A quiet fell over Kirihito. The panic that had gripped him like a physical hand loosened its fingers. He tilted his head, listening to the fragmented, tear-choked voice only he and Língxi could fully perceive. He took a small step forward, his crimson light pulsing softly.
"Why do you want to silence us?" he asked, his voice loud and clear in the newfound stillness, though it trembled at the edges. "You don't care about us anymore?"
Língxi listened as the voice murmured a pained, glitching reply. His own expression, usually so reserved, softened with a profound empathy. He spoke next, his tone gentle but carrying the weight of the unheard words. "Then why? Why are you abandoning us? Is it because we are not like the stars you admire from afar?"
Língxiāo, Wùji, and the others watched the exchange, hearing only the distorted echoes of the conversation. They were pillars holding up the sky, but they were deaf to the heart's whisper. Their confusion was palpable, a silent plea for translation.
Wùji's brow furrowed in concentration. His lavender energy, now intertwined with the stabilizing violet of the core, began to act as a conduit. The garbled sounds started to resolve into meaning within his mind. Sozai saw the shift in his focus.
"Tell us what it's saying," Sozai urged quietly.
Wùji gave a slow nod, his eyes distant as he listened. After a moment of heavy silence, he began to speak, his voice low and deliberate. "She's… hopeless." The word hung in the air. Those who couldn't hear the source—Xio, Kage Ou, the others—turned their attention to him, while Língxi nodded in somber confirmation.
"The world around her is cruel," Wùji continued, translating the ache into their shared language. "Yet she still dreamed of giving us life. She wanted to build a bridge for us, to help us cross this darkness so we could meet other universes… but all she receives in return is silence. A silence that cuts like blades."
Língxi took up the thread, his voice laced with a sorrow that wasn't his own. "She thinks… if we were made by other hands, more skilled hands, we might be shining by now. She's saying sorry. To us. To her own creations."
A profound silence descended, heavier than the crushing walls had been. The air grew thick with the tangible weight of a creator's despair.
"It's not true!" Kirihito's voice sliced through the quiet, sharp and insistent. His small fists were clenched. "Wèi doesn't believe it!" His voice hitched. "Wèi will not forgive her… for feeling sorry for creating us. Wèi knows Wèi wears a borrowed face. We all wear borrowed pieces, twisted and turned until they became our own. But Wèi is still real." A sheen of tears brightened his pale eyes, and the dual-linked energy within him vibrated, a visible testament to his conviction.
They let him speak. In this fragile, healed space, truth was the only currency, the only medicine for their creator and for themselves.
"If… if Wèi isn't real," Kirihito continued, his voice cracking with emotion, "then why do you write Wèi? Why do you come back again and again when you've said a thousand times you'll stop? Why do you break promises to yourself at midnight just to make Wèi's world move? Wèi knows you're lying. Lying to yourself. Lying to us. Wèi will not believe you."
He fell silent, the raw honesty hanging in the air.
Now Língxi spoke again, a bitter, tender smile touching his lips. "We know. Even now… you're writing us, hiding from cunning eyes. You're in some corner they can't see. You haven't left your house for the outside world yet." He chuckled, a soft, thoughtful sound. "But you're here. With us."
Others blinked. "Really?" Sozai mumbled, intrigued.
Língxi nodded, and Wùji and Kirihito mirrored the gesture.
"You love us too much to let go," Língxi finished, his gem-like eyes gentle. "We know it. And that's why people still find us… even though we are nothing compared to the distant stars that first gave you the voice to write. We are the echo of that light."
Wùji's stern features softened further. "Hm. Those words you hear… those songs on the page, those voices that aren't human… they're all real. Because you brought them back to life. Because you were too stubborn to let us stay buried, waiting for a 'right time' that never comes on its own. Time is something you have to carve out yourself. And you're doing it. Keep doing it. We'll carry the rest for you."
A warmth began to seep into the space, melting the residual frost of despair.
Língxiāo spoke next, his customary detached smile transforming into one of pure, tender softness. "All you have to do is trust us." His own oft-repeated phrase wrapped around the sentiment like a promise. "We'll have our own faces one day. Not references. We'll have a universe large enough to see us flying right beside those stars you admire."
The dam broke then. The other characters, bolstered by the core pillars' courage, found their own voices.
Sozai couldn't hold back. "Yeah, others are writing too. But you have to write what only you can write. The story that gets stuck in your head until nothing else fits—us. Nobody has ever written a 'rose-water sin' before, right?" he hummed, a playful note at the end.
