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Morning here is always cold, but today it feels colder deep in Tomas’s skin, as if something inside him is shivering faster than the body it lives in. He wakes before dawn again—and lies on his side watching the faint trace of smoke curl from his fingertips, thin as a spider’s thread, barely visible in the quiet half-light.
It shouldn’t be there.
He hasn’t used his power since yesterday’s training.
Yet it rises anyway, an involuntary exhale of something he can no longer control.
The whispers start soon after.
No, not quite that.
Just impressions: weight, sharpness, a tug toward dissolution, a static hiss in the bones.
He presses his knuckles against his lips. It quiets nothing.
“Tomas.”
Bi-Han’s voice. Tomas jerks upright too fast, the smoke retracting into his skin in a thin, sickly twitch.
He steps inside. No announcement, no question. Dawn hasn’t fully broken and he is already in his complete official attire. Deep blue and silver. Tomas always has found it unreasonably beautiful.
The Grandmaster’s posture is impeccable, and Tomas finds himself mirroring it out of instinct, out of fear, out of the strange devotion he learned to hate.
Bi-Han’s eyes flick once to the air behind Tomas, a microsecond too sharp—did he see the smoke? No, he dismisses it. A trick of light. Tomas forces himself to meet his brother’s eyes.
“You overslept,” Bi-Han says, though Tomas was awake long before him. It’s easier to accept the reprimand than to correct him. Correction feels like claiming a right he doesn’t have.
“Apologies, Grandmaster,” Tomas murmurs.
His voice is steady. His hands are not.
Bi-Han watches him with that unreadable expression Tomas has learned he fears. There is attention in it—focused, exact, heavy. The kind of attention that makes his chest ache he has no permission to feel.
“Your stance was imprecise yesterday.”
It had been. And it hadn’t.
It had been a moment of dizziness—
blood pressure dropping again—
vision greying,
knees buckling.
Kuai had reached for him.
No one saw the world tilting. No one suspected the way the smoke inside him thickened then, trying to crawl upward into his throat.
“Yes, Grandmaster,” Tomas says, bowing his head enough that the ends of his hair shadow his eyes.
Bi-Han’s fingers tighten minutely behind his back—barely visible, but Tomas notices; he always notices Bi-Han’s hands. They hold so much control.
“Are you injured?” Bi-Han asks suddenly.
A trap. A mockery or kindness? Tomas can’t tell the difference.
“No, Grandmaster. I apologize.”
Bi-Han steps closer. Tomas stiffens. He wonders if Bi-Han can hear the faint static hum under his ribs. It feels so loud to him, deafening.
Bi-Han studies him.
This is too close; he doesn’t want Bi-Han to see—
but God, a piece of him wants to be seen.
“You have been… careless recently,” Bi-Han says.
He was everything but.
Near-drowning in the bathhouse when his own shadowed breath wrapped too tightly around his lungs – he was deliberate.
The last shallow cut he made across his thigh—a successful escape in the moment of panic, of needing pain sharp enough to quiet the whispers.
But they all looked like mistakes.
Accidents.
Stupidity.
“No excuse,” Tomas murmurs.
Bi-Han exhales through his nose. Irritated. Concerned. Both.
Then he does something Tomas does not expect—
Bi-Han reaches out and touches his chin, tilting his face up.
It’s light. Cold.
It feels like a star collapsing.
Tomas’s breath catches in his chest. The touch is too intimate, too direct, too undeserved. His heart thunders, his lungs burn, and for one horrifying moment he thinks he might dissolve into smoke in Bi-Han’s hand.
Bi-Han’s eyes narrow. “You are pale.”
“I am fine,” Tomas whispers.
A lie. A habit. A shield.
Bi-Han studies him a beat longer, then releases him with a sharp move, as if punishing for letting the contact.
Tomas stands very, very still.
“You are cold too.”
Tomas hadn’t noticed. He pulls his hands into his sleeves, embarrassed.
“It’s fine. Really.”
Bi-Han’s silence carries weight.
“If you are unwell, you must say so.”
Tomas wants to laugh. He wants to scream. He wants to curl into smoke and disappear between the boards of the porch. Because he is unwell, deeply unwell, hollowing-out unwell—but he would rather die than confess it.
How could he? How does one explain the way his own power coils around his thoughts like a constrictor?
The way the whispering in his head sometimes sounds like his own voice, sometimes like another creature altogether breathing through him?
How could he say he has woken more than once with smoke filling his lungs from the inside, choking him, and that he didn’t fight it? Didn’t want to?
He simply shakes his head.
“I know Grandmaster.”
He knows Bi-Han sees him as fragile. A lesser fighter. A brother to be disciplined rather than trusted. Tomas cannot bear to see disappointment flicker in those eyes.
He already sees himself as a monster-in-making; he does not need confirmation from someone he admires so painfully.
Bi-Han finally exhales, long and as if tired. “You will assist me today. No trainings or sparrings.”
It is not an option.
It is a command.
Tomas nods, grateful and ashamed in the same breath. No sparring means fewer chances to be around others long enough for them to notice. Fewer chances for the smoke to surge out when he loses concentration. Fewer chances for more people to see how wrong he is inside.
Bi-Han glances back for a moment—quick enough that Tomas isn’t sure if he imagined it.
