The third cut didn't bring anything new.
It just stopped lying about what was already there.
The sky tore itself in half above the sandstorm city, but I barely saw it. All my sight turned inward, where the thing that had possessed me back at the River Hei—back when the world first bent wrong—finally stretched without restraint.
It had always been there since that night.
In the way my rage lasted too long.
In the way battle felt too clear.
In the way the world sometimes looked like a skin that could be peeled back.
This was just the first time it didn't pretend to sleep.
Shen Yue's hand was locked around my wrist. "An," she said, voice tight, "you know this. You've survived this before. Stay with me."
Her words reached the part of me that was still just a man with a sword and a wife and a father he hated.
The other part laughed.
Not aloud.
Through bone.
We have done this dance, it murmured, smooth and cold. You invite ruin. I give you strength. Why flinch now?
The ground shook as if agreeing. The storm around the city held its breath. The hooded guide stood at the edge of the platform, staff anchored to the stone.
"The restraints are gone," he said. "Your father's bindings, the tower's pull—cracked. This is the third cut. Let it finish."
"Finish what?" I rasped.
"Separating what you are," he replied, "from what he meant you to be."
The being inside me shifted, amused.
He speaks as if you could exist without me.
Shen Yue stepped in closer, one hand on my chest where the previous cuts still glowed faintly beneath the skin.
"You already know what it is," she said softly, eyes never leaving mine. "You've known since the Hei. This is not new. It's just louder. Don't let louder mean truer."
The being sharpened, taking the contour of my own thoughts, my own bitterness.
Listen to her, it whispered. She names you. Wife. General. Son. But not what you really are.
"And what's that?" I thought back at it.
It answered with my father's voice.
Instrument.
Pain flared as the third cut opened—not along my flesh, but through every place the being and I touched. Threads snapped and fused, snapped and fused, not clean separation, but a violent rewriting.
I fell to one knee.
Shen Yue's arm went around my shoulders, holding me upright, the way she had after battles, after nightmares, after the Hei. "You're Wu An," she said. "You're not a title. You're not a tool. And you're not his. Say it."
I tried.
"My name is…"
The being surged, predatory now, forcing its way forward, folding itself more tightly through my nerves, my memories, my instincts.
Our name, it breathed. Not his. Not theirs. Ours.
The city stones began to hum. The sky smeared like ink in water. I felt not one heartbeat, but two, then three, trying to fall into a single rhythm.
"An," Shen Yue said, forehead pressing to mine, voice steady despite the chaos, "look at me."
I did.
Her face did not distort. Her features didn't melt or twist the way the world often did when the being stared through my eyes. She was the one thing it never managed to corrupt.
That irritated it.
She weakens you.
"No," I thought back. "She reminds me which parts are mine."
The third cut dug deeper, invisible and merciless. I saw flashes:
—my hand drawing a blade in a temple that no longer existed
—my father's blood on the river rocks
—the Emperor's smile over a cup of wine
—Wu Jin under a false crown
—Wu Shuang watching everything and promising nothing
—the tower rising like a finger pointed at Heaven
Underneath all of it, the being, patient and endless, wrapping itself around each memory like water finding every crack.
"This is the point," the guide said quietly. "If you surrender now, it will wear you completely. If you reject it entirely, you will die. The third cut is not about choosing one or the other."
"Then what is it about?" I ground out through my teeth.
He met my eyes.
"Making it choose you back."
The being stilled.
Choose… you? it echoed, as if the idea were offensive.
I understood then.
Father made a pact that broke the usual order: mortal kneeling to power. I was the consequence—possessed, reshaped, built as a bridge between this thing and the world. I'd assumed, all this time, that meant I belonged to it.
The third cut said otherwise.
"Listen," Shen Yue whispered. "You are not just something it uses. Make it something you use. Make it answer to you."
I laughed, hoarse, half-mad.
"You want me to… what? House-train a god?"
Her fingers dug into my jaw. "No. I want you to refuse to be smaller than the horror they stuffed into you."
