studying that ruby rabbit skull, thinking as he turns it this way and that. He knows what he heard. He may not know how it happened, but he knows what that was. He has no doubt.

After all these months of close study, trying to understand Hanguang’s nonverbal communications… he just heard Hanguang’s inner voice, the way Gui can. 

But still, studying aside, the question is: how? What’s linking them like this? Is it because they’re both cursed? 

Or… could their bond actually be stronger than he’d even hoped for?

Typically, Sizhui is a forthcoming person. He knows he should tell Hanguang about such a significant thing right away. But right now… his heart is bruised and jumpy from Jiang Wanyin, and he’s not sure how to talk so intimately with Hanguang. And he’s very sweaty from training. 

He’ll tell Hanguang soon. He just needs a moment to process. A bath and a nap are in order, for him to sort out his heart, and wake up clear for an evening together… 

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A great, wide cave tunnel, scattered floor to ceiling with jewels and talismans and notebooks and lingfu and discarded inventions and paint brushes and rattle drum toys… all littered over with bloody black feathers.

Sizhui stands alone in this sad, wondrous tunnel, bearing a torch. He grips the wood, thinking of Hanguang. And also of Zhulong, painted protectively over their threshold. Known as ‘dragon of candles’ and ‘torch dragon.’ Lighting the home. Lighting the way.

Remember, the torch whispers. 

The sparkling, messy tunnel is loud with a low wind, much like the blizzards of the Wilds. Sizhui feels dread and urgency pressing upon his spirit, like a hunting horn sounding in his ears. He hurries.

He finds a massive, shuddering crow monster at the end of the tunnel, huddled hurting in the dark.

Sizhui summons his courage. “... Gui? Wei Wuxian? Is that you?”

The monster curls in on itself, shuddering harder. “Go away,” a horrible voice says. Black mists seep from him, casting a miasma. Sizhui’s torch vanquishes it before it reaches him.

Sizhui intuitively knows that this demon is his Gui. “Please, tell me what’s going on! I don’t care if you’re a monster. We can break the curse you’re under!”

“You can’t even break your own curse…”

“I will! And yours too! Please, Gui, let us help you! Xuanyu, Hanguang, and I, we’re here! You’re not alone!” he cries, fighting his way closer against the smoke like qi. “We love you—!”

“You’re too late.” The monstrous crow takes off, soaring into a far more monstrous battle of red flames—

“GUI, NO!” Sizhui sobs, turning young and tumbling into darkness, dropping the torch—

And for just a second, Sizhui sees a glimmer of his usual nightmarescape—of that person with scarlet eyes and flowing robes and hair, standing in a mighty wind among starlit pools, a precious bundle at their feet—watching a massive fire overtake the horizon—

I’m too late, that person’s voice whispers in Sizhui’s soul.

… Gui’s voice. 

As the vision’s sky flares blue, Sizhui realizes… that person from Sizhu’s nightmares… it’s Gui.

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Chapter Text

Waking up suddenly in his bedroom, Sizhui senses commotion beyond his pine wood door. Something feels off to the quality of everyone’s voices.

He rises swiftly, startled for a moment at how cold he is, but then remembering that he is always cold, after nightmares. Just like Gui is, whenever he returns from his sorcerous portal—

“Wait,” he whispers to himself, freezing in place as he grabs his jacket. His mind is suddenly racing.

That poem Gui brought home from the roots of a sacred olive tree—Sizhui has studied it closely.

‘Be nothing and everything to cross the fabric of time and sea of space’

‘Past and Future should be regarded as one’

‘Time and love are both circles’

‘Meet in the plain between right and wrong / Find a fellowship, and sail into the light with them’

That last part made sense right away, when he thought about this household and everyone in it. The love here is a path of light to follow, like a righteous dao. But as for the rest… what if, when Sizhui slips into a state of nothingness as he sleeps… he is somehow crossing time? 

Gui is so sure Sizhui has his own magic, and Gui's instincts should be listened to. Now that Sizhui knows he's seeing an actual, living person in those nightmares—someone he didn't even consciously remember—he's certain they aren't just dreams. Usually, his nightmare-visions show him that person in the field of pools and stars as alone. Sizhui’s not able to speak to them—to Wei Wuxian, that Yiling Laozu alone against the world.

Yet somehow, Sizhui’s seeing it, is able to portal there…

Because… there is more than just Gui, in that vision. For always, always in that tragic scene, Sizhui has seen a bundle of something at Gui’s feet! A bundle of something precious.

Thirteen years, Gui has been heartless. 

Thirteen years, Sizhui has been an amnesiac orphan. 

Sizhui is… the bundle. 

Sizhui’s ‘nightmares’ are his own magic, throwing his spirit into the past! His nightmares are spirit portals!

Sizhui’s spirit has been circling back to the person he loved and who loved him, long ago. The person he’s somehow found again, who he newly loves once more. 

Now, he’s made a full circle, finding Gui. 

In fact—in a way—the curse led him to Gui!

Sizhui gasps with a pang of love and grief, realizing yet more: despite how brief their time was together, Sizhui actually grew up to be like Gui all the same. Because Sizhui’s cared for his inner needs—been alone in it—all his life. Even things like cleaning and cooking were learned at a young age. Self-soothing his nightmares, younger still. His curse flares whenever he feels like a tiny boy again, for delight or wonder or fear. For needing care. So of course those feelings are set to ease whenever he’s around Gui. That lonely orphan child is no longer tucked in a forbidden box—he’s allowed to be free, to be joyful, and to need someone. Gui is an unbeatable, unrelenting shield against Sizhui’s curse without using any sorcery at all.

I am still that little boy, he understands. The curse made me see it.

And to truly see himself means to see a tormented Yiling Laozu in a field of reflected stars. To see a person he lost, who he would someday be reunited with again.

‘Past and Future should be regarded as one.’ 

All this means… that bloody, whimsical tunnel where he found crow demon Gui was a portal, too. Usually, they take him to the past. But what he saw this time—that was the future. And not the distant future, either. 

This is about to happen. 

Sizhui blurs into action.

He bursts out of his bedroom to find Gui pacing, wide-eyed and frowning. Xuanyu follows him, wringing their hands. 

Hanguang looks frightful. “Sizhui—the war draws close to Alpine Town. He is forgetting—” 

“That Alpine Town orphanage…” Gui is muttering, grabbing talismans of power from his shelves. “I have to stop this war, once and for all. There’s no denying it. No one else can do it. The battles will find Pineslope too, it won’t stop till it’s eaten in everyone in its path. I must protect my famil… My… I have to protect my…”

And he seems confused for a moment, his fast steps slowing. “What am I saying…? It’s only me here.” A lonely tear slips out eye as he shakes his head, disconcerted—and Sizhui knows he just watched Gui’s curse fully take over. 