“Do not be late,” the Grandmaster says. “I expect you in my study in an hour.”
Tomas forces neck to move in another short nod.
The voices whisper with Bi-Han’s each step.
“You won’t last long.
They’ll see what you are anyway.
You shouldn’t be here.”
A thin curl of smoke rises from his collarbone.He presses his hand against it, as if that could keep everything inside from leaking out.
He presses his palm over his mouth too.
The smoke rises regardless and his throat closes.
“If Bi-Han ever saw what I really am, he would freeze me where I stood.
If Kuai ever saw, he would cry.
If anyone knew, they would lock me away.
There is no future for me.
No love for me.
No place for me.
I am already disappearing.”
The room is dark by the time he tries again.
Not just night-dark.
A darkness that feels thick in the corners, breathing with him.
Tomas sits on the floor with his back against the wall, knees bent, head tilted back to stare at the ceiling he can barely see.His body as well his mind is soaked in that heavy, familiar numbness—
the kind that makes the world feel far away,
the kind that makes existence feel heavy and excessive.
The smoke gathers on its own.
It always does when he stops fighting.
It pools low in his lungs, warm and comforting, like slipping into a bath. Then thicker… heavier… harder to swallow. His chest tightens. His breath shallows. The air grows hot behind his ribs.
He closes his eyes and lets it rise.
It hums, pleased, sharp as a blade dragged slowly across glass.
“Let it hollow you out. Let it take what you cannot hold.”
Tomas tilts his head back further and opens his mouth, but there is no air, only heat, only pressure. The smoke expands, thick and searing, crawling upward, filling the space behind his eyes until tears spill unbidden.
His lungs spasm.
His throat too.
His whole body shakes.
He tastes ash.
He feels the familiar, terrifying moment where consciousness slips—
where the world goes white around the edges—
where the voice murmurs almost lovingly:
“Jít domů—”
But survival isn’t rational.
It’s a reflex.
At the last instant, before everything collapses inward, his body betrays his mind. The smoke bursts from him in a cold, shivering wave, escaping through his skin in trembling wisps. His lungs drag in air with a violent gasp that tears his throat raw.
He doubles over, coughing, shaking, retching.
The voice is immediate.
“You failure.
“Again.”
“Pathetic.”
“You can’t even do this. You can’t even follow through. Disgusting creature—too weak to live, and still too weak to die.”
Tomas presses his palms hard against his eyes, but the voice blooms inside his skull, relentless.
“Not just you, everyone would be relieved if you disappeared. But you can't even manage that.”
“No place for you. No love for you. No courage, no resolve. Just smoke and uselessness.”
Tomas’s breath hiccups. His vision blurs again—not from suffocation this time but from the sharp, crushing pain that rises from somewhere deeper still.
His chest feels flayed open. His pulse thunders with panic and humiliation and despair. He can’t contain it. He can’t silence it. He can’t breathe around it.
Just a quiet, internal snap—like a thread pulled too tight.
He doesn’t think.
He doesn’t plan.
He only acts.
A line of sharpness.
A hot sting.
A flash of red.
It’s not—
not even fully conscious.
Just another frantic, desperate attempt to quiet the noise, to match the internal agony with something he can see, something he can understand.
The pain is immediate.
And for one breath, it grounds him.
It's good. It's quiet.
Then it returns of course.
“Look what you’ve done.” it snarls, almost gleeful.
“Visible now. No hiding it.
You want them to see, don’t you?
How weak.
How monstrous.
How unfit to stand beside them.*
Tomas stumbles toward the washbasin. The mark burns.
His chest heaves.
He stares at himself in the dull glass of the mirror.
A faint outline, distorted by shadow.
Eyes red from suffocation.
Skin pale from panic.
Smoke leaking from the corners of his mouth.
He looks exactly like the creature he fears he’s becoming.
He turns away.
He presses his forehead to the cool glass and tries—tries so hard—not to sob.
Outside, somewhere far down the corridor, he hears Kuai’s soft laughter answering someone’s jest.
Life continues.
Warmth exists somewhere.
Just not here.
Not in him.
Tomas goes through the notes for Bi-Han’s next audience with northern neighboring clan elders when he hears the voices from behind the door. He doesn’t make out the words yet— only that it’s the low, steady rumble of Bi-Han speaking in that clipped, pragmatic tone he ’s already made a decision, and Sektor’s flatter, metallic precision, answering him. The corridor just outside of the study vibrates faintly with their presence, their footsteps pausing close enough that Tomas can imagine their shadows cutting across the wall.
They do not enter because they do not want him to hear.
So he shouldn’t listen.
But he can’t help it.
“…He is not suited for tomorrow’s operation,” Bi-Han says. Not exactly judgment in his voice — just cold certainty. “I will not take him into unfamiliar terrain like this.”
Sektor hums, a sound like turning gears. “Will you get him… reassigned?”
A long exhale. Bi-Han is thinking — Tomas knows that silence, the tightness in it. “A short dispatch for now. Maybe a scouting route. Something quiet. Away from the real clan pressure.” His voice lowers. “He has been… strained. Withdrawn. Perhaps distance will make sense.”
Tomas’s stomach flips, twisting with a hot, nauseating ache.
Bi-Han continues, “He does not seem happy here anyways.”
