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Lan WangJi woke up one day and found himself in a spacious, vaguely familiar room. There were soft clicking and hushed footsteps nearby coming from what he would come to realize to be people—servants—trying to dust this place without making as much noise as they could.
The second they noticed he was awake, all of them stopped what they were doing and fell to their knees, bowing deeply.
“ Zhu-shang , welcome back,” they said in unison, and Lan WangJi, despite a prickling of something akin to recognition in the back of his head, was mostly at a lost to what was going on, a light frown creasing his eyebrows.
Right then, all he thought about—the only thing that kept on looping in his mind and was quickly squeezing the breath out of him—was ‘where is Wei Ying?’
He was just about to speak up when a tall figure walked in through the door, and Lan WangJi felt himself relax a little once he had managed to clearly see who this was. Finally , someone whom he could trust to answer his questions and make sense of this situation.
“ Xiongzha—…”
“ Zhu-shang ,” the person wearing Lan XiChen’s appearance said, head bending forward at a courteous angle with his arms outstretched and hands clasped in front of him.
At this point, two things crossed Lan WangJi’s mind. One, his brother passed away years ago already. And two, this person, who was all at once too much like Lan Huan and not enough at the same time, wasn’t wearing Gusu Lan Sect’s pristine white robes. Instead, he was dressed in navy blue silk, designed and fashioned to be both comfortable and practical, respectable but always ready for combat.
“You’re awake,” the Not-Lan-Huan continued, quiet and steady. And just like that, everything clicked.
Oh.
The concept and identity of Lan Huan, his blood brother for more than forty mortal years, faded away into the background, and in its wake, Lan WangJi also saw, plain and simple now, one of his most loyal subordinates in all the Five Kingdoms—his xinfu , who would (and had) followed him anywhere he went.
But it was also now, now when comprehension was crashing into him like the rising tides of a quickly angering sea, that another sort of understanding lanced through him with all the vicious force of a freshly forged sword piercing straight through his heart—scorching and excruciating: another mortal life cycle had once again ended for him.
And as always, without even meaning to, he had left Wei Ying behind—all by himself and alone again.
Alone .
(They had been doing this for more than two thousand mortal years already, cycle after cycle after cycle… It never seemed to end.
Fate was, after all, relentless like that.)
-
The bitter medicine left a foul taste in the roof of his mouth, but having been Lan WangJi for so long, after having tasted and eaten Gusu’s food for what felt like many long years to humans, he was used to it already.
“How are you feeling, zhu-shang ?” his xinfu asked, standing beside him like the ever unwavering presence that he was.
“Better.” The spoon in his hand rested back inside the mostly drained porcelain bowl with only a tiny clang . “You came back early,” he began gradually, as if testing out his voice. This body had been asleep for more than two months already, and while stasis magic had kept it just as it had been before he had gone into his deep slumber, some things still needed to be worked out. “Was there something wrong?”
“A bit of a skirmish at the lower gates, but I have taken care of it.”
“Good.” Lan WangJi nodded. ( Lan WangJi still because his life with Wei Ying as this mortal reincarnation was one of their few happier cycles, and he was too selfish to let it go so soon, to let it bleed back into the darkness of the past when Wei Ying remained left alive and suffering .) “You can leave now. I’m not to be disturbed until tomorrow.” Unless it’s an emergency went unspoken but acknowledged anyway.
His xinfu — Lan Huan —paused a little, his gaze lingering on Lan WangJi for a fraction longer than what was necessary before bowing one more time. “As you wish.” He gathered up the lacquered tray swiftly and was just about to cross the door threshold when he stopped in his track.
Lan WangJi looked up at him, and Lan Huan seemed to hesitate a bit before saying, “It was a painless death this time, zhu-shang .” And with that, he was gone, plunging the room back into its cool silence, permeated only by the teasing scent of the burning incense that one of the servants had lit shortly before his awakening.
His hands flexed uselessly once, twice on the surface of the table. From what he could vaguely remember, he had died in his sleep—no injury, no struggle—slipping away like a blown out candle light rejected from life.
He wasn’t sure it really was that painless, all things considered.
-
The bronze mirror rippled, its glimmering, polished metal front settling into a familiar rhythm of installed mechanism after recognizing the magic signature of its creator, laying out everything it had managed to record bare and open in front of his eyes.
Lan WangJi didn’t even stop to think as he pinpointed the moment he wanted to see and went right back to the morning after—the morning after his death. Because he couldn’t stand the thought of letting Wei Ying suffer through the pain all by himself again.
At least this way, he could share some of it… no matter how incremental and inconsequential this was.
“Lan Zhan, wake up. You’re scaring me. Lan Zhan!”
“Lan Zhan... Fujun … Look at me. Just—...”
“Please…”
-
The cries lasted for hours.
