The silence after the storm was worse than the storm itself.
Petals still floated through the air, drifting in lazy arcs as though reluctant to fall. The shattered courtyard was a graveyard of beauty—red, pale, and bleeding soft. Every breath Liansheng drew tasted like ash laced with lotus pollen, sweet enough to choke.
And in the middle of it all, Yinan.
His body trembled from exhaustion, yet he stood with his back against the fallen wall, chest rising and falling like a trapped bird's. Blood streaked the corner of his mouth. His eyes—storm-dark, bright with refusal—lifted and pinned Liansheng.
Liansheng had expected resentment. Distance. A blade where once there had been a smile.
Instead, Yinan only whispered, hoarse and thin:
"...You stayed."
The words cut deeper than any petal-blade.
Liansheng's throat locked. "Of course I—"
He stopped himself. He almost said: of course I always will. But he had no right to promise, not when promises had broken them in the first place. Not when the world itself was unspooling beneath their feet.
Instead, he stepped closer. Slow. Careful. Like approaching a wounded animal who might still bare fangs.
Yinan didn't move away. He didn't move at all. His eyes followed Liansheng's hand when it lifted, trembling slightly, and hovered at the edge of his jaw.
A pause. A breath. Then skin met skin.
Heat shot up Liansheng's arm as his thumb brushed Yinan's cheekbone, where lotus pollen clung like dusting gold.
Yinan's eyes fluttered shut. His lips parted, as if a confession trembled there, as if silence was too heavy to hold any longer.
Liansheng leaned in. Closer. The world quieted, petals stilled midair. The space between them thinned until even breath mingled.
For one fragile heartbeat—Liansheng thought he might finally taste the thing he had chased across lifetimes.
And then—
A scream.
It tore through the lotus-field, jagged and inhuman.
The petals convulsed as though alive, snapping into razor-edged whorls. The air shuddered with Qiuyue's fury, voice split between a child's wail and a woman's howl.
"You dare—"
The petals surged. Not soft this time, not beautiful—deadly. They spun into knives, slicing walls, cleaving stone, driving into the ground until sparks spat up like blood.
Liansheng shoved Yinan behind him instinctively, his palm never leaving Yinan's face until the last possible second. His sword unsheathed itself in a single furious breath of steel.
Qiuyue's form reassembled from the petal-storm—a grotesque mockery of bloom and bone, half-flower, half-shadow. Her face flickered between a porcelain mask and something cracked, monstrous.
"You think you can take him from me again?" Her voice was everywhere at once, hissing in their ears, digging into marrow. "No one steals what I cradle. Not in this life, not in any life."
Liansheng tightened his grip on his blade. His voice was quiet, steady:
"You never cradled him. You caged him."
Yinan, breathless, reached for Liansheng's sleeve from behind. Fingers curled, not to stop him—but to anchor him.
The petals screamed louder, the storm swelling. Qiuyue was not retreating this time. She was rising.
And so were they.
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