“So you’ll send him away without dishonor. How considerate. Even sentimental of you, Grandmaster.” Sektor answers and Tomas can almost see in his mind's eye the smirk on her face, the one allowed only to her when addressing the Grandmaster, her childhood friend. Her only friend.
Bi-Han doesn't bother to answer before entering the room.
They continue the conversation which dissolves into logistics — pathing, timing, briefings — but Tomas hears nothing.
Not with his Grandmaster’s previous words ringing in his ears still.
Tomas moves through the day the way someone moves through the memory of it.
He assists Bi-Han with silent precision—fetching scrolls, relaying orders, cataloguing weapon racks, even adjusting the temperature in the archives so nothing warps in humidity. His tasks are simple, mechanical, and he does them flawlessly.
But each action hurts.
Not physical pain.
Like grief for something that has not yet been taken from him.
Every time Bi-Han speaks to him, the grief sharpens.
Every time Kuai passes him in the hall with a warm nod, it thickens in his throat.
It feels like he is already exiled.
Already condemned.
Already a creature on the wall that no one will remember when he stops moving.
The suffocating inside him hums with approval.
“See?”
“They cast you out even without realizing what you are.”
“Better to leave now.”
“Better to disappear before they force you to.”
Tomas presses his nails into his palms whenever voices swell too loudly, grounding himself with sharpness. Bi-Han notices.
“Focus,” he says, cool, crisp.
“Yes, Grandmaster.”
Tomas steadies his hands. The whispers slither back under his ribs.
He follows Bi-Han through the compound’s long corridors. He feels the his presence like a polar star—distant, perfect, mercilessly bright.
Bi-Han doesn’t look at him more than necessary.
Tomas is grateful.
Tomas is aching.
By late afternoon, the whole world feels muffled.
Like he is walking underwater.
He sets two map scrolls on Bi-Han’s desk, bowing his head automatically though he can barely feel his own body.
Bi-Han dismisses him with a gesture. “Go. Your duties for today are complete.”
Tomas’s chest tightens.
“Complete.”
Finished.
Unnecessary.
He leaves without speaking.
Kuai Liang runs into him in the corridor just as he turns toward his room.
“Tomas,” Kuai calls gently. “I’m setting up a board in my room. Come play with us this evening?”
Kuai’s smile is warm, familiar, soft in all the ways Tomas feels unworthy of.
A part of Tomas reaches for it instinctively—like a hand reaching for a fire in winter.
But the whispers speak first.
“He pities you.”
“You will ruin their peace.”
“Let the real brothers have their time together.”
Tomas lowers his gaze. “Thank you, but I… I don't feel like it today.”
Kuai steps closer, concern in his brow. “Come sit with us at least. You don’t have to play.”
Tomas shakes his head quickly. Too quickly.
He can’t be seen like this.
Not when the smoke presses so close to the surface.
“I will rest,” he says, voice barely above a whisper.
Kuai hesitates—he wants to insist, Tomas can see it—but he respects boundaries more than Bi-Han ever would. He nods gently, giving Tomas a small, worried smile.
“All right. If you need anything—”
“I know. I’m fine,” Tomas says, cutting him off too fast, too harsh.
Kuai’s expression flickers, hurt glimmering through it before he masks it with kindness again.
Tomas hates himself for that.
Hates himself so deeply it reverberates in his stomach.
He slips into his room before Kuai can say anything else and closes the door quietly.
The room still holds some of the smoke he exhaled this morning.
He did not open a window.
He does not want the world to see it drift out.
He sinks to the floor beside his bed, hands in his hair, forehead against his knees.
He thinks of Kuai’s gentle invitation as if remembering a life he has already lost.
And still so painfully desirable.
He thinks of the clan, of the halls, of the snow outside.
Everything hurts like a farewell.
Outside his room, soft laughter echoes—Kuai and one of the younger disciples.
Warmth.
Life.
Family.
Inside, Tomas curls tighter.
And he does not answer when Kuai passes by in a few hours. Hesitates, even knocks gently on his door.
“Tomas…? Are you sure you’re all right?”
He presses the heel of his hand over his mouth to stop the sound that tries to crawl out of him — some pathetic, wounded noise he refuses to let exist. The room is still.
He holds his breath until the footsteps fade.
His pulse is too loud. His body too tense. Everything hurts. So no sleep today too.
“Away from clan pressure”
It does feel like a dismissal. Proof that Tomas is exactly what he always feared: the weakest link, the unstable one, the brother who does not belong. Not a real brother. Not a real human at all.
His cuts sting under his weight. A faint throbbing rhythm.
“He doesn’t trust you. He can’t rely on you.”
“You’re just a problem he is trying to remove.”
He tries to breathe slowly, and the air is wrong again — too thin, too heavy, too sharp. His thoughts spiral faster, dragging him with them.
Why would Bi-Han want him close?
Why would anyone?
Kuai is warm, but warmth has limits.
Bi-Han is cold as he should be. Perfect. Them both are.
And Tomas is a tangle of fear and shame and something monstrous he can barely keep inside. Of course they would want distance. Of course he’d want someone more reliable at his side. Someone strong. Someone they wouldn’t have to manage tolerate.
A breath shudders out of Tomas, breaking mid-exhale.
