I know I am being moved.
Not ordered.
Not commanded.
Positioned.
The city has learned how to guide me without touching me, like a river that pretends it is not narrowing while its banks rise higher every step. When I walk toward the tower, no one stops me. When I walk away, paths seem to close of their own accord.
I am allowed only one direction now.
Up.
The Presence hums low beneath the stone, distant and restrained, like a great animal that has been fed just enough to remain docile. Zhou's binding still aches against it, a foreign geometry pressing inward. I feel the drag on myself more than on the god—like chains looped through my ribs rather than around its limbs.
By the time I reach the upper chamber, I am already exhausted.
Wu Shuang waits inside.
She does not rise when I enter.
She does not bow.
She sits cross-legged before the lotus sigil, hands resting on her knees, eyes half-lidded. The sutras carved into the walls glow faintly, no longer drifting, no longer rearranging. They have been fixed.
Pinned.
"You shouldn't be here," she says calmly.
"I don't care what I should be anymore," I reply.
The Lord Protector stands behind her, hands folded, posture immaculate. He looks older than I remember—not in flesh, but in bearing. As if the weight of finally succeeding has settled into his bones.
"You've been busy," he says. "You always were."
I laugh, and the sound is ugly.
"You took it back," I say. "The Presence. Her." I gesture at Wu Shuang. "You tightened the leash."
The Lord Protector inclines his head. "You were bleeding control."
"I was using it."
"You were burning it," he corrects. "There is a difference."
Wu Shuang opens her eyes then and looks at me fully.
Whatever she is now, it is not less than before.
It is sharper.
"You overreached," she says. "You always do when you think speed is the same as inevitability."
I step closer, ignoring the way the air thickens with each pace.
"And you?" I ask. "You let Zhou touch it. You let them bind me."
Her gaze flickers—just once.
"That wasn't me," she says.
The Lord Protector's voice cuts in smoothly. "That was the cost of keeping you alive."
Alive.
The word lands wrong.
I feel something inside me tear—not violently, but finally.
"You planned this," I say slowly. "The executions. The isolation. The city turning on me. You let it happen."
The Lord Protector does not deny it.
"Pressure reveals structure," he replies. "I needed to see what you would become."
"And now?" I ask.
He studies me carefully.
"Now I know."
The Presence shifts beneath us, not in response to me, but to him. The realization hits harder than any blow.
I am no longer the axis.
Wu Shuang rises smoothly to her feet. She is closer to me now than she has ever been, yet impossibly distant.
"You were never meant to rule," she says. "You were meant to clear the board."
I clench my fists.
"And after?" I demand. "After the South arrives? After Zhou marches? After Ling An is bled dry?"
The Lord Protector steps past her and looks out the narrow window toward the horizon.
In the distance, I can see it too.
Smoke.
Not battle smoke.
Cooking fires.
Zhou is close now. A few miles at most. Close enough that their scouts no longer hide. Close enough that their silence feels deliberate.
Behind them, unseen but felt, the Southern Kingdom advances like a ceremony that has learned how to walk.
"After," the Lord Protector says quietly, "there will be order."
I turn on him.
"You broke me to get it."
"Yes."
The honesty is worse than cruelty.
I stagger back a step. For the first time since this began, the Presence does not steady me. It remains distant, constrained, watching—not intervening.
Wu Shuang watches me carefully.
"You feel it now," she says. "Don't you?"
I do.
The loneliness.
The way the city no longer belongs to me.
The way decisions are being made around me, not with me.
Somewhere in the palace, Wu Jin is preparing to keep a throne I have made possible and impossible at the same time.
Somewhere below, Shen Yue is putting pieces into place that I cannot see—quietly, efficiently—while telling herself it is mercy.
I feel the betrayal not as knowledge, but as alignment.
Everything points away from me.
"You're afraid," I say to the Lord Protector.
He smiles faintly.
"No," he replies. "I'm relieved."
Wu Shuang steps between us—not to protect me, not to bar my path, but to end the moment.
"It's already moving," she says. "Zhou will test the city within days. The South will arrive under banners and incense. And you—"
She meets my eyes.
"You will be blamed for what comes next. Whether you act or not."
I understand then.
They are done shaping me.
Now they will use me.
I turn away from them without another word.
Behind my back, the Lord Protector exhales slowly, as if something he has carried for years has finally been set down.
The Presence hums once, low and distant.
Outside, the wind carries the sound of drums from far away.
Zhou is close.
The South is coming.
And I walk down from the tower knowing one thing with absolute clarity:
Whatever happens next,
it will be written in my blood—
whether I choose it or not.