There was never any reply.
“ Zhu-shang. ”
The Gyre of Fate spun tirelessly, pulling at the myriad of threads in its midst and weaving them in an almost random manner, swirling and churning, spitting temporarily idle souls to the side and yanking newly formed ones into the ongoing cycles.
Merciless.
Lan WangJi tilted his head enough to indicate that he was listening, and Lan Huan carried on, “All the guests have arrived.”
The statement passed him by meaninglessly, but Lan WangJi knew, whether he wanted to or not, it would be better if he didn’t ignore this one gathering.
“Mn.”
With one last look, he turned away, leaving the chamber with Lan Huan following closely behind him. Unlike the previous Celestial King, Lan WangJi didn’t need a trailing herd of people—guards and maids and attendants—to make himself feel safe. After all…
He was not the one who had thrown away what had been, and still was, assuredly amongst the most important factors that would’ve guaranteed him of his own continued protection and survival. He was not the one who had dug himself an early grave.
They entered through the concealed passageway that was off to the inner side of the main banquet hall, and true to form, everyone on the invited list, all those who had helped him wage the last Great War that had just ended a few months ago, was there, chattering loudly whilst waiting for the feast to begin.
The noises condensed into a tightly-packed hush once they saw him arrive, all swirling black silk and subtle gold patterns threading along the smooth fabric of his royal robes.
“ Zhu-shang .” They all stood up, bowing as he stepped up the low platform and settled into his seat at the front of the banquet hall. “ Wansui, wansui, wan-wansui! ”
The Ghost King had arrived, commencing the victory celebration on his successfully taking over the Celestial Palace.
-
“I heard that his soul and energy are so inherently dark and demonic that even HanGuang-Jun couldn’t take it anymore.”
“That’s how he died?! Are you sure? HanGuang-Jun is—was—one of the strongest cultivators out there!”
“Well, I don’t know, but… we are talking about the Yiling Laozu here. And I mean, you do realize the sort of despicable things he was capable of back in the days, right? If he could massacre three thousand people in one night… what’s not to say he didn’t do something that might as well have killed HanGuang-Jun in his sleep, intentionally or not?”
Lan WangJi listened to the conversation and couldn’t but imagine up all the ways he could— should —agonize these people based on the fact that they were speaking nonsense about things they knew nothing of on principle alone, and that was to say nothing of the subject matter of which they were discussing.
This was the difference between him and Wei Ying because, in the end, there was a reason why he wasn’t the one who had once been heralded as The Protector , shining reputation like a glorious miniature sun preceding him throughout the lands.
There was a reason why he was the Ghost King instead, and why associating with him had ended up condemning the sun to lifetimes of damnation.
He stood up and tried not to think about it too hard, lest he start destroying everything in front of him in blind rage. Again.
(“ My dear zhu-shang ,” a familiar voice whispered.)
Fate was continuously toying with them. Mocking them, sneering on their union, degrading the one thing Lan WangJi had ever cherished more than his very own existence.
(“ Don’t worry so much,” it said, arms wrapping gently around his neck and soft lips brushing over his skin, bold and coy and trying for a distraction. “ I’m fine .”)
One day, the second it stopped mattering anymore, he would destroy that spinning gyre and end all its ridiculous games.
( No… You’re not fine. )
(Not at all.)
-
Wei Ying was drunk.
He’d been drinking and drinking to the point where the people in the village down below refused to sell him any more wine, at least until the following day once he’d sobered up enough. And just this alone, the idea that he’d ever be willingly sober again, had been enough to send him into a laughing fit that didn’t cease until he nearly vomited on the spot, his steps staggering as he paid up and stumbled out of the store before he could further taint Gusu Lan Sect’s name.
Before he could defile Lan WangJi’s posthumous image any more than he already had.
Lan WangJi honestly couldn’t care less about that, about whatever sort of pride or dignity—not right then, not as much as his Lan WangJi persona had been in life—because the rest of the world could burn and he probably would’ve been the one who set it on fire, for hurting Wei Ying like this.
It took a while, but in the end, his husband managed to drag himself back home without once tripping over himself. (Husband still, because forever more meant exactly that, even when their faces changed, separated by deaths and realms, and their lives and stories were no longer the same.) And Lan SiZhui was there, waiting, ever the diligent presence, and Lan WangJi watched as the boy—man, now—helped Wei Ying inside, Wei Ying chuckling and humming a familiar song under his breath then apologizing all over again hey, sorry you have to keep doing this. You don’t have to do this every time, you know. You don’t have to wait for me.
To which SiZhui would patiently reply, “It’s okay, Wei- qianbei . I don’t mind,” because lifetimes ago, when they had still been in the Celestial Palace, SiZhui had been Wei Ying’s xinfu , and that was how it had always been.