The ceiling blurs. His heartbeat hammers in the back of his throat. He digs his fingers into his blanket until the fabric strains, but it does nothing to hold him together.
“Away,” he thinks.
“They want me away. They are already preparing a world without me.”
Tomas curls tighter. He is so tired of fighting. So tired of waking up inside this body that feels borrowed and wrong. So tired of wanting to be human and good and worthy when everything inside him insists he is none of those things.
The hours crawl.
He does not sleep.
He only listens — to imagined footsteps leaving without him, to the echo of Bi-Han’s voice, to the relentless hiss of the smoke inside his lungs asking, coaxing, urging:
“End it. End it. End it.”
By dawn, he feels hollow. Already half gone. Only one breath away from proving the voice right.
There is a knock again—soft, hesitant, the way Kuai always approaches closed doors.
“Tomas?”
Kuai’s voice is warm in that way that always makes Tomas’s heart jump.
Another knock, gentler. “I… wanted to say goodbye. Bi-Han told me you weren't going with us this time. Please,” Kuai stops, as if searching for a word that won’t trespass.
Tomas tightens his jaw. He wants to be invisible. To disappear into smoke entirely.
Silence follows.
A silence full of Kuai’s concern, kindness, and a soft hurt Tomas can already feel like a bruise.
The door slides open a sliver.
Tomas should lock it. He should have locked it.
But he never locks doors. Locked doors were prohibited for him as he just joined Lin Kuei. And the habit stuck with him. It also now feels somehow accusatory, like declaring he has something shameful to hide.
Kuai leans just a fraction into the room—no farther.
He doesn’t invade.
He never invades.
He always gives Tomas space, even when Tomas doesn’t know how to fill it with anything but despair.
“Tomas…”
Kuai’s gaze lands on him.
“Sorry for waking you.”
His voice softens even more, like he’s speaking to a frightened child. Or an animal.
Tomas sits up sharply, dragging his sleeve down under the blanket, heavy with the weight of sudden shame. “What, Kuai? I’m very tired.”
Kuai hesitates. Tomas knows that hesitation—
the moment where Kuai wants to cross the room, sit beside him, put a steadying hand on his back the way he used to when they were younger.
But Kuai is older now. Wiser. Respectful. He doesn’t force comfort on people anymore.
And now, for Tomas, that gentleness twists into something agonizing.
“I think you know… we are departing for a mission early in the morning. I just wasn't sure I'll see you before it. So I came now. Sorry.”
They both can feel that Kuai apologizes not just for coming late.
Tomas doesn’t know what to say. What is there even to put into words? That he doesn't want Kuai to go? That he would like him to stay with him for the night, like all those years ago? That he is selfish and needy and pathetic enough to entertain the fantasy of his brother choosing him over the mission, over the clan, over everything really?
Apparently he stays silent too long, because Kuai gently touches his hand.
“Tomas… Do you hear me? You do now that if something is wrong, you can—”
“Nothing is wrong! What's wrong with you and this attempts to babysit me all the time?” Tomas snaps, too sharp. “Have a safe travel and come alive. What else? You want an official blessing? Or a forehead kiss?”
Kuai flinches almost imperceptibly.
Not from anger—Kuai doesn’t anger easily.
From… hurt.
A small, quiet hurt that slices through Tomas with surgical precision.
“Oh,” Kuai says softly, eyes lowering. “All right. I won’t bother you anymore, brother. Sleep well.”
He stands up, giving space.
Always giving space.
Always letting Tomas dictate the boundaries, even when Tomas desperately wishes someone would ignore them again.
Drag him into light.
Tell him he’s not unbearable.
But Kuai sees Tomas’s walls and honors them. Like he would like his own.
And Tomas interprets it all wrong.
He hears:
“He doesn’t really want to deal with you.
He’s relieved you pushed him away.
Why would he stay? Why would anyone stay?
You’re not stable. You’re not good.
Kuai is fire. And you are just smoke. You poison and choke.”
Kuai lingers a breath longer, looking like he wants to try again—then steps into the hallway.
The door closes gently.
Just a deep, silent implosion, like a star dying without witnesses.
Kuai is hurt because of him.
Kuai is hurt because Tomas exists.
Because Tomas needs too much. Gives too little.
Because Tomas ruined even this simple kindness. He knows he will regret this every single morning Kuai is not here.
“You push away the only warmth you ever had.
You are too broken for them.
You are too much.
Too sick.”
Tomas slides fully under the blanket, and curls, forehead against his knees.
He should have gone to play with them. He should have smiled.
He should have forced normalcy, pretended to be someone easier to love. Just for this one damn evening.
Instead he watched Kuai’s face fall. Watched the subtle way he hid his disappointment for countless time again.
It feels like losing a brother.
It feels like losing safety.
It feels like losing the past.
And Tomas thinks, with hollow certainty:
“Even Kuai won’t want me soon.
And Bi-Han never did.
I am truly alone now.
It's a perfect time. This is my chance.”
He inhales deeply, struck with the clarity of it. Not the desperate impulse he’s had before. Not the frenzied, emotional crashes.
This feels… right. Arranged. Clean. Practically considerate.
They’ll be gone for days. Maybe more.
There will be more than enough time for the bleeding to stop the right way.