Xuanyu is white with fear, tugging on Gui’s sleeve to no avail. “Please, Master Gui, please hear me this time…”

Gui hurries frowningly toward the stairwell. “There are so many of them, but I… I have to try.” He stands pinioned at the top of the stairs, looking down at the door with a resigned expression. “I won’t be too late this time.”

“STOP!” Lan Zhan roars and sparks in his grate, straining against his limitations. “WEI YING!”

But Gui flicks the compass to black and leaps in, disappearing. The door closes with a snap of finality.

Your spirit will be corrupted this time! Inside, Sizhui hears Hanguang’s deep, anguished cry. I love you! Come back!

Sizhui feels pierced by Hanguang’s pain—but he’s also thrilling with hope. Not only can he hear him, but he can hear things Hanguang cannot say out loud. “Hanguang! I think I can hear your heart in mine! Speak to me that way, if you can!”

Hanguang whirls around to glare at him, crackling like a firework. Then: Sizhui?

Gasping, he dives toward the fire and kneels face-to-face, grasping the edge of the stone hearth. “YES!” 

Now Hanguang flares white, and blue embers fly everywhere, sparkling. They dance around Sizhui’s face and hair, brushing him with a supreme, non-burning heat.

Listen closely, for there isn’t much time—You were the last child living at Yiling, about to perish with the rest—I came to Earth for you—But it was a landscape of water—I was going to be extinguished—But Wei Ying caught me— He saved me —He asked me to save you—To fly you away to a safe place, even though he’d be cursed—As I carried you, I saw your soul, and what I saw made me love you too—I took you to your monastery, but couldn’t tell Gui—He’s been searching for you ever since! 

Sizhui is still kneeling, with white-knuckled grip on Hanguang’s hearth. He was brought to the orphanage by a Shenjing. By THIS Shenjing! “The monks say there was an uncanny wind the night I arrived. People even tell stories about that night to this day, the gale was so great… And I… Ah, Haunguang, I can’t remember that night, but I used to dream about a blue dragon…”

It was I—I placed ‘Sizhui’ in the monks’ heads, longing for you to remember—Your true name is Wen Yuan!—To Wei Ying and I both, you are A-Yuan!

Sizhui gasps, eyes flying wide open as something inside of him releases like a flood.

In a rush, Sizhui transforms to three years old—but for the first time, he also remembers. 

He remembers Yiling, and its ‘laozu.’ The beloved caretaker Sizhui’s always keening for, even when he can’t remember him.

Then, he’s sixteen again, and the rushing, broken-dam feeling is fading away like water down a drain… until it’s simply gone, sunken inert into the earth. 

Sizhui knows, without a doubt, that his curse is fully broken.

But of course, Hanguang’s is not. As you grew, he says in Sizhui’s mind, deeply sad, I could not watch over you—I am bound here—Forgive me, A-Yuan—But, for that one night, I was your star guardian.

“You’re still my star guardian! You saved my life then. You broke my curse now. Oh Hanguang.” That longing in Gui’s eyes, while gazing down at a loved one he cannot touch, is suddenly very relatable. Sizhui wants badly to run into Hanguang’s arms.

Xuanyu’s biting their nails to nubs. “Sizhui I can tell something important is going on here and I’m sorry to interrupt, but we need Hanguang to summon Gui back.”

Now, Hanguang speaks aloud, tones low and harsh. His flames are orange-red. “Impossible. Only Gui can direct me in sorcery. And it would demand all my power. You two would be left too vulnerable.”

“We already are!” Xuanyu cries, fierce. “And if we don’t find Gui, he’ll die!”

“Gui would say nothing is impossible,” Sizhui adds, quiet.

Hanguang flares blue tipped in white, at that—his true colors. “Very well. Children, I’ll need something of yours.”

They nod at each other, not needing to discuss it: anything for Gui. “Like what?” Xuanyu asks, coming to kneel by the fire too.

“Humans sometimes give their tongue. A hand. Sometimes their eyes. I won’t accept such offerings from you.” He watches their shocked reactions archly, and Sizhui hears him say internally, Now do you see what you’re asking for?  

Sizhui gulps, and holds out his hair. Gui did say it holds lots of essence, and at least this part of his body will grow back. “How about this?” Immediately, Xuanyu holds their ponytail out for Hanguang, too.

Like two whips of fire, Hanguang sends hot tendrils to accept his offerings. He singes each long mane away at chin length, pulling both bundles of locks into his fire, where they immediately turn to ash. Sizhui smells burnt hair and feels strange without the weight of it.

Hanguang’s blue flame grows and flares as it did when they moved house—a hint of his dragon form, Sizhui realizes! A long, wolf-like snout… sharp teeth… arching horns, and whirling, tendril whiskers—he can recognize them now.

The door flies open to the black portal, with its cold, howling wind. Hanguang extends his flames to the door, blackening the frame with his fiery grip, and calls, “ WEI YING! ”

For a few breathless moments, nothing happens. 

But then… Sizhui sees a feathery shape appearing, distantly but swiftly, through the rippling black.

“It’s him!” Xianyu cheers. “It’s him!!”

“Hanguang, you’re incredible!” Sizhui cries, giddy with relief.

His low voice booms and echoes like thunder. “ Imagine what I could have done with your eyes.”

And then silently, inside Sizhui: Or your heart.

Sizhui’s giddiness evaporates with absolute clarity. “Oh.”

Xuanyu is baffled at the quick change. “Sizhui, you look like you just got hit over the head…”

But Sizhui isn’t confused. 

When Gui tumbles unconscious into the stairwell, black feathers scattering away from him with the sound of breaking glass, Sizhui knows exactly what he has to do.

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Chapter Text

Struggling, the teens pull Gui up to lay closer to the hearth. He’s as ashen as a ghost really would be. 

“Add more wood to Hanguang, we need a big fire,” Sizhui directs. But Hanguang is rapidly, alarmingly shrinking… Their cherished common room is growing dark. 

“Are they dead?” he hears Xuanyu ask, voice wavering. Sizhui also hears logs clatter onto the grate, and then, light purple witch fire lights up the room. Xuanyu really is so brave.

“Don’t worry, Xuanyu,” Sizhui says, rising to squeeze their free hand. In the dancing witchlight, Xuanyu looks young and scared. “Please trust me. I’m going to try something.”

“Sizhui, I… I do trust you, actually.”

He turns to his teacher. His star guardian. The heavenly spirit trapped in this fireplace for thirteen long years, who is now burning very, very low. “Master Hanguang.”

I knew you. Those golden eyes are barely open, and even Hanguang’s internal voice sounds distant. He’s like a dark blue mist around Gui’s heart, which barely beats. When you found us… When your voice touched my walls from the Wilds… Though I could not see… I knew you, A-Yuan.