Just like how Jiang WanYin and Jiang YanLi would always be Wei Ying’s sworn brother and sister, family in everything but blood, no matter how many times they had met, celestials then humans. Again and again and again.
Fate would make sure Wei Ying paid every life debt he owed all these people around him; anyone capable of emotionally hurting him, anyone he cared for at all in any way were the ones who had helped share his punishment in what felt like eons ago.
Once upon a time, the shadow fell in love with the sun.
The second it looked up into the tall sky above and felt for itself all the warm glory that the sun provided, there was no turning back.
What it hadn’t expected was the fact that the sun, somehow, miraculously , felt the same way, too. And from then on, they began dancing in and out of each other’s orbit, always close by but never staying for long, always reaching out but never having the chance to unite as one.
Because the sky was watching.
The sky was watching, and because the shadow didn’t want its sun to be thwarted for any reason at all, because the sun was that one single thing it had actually ever loved more than itself, it made sure to be discreet in their meetings, to be subtle and anonymous with all the gifts it could find to lavish the sun with.
Better for it to bear a little unfairness now—in the fact that it had actually wanted for everyone to know about this brilliant love of theirs instead of having to hide it away as though it was something worthless and shameful like this—than for the sun to feel sad and be ostracized from those around it, the shadow had thought.
That had been its first and last, most fatal mistake.
They were back in the privacy of his jingshi , or it used to be his at any rate. It was Wei Ying’s now, but even though Wei Ying kept it clean and spotless and precisely as it had always been when Lan WangJi had been alive as a mortal… there was currently no warmth to it.
A single candle lit up a corner of the room on the table that Lan WangJi had used to lay out his books and scrolls before for perusal, its quiet flame flickering a cold loneliness that lurked in the air and seeped into the fabric of every existing thing in this space. Including Wei Ying.
Wei Ying, who then had fallen asleep hunched and curled up by the garment rack where Lan WangJi’s old clothes still hung, washed and carefully arranged so there wouldn’t be any wrinkles on them. His face was tilted sideways toward the entrance, like if he sat there long enough, waited long enough, pretended like he wasn’t thinking about tearing his skin out long enough, then maybe one day the person he was yearning for would once more walk in through those doors.
It… couldn’t happen, though. Not like that.
( The last times WangJi had tried, tried to help, tried to gather the embodiment of Wei Ying’s soul back then into his arms and run as far away as they could manage, Fate had retaliated. It had riddled their paths with nothing but obstacles and destructions and desolations, and had ultimately stolen away the life of Wei Ying’s soul every time.
Unless Lan WangJi allowed his soul to drift into the Mortal Realm for reincarnation also, there was no way he could interfere without ugly consequences. And it had never been him who had to pay the price.
Because afterwards, after all these attempts, Wei Ying’s following cycles had always been some of the worse ones—filled with no respite for all the misery and despair and sickness to the point where he had been so broken sometimes that he hadn’t had the strength to move on and reincarnate for nearly a hundred mortal years.
In the whiplash of it all, of trying to defy Fate, Lan WangJi lost half of his Qi base, which had one time spurred on a coup for power, which he had ruthlessly crushed without hesitation. The only regret he had had during that time was that the temporary chaos had made sure he wouldn’t be able to be there to at least have a chance at cushioning the agony Wei Ying had had to endure. )
(Now, it was the same all over again.)
Without a sound, Lan WangJi pressed a sleeping spell to the center of Wei Ying’s forehead, rendering his husband into a deeper sleep, before proceeding to pick him up and bring him over to their bed. He tried not to think about how light Wei Ying was in his hold, how the dark circles under his eyes were now a part of what constituted his usual facial features. Or how his laughs had sounded so emptied and hollowed out earlier, a shell of the delight they had used to be, like someone had reached into his chest and gouged out his still beating heart and squashed it.
He tried not to think about any of that and focused on the task at hand—checking to see if Wei Ying had sustained any unmentioned wounds during the last night hunt he had just returned from hours ago. Because this was how his husband was—reckless to a fault—and without Lan WangJi there to ground him, to sometimes attempt at being his shield, to protect him from himself, Wei Ying would use every opportunity to dive headfirst into danger without a second thought, more so now than ever.
And even though SiZhui, Jin Ling, and Lan JingYi (even Jiang WanYin, who couldn’t but notice his brother’s deteriorating conditions) tried to help, they would never be the ones whom Wei Ying would bear his wounds to; for the only person who could ever pry that out of him and coax the hidden vulnerability out from behind the perfectly crafted smiling mask, was no longer alive.
Lan WangJi sighed softly at the purple bruises that were already forming all over Wei Ying’s body, looking all the more angrier against the pasty complexion of his skin. The small cuts and nicks had barely scabbed over, despite them not being that new, and just this told him all he needed to know about state Wei Ying was in physically.