Enough time for the body to cool.
Enough time for him to not be found messy or half-alive or filling the air with bitter smoke.
Enough time for his absence to be complete.
They won’t have to deal with him afterward. Won’t have to hide him, explain it, escort his body with shame for the burial rites. They won’t even have to look at him dead.
His death would be… invisible.
Contained.
Private.
He feels strangely calm, even though a tremor keeps flickering through his hands like static when he jumps out of the bed and sits at his desk. Straightens the paper.
Finds a pen.
“Brothers,”
He stops. The word feels enormous. Too close to something he knows he doesn’t deserve. But crossing it out would look cruel. Would twist the meaning. So he leaves it.
He tries again.
If this will hurt you, I am sorry. I truly am.”
He stares at the words.
It already feels too intimate.
He needs to explain himself the way the clan would expect, the way Bi-Han always demanded clarity, discipline, purpose.
“I tried to be true Lin Kuei. Or at least to be useful. Not to be a burden. I tried not to be like this.”
His hand hesitates, and the ink pools into a small dot where the pen rests. He curses under his breath and turns the paper slightly.
He does not write about love.
Or longing.
Or the aching pull in his chest every time Bi-Han walks past him without looking.
Or how Kuai Liang’s gentle voice sometimes felt like the only thing holding him together.
That would be selfish. And shameful. And it would tie them to him in ways he can’t stand.
“This is my fully and solely my failure. I do not want to bring dishonor to our clan, but simply cannot continue pretending.”
He sits back, breathing shallowly. The fear is there—alive and shifting inside him like something with claws—but he pushes it down. He tells himself it’s natural. Anyone would be a little afraid.
He folds the note once.
Neat, clean edges.
Places it on the center of the table like a final offering.
He looks around his room one last time.
Makes the bed perfectly.
Folds his uniforms.
Arranges his books lined up straight.
He wants to leave it all spotless.
He wants them to enter a room that explains everything for him.
A room that says:
“He planned. He was calm. He took responsibility for his own weakness.”
He wants it to look like there was no struggle.
No terror.
No hesitation.
Even if inside him, everything is shaking.
He wipes his palms on his pants.
Glances once more at the door—closed, silent, final.
Now he finally gets to follow through.
He presses harder, until the metal slips deeper and the skin gives, splitting with a slow, wet sound that turns his stomach. A wave of dizziness sweeps over him — fast, sudden. His heartbeat is loud in his ears, too loud, too heavy, like someone knocking inside his skull.
His breath hitches.
The wound throbs again.
Another warm spill of blood pools around his hand.
His fingertips feel far away, like they belong to someone else. A faint ringing begins at the edge of his hearing. It should terrify him — the pain, the dizziness, the numbness creeping slowly outward — but he clamps his jaw tight and forces himself to stay still.
He deserves this.
He needs this.
He can endure it.
His vision starts to flicker — gray shadows encroaching at the edges — a heavy, sinking feeling pulling at the back of his skull. He swallows, or tries to, but his throat feels too thick.
Then he hears it.
Footsteps. Heavy. Familiar..
No.
No no no please no.
Not now. Not now.
Panic spikes through him so sharply he nearly drops the blade. His heart stutters, a wild rabbit-thump that sends another dizzy wave through him. He doesn’t want to be seen like this — weak, bleeding, pathetic — but another part of him, a terrified, childlike corner of his chest, aches with something close to relief.
Someone is here.
Someone is close.
Someone could stop him.
But he doesn’t want to stop.
He wants it done.
He wants the pain to end.
And he wants Bi-Han not to see him like this — his shame split open on the floor.
“Tomas.”
It is not a question.
It is the kind of summons one cannot escape.
There is a pause outside his door — the slight, almost imperceptible pause Bi-Han makes when something is… off.
“Tomas,” Bi-Han repeats almost instantly, quieter now, as if he can somehow hear the difference in the room’s stillness. “Open the door.”
Tomas cannot move. He cannot answer. He feels the world tilting around him, the air turning thick, his heartbeat hammering wildly as he tries to steady his breath without sobbing. The note lies folded on the table — a damning little square of his cowardice.
Blood drips onto the floor.
He presses his hand over the wound instinctively, breathing fast through clenched teeth.
Another step.
A shift of weight.
Bi-Han is right outside his room.
“Tomas.”
The voice is controlled, but beneath it — something tight, something off-balance. “I know you are awake.”
Tomas’s eyes squeeze shut. He barely manages to gasp:
“Don’t—”
It leaves him raw, humiliating.
The doorknob shifts.
Bi-Han tries it — gently, almost respectfully. Locked.
Tomas presses his shaking hand hard over the wound, not sure himself why – to slow the bleeding, to hide it? Either way, the blood keeps seeping between his fingers. He bites down on a sob — it tastes like metal and salt — and lies as still as he can, hoping the darkness will swallow him first. But it doesn’t yet.
A breath of cold air slips under the door.
“Tomas,” Bi-Han says with that dangerous calm he uses on panicked recruits, “open this door. Now.”
Tomas’s hand shakes violently over the wound. He stares at the blade on the floor, the blood blooming around it.
He can’t hide it.
He can’t finish it.
He can't even die without failing.
The shame is overwhelming — enough to make him choke on his own breath.
