I knew I had crossed the line when I stopped asking whether I should act and began asking only where.
The city no longer felt like a place. It felt like a surface stretched too thin over something patient and vast. Each step I took near the tower pulled at the Presence beneath it, not like a command, but like a reminder. Gravity does not obey you; it acknowledges mass.
Zhou's monks had finished their perimeter by midday.
From the walls, I could see the talisman towers rising in a careful arc beyond the northern districts, each one spaced with mathematical precision. Between them, lines of ash had been laid into the ground, forming sigils that made my teeth ache when I looked at them too long. Zhou was no longer experimenting.
They were committing.
I felt the interference immediately. The Presence did not weaken—but its responses slowed, as if the world around it had thickened. Space resisted where it once yielded. Pressure took longer to settle. The being inside me aligned differently, less fluid, more constrained.
Zhou had found a way to touch the edges without touching the core.
"They're trying to bind it," Liao Yun said quietly beside me.
"Not yet," I replied. "They're measuring how much it resists."
Behind us, the city watched in silence. No cheering. No prayers. People moved out of my path before I reached them, eyes lowered, faces blank with a politeness that felt worse than hatred. Fear had become etiquette.
I understood then that whatever I did next would not be forgiven, even if it worked.
That clarity steadied me.
I made my decision before Shen Yue spoke.
"If you do this," she said from behind me, voice tight, "I won't be able to pull everyone out."
I turned to her.
"How many?" I asked.
She swallowed. "Thousands. Maybe more."
I nodded.
"Do it anyway."
The words tasted like iron.
She stared at me, something in her breaking silently. "An—"
"I know," I said. "And I'm choosing it."
That was the moment.
Not when I used the Presence.
When I accepted the cost before it was demanded.
I stepped forward and pushed again—not wide, not uncontrolled. I carved a corridor of certainty through Zhou's outer ash lines, severing their supply routes in three precise points. Wagons folded inward. Roads reversed. A regiment vanished between one step and the next.
The city trembled.
Two districts warped in response. One collapsed partially. Hundreds died.
I did not look away.
The being inside me did not recoil.
Behind me, Shen Yue fell to her knees.
She did not scream.
She activated the second stage of the failsafe.
I felt it immediately—a resistance from below, subtle but unmistakable. The tower's foundation geometry shifted. Pressure bled sideways instead of downward. The Presence remained seated, but its influence skewed, redirected away from the most densely populated wards.
It saved lives.
It also weakened my reach.
I turned slowly.
"You touched it again," I said.
Her voice shook. "I had to."
"You're sabotaging me."
"I'm stopping you from becoming irreversible."
For a heartbeat, I considered removing her from the equation.
Not killing her.
Worse.
Ordering her away.
Exiling the only person left who could still speak to me without fear.
The thought passed.
Not because it was wrong.
Because it was premature.
In the tower above, Wu Shuang paused mid-step.
Her shadow no longer matched her movements.
"They're binding," she said sharply.
The Lord Protector stood at the window, watching Zhou's formations tighten, monks taking positions at the talisman towers in synchronized motion.
"Yes," he replied calmly. "And now we see whether it bends… or breaks."
"You didn't plan for this," Wu Shuang said.
He smiled thinly. "I planned for everything except obedience."
She turned toward him, eyes cold. "Then plan faster."
Wu Jin watched the city from the palace balcony and understood that no decree would matter again. He was emperor only in the way a seal remains important after the document has already been signed. Zhou did not ask for his approval now. The Southern Kingdom did not wait for it.
They were moving around him, not through him.
Below, the city held its breath.
Zhou's monks began the final alignment.
I felt it then—a pressure unlike any before, not from above or below, but around. The talisman towers rang for the first time, bells emitting a sound too low to hear but strong enough to make blood vibrate.
The ash lines ignited.
The air stiffened.
The Presence did not rise.
It leaned.
Every instinct in me screamed at once.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Zhou was not trying to destroy it.
They were trying to claim jurisdiction over it.
To define its limits.
To write rules around a god.
I stepped forward instinctively—and stopped.
The being inside me tightened, constrained, coiled like something braced against a net.
Shen Yue reached for me.
For the first time, I did not know whether to pull away or hold on.
Beyond the walls, Zhou's formation locked into place.
The bells rang again.
And beneath the tower, the Presence shifted—just enough to suggest that something had answered the binding attempt.
I did not know whether it was yielding.
Or preparing to resist.
And in that uncertainty, I understood the truth too late:
This was no longer about who controlled the horror.
It was about whether the horror would accept control at all.
The bells rang a third time.
The world leaned inward.
And then—
—the binding began.