The being's presence tightened, curious now, echoing my own anger with an older, deeper version.
You would command me?
"No," I thought. "I would bargain differently."
You have nothing to offer.
"Wrong," I said, blood in my mouth, head splitting, storm screaming overhead.
"I have a world you want to break."
It paused.
Go on.
"You don't care about my father," I thought, forcing the thoughts into shape, into words both of us could stand on. "You don't care about the Emperor. Or Zhou. Or the South. Or Heaven. You care about ending the pattern itself. No kings, no Mandates, no more towers."
A tremor of recognition rolled through it. Daoist, Buddhist, older than both, it had no interest in thrones—only in dissolving the whole structure.
"And I," I said, "want thrones broken too."
Shen Yue inhaled sharply, but she didn't interrupt.
"Here's the bargain," I thought, as the third cut burned the last of the father-made tether between us. "I stop being just your vessel. You stop trying to overwrite me. We work together long enough to destroy what they're building. The He Lian line. The false dynasty. The tower. The old Emperor. Zhou's Mandate. All of it."
I swallowed.
"And when that's done… we settle the question of who walks away."
The being coiled lazily, tasting the proposal, mirroring my ruthlessness back at me a thousandfold.
You offer cooperation, not submission.
"Yes."
A shared body, not a conquered one.
"Yes."
You would become like me.
"Or," I replied, "you become more like me."
It considered.
Lightning spidered through the clouds. Somewhere far away, the tower's light flickered, just once. The Lord Protector, I knew without seeing, would feel that flicker as an insult.
Shen Yue's breath warmed my cheek. "An. Decide. Now."
The being responded.
Agreed.
The third cut snapped shut.
Not separating us.
Re-binding us. Differently.
The pain changed. It wasn't tearing anymore—it was setting. Like a broken bone forced into better alignment, one that would never be quite clean again.
I dropped forward, catching myself on my hands, gasping. The world rushed back: sand, stone, storm, the guide's sharp intake of breath, Shen Yue's arms around me, holding on like she would drag me back from the river itself if she had to.
The being murmured, quieter, no longer trying to drown my thoughts.
We are not his instrument anymore, it said. Nor Heaven's. Nor the Emperor's.
"No," I whispered aloud. "We're ours."
The guide stared at me as if he were seeing something that should not exist.
"You did it," he said. "You turned it sideways. It is no longer a bridge for your father. The tower will feel that. The Mandate will feel that."
Shen Yue searched my face. "Are you still you?"
I looked at her.
And I knew the answer would decide if she stayed or walked away.
"I'm more me than I've ever been," I said. "That's the problem."
Her shoulders sagged, relief breaking through the fear. She pulled me into her chest, arms tight, as if she would crush the god out of me if she could.
"Good," she whispered. "Then we'll deal with the rest together."
The being observed her through my eyes, through our eyes, weighing her, measuring her.
This one is dangerous to our purposes.
"Of course," I thought back. "That's why we need her."
It went quiet.
Not defeated.
Interested.
Above us, the storm started moving again, slowly, like a great animal waking. The sky over the sandstorm city closed its wound—but not fully. A faint scar of white remained.
Far away, Ling An's tower dimmed, then flared with renewed fury, like a wounded beast.
The Lord Protector would know something had slipped from his hand.
The Emperor at the Hei would know something had changed in the pattern he meant to inherit.
The bell would ring again. Soon.
I stood with Shen Yue's help, legs unsteady but mine.
"Where now?" she asked.
I looked east, where war waited.
"Now," I said, "we go back into the mess they made."
The being agreed.
And we make it worse.
I almost smiled.
"That's the plan."
We stepped down from the platform together, wife at my side, horror in my bones, no longer anyone's weapon but my own.
And for the first time since the possession at the Hei, I felt something almost like clarity:
I was not free.
But I was no longer owned.
The bell would ring again.
And when it did, I would not be the same as the son my father had built.
I would be something he hadn't planned for at all.