“Please,” Tomas whispers, voice cracking. “Go away.”
“No.”
That one word is absolute.
Something metal clicks.
Bi-Han is unlocking the door.
Tomas’s heart slams into his ribs.
“No— don’t—!” His voice breaks, frantic, desperate, the words tumbling out without thought. “Please— Bi-Han, don’t come in—”
Tomas jerks, and pain shoots up his arm so sharply he gasps. The dizziness intensifies; the room leans. He blinks fast, trying to clear his eyes, but the colors blur. He tries to speak, but his throat tightens around the words.
He can’t let Bi-Han come in.
He can’t let him see.
But he also desperately, desperately needs him to.
“Go away—” Tomas chokes. It barely sounds like him, more air than voice. “Please… go away.”
It isn’t convincing; it isn’t even strong enough to make out the words it comes out trembling, soaked in terror — an unmistakable cry for help he didn’t intend to give. He hates the sound instantly. Hates himself for letting it out. Hates how obvious it is, how it betrays every miserable piece of him.
But he also clings to it.
Clings to the hope it’s enough for Bi-Han to understand.
Clings to the hope that someone will finally take this choice from him.
His arm throbs so bad — a deep burning pulsing ache. The warmth spreading down his wrist feels thicker heavier. A new wave of nausea rolls over him. The ringing in his ears rises. His fingers go fully numb. And the fear — the primal, instinctive kind — finally sinks its teeth into his ribs.
He is losing blood too fast.
He is slipping too quickly.
This is real.
He is dying.
And he is terrified.
The doorknob clicks.
Cold rushes into the room and touches everything at once — the blade, the spreading pool of dark red around Tomas’s knee, the trembling shoulders, the face streaked with tears he had no idea were falling.
Bi-Han stops.
Completely.
His breath catches audibly, a short, stunned inhale.
For a moment Tomas wishes the floor would just open and swallow him — that he could disappear before the horror in Bi-Han’s eyes finishes forming. But there is no way he can summon another energy to go invisible. His heart lurches painfully, and dizziness sweeps through him so strong he sways.
Bi-Han moves fast— not running, but with a precision that feels like the world itself is narrowing to one point: Tomas, bleeding on the floor.
And Tomas, faint, shaking, terrified beyond breath, feels a terrible, crushing relief wash through him.
Someone saw.
Someone came.
Bi-Han starts to act instantly—snatching Tomas closer, sealing the wound with ice, which melts away as blood hits it, streaming in diluted red torrents. With second attempt Bi-Han creates pressure so fierce it turns his own knuckles white, calling for help with a voice that carries the full force of command and desperation.
Tomas’s face crumples. His lips tremble, turning pale. The wave of blood loss is rolling through his body in a violent shiver. It is so cold. His teeth chatter. His legs draw up instinctively, as if to brace against pain that has already gone too far.
“It hurts,” Tomas whispers.
“I know.” Bi-Han presses harder, fingers digging into failing flesh. “I know. But you stay awake.”
Tomas tries. He pulls one ragged breath after another. But the room keeps bending around him, pulling away, shrinking and darkening at the edges. He feels the blood moving out of him in warm, steady pulses, each one weaker, slower.
His eyelids flutter. His spine arches once in a feeble attempt to sit, to fight, but it’s useless—his body won’t obey him anymore.
And somewhere inside the fog, he feels Bi-Han’s hands lifting him, firm and violently steady. It terrifies him. It relieves him so deeply he could scream.
“Don’t… don’t look at me,” Tomas chokes out, tears mixing with sweat. “Please. I didn’t… I didn’t want you to see…”
“You think I will look away from you now?” The ice in Bi-Han’s voice fractures as he runs through the corridors. “Focus. Tomas, focus on my voice.”
Tomas’s breathing stutters. His fingers twitch against Bi-Han’s wrist, seeking and failing to grasp it.
He tries to speak—maybe an apology, maybe another plea for Bi-Han—but his throat collapses around the words. The fear rises violently, choking. His eyes dart around like an animal cornered by its own dying body.
“I’m scared,” he finally admits, softly.
Bi-Han’s heart punches hard enough against his ribs for Tomas to feel it.
“Me too,” he says, and his voice is no longer steady. “Stay with me. Stay.”
Tomas tries. But feels light, too light, hollowed out.
Bi-Han senses it. His grip hardens, almost bruising.
“Don’t you dare,” he screams, the words trembling with fury and something far more fragile. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
Tomas’s lips part, searching for air, for words.
His body slackens.
In the medical compartment it's chaos but just for some seconds. Operating is fast when Grandmaster himself breaks in screaming threats like a madman.
As the medics try to take Tomas from him, Bi-Han’s grip locks for a heartbeat too long. His fingers refuse to unclench. Only when one medic meets his gaze—firm, urgent, respectful—does he relinquish Tomas to the waiting hands.
Tomas’s body looks too small on the table. Too pale. His arm a ruin of blood and cloth and trembling muscles. His face slack, lashes unmoving.
Bi-Han stands there with his forearms coated in drying blood—Tomas’s blood—and something inside him threatens to split apart.
“Grandmaster, we kindly ask you to step outside,” one of the medics says.
“No.”
It’s not loud, but it’s absolute.