He didn’t waste more time and started transferring the worst of these wounds over to him, leaving behind only an indolent ache that would linger for merely a couple of days or so at most so that Wei Ying wouldn’t grow suspicious of his own healing rate.
Lan WangJi would have tried to infuse some of his energy over to boost Wei Ying’s weakened system, but he was back to being the Ghost King now, no longer the ironically righteous cultivator that he had been as the mortal Lan WangJi, and, with things as they were, any added dark traces of miasma would only serve to destabilize Wei Ying further.
It was the one joke that Fate never seemed to grow tired of dishing out at them. The more hurtful the better. The Celestial King had ensured it so that Wei Ying’s soul would keep having to go through the experience of having darkness eat at him repeatedly throughout every lifetime, just to try and drive his sickening point home.
And they had had the gall to delude themselves that the wicked ones were not them.
With a flick of his hand, the black silk on his person bled into an unblemished white, and gently, he laid a soft hand over Wei Ying’s cheek, all flushed thanks to his drunk stupor, feeling the radiating warmth from it rush into his vein from this simple touch as he suppressed a shudder.
Wei Ying’s eyelashes gave a shiver, like the silent flutter of butterfly wings, before they opened a sliver to settle upon Lan WangJi.
Immediately, Wei Ying’s body jerked as if slapped.
“Lan Zhan?” His eyes were wide, urgent with a heartbreaking desperation even while he kept his voice no louder than a whisper—as though afraid everything would shatter to pieces the second he breathed wrong.
Lan WangJi didn’t blame him. He knew this would feel cruel, later on when Wei Ying woke up in the morning with the alcohol gone from his veins and rationality once again back in his mind, but right then, he really couldn’t help himself. Not in the face of all this pain.
“Wei Ying,” Lan WangJi called, thumb caressing the uncomfortably sharp, jutting rise of his husband’s cheekbone, and like the never ceasing waves that would forever be helplessly crashing ashore, he could only wish that Wei Ying would just try and be kinder to himself for once.
But they both knew that was never going to happen.
“I’m sorry.”
The sky found out eventually (because good things never lasted, and the shadow should have known—probably would have known if it hadn’t been entirely so encompassed and so blinded by the love the sun had been gracing it with).
An informant, who had wanted to consume the vacuum of power that the sun’s absence would surely leave behind, had told on them, and by the time the shadow found out, it was already too late.
That day, when the sun fell, judged and cast out by far lesser beings, many stars in the sky went along with it.
Lan WangJi now knew: Back then, he really should have just pulled Wei Ying into his embrace and never let him go. Consequences be damned.
Because, branded as a traitor, the soul of what had once been the Celestial Kingdom’s blazing and illustrious Protector had been thrown back into the Gyre of Fate, condemned to spend the next thousands of mortal years suffering as a human, made to taste the bitter fruits of what he had supposedly deserved for engaging in indecencies with a demonic entity. The Ghost King no less.
However, full wrath and trying to make an example out of him aside, the Celestial governing body had still been one that had wanted to save themselves a formidable warrior enough that they had even left him a way to return to their world, after literally doling out a punishment that was no different than trampling on his very existence. As long as, when the time came, he seemed to have repented for his sins .
(This was why they had deserved to perish.)
The only ones who had stood up for the Celestial Protector had been his loyal subordinates. They had had no power nor say, but they had done the only thing they could have and born half of the sentencing for him, dividing the vast amount of years amongst themselves. And these would be the very same people whom Wei Ying’s soul had met, and would meet, time and time again. All by Fate’s design.
It would bring them together and throw them a cruel question, but no matter what they chose, there would be no complete, happy ending. Never. And being the Protector that he had always been, the ideal having already been imprinted down to the cells of his body, Wei Ying would pour his heart out and lay his life down for them, over and over and over. Every single time. Because it was his duty to repay his life debts to the original celestial souls that had sacrificed parts of themselves for him all those mortal years before.
But more than that, beyond the obligation and beyond the title of the Protector that had been bestowed upon him like a curse (more or less seemingly pointing toward the sad answer that Wei Ying’s soul would always undoubtedly give in response to every problem and hardship Fate tossed out at him)… that was just how much he cared for them.
And now, Lan WangJi—the Ghost King —stood over the crumpled remains of the throne room, just the one in which the Celestial King had previously conducted his ludicrous of a trial over the so-called case of the Celestial Protector, and right here, Lan WangJi would build everything back anew from the ground level upward.
He had razed the Celestial Kingdom to the ground, seared fire along the walls of the royal courts and made those responsible pay for what they had done, and by the time he found a way to bring his husband back, everything would be ready for them.
No one would ever have the audacity to hurt the Protector, ever again. And if this meant that he would most likely have to fight a few more wars, then so be it.