“In my dreams, the dragon felt as familiar as family. I thought maybe he was an ancestor, but that…” Tears sting his eyes. “That was you, Master Hanguang… All those years I was alone… You and Gui saved me, in more ways than one.”

A-Yuan… I am tired.

Then let me save you, now, Sizhui thinks back, flooding with determination. He reaches his hands into Hanguang’s flames to pick up Gui’s failing heart. Hanguang does not burn him at all.

Kneeling before the man he now remembers (a refugee camp for his clan of medicine people, somewhere in those rounded mountains just beyond Pineslope…), Sizhui cradles that man’s heart against his own, eyes closing. 

“Please let this work. Please let Wei Wuxian and Master Hanguang be whole. Let us be a family.” These next words come out of him unexpectedly, but they feel very right. “Please let the circle complete.”

Moving with a calm instinct, Sizhui lowers his hands to Gui’s chest. Focusing his intention with all his might—Let the circle complete—he presses Gui’s heart into his flesh like burying a seed. It sinks perfectly inside, as if Gui’s chest were soft soil.

A vapor-like, indigo flame rises out into the air—then shoots over to the fireplace, where it roils like blue and white smoke on the wood. 

Gui does not move.

But because Sizhui is master of his own past now, he reaches his spirit back in time with intention—in order to remember another, older, deeply true name for Gui. “Xian-ge!”

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Gasping and sitting bolt upright, Wei Wuxian comes to.

He is sitting on the ground in a dim room and his chest is aching fiercely. He’s been jolted awake, panicking at a supreme level, because his little boy just called for him. “A-Yuan—?!”

A short-haired Sizhui kneels next to him, in front of the dark fireplace (dark?!). He’s lit only by Xuanyu’s light purple witch fire. “Gui, I’m Wen Yuan! My curse is broken, and so is yours!”

“WHAT?” Wei Wuxian grabs his shoulder. Maybe a little too hard, but he’s beyond shocked. He can’t let this moment break apart, must anchor them in it. “You’re… you’re my A-Yuan??”

Equally short-haired Xuanyu watches nearby, one hand casting witch fire and the other over their mouth in awe and emotion—as Wei Wuxian and Sizhui are forehead to forehead, gripping each other's shoulders, smiling and crying.

“A-Yuan, oh A-Yuan, I couldn’t find you, but you found me… Oh, skies…” 

His boy. His little boy. It really was A-Yuan crying ‘Baba’ like that, the day they moved! That little voice had shaken Wei Wuxian to the core. Now, his boy is really, finally here… His heart thunders.

But with that thundering, he realizes something else. “Wait—Lan Zhan??”

His beloved fire demon is burning differently than Wei Wuxian’s ever seen—faceless, almost transparent, and emitting hardly any light. In this form, he’s climbing over what’s left of the logs in the fireplace. They’re shrinking incredibly fast, barely scraps—

In a sudden burst of light that makes Xuanyu yelp, Lan Zhan shoots over to their giant stock of firewood. His essence—for that must be what this beautiful, smokeless, otherworldly fire is—trickles over the entire pile in a blink, and begins to consume it. 

Wei Wuxian is on his knees before the pyre. “Lan Zhan?? LAN ZHAN??! Can you hear me? Do you need anything?”

No answer. The lamps and fire remain out, too. 

“Is it alright to know his true name?” Xuanyu whispers to Sizhui, somewhere behind Wei Wuxian’s trembling back.

In answer, Lan Zhan’s low, echoing voice faintly whispers: Family.

“He’s alright. Oh fuck.” Wei Wuxian droops in relief against the hearth stones. He keeps laying a palm on his neck's beating pulse, the way he remembers feeling at the strangeness of childhood’s loose teeth. “I suppose if the castle is standing, we both must be fine… And there’s got to be two entire trees’ worth of wood here… Alright. Alright. Let’s… Let’s just give him some time. He must be transforming, and I trust Sizhui’s curse-breaking. I think—oh.” He blinks twice. “Sizhui, I think you have time magic.”

“Yes. Hang on, though,” Sizhui replies with a determined set to his brow. The shoulder-length hair somehow makes him look extra plucky. He’s heading for the kitchen counter—where he grabs all twelve heads of cabbage they’d bought to pickle, crosses to the blue-flamed woodpile, and drops them on.

“Good thinking.” Wei Wuxian rises shakily. “Just take care not to touch him.”

Xuanyu and Wei Wuxian join in—together, they feed Lan Zhan all their teas, vegetables, spices, cooking herbs, beans, tofu, and mushrooms. At one point, when the castle is almost entirely emptied out, Lan Zhan's diligent student stops Xuanyu from adding meat jerky: “Plants only.” 

They empty every apothecary drawer of fragrant medicine too. The room tinges blue now, from Lan Zhan’s growing light. “Some final things,” Wei Wuxian says—heading to the shelves for a bolt of his finest silk, his ruby rabbit skull, and a pouch of gold dust. 

The bolt, he drops down like another log, and the ruby is gently tossed on top like a cherry on a cake. Then, he opens the pouch and turns it upside down. The dust glitters its way into Lan Zhan’s indigo flames, hissing like snow.

As he does this, he looks at Sizhui and feels his heart contract. “A-Yuan, I have searched the entire world over for you.”

The boy’s lips are pursed together. All three of them have been crying on and off, since Wei Wuxian woke up.

“After Hanguang and I struck our bargain, I checked every orphanage in our lands. Alpine Town was a few years into my search.” Gold dust dispersed, Wei Wuxian turns to Sizhui sadly. “There was a little boy there who looked so much like my Wen Yuan. But, he didn’t recognize me, so I let him be.”

“I couldn’t remember you then,” Sizhui says, weeping now. 

“Whenever I would have cursed episodes, I felt this overpowering urgency to protect someone, but I couldn’t remember who. It wasn’t just Hanguang. It was you. I was also being pulled back to that starstruck night in Yiling.”

“We were trying to complete a circle,” Sizhui manages to say, throat thick. “But we were cut off.”

“And you finally completed that circle. Sizhui, A-Yuan, I am so, so proud of you.”

Sizhui flushes, smiling and looking down. Nearby, Xuanyu snickers. “I also had no idea what to do when he said stuff like that to me, the first time. Get used to it. He’s weird.”

Wei Wuxian laughs, delighted. “You know, Sizhui, maybe your curse was actually just your magic getting desperate. It wanted you to remember your past, and it wanted you to embrace your inner power. And, if you’d initiated with the monks, you never would have used your own magic. This was your sorcery’s naughty way of getting your attention.”