He plants himself beside the wall, shoulders squared, eyes fixed on Tomas as if watching alone could hold him to life.
The medics work—pressure packs, sutures, IVs, but all Bi-Han can register is the suffocating metallic smell, thick enough to taste.
And while they work, his thoughts spiral violently, uncontrollably.
He feels sick.
A medic calls out numbers—pulse dropping, pressure unstable. Another orders more saline. Another reaches for a transfusion kit. The room is a storm of purposeful movement, but Bi-Han stands like he’s rooted to the floor, fingers flexing with useless, desperate tension.
He cannot stop replaying the moment he found him.
Rage lances through him suddenly—hot, self-directed.
His hands shake. He hides them behind his back.
The sight of Tomas on that floor… it carved open a truth Grandmaster has been avoiding with all his discipline.
He loves him.
Not as a comrade, not as a younger brother he pretended to be. But in a way that terrifies him.
In a way that made the world go silent when Tomas’s eyes started to close.
In a way that makes every needle the medics insert feel like it pierces his own skin.
He loves him in a way that leaves him trembling now, watching Tomas’s chest rise—shallow, shaky—after every assisted breath.
A medic glances at Bi-Han, cautious, awaiting his reaction.
“His condition is hard,” she says softly. “But he’s fighting.”
Bi-Han’s throat closes. He swallows a sound that almost escapes him.
Of course Tomas is fighting.
Because he always fights.
Because Bi-Han taught him to.
The thought comes like a blade slipped between Bi-Han’s ribs.
The knife.
The one he still has with him, the one he came to give Tomas before leaving. Forged for Tomas as a gift Bi-Han imagined would be… what? Encouragement? A gesture of trust? A wordless acknowledgment of what he never dared to voice?
How absurd.
How arrogant.
How impossibly blind.
He forged Tomas this beautifully balanced knife with a grip carved precisely to Tomas’s palm—and all the while he was carving himself open in the dark.
Bi-Han’s hands curl into fists at his sides, nails biting deep.
Why didn’t he see it? Why didn’t Tomas tell him anything—
And the answer comes immediately, like a slap:
“Because you gave him a thousand reasons not to.
Because you never allowed yourself to show him anything gentler than command.”
Bi-Han closes his eyes, just for a moment, but it does nothing to stop the wave of panic rolling through him.
What did Tomas carry alone, while Bi-Han was busy?
He has no answers.
Only a suffocating emptiness where certainty used to be.
Behind him, a medic murmurs something about stabilization, though her tone is cautiously hopeful. Bi-Han barely hears her. His mind is a snarl of fractured thoughts.
It jerks abruptly to Kuai Liang—probably still waiting for him to return, unaware that Tomas is bleeding out on a table upstairs, unaware that their little brother has tried to die in the stupidest, loneliest way imaginable.
Bi-Han’s pulse spikes sharply.
Kuai must know.
Bi-Han’s throat tightens.
He has to tell him.
He has to say the words out loud, has to admit that he failed, that he overlooked something catastrophic, that Tomas nearly died under his command—under his roof—under his watch.
The thought makes him feel small. And helpless.
He hates it.
He steps forward unconsciously, fingers twitching toward Tomas’s hand before he catches himself.
He cannot leave.
Not with Tomas like this.
But he cannot stay.
Kuai needs to know.
Bi-Han inhales sharply through clenched teeth, grip tightening behind his back.
He has led men into war.
He has executed flawless strategies under fire.
He has commanded the Lin Kuei with unshakeable precision.
But this—
This feels like standing in front of a cliff with no ground on either side.
Bi-Han forces his voice to work.
“Send for Kuai Liang. Now.”
In hours that pass like a seconds, Kuai Liang still sits in the chair beside Tomas, elbows on his knees, fists pressed against his mouth. His eyes are red-rimmed, but his posture is contained, steadying himself the way he always does—for others.
The note lies between them on the low table.
A small, folded paper.
So thin. So easily missed.
So unbearably heavy.
Bi-Han paces with the taut, coiled tension of a storm trapped in human form. Blood has been cleaned from his arms, but he still looks like a man stained from within—like the color has soaked into him deeper than skin.
“He meant it,” Kuai says quietly, staring at Tomas’s still fingers beneath the blanket. “This wasn’t a cry for attention. He meant to leave us.”
Kuai reaches for the note again—not to open it, but simply to touch the edge, as if trying to understand how something so small could shatter the world.
“He wrote, ‘I am sorry.’ Kuai whispers. “Why would he think he owed us an apology for being in pain?”
Bi-Han closes his eyes
“Because we taught him that”
The admission hangs there, vibrating between them.
Kuai looks over, startled.
“How could he believe he has no right to come to us?
Kuai stands slowly, crossing the room with soft, steady footsteps. “Did you… sense anything? Anything at all?”
Bi-Han swallows. The memory of Tomas’s voice—thin, cracking, “please go away”—hits him like a blow.
“I knew something was wrong,” he forces out. “But I thought… I thought giving him time alone would allow him to breathe.”
Kuai flinches. His breath leaves him in a quiet, strangled sound.
“I drove him to this,” Bi-Han suddenly says.
