Work Text:
The water pressed against the walls like something alive. Darkness swallowed the sea palace whole, broken only by wavering blue lanternlight that drifted through the hall like drowned stars. The air smelled cold. Salt. Blood.
Shi Qingxuan was on his knees. Not because anyone had forced him down. Because his legs no longer seemed capable of holding him.
Ahead of him, chains dragged across the stone floor with a wet metallic scrape.
His brother gasped somewhere behind him. “Qingxuan,” Shi Wudu hissed, voice shaking with fury more than fear. “Don’t listen to him.”
The figure standing before them laughed softly. No — not softly. Coldly. He Xuan stood beneath the swaying lanternlight in black robes soaked dark with seawater, face expressionless in a way that no longer resembled humanity.
Yet Shi Qingxuan still saw traces of someone else layered over him. A man sitting beside him at banquets with crossed arms and bored eyes. A man who complained when Shi Qingxuan talked too loudly. A man who silently pushed tea toward him before he could ask.
Ming Yi.
His stomach twisted violently.
“Choose,” He Xuan said. The word echoed through the hall. Behind Shi Qingxuan, other voices trembled — heavenly officials trapped in chains, mortals dragged into Black Water territory, trembling servants, terrified people who had done nothing wrong except exist in the wrong place tonight.
Shi Qingxuan finally understood. He Xuan wanted him to choose who lived. His brother, or everyone else.
Shi Wudu snarled. “This is between us.”
“It was always between us,” He Xuan replied.
The ocean outside groaned. Water climbed slowly higher along the edges of the hall. Shi Qingxuan could barely breathe. “No…” he whispered.
He Xuan looked at him then. Not at Shi Wudu. At him. Those black eyes were endless. “Your brother stole my fate,” He Xuan said quietly. “My family starved. My sister died. I died.” His voice remained calm, which somehow made it worse. “And you stood beside him all this time.”
“I didn’t know—”
“I know.”
Shi Qingxuan’s fingers curled against the floor. Because He Xuan did know. He knew Shi Qingxuan hadn’t known. And still hated him anyway. Or maybe hated himself for not being able to hate him properly. The silence stretched.
Then Shi Wudu spoke again, sharper this time. “Qingxuan.” An order. A reminder. Your brother. Your blood. Your family.
Shi Qingxuan shook violently. The water had reached the stairs now. Somewhere in the darkness, something enormous shifted beneath the sea. He Xuan stepped closer. “Choose,” he repeated.
Shi Qingxuan stared at him. And for one terrible moment, all he could think was, Ming-xiong never looked at me like this.
The words slipped out before he could stop them. “…Ming-xiong…”
Silence. Complete silence. Even the water seemed to still. He Xuan’s expression changed. Barely. But Shi Qingxuan saw it — the sudden sharpness in his eyes, like a knife twisting unexpectedly into his ribs. “Don’t call me that.” His voice came out low.
Shi Qingxuan flinched. “I—”
“That person never existed.”
The lanternlight flickered violently. He Xuan’s aura pressed through the hall hard enough to make several chained officials choke. Shi Qingxuan stared at the floor. “I know.”
“Then why,” He Xuan snapped suddenly, the first crack in his composure, “do you keep saying it?” The rage in his voice echoed through the sea palace. Not hatred. Something uglier. Something desperate.
Shi Qingxuan’s throat tightened painfully. Because there was no correct answer. Because every answer sounded cruel. Still, quietly, he said, “…because he was real to me.”
He Xuan froze.
Shi Qingxuan laughed once, weakly. Miserably. “I know you lied to me. I know none of it was real from the start. But…” His voice shook. “The person who sat beside me for years… the person who listened to me talk… the person who stayed…” His eyes burned. “…he still existed.”
He Xuan stared at him as though he’d been struck. Shi Qingxuan looked up then, tears finally slipping free. “You can say Ming Yi was fake all you want,” he whispered. “But you were still there.”
For the first time that night, He Xuan looked uncertain. Not furious. Not cruel. Uncertain. Like Shi Qingxuan had reached into his chest and exposed something rotten and human underneath all the hatred.
The silence became unbearable.
Then behind them, Shi Wudu barked harshly, “Enough of this nonsense! Qingxuan, get up and come here!”
The moment shattered. He Xuan’s expression closed instantly. Cold again.
Dead again.
But Shi Qingxuan had already seen it. That hesitation. That flicker of pain. And maybe He Xuan realized it too, because his jaw tightened. He turned away sharply like he could still bury whatever had surfaced for those few horrible seconds. “Choose,” he said one last time. But now his voice sounded strained. Because somewhere along the years, beneath the revenge and the lies and the identity he created —
Ming Yi had become real to him too.