Discussing magical theory is calming, but it’s hard to keep his eyes off faceless, voiceless Lan Zhan for too long. More than half the pile is consumed—all without a single wisp of smoke or steam. “Natural magic is like a wellspring inside us. Yours has been pushed down, suppressed in order to fit in with those mage monks. So, it finally erupted out—and this happened.” At Sizhui’s alarmed look, he says, “Don’t fear your gift, Sizhui. Not with me here. Acknowledged and trained, your magic can make you as fine a mage as anyone.”

Sizhui takes a steadying breath. So mature, this boy. This treasure. “I think maybe I’d like that. But for now, I just know I want to be a part of this family.”

“Are you saying you want to be my A-Yuan again?” he asks, voice small. “You were mine once, if only for that special year, and you’ve grown into the most wonderful young man… I would adopt you in a heartbeat, just say the word—”

Sizhui’s crumpled face—trying to keep it together even though he’s so obviously overjoyed—is beyond adorable. He bows. “Yes, please.”

“Xuanyu,” Wei Wuxian chirps, suddenly pivoting his focus—because the other kid is sulking. “What, you think being my apprentice isn’t as good? It’s just as important a role as a son, you know. We’re family in the sect way, which is family to me all the same.”

Xuanyu’s crooked, shy little smile is equally adorable. “Oh. Well. Heh heh, that’s… exactly what I want, actually.” 

“Come here, both of you little radishes!” The kids hurdle into him, and they all squeeze each other tight. “Ahhhh, I have a sweet one and a spicy one, how lucky I am… I’ll never forget you again, not for a thousand lifetimes…”

Once they’ve pulled apart, Sizhui gets everyone water. “How will we know when Hanguang’s—?”

Just then, the three of them gasp and face the place where the woodpile was—at the ROAR of blue energy tipped with white, the fire that becomes long and twining, much like a serpent… if said serpent was the size of a great tree…!

“My dragon,” Sizhui whispers beside Wei Wuxian, transfixed.

As the body of Lan Zhan snakes further away from that mighty source of energy, it transforms. The same rainbow of transformational sparkles that overtake their home whenever they ‘move’ now shimmer all around Lan Zhan’s blue fire form. Lan Zhan has to bend his gliding neck to curl around the room. He really is transforming into something quite large to be indoors. 

Wei Wuxian’s eyes lock on the fiery shape of a dragon’s elegant head at the front—waiting to finally see his face—

The shimmering lights dance over the flames from snout to black-boned horns—revealing a heavenly beast cloaked in something like shiny feathers or the softest, sleekest fur, with whiskers flowing in otherworldly currents. Lan Zhan opens his eyes, and looking into them JOLTS through Wei Wuxian—not from only Lan Zhan’s power, but his own thrill and love. Those eyes are the exact same as the ones he knows so well. He's known them only as an apparition, but now, they are fully dimensional and alive—!

Wei Wuxian laughs in astounded excitement as fur and scales and claws emerge, too—until Lan Zhan is fully embodied in an earthly form at last. A dragon from the stars, accented in white fur and black horns and talons. As a heavenly beast, he is magnificent. Wei Wuxian has seen many great creatures and demons and natural wonders, traveling the world. Nothing compares to this.

Lan Zhan arcs again at the next corner by the curio shelves, sailing back toward the fireplace. When he passes the children, he twines in around them, rubbing cheeks with Xuanyu’s and then Sizhui’s before gliding on. He’s so tender. Wei Wuxian could sing or cry or scream, from the joyful excitement swelling inside him. His joy feels uncontainable.

The dragon soars back into the hearth, diving into a shapeless blue fire—then, he becomes a rainbow of many essences, glowing brighter and brighter and brighter, until Wei Wuxian almost can’t look—

A man clad in white and blue leaps out of the fire in a great fountain of sparks. “WEI YING!” 

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Chapter Text

Sparks shower down from the explosion of light and color in the fireplace, branding their common room floor like a scattering of the tiniest, blackest cherry blossoms, and Wei Wuxian barely gets a chance to see Lan Zhan—

—Someone tall and lean and strong and masculine, with flowing hair as jet as the darkest cave, and skin like white peach’s flesh, and a devastatingly handsome face to frame those long, fey, molten gold dragon eyes—

—Wei Wuxian barely catches a glimpse of this incomparable beauty before Lan Zhan is crushing him close in his arms, burying his face in his shoulder and hair.

“Wei Ying,” he says again. In a physical voice that thrums with emotion in the room, and into Wei Wuxian’s body.

Wei Wuxian holds him back tightly. He just might never let him go. “Lan Zhan!! Oh skies, Lan Zhan Lan Zhan Lan Zhan…”

Laughing, Wei Wuxian leans back to look at him again. Up close like this, he’s unbearably beautiful, and solid under Wei Wuxian’s hands, and he smells INCREDIBLE. Like a sandalwood forest that Wei Wuxian wants to get lost in. Touching Lan Zhan’s face, touching his hair, running his hand over the collar of his silk robes, Wei Wuxian can’t even speak. He’s just laughing and sputtering and weeping, somehow looking at someone he knows better than anyone else yet has never actually seen before.

Lan Zhan’s brows furrow, as he takes Wei Wuxian’s face in his elegant hands. They’re so warm. “Wei Ying, I love you.”

“What???”

“The curse held my tongue. No one can speak about the nature of a Shenjing’s curse, not even the Shenjing. Thus, I could not discuss any matter of the heart.” 

Wei Wuxian’s really crying now, and still laughing with joy as he strokes Lan Zhan’s angular cheeks. “You really take everything so literally!”

“I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you. I tried.”

“Lan Zhan, don’t apologize to me, you were cursed! Oh you poor thing… I’m always chattering away, while there you were unable to speak… There’s nothing to forgive, Lan Zhan, please, get that sad look off your face, I just can’t stand it.” Without thinking about it, he kisses his cheeks, one after the other. Feeling the brush of Lan Zhan’s warm skin on his lips lights him from the inside.

At those kisses, Lan Zhan’s dragon eyes fly wide open in amazement, and he brings his fingertips to where Wei Ying’s lips had been in awe. And then, he smiles. While his eyes aren’t actually glowing (Wei Wuxian suspects that they could), it feels like they are. 

Slightly uncertain in the motion at first, he reaches up and thumbs Wei Wuxian’s tears away. “Wei Ying, our cursed bond is broken. Still, you are my fated person. Wherever you go, I go.” 

Wei Wuxian’s barely been touched, all these years. Lan Zhan’s touch, clumsy though it may be in these first few minutes of having a body, feels incredible. Huffing a laugh, Wei Wuxian gets lost in exploring this man-Lan Zhan again, rubbing his arms and looking him over. Grinning, he toys with Lan Zhan’s hair (impossibly silky). “Just look at you… The human form of starlight…”

“… You like it?”

“Like it?! Oh, Lan Zhan… Truthfully, my darling, amazing, beautiful Shenjing, I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve been in love with you as a fire, you see, so, how could I possibly have complaints about you as a gorgeous, flesh and blood man—?”

