Steam had colonized the entire chamber.
It rose from the surface of the bath in slow, lazy pillars, curling against the vaulted black stone of the Pleasure Palace's inner bathing hall—a room that deserved a different word entirely. Not a bathroom.
A 'pool'.
Obsidian tiles ran the full perimeter, wide enough for forty bodies to float without touching. Water channels carved from the walls themselves fed it constantly, salt-warmed, faintly luminescent where the palace's formation stones bled their residual qi into the current. Lantern clusters hung from the ceiling on chains, their amber light refracted through steam, painting everything in the color of old honey.
It should have been peaceful.
Then Sai breached the surface.
He 'erupted' from the deep end—full merman, all six feet of scaled tail and bare torso—and launched himself into a horizontal torpedo through the center of the pool with absolutely zero warning and zero apology.
The wave hit like a wall.
