The next morning, Wuye woke to silence.
Not the dead kind — the kind that comes after battle, where even the wind forgets to breathe — but the living kind. Crickets in the moss. The pop of a low fire. Somewhere deeper in the cave, water dripped in slow, methodical intervals, like a bored god tapping its finger.
He sat up. The furs clung to him, sweat-soaked.
His body still hurt but the pain had changed. It was no longer the sick, melting agony of poison and resurrection. It was cleaner and Sharper now. A soreness that whispered, You survived. Now earn it.
Across the cave, Master Yan sat on a stone bench, eyes closed. Meditating or maybe just ignoring him.
Wuye pulled the fur blanket tighter and cleared his throat. "Still not dead."
"Noisy way to announce it."
The old man didn't open his eyes.
"You slept for two days," he continued. "Muttered in three tongues. Cursed someone named… 'You damn, customer support'?"
"Demonic sect," Wuye muttered. "Leave it."
Master Yan snorted. A real one — not the kind meant to impress. "Your spirit thread is fractured. Whatever brought you here left damage behind. Not all of it in the blood."
"Yeah," Wuye said, "well. The old model broke. This is the replacement. Cheap import."
The silence between them lingered. Then—
"Tell me," the old man said. "What do you remember of your poisoning?"
Wuye froze.
The words clawed their way out slowly.
"A night colder than this. Courtyard full of plum blossoms. Father watching with that dead look on his face. My brother smiling too hard as he poured tea. I drank. Because I was twelve. Because I thought…"
He trailed off.
"Because I thought they still loved me."
Master Yan gave no comfort. "And?"
Wuye exhaled. "I woke up in a ditch with a body that wasn't mine."
"A ditch is honest," the old man said. "Thrones are not."
The flames crackled.
"You were supposed to die," Yan said. "Your body was emptied. And yet… here you are. Something returned. Something refused."
"I didn't ask for this," Wuye muttered.
"Neither did the sword."
That earned a look. "What sword?"
Yan stood. His bones cracked like old branches. He moved to a stone shelf carved into the wall, where lay a long, cloth-wrapped bundle. When he unrolled it, the blade inside was unlike anything Wuye had seen.
Old, blackened and not rusted — but scarred, as though time itself had tried to erase it. Its edge curved like a crescent moon, wicked and silent. The hilt was wrapped in faded silk, embroidered with a character Wuye didn't recognize.
Yan set it between them like an offering.
"This is Voidsteel," he said. "And this—" he tapped the blade— "was once mine."
Wuye frowned. "Sword cultivation?"
"No." Yan's eyes glinted. "Sword rebellion."
That sounded pretentious and true.
"I abandoned the my sect," Yan said. "Left the capital. Hid here when my lungs began failing. I thought I would rot in peace and then some cursed prince with a second-hand soul crashed into my grave."
"You're welcome."
Yan ignored him. "You want revenge?"
"No," Wuye said.
The old man raised a brow.
"I want erasure," Wuye said. "Of the whole thing. The court. The bloodline. The lie."
A long silence.
Then — softly — the old man chuckled.
"Good," he said. "Then I'll teach you."
They began that night.
Not with sword forms. Not with Qi. Not with any grand philosophy.
With stillness.
"Sit," Yan said. "And shut up."
Wuye did.
Then five minutes passed.
Then fifteen.
Then a mosquito bit his ankle.
Then his leg cramped. His back itched. His stomach growled.
Still, he sat.
Yan didn't move.
Eventually, Wuye whispered, "Is this a test?"
"No. This is a grave."
"…what?"
"You were buried once," Yan said. "But a shallow grave only kills the body. The mind is harder to rot. So now, you dig a new one. Sit with your ghosts. Listen to them scream."
Wuye said nothing but he did sit and in the firelight, something inside him did scream.
Not in fear.
In recognition.
On the third day, Yan let him touch the sword.
Not wield it. Not swing it.
Touch it.
It nearly broke him. The first time Wuye's fingers brushed the hilt, something snapped in his mind — a sharp, sick twist, like a door being opened the wrong way. He fell back, gasping, cold sweat pouring down his spine.
"The sword remembers," Yan said quietly. "Every cut it ever made. Every soul it ever wounded. You think you're the first broken thing it's touched?"
Wuye clutched his ribs.
"No," he rasped. "But I might be the last."
Yan almost smiled.
"Good."
That night, Wuye dreamed of snow but not the grave. This time it was a palace garden. White camellias blooming in silence. His brother standing in the cold, face young, kind and a teacup.
Always the teacup.
In the dream, Wuye turned the cup over.
There was nothing inside.
Just the reflection of his own face — older, darker, rimmed in firelight.
He woke with an answer already forming. When Master Yan offered him tea in the morning, Wuye didn't drink.
Yan didn't comment.
He only smiled — the kind of smile old swords make when they're finally drawn.