At ‘in love with you,’ Lan Zhan’s eyes went very wide again. At ‘gorgeous,’ he was already pulling Wei Ying in to kiss his babbling mouth. 

Wei Wuxian has felt the thrill of summoning a thousand lingfu at once, has explored caves made of jewels and waters bright as turquoise, has traversed mountains where only gods live, and still—never has he felt such a hot, ecstatic thrill in his body and spirit as this.

They pull apart with barely time for a breath and charged eye contact before they come in for another. Their arms are wrapped tight around each other now, and the kisses don’t stop. And Lan Zhan… Lan Zhan’s mouth is soft and hot, and he tastes like a sweet, smokey, piney cup of lapsang souchong, oh skies, Wei Wuxian’s actually, finally kissing his fire demon…

But Wei Wuxian happens to open his eyes and catch a glimpse of THE KIDS. Standing right there, just a short ways away. Gaping.

He giggles, shying away from Lan Zhan’s lips (he stays in his arms though—he couldn’t possibly leave). “Oh, eh heh, ah, Lord Hanguang, I guess this isn’t the most private of places…”

His Shenjing’s expression does not change. He simply scoops Wei Wuxian into his arms and sprints them up the stairs. Wei Wuxian laughs the entire way, latching his hands behind Lan Zhan’s neck and nuzzling close.

At the top of the stairs, when he sees his bedroom door down the hall—or, rather, sees their bedroom door—his heart truly begins to thunder.

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After the adults rush upstairs, Mo Xuanyu’s thrill ashes away, and… they just feel awkward. 

They’re standing with Sizhui in the empty common room after witnessing that display, not speaking and not knowing where to look. 

Sizhui’s not being awkward. He rarely is (which is nice), and his happiness on Master Gui and Hanguang’s behalf was sweet. Mo Xuanyu feels it too (family! Master Gui sees Mo Xuanyu as FAMILY!). There’s an incredible relief ringing in them right now, with Master Gui safe and Hanguang free. But still. That passionate kissing and racing off to a private room for obvious, private activities was… a lot. Even if Xuanyu doesn’t blame them one bit.

Finally, Mo Xuanyu plucks up the courage to face him (they know the longer they avoid it, the more awkward things will get, anyway). Sizhui’s gentle, even features are soothing to look at. Mo Xuanyu has to try not to stare at him these days, in fact, which is weird. He’s not particularly handsome or pretty, just… nice. Symmetrical. Grounded. They keep remembering the kissing, as they look at him.

Oh, I looked at him too long again, they think, eyes darting away. They’re giggling as they say, “Can you even imagine acting like that with someone?”

Something solidifies in Sizhui’s expression. “I think so,” he replies—stepping forward to peck Mo Xuanyu on the cheek.

Wide-eyed, open-mouthed, Xuanyu feels shock and excitement zip through every inch of them. They flicker into a girl, a boy, and then back to their true form in just a few wild heartbeats. “Me??” 

Sizhui only smiles. “Is that so hard to imagine?”

WHAT??!?! “Um. Yes.” WAIT—HE’LL THINK YOU DON’T WANT HIM TO LIKE YOU! “Or, ah, I mean—Not you and me together, that’s not the hard part… What I mean is the thought of you imagining that, not me imagining you—” AUGGHH YOU SOUND LIKE A CREEP NOW! “OR, I mean, not that I’ve been thinking about you like that—!”

Unbelievably, he looks endeared by all of this bumbling. “If you don’t want me to, I won’t do it again. I really like being friends as we are. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. Did you like the kiss?”

Oh… I can trust Sizhui even more than I already do. “I think so,” they say, echoing him.

Sizhui jogs down the stairwell to the portal compass. He swivels it from red to teal to green, peeking out the door each time.

Then, he looks up at Mo Xuanyu with a pink-cheeked smile. And they have an intuition, right then—that those hazel eyes of his could melt them even at their frostiest, soften them even at their prickliest, and coax them even at their most withdrawn. “It’s snowing in Pineslope. Would you like to take a walk with me?”

Mo Xuanyu’s smiles come so much more freely, these days, around this sweet mountain boy. “Definitely.”

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Wei Wuxian has to open the door, because Lan Zhan has no idea how. The Shenjing seems to have all the physical grace and strength of the finest warrior, though. He has no problem hurrying inside their room, slamming the door shut, and pinning Wei Wuxian to it—to devour him with kisses. 

Barely able to breathe from excitement, Wei Wuxian's still taking in deep, greedy breaths, tasting and smelling and feeling this precious person. The person he housed in his heart. Lan Zhan’s here in the room. He’s free!

His left hand has perfect, black nails, long and almost like claws. It’s well-known that Shenjing, like any of the fey folk who take human form, always have at least one part of them that gives their magical nature away. At least Lan Zhan isn’t stuck with animal feet, as many of them are rumored to be in human form. 

In any case, as Lan Zhan carefully learns how to run them along Wei Wuxian’s scalp and through his hair, and how to rake them with just the right pressure down Wei Wuxian’s back, his human “Mmmm”s with each drag of them along his skin. Wei Wuxian’s pleasure seems to turn Lan Zhan on even more.

And Wei Wuxian wants more skin. He pulls at the fine, cloud-patterned robes covering his beloved’s chest and shoulders, kissing new territory as he does. Lan Zhan lets out a small groan, eagerly following suit with Wei Wuxian’s clothes. After thirteen years of hardly any touch at all, being skin to skin with Lan Zhan is making Wei Wuxian melt.

“Wei Ying—one moment.” For some insane reason, Lan Zhan stops kissing him to kneel among his scattered silks, searching for something. The firelight flickers in warm colors on his muscled back. In order to patiently wait for naked Lan Zhan to return to his arms, Wei Wuxian indulges in this view, savoring it.

Lan Zhan stays kneeling, but turns to face Wei Ying now with red and blue treasures in his hands, presenting them. “Wei Ying. Wei Wuxian. Sorcerer Gui. I wish to be bound as your partner in life.”

The ruby rabbit skull has been transformed. Wei Wuxian reaches out and takes two earrings with rubies shaped like long teardrops, beaded to their golden ear hooks with a milky jade bead. There’s also a yaopei for his sash made with indigo silk, featuring a dangling ruby coin the size of a moon cake. It’s carved all over with protective heavenly script and bears another jade bead threaded above its shiny blue tassel.

Loving a demon is as wild a ride as ever. “So pretty. Who knew you were such a romantic!” He immediately puts in the earrings ties the yaopei around his bare waist. If he can’t tie it over clothes, he’ll wear it like this. Because it’s a love token from Lan Zhan. I’m never taking this off, he decides, giddy. “The most righteous Shenjing in all the lands loves me? What did I do to deserve this??”