“That is not true,” Kuai steps closer. “Depression is a shadow that hides itself. Tomas has always been gentle, uncertain, easily overwhelmed. None of this is your—”
“It is,” Bi-Han snaps, then immediately lowers his voice, glancing at Tomas. “I am his commander. His elder.”
Kuai exhales slowly, absorbing that. Understanding it. Not judging, only weighing the truth of it.
After a long silence, Bi-Han still stares at Tomas. Not with the calm of a guardian but with the dread of someone awaiting judgment.
He fears the moment those eyes open.
More than he fears battle.
More than he has ever feared any enemy.
Because when Tomas wakes, Bi-Han will have to speak.
He will have to say something right, something that matters. He will have to show a tenderness he barely knows how to wield—and even worse, he will have to reveal how deeply he feels, how deeply this broke him, how deeply Tomas’s existence actually means something to him.
He wants to tell Tomas everything.
That he has been watching him with a heart he pretends he doesn’t have.
That he forged a knife for him like an idiot in love.
That he almost lost him and something in him will never recover.
But when he imagines speaking those truths, fear coils inside him. The words seem impossible, too heavy for his tongue.
What if Tomas doesn’t want to hear them?
What if Tomas feels nothing but shame?
What if Bi-Han’s honesty only harms him more?
He must greet Tomas with something gentle. Something warm. Something healing.
But fear builds in him like pressure under ice. Every moment Tomas remains unconscious is another breath he has to prepare for the impossible.
And then Tomas stirs.
The smallest movement—a twitch in his fingers, a hitch in his breath.
Bi-Han freezes.
Kuai stands immediately, leaning in. “Tomas? Tomas, can you hear me?”
Eyelids flutter.
A soft, fragmented inhale escapes Tomas’s cracked lips.
Bi-Han’s pulse explodes in his throat.
Tomas’s eyes open slowly—fogged, heavy, confused. His gaze drifts unfocused, searching for something.
This is the moment Bi-Han has equally feared to come and never to come.
He should say “It’s all right.*
Or “I’m here.”
He should say “You frightened us, but you’re safe now.”
He should say “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”
But when Tomas tries to speak and only a rasp comes out, the pressure inside Bi-Han finally bursts through his composure.
The fear.
The shock.
The heartbreak.
The fury at himself, at Tomas’s pain, at the helplessness that broke him open—
It all rushes out in the worst possible shape.
“How could you do this to us?”
The words leave him before he can cage them.
Sharp. Desperate.
Kuai stiffens beside him.
Tomas blinks, pupils widening, breath stuttering. That fragile heartbeat on the monitor spikes.
Bi-Han wants to drag the words back into his chest, tear them apart, swallow them whole.
He sees it hit Tomas.
Sees the confusion, the shame, the quiet horror flicker across his face.
His lips part. A broken whisper escapes:
“...sorry…”
Bi-Han flinches.
He forces his body to move, sitting forward, fingertips trembling against the sheets near Tomas’s hand but not yet touching.
“No,” he murmurs, “No. Not like—”
He exhales sharply, trying again.
“Not what I meant.”
“Tomas,” Kuai jumps in softly, leaning into his line of sight. “Look at me.”
Tomas hesitates, then forces his eyes back toward Kuai. He swallows weakly, throat working around dryness and fear.
Kuai’s voice is warm. Warm like a hearth, warm like safety, warm like everything nice in the world Tomas knows.
“I am so happy you’re with us,” Kuai says, and the sincerity is so real it nearly glows. “I am grateful. I am relieved. I am proud of you for surviving this night.”
Tomas blinks rapidly, tears welling despite his attempts to suppress them. The words strike somewhere deep—somewhere raw and starved and aching.
“You didn’t fail,” Kuai continues, his tone steady but tender. “You were in pain. Too much pain for one person to carry. You should never have had to hold all this alone.”
The words settle like a balm, softening the air.
But Bi-Han feels none of the comfort.
He feels like he is drowning.
Everything Kuai says—every gentle reassurance, every perfect phrase—makes him feel heavier. Smaller. More monstrous in contrast.
The shame is suffocating.
He watches Tomas curl into himself, weak and overwhelmed, and the sight claws at something deep in Bi-Han’s chest. All the things he should say burn on his tongue, but none of them come out. He does not know how to make himself sound gentle. He does not know how to soften his own truth.
But he can do one thing.
He can reach.
Slowly—slow enough that Tomas sees him approach—Bi-Han leans forward. He extends a hand, his fingers trembling despite his efforts to still them. He hovers for a moment, giving Tomas a chance to withdraw.
Tomas does not move.
If anything, his breath pauses, suspended.
Bi-Han’s hand closes around Tomas’s—cold against fevered skin, steady against trembling fingers. He feels Tomas flinch, just once, instinctively—but he does not pull away.
Bi-Han brings the back of that fragile hand to his lips.
Not a kiss.
Not quite.
His breath hitches against Tomas’s knuckles.
“You survived,” he whispers, barely audible. “It’s all I could ever ask for.”
Tomas’s eyes flutter, startled. His lips part, a tiny quiver of confusion.
Kuai steps back—not far, but enough to give the moment space. Enough to let Tomas feel the gravity of what Bi-Han is trying to say without words.
Bi-Han keeps Tomas’s hand close to his mouth, eyes lowered, voice rough.
“Do not… ever do that again. Please.”