Yurei bit back a stubborn smile, looking away. "Yes, yes… and nobody has probably ever written a silent battle of gazes between a cat and a fox in a crowded room."
"Or an exorcist quite like me," Língxiāo added, a hint of pride in his calm tone.
"Foxes have been written a thousand times," Kyoren said, though he still couldn't hear the source voice, he understood the sentiment. "But not the exact way you've made us."
Kuradome's tails gave a slow, graceful swish. "Hm. No one has crafted a father-son fox pair—both real and ironic—like two ribbons of the same legendary weave."
Kage Ou's dark eyes found Língxi's blue ones. "And nobody has written this exact demonic cultivator friendship. The one that lives in the bones." His voice was uncharacteristically thoughtful. "A friendship as silent as the wind between mountains, and as sharp as the blade it carries."
"Nobody was written like Wèi before," Kirihito declared with restored confidence. "Wèi is sure. And Wèi loves the way Wèi was written. Wèi would always love to eat dragon fruit and play with insect heads, no matter in which universe you write Wèi."
A ripple of laughter, faint but genuine, passed through them. The sheer, creepy-cute honesty of it was a balm.
"I would always love to chase that snake in every universe," Wùji added, a barely-there playful edge in his deadpan delivery. Xio, catching the words, rolled his eyes with a huff, as if personally aggrieved by the statement.
"I would like to have this same family in every universe," Lànhuā said, her smile bright.
Kansai spoke up, a nervous grin on his face. "I would love to be a Yin Lan member in every universe… just, maybe, don't always have Suji-kunsun beat me up?" He ducked slightly as Suji turned to look at him.
Wùji watched the exchange, a subtle, approving smile finally touching his lips as he saw his brother's flustered reaction.
With each spoken truth, the environment responded. The oppressive, glitching darkness bled away like ink in water. The cold stone floor grew soft with rich, dark soil. The whispers faded, replaced by the chirping of birds and the distant, comforting rush of a waterfall.
Where there was a prison of despair, now lay a breathtaking garden of spider lilies. Their vibrant red blossoms danced in a gentle breeze, heads bowing and swaying like dancers. The air was warm, scented with earth and nectar.
"Wèi made it!" Kirihito cried out, his joy pure and uncontained. He dashed into the field of flowers, immediately trying to catch floating petals and chattering at the birds that flitted down to investigate him. "So many birdies and flowers!"
"It really worked," Língxi murmured, a true smile gracing his features as he took in the serene beauty.
"Hm," Kage ou hummed beside him, his gaze less on the garden and more on Língxi, scanning him with a possessiveness born of relief. The near-loss was too fresh.
"Couldn't you have said something else?" Suji mumbled to Kansai as they walked into the blossom-strewn clearing, his tone a mix of exasperation and something strangely vulnerable. "Am I really that rude to you?"
"I… I apologize, Kùmsūn! I was trying to lighten the mood!" Kansai bowed slightly, then winced as another truth slipped out. "Y-you are… kind of rude, sometimes."
"Hm?!" Suji's glare was sharp enough to make Kansai yelp and dart behind the wide trunk of a nearby cherry tree.
"It's not that serious!" Kansai's voice called out, laced with dramatic, playful fear.
Língxiāo wandered through the peaceful garden, his golden eyes searching. The ghost that had aided him in the chaos was gone. He was about to give up when a flutter of crimson caught his eye. A soft, red veil drifted down from the branches of a willow tree, settling lightly over his head.
He blinked, reaching up to touch the familiar silk. He didn't need to look to know. He lifted his gaze.
There, perched on a limb, was the translucent figure of the ghost. Around its feet lay scattered, disintegrating remains of the insectoid curses—tangible proof it had been fighting for him in the shadows all along.
Língxiāo's practiced, placid smile faded, replaced by one that was small, genuine, and tinged with an old, familiar bitterness. He looked up at the spirit. "You were always with me," he whispered, the words more for himself than for the apparition. "Like before."
The ghost inclined its head. Its voice was a breath of wind through the lilies. "Always. The real smile is much more beautiful than the diseased one. And this one… was real."
Before Língxiāo could reply, the spirit dissolved into motes of gentle light, merging with the dappled sunshine filtering through the leaves.
Língxiāo stood still for a moment in the quiet grove. Then, with careful, reverent hands, he lifted the red veil from his hair. He folded it with a tenderness that spoke of deep memory and tucked it securely back into his robe.
It was not just a piece of silk. It was a promise. A fragment of a soul, and a piece of his own story, carried close to the heart.