“You deserve more than I can give,” he replies, fierce.

“Lan Zhan…” He believes in Lan Zhan’s righteous spirit. He admires Lan Zhan’s convictions and principles, deeply. Lan Zhan is good. If he sees Wei Wuxian this way…

“The earrings will sense danger and alert you.” His beloved Shenjing is still kneeling, formal and serious. Of course. “The yaopei’s silk is not of Earth, but fully my essence, which—”

“Tell me later,” he purrs, pulling Lan Zhan up to his lips again. 

And soon enough, they’re pressed together on the bed into the soft quilts, adorned only by Wei Wuxian’s new love tokens. Its silky rope feels amazing on his bare waist, but nowhere near as nice as Lan Zhan, who clearly is reveling in being able to touch him. With hand, mouth, and the rest of his new body. 

In fact, his hard, hot erection is pressed against Wei Wuxian’s thigh, and Wei Wuxian’s going to go mad. “Lan Zhan,” he whispers, hazy already, “you really did become a man… I’m dying to pleasure you… May I?”

And so Wei Wuxian shows him just how great having a cock can be. Lan Zhan is eager to reciprocate, and is also a fast learner. His body, from erection to pectoral, is just glorious. Wei Wuxian is practically drooling, as he runs his lips and tongue over more of him—moaning at the feeling of this long-hidden part of his own body in Lan Zhan’s strong grip, and at the feel of Lan Zhan in his own hand, and the sound of Lan Zhan’s breath, and his lips on Wei Wuxian’s collarbone, his shoulder, his neck…

Oh, his neck. “Fuck I’ll come now, wait wait,” he manages, wriggling beneath his new lover once more and opening his legs to wrap them around Lan Zhan. “Let’s make love like this. Take me. I’m yours.”

Lan Zhan diligently proceeds with sandalwood oil on a gentle (non-clawed) hand, enticing Wei Wuxian’s body to open and relax with sensuous neck kisses as he reaches in. "May I also try magic to relax you?"

That's exciting. "Please!"

"Wei Ying…" Lan Zhan's gazing into his eyes now, and Wei Wuxian feels pure adoration lay over him like a blanket. He can't look away. In fact, he could never want to. Lan Zhan is the most perfect beautiful thing, and there is nothing else, nothing that exists except for him, and Wei Wuxian lives to love and please him. For the first time, it feels very, very good to forget. "Relax."

With a happy sigh, Wei Wuxian complies. And Wei Wuxian's body feels better than it ever has. He feels like warm, soft clay, gazing up worshipfully at his fey lover.

Suddenly, the enchantment lifts, and Wei Wuxian feels his wits return. Still, his body has definitely benefited. "Skies, Lan Zhan, that felt incredible. You could do more."

"Not yet," he murmurs, kissing him and entering him further. "Too powerful, for starting out. And... I need to know you want this."

"Oh I do, I do, so much," he whines back, reaching down to pull Lan Zhan's hand further in.

More time passes like this. Once satisfied with Wei Wuxian’s looseness (Wei Wuxian is delirious with desire, at this point), he coats his erection with yet more fragrant oil. Entering Wei Wuxian slowly but surely, he’s gazing into his eyes with loving dominion. Lan Zhan: Wei Wuxian's new lover. His old friend. His spiritual companion. His fire.

“Is this really happening?” Wei Wuxian breathes, voice pitched high. “How is this real? Oh, Lan Zhan… Lan Zhan…”

With each forward motion of Lan Zhan's hips, Wei Wuxian moans again, rolling his head back. Rapt, Lan Zhan watches him, drinking in his pleasure the way a plant soaks the sun. His thrusts quicken, and so does Wei Wuxian’s breath and heart. Wei Wuxian’s crying out in pleasure, now clutching Lan Zhan’s hips with his thighs and hair with his hands—

“Wei Ying…” his Shenjing says, kissing him again, and finally moaning himself as he strokes Wei Wuxian inside—

And then Wei Wuxian shudders all over with orgasm, practically screaming into Lan Zhan’s muscled shoulder, breath fluttering. Lan Zhan lets out a deep, guttural moan in response, breathing hard and deep—and Wei Wuxian feels something very hot and good inside him, filling his lower dantian with soothing warmth. I’ll never be cold again, he intuits, laughing a little.

Lan Zhan pulls back, and notices his lover's orgasm pooled and peppered across Wei Wuxian's stomach. His eyes widen dramatically. In a rush, he licks all of it up from Wei Wuxian, breathing deeply and groaning again. 

Wei Wuxian laughs, arousal returning already at such an ardent, hungry display. “Well well. Shenjing, are you going to devour me after all?”

Collapsed now, cheek against Wei Wuxian’s chest, Lan Zhan’s eyes are closed. “Apologies…”

“No no,” he sighs back, stroking Lan Zhan. “It was hot, actually.”

After a quick rest, they’re lying there in the bed’s chaotic jumble of quilts and pillows, just looking at each other. Neither can stop touching the other for long. 

“Lan Zhan, share my life with me. Travel the world with me, fight monsters with me, mentor these kids with me. You said ‘I go where you go’—please, please yes. I want you with me.”

“You have accepted my tokens. So it shall be. My kind does not love the way yours does,” Lan Zhan murmurs, looking almost nervous. “I… I only love once, and that love lasts till death.”

“A Shenjing’s heart is a heavy burden,” Wei Wuxian purrs, smiling and cuddling closer in their nest. “One I gladly accept. It’s an honor, Lan Zhan… Lan Wangji, Lord Hanguang, my zhulong and hearth-lighter…”

“This is a human form, but the core of me is still smokeless flame. I am also a heavenly beast. You’re sure?”

Yes, beneath this magically transformed flesh Wei Wuxian so eagerly joined in lovemaking, of course there is still that otherwordly energy Wei Wuxian knows from his hearth. It flares steadily in the center of his lover, as familiar in its feel as Lan Zhan’s eyes were on sight. 

It feels like home. “Of course, Lan Zhan. I know you. I’ve known what you are since we met that night, and I knew you just now when I brought you to my bed. I loved you as a fire, I love you as a dragon, I love you like this. It could only be you.” He sighs dreamily again, tracing Lan Zhan’s eyebrows. “To think my first time would be so perfect… No one could ever compare to this.”

“… First?”

“Haha, yes, darling. Many have propositioned me, but I’ve been waiting for you.”

Subtlety is a defining trait of Lan Zhan’s. Yet right now, in bed with his love, there is no hiding his fierce happiness, nor the fact that he is close to tears. 

All these years? he asks in their hearts, unable to speak.

Wei Wuxian climbs onto him, nuzzling his nose. “Yes, Lan Zhan…” 

They kiss and kiss and kiss. Being on top is nice, too. 