The water surged higher. It crashed against the black stone pillars hard enough to shake the entire hall, lanternlight splintering across the surface in frantic streaks of gold and blue. No one moved.
Shi Qingxuan could still feel the echo of his own words hanging in the air. You were still there.
And across from him, He Xuan stood utterly still. Too still. Like if he moved at all, something inside him would crack open.
Then Shi Wudu laughed. A harsh, contemptuous sound. “So that’s what this is?” Shi Wudu sneered. “After all this crying and revenge, you’ve grown sentimental?”
The temperature in the hall dropped instantly. He Xuan slowly turned his head. Shi Qingxuan’s stomach dropped. Shi Wudu either didn’t notice or simply didn’t care. “You think you’re some tragic victim?” Shi Wudu continued coldly. “Your fate was useful. That’s all. If I had to choose again, I would.”
He Xuan smiled. It was small. Horrifyingly small. “I know,” he said.
Shi Qingxuan suddenly realized something was wrong. Not wrong like before. Worse.
Because He Xuan’s anger had disappeared. And the calmer He Xuan became, the more terrifying he was.
“Brother—” Shi Qingxuan started shakily.
Shi Wudu ignored him. “You lost. Whatever this little performance is supposed to accomplish, it changes nothing.”
He Xuan walked forward. One step. Then another. Black seawater curled around his boots like living things.
Shi Qingxuan scrambled upright instinctively. “Ming—” He caught himself too late.
He Xuan paused. Just briefly. Pain flickered across his face so quickly it barely existed at all. Then it vanished. “Don’t,” he said quietly.
Shi Qingxuan’s chest tightened.
But Shi Wudu suddenly barked, “Qingxuan, come here. Now.” That voice.
That familiar commanding tone from centuries of being protected, guided, sheltered—
For one horrible second, Shi Qingxuan almost obeyed automatically. He Xuan saw it. Shi Qingxuan knew he saw it because something in his expression finally died. Not his rage. Not his hatred. Something that had survived far longer than it should have. “Oh,” He Xuan murmured. The word sounded emptier than the ocean. Shi Qingxuan shook his head immediately. “No, wait—”
Too late. The sea exploded upward. Screams tore through the hall as black water crashed across the floor in violent waves. Chains snapped taut. Several officials cried out as ghostly hands dragged them beneath the surface before releasing them again.
Shi Qingxuan stumbled. “He Xuan!” For the first time, he used his real name. He Xuan looked at him.
There was nothing left in his eyes now. Only exhaustion. Only vengeance stretched so thin it had become hollow. “You asked me once,” He Xuan said softly, “why I stayed beside you for so long.”
Shi Qingxuan’s breathing turned ragged. “No—”
“I think,” He Xuan continued, voice nearly drowned by the roar of water, “I forgot, for a little while.” Then he moved. Fast enough that Shi Qingxuan barely saw it happen.
One moment He Xuan stood several feet away. The next, his hand had closed around Shi Wudu’s throat. The sound Shi Wudu made was ugly — shocked more than afraid.
“He Xuan—!” Shi Qingxuan lunged forward.
Black water slammed into him like a wall, throwing him hard against the flooded floor. He choked, gasping. Across the hall, Shi Wudu struggled violently in He Xuan’s grip. “You think,” He Xuan said quietly, “that because you stole everything from me, Heaven itself would always protect you.”
Shi Wudu spat blood at him. “You were born worthless.”
The hall went silent. Then He Xuan laughed. A broken sound. “Maybe.”
And then—
A sickening crack split through the room. Shi Qingxuan screamed. He didn’t even realize it was his own voice. He Xuan’s other hand had seized Shi Wudu by the head.
For one impossible moment everything froze — Shi Wudu’s furious expression, the violent pull of black water, the lanternlight trembling across soaked stone—
Then He Xuan tore upward. Blood splashed across the seawater in dark ribbons. Shi Qingxuan’s mind refused to understand what he was seeing.
His brother’s body collapsed first.
Then the head still hanging from He Xuan’s hand. The hall erupted into screams. Someone was crying. Someone else was praying (To whom, Shi Qingxuan wondered. Evidently not his brother).
Shi Qingxuan crawled forward numbly through blood-stained water, hands shaking so badly he could barely move. “No… no no no…” His voice cracked apart.
He Xuan stood motionless in the center of the hall, black robes dripping red into the sea.
Shi Qingxuan reached Shi Wudu’s body and collapsed beside it. His hands hovered uselessly. There was nothing to fix. Nothing to save. The water around him trembled from the force of his spiritual collapse.
And behind him, quietly enough that no one else could hear, He Xuan said “…Qingxuan.”
Not Wind Master. Not Shi Qingxuan. Just Qingxuan. Like Ming Yi would have said it.
Shi Qingxuan just started crying harder at the sound.