“My first offering to you was my heart,” Wei Wuxian whispers between kisses. “I’ll make many more offerings to you… like the one I just made in this bed, darling Shenjing… Any time we want… I’ll keep you happy and strong and hot-blooded, I promise…”

“You… already made your heart into a refuge for me… Those tokens were mine to you…” Lan Zhan’s limbs wrap around him. He’s melting into the kisses, struggling to keep focus. “I… I would not ask for offerings…” 

“Ah, but I’ll give them because I want to… Just as you filled me up with your lovely yang magic just now… Hey, even kissing is probably good for us both, isn’t it?” Lan Zhan blushes. “Haha!”

His partner rolls them over, pinning him into the pillows again with a stern smile. “Crude.”

“And? What will you do about it, mighty Lord Hanguang? Isn’t an animal body what you’ve been wanting? Spit and come are included!”

“WEI YING.”

It turns out that kissing in bed can be play, too. Wei Wuxian has never appreciated authority—until playing with this person who respects and loves him, and whom he respects in turn. Now, it’s fun to be naughty and punished, with much giggling and grappling and biting. He wonders how else this can transform their relationship…

Some time later, as light of star and moon pour in their window and the fire crackles from the hearth, they get to talking more. About life, about their shared past, about their values. There are so many things Lan Zhan couldn’t say, and though he will certainly remain a man of few words, he’s not falling silent. It feels so good to be able to talk.

“Lan Zhan, you’re an expert at anal sex… Heavenly Shenjing, how did you learn this, hm? Peeking down as a watcher from the stars?”

Lan Zhan’s eyes narrow at him. “Never. I listened to humans sharing knowledge, compared it with my own knowledge of human anatomy, and ascertained what was true and what was not.” 

“Ah, that fits, of course you did…” he coos, curling up to brush against his lips again. 

When they reach the topic of the war, Wei Wuxian reveals an idea. “The dead are in the many thousands. Lan Zhan—I was thinking I’d raise all those dead in one go and lay siege to Jinlintai itself. I think this would make even the nobles and royals call for Jin Guangyao to end it.”

At this description of a zombie army, Lan Zhan looks stunned, even mildly horrified. But after a moment, he wryly smiles, closing his eyes and shaking his head. For the first time in his life, as far as Wei Wuxian knows, he huffs a laugh. 

Grinning, Wei Wuxian wheedles, “What do you think?”

“Heinous. And, also…” He opens those elemental eyes again, burning with righteousness. “Perfect justice.”

His heart leaps. “Really? You think so?? You know, this way, I think it’s actually more ethical, because I’m not asking anyone to get hurt for the cause. My army would already be dead!”

With a burning smile, Lan Zhan can only say, “Mmn.” Wei Wuxian can tell he hates to agree to such dark magic. But also that he knows Wei Wuxian is right, and trusts him.

And this is their life, now—a divine spirit and a necromantic sorcerer, in love and taking on the impossible.

“Hmmm, Lan Zhan, I suppose one consideration is that there may be surviving loved ones of the corpses, and terrified children… I wouldn’t want them to see all that.”

“We’ll evacuate the capitol.”

“YES!” He has no idea how they’ll do all this. He just knows that together, they can. “Lan Zhan, I’m not sorry for what I’ve done against this war, but I’m sorry I’ve worried you so much. An ordinary person couldn’t stop all this. But I can, so I have to try.”

“I know.” Lan Zhan’s eyes truly burn with love. “I’ll do it with you.”

The same love burns in Wei Wuxian—but it makes him squeal. “Let’s end this war, Lan Zhan, you and me! Once and for all!!”

“Mmn…” Pulling him in for a passionate kiss again, Lan Zhan holds him tight. This kiss feels like a promise. Like devotion embodied. 

Some while later, Wei Wuxian asks, “Lan Zhan, bathe with me? OH, wait, can you??” 

Lan Zhan smiles his small, perfect smile—and Wei Wuxian hears the water heater flare to life.

Once inside, Wei Wuxian delights at Lan Zhan’s first experiences with water and steam. He’s much like a cat toward it, at first, but is soon standing beneath the hot rain of Wei Wuxian’s invention in complete surrender, head tilted back and lips parted.

“How is your opposite element treating you, fire demon?”

“It dulls my senses, but feels… miraculous.”

The shower is fun and sweet, involving much soaping and shampooing and head massage and teasing. Until, quite suddenly, the sweetness phases erotic again. 

And this time, they’re in Wei Wuxian’s domain. It’s time for Lan Zhan to have a turn at all the wonders he wrought upon Wei Wuxian’s body, and Wei Wuxian is reveling in the process.

“Lan Zhan, turn around,” he says at one point, eager for his perfect ass. So eager, he’s forgetting that such phrasing—using a Shenjing’s true name and a command—results in compulsion. 

With a gasp, Lan Zhan swiftly turns and plants his hands on the rain chamber’s wall. He looks over his shoulder at Wei Wuxian with one shocked, ardent eye. “Wei Ying…”

“Oh no, ahhhhh I didn’t mean to force you!” For thirteen years, he never slipped up on this! “Oh skies, I’m so sorry—”

“No! Let’s… let’s explore this,” Lan Zhan says, swallowing. He’s breathing hard. “I trust you.”

A realization trickles over Wei Wuxian, from crown to heart to sex. “Oh. Alright then… But how will I know if you really want to stop, but can’t?”

“Command me to tell you now, as a blanket rule.”

“Oh my.” He steps forward into the rain shower again, taking Lan Zhan’s hot, wet hips in his hands to whisper in his ear, “Lan Zhan. You must tell me if you don’t like a command during sex. And if you can’t tell me because your mouth is full, then that command is broken.”

“If my mouth is full…?”

“Lan Zhan—take me in your mouth.”

Those gold eyes flash with light, dragon pupils disappearing for a heartbeat. And then Lan Zhan faces him, kneels, and, looking up at him so full of adoration and desire, follows the command. With gusto.

"Harder," Wei Wuxian groans, holding onto Lan Zhan's head, now. Lan Zhan complies without needing a command.

Wei Wuxian laughs, biting his lip. “Hanguang? You’re being so obedient…”

Before Lan Zhan’s ministrations undo him, Wei Wuxian has his lover braced against the rain chamber wall again, completely relaxed—and then, he is fucking him so deep and good, he’s sure Lan Zhan is seeing stars.

“One last command.” Wei Wuxian bites his beautiful shoulder, then says, “Lan Zhan, don’t hold back your voice.”

This was a very good idea. Wei Wuxian climaxes not long after. He then kneels to finish Lan Zhan with his own mouth, and his eyes widen when Lan Zhan’s seed floods in. It’s hot on his tongue, almost scaldingly so, but tastes so ineffably delicious that he swallows without thinking. 

As they climb out and dry off, Lan Zhan’s brow furrows. “My body…”

Wei Wuxian hears a rumble from Lan Zhan’s stomach and laughs, endeared. “Oh Lan Zhan—you’re hungry! Let’s go downstairs together. There’s so much for you to explore as a man down there, too! Ooh, well, we may not have much to eat, we fed everything to your transformation fire…”

Once downstairs, still cozy and casual in quilted house robes and fluffy slippers, they find their kids up late, matching short hair so funny-looking. He still needs to ask about that. Those two seem closer than before somehow, and very happy.

Sizhui is chopping tofu. “We went to the night market.” Xuanyu smiles crookedly over their clumsily diced mushrooms.

“You two are so dependable!” Wei Wuxian chirps, running over to give their shoulders a squeeze. 

“Mmn.” Lan Zhan approaches with elegance, golden eyes on them. He’s mostly expressionless, yet somehow, Wei Wuxian can see so much affection in his gaze. 

Wei Wuxian isn’t sure how the kids will act around this stoic Shenjing. Xuanyu looks intimidated but hopeful, and Sizhui looks like the dedicated disciple he was always meant to be. He initiates a proper bow, and Xuanyu follows. 

When they rise, Lan Zan lays a hand on each of their heads, energy reminding Wei Wuxian of the warm glow of coals. Then, they’re in his arms the same way they were Wei Wuxian’s earlier. Lan Zhan closes his eyes, brows furrowing as he holds them tight. 

Treasures, he says in Wei Wuxian’s heart. Making fierce eye contact over the teens’ heads. I will protect them with my life.

I know, he thinks back, yet another tear escaping his eye.

It’s not long after this that Lan Zhan realizes he can actually, finally go outside. He and Wei Wuxian stand silently in their quiet Pineslope lane, in a night with that soft kind of silence snowfall makes. Lan Zhan smells the cold night air, catching icy flakes on his lashes and nose.

As they walk back up the stairwell, Sizhui offers Bichen. “Master Hanguang, your sword.”

Shyly, Xuanyu shuffles forward with the instrument Wangji. “And qin.”

Intent, Lan Zhan accepts his ancestral items, sitting to play qin right then and there. Apparently, this is something he does not need to learn—it is the most lovely music Wei Wuxian has ever heard. He now understands Lan Zhan’s left-handed black claws: his form was made to be a qin player.

After this, Lan Zhan bows to and unsheathes Bichen, wielding him with a mastery such as Wei Wuxian has ever seen. Heavenly martial art forms are as inborn in Lan Zhan’s body as the qin, and he turns their common room into a magnificent arena for a few moments. Sizhui is gazing awestruck at his master, jaw dropped open.

When Lan Zhan sheathes Bichen again, Wei Wuxian hugs him from behind. “Delicious. I can’t wait to spar.”

The night grows late, but no one is ready for bed. Wei Wuxian is on the couch with Xuanyu, looking over some new invention designs, both of them wrapped in fleece shawls. Lan Zhan stands with Sizhui at the fire, bound in a one-armed hug while they cook. It’s funny what’s awkward for him and what isn’t—sword and qin, complete perfection. But he grapples with holding spoons.

And Wei Wuxian realizes he gets to discover life all over again with delight, even its most mundane pieces. Just as Lan Zhan has been his teacher and guide to sorcery, it's his turn to guide Lan Zhan through Earth.

After they’ve eaten (Lan Zhan has now tasted tofu, mushrooms, soy sauce, and white tea), they all cuddle up on the couch, talking through the day’s terrors and wonders. Their curses. Their magics. Their realizations and joys. 

Eyes heavy, Lan Zhan eventually says inside, Wei Ying… I feel strange.

“Hm? What is it, darling?” 

Before Lan Zhan can answer him, Lan Zhan yawns. Wei Wuxian sees a thrilling flash of fangs. 

“Oh how adorable… You’re tired. Look how cute, kids!”

They giggle, and Lan Zhan reprimands Wei Wuxian with frown and dragon side eye. Cute? I? 

“Yes, you. SO cute. You've got a full belly. Time for bed.”

Now, Lan Zhan looks remotely into the middle distance, correcting his posture as if not sleepy at all.

Wei Wuxian’s heart could BURST with affection. SO CUTE! “Come on to bed, come on now, Lan Zhan. Maybe you don’t want the night to end. But this is part of having a body. Hey, you can finally learn what sleeping is like!”

Lan Zhan sighs, closing his eyes. “It feels like… my fire is going out. Except, it’s not dangerous… I think.”

“That makes sense.” He tucks Lan Zhan’s hair behind his ear. “It’s been a big day, and a long night. Come, Lan Zhan, let’s go cuddle up.”

This seems to convince him well enough.

Curled up under layers of soft quilts with snow falling outside their window, Wei Wuxian lays his head against his love. His love, who is warm and solid and breathing beneath him. 

He makes sure to drape his arm right over Lan Zhan’s beating heart.

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The next time Sizhui has a nightmare, things are very different. 

By all accounts, there is no reason for it. The evening is a good one. He and his strange family are all in the common room together. Xuanyu studies a stele, Sizhui studies a scroll, and his adoptive parents sit on the window bench together, playing flute and qin to accompany them.

“Heaven seems too good to be true,” Xuanyu says suddenly, setting down the inscribed stone. “Is it real? These people believe that getting there is the biggest goal in life.”

Sizhui lowers his own scroll—a set of Daoist poems, assigned by his adoptive dragon father. “The monks said it was a realm only good people could reach. They had strong ideas about good and bad, right and wrong.”

“This stele says heaven is distant. But then other holy traditions I’ve read say it’s just a step away, like the Underworld…”

Baba turns to his partner. “Well, heavenly beast? You’re the expert. What do you say? Is heaven far, or close? Is it all it’s chalked up to be?”

Master Hanguang keeps playing. His subtle smile warms the room. “Heaven is on Earth.”

Later that night, a nightmare comes. He’s seeing new things, now, things he hasn’t been able to grasp very well through a small child’s memories. 

But when Sizhui wakes, cold and trembling, he still has those memories, at least. And he allows himself something that he hasn’t done in many, many years—he comforts himself by imagining that beautiful blue dragon of his youth. Now that he knows Master Hanguang is real, it doesn’t make him sad. It warms his heart like it used to. The love he feels there, for his spiritual master and father, is bright and limitless.

And then, his star guardian appears. Sizhui accidentally summoned him with his heart.

A dragon’s shiny fur is surprisingly, divinely soft. The coils of Master Hanguang’s long body encircle the bed several times, cocooning him. 

A-Yuan, you are not alone, his voice said in Sizhui’s heart. We have you. You are ours. Do not worry.

Sizhui has never slept so well.

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