The body lay breathless before her, red slick pooling like spilled lacquer; relief dropped through her like a stone sinking in a pond.

Once the high alert fell away, exhaustion crashed back like a returning tide. Yun Shi braced against the wall, breath sawing like a bellows, limbs heavy as rain-soaked cloth.

“You okay, Xiaoyun?” Sham’s voice came soft, like a sleeve brushing a lantern.

Sham hurried forward like a gust catching a door. Her fingers touched Yun Shi’s waist. Yun Shi hissed, eyes snapping shut like shutters.

“Are you hurt?”

Blood had soaked the fabric, a dark flower blooming through cloth.

“I’ll bandage you.”

“No. Better we move.”

“But your body—”

“Life matters more than anything. If we don’t move, the wolves catch up.”

“…Got it.”

With a helpless sigh like wind skimming reeds, Sham shouldered Yun Shi. They trudged off, shadows peeling away from a bonfire.

Just as Yun Shi expected, enemies came like crows to carrion and found the corpse cooling on the floor.

“Damn it! Who killed Tianhe!”

“We’ll butcher him!”

“Tear him to pieces!”

Their rage boiled like oil in a black pot, grief turning to knives.

There’s no absolute right in this world; Yun Shi had killed to live, and she wore hatred like rain on a straw cloak.

Elsewhere, Sham and Yun Shi slipped into an abandoned building, a husk with hollow eyes, where patrols drifted thin as scattered reeds.

They guessed the hunters searched far afield, blind to prey curled beside the tiger’s den; where it’s most dangerous, it’s safest under the eaves.

While the air still held steady, Sham lifted Yun Shi’s shirt; pale skin like porcelain, marred by a cut still weeping like a thread of crimson.

Yun Shi’s face tightened like frost, but she bit it back and gave no sound.

Sham didn’t waste a breath; she pulled a vial from her coat and smeared medicinal wine over Yun Shi’s side, fire tracing a wick.

“Tss…”

The sting was sour lightning, a chill heat ringing her bones like a struck bowl. Yun Shi almost let a sound slip, but fear of discovery—and that old pride, shameful in the days she wore a man’s skin—locked her jaw.

“Didn’t you once dab medicine on me? It’s fine if you yelp.”

“Shut it. Who does that…”

She wasn’t the sort to yelp when it hurt or cry when it stung; she swallowed storms like stones.

She was the kind who let everything sink to the seabed of her chest.

“You’re impossible,” Sham muttered.

“None of your business.”

“Fine, fine. I won’t pry.”

Knowing words were useless, Sham sealed her lips like a stitched seam and wrapped the bandage with steady hands.

“Strange, isn’t it,” Sham said, her voice wistful as dusk smoke. “We ended up in this mess.”

“What do you mean?”

“Xiaoyun, this had nothing to do with you. It was my storm alone. Yet last time and this time, you got dragged in.”

“I just happened to—”

“I believed that the first time. Not this time. You came on purpose, didn’t you?”

“Uh…”

“Why come, like a fool? Didn’t you think you might die?”

Her tone held blame like a thorn, but more than that, guilt like a stone in her shoe.

“And you turned me down, didn’t you? So why save me? We had no ties left.”

“I…”

“How am I supposed to read you? You’re too complicated.”

From the start you were like this, showing up out of nowhere like rain and pulling me from the fire. Then you stuck to me and looked annoyed like a cat in the rain. When I was cut to ribbons, you came to carry me home and bind me. You told me to go, and when the thread should’ve been cut, you came again and saved me twice. I really don’t get you, Yunshi Bianqi—or that Four-Eyed Yun Shi people whisper about—what are you thinking?

“…Maybe you’re right,” Yun Shi sighed, wind slipping through bamboo. “I am strange. I’ve been running.”

“I keep running. I don’t know how to face anything. But this one thing—I can’t just do nothing. At least, I want you to stay.”

Each word sank into Sham like rain into dry earth, leaving her at a loss, hands empty as air.

“Even if you say that, I still don’t get what’s in your head.”

Without noticing, her voice tightened like a drawn bowstring.

“It’s fine if you don’t. I just don’t want you to leave. That’s all. So… Sham Einafel, let’s go back together.”

Yun Shi spoke her heart, the words awkward as a bird trying its first flight.

It was what she’d wanted to say; she had begun to treat Sham as part of her life, a friend woven like thread into her days.

Lonely people hunt for moorings; the quieter they are, the more they crave a friend, so Yun Shi reached for Sham to fill that winter-silent space.

But in Sham’s ears, it sounded different.

A confession?

Sham blanched, her heart hammering like a caged sparrow, heat climbing her neck like sunrise. She glanced at Yun Shi’s averted face—lonely yet lit with hope—and a blush bloomed like a peony.

No, no, we’re both girls! I can’t think like that!

She tried to slam the door on the thought, but Yun Shi’s face slipped through like moonlight under a curtain, along with her figure at the stove, knife flashing like fish scales.

Worst of all, her mind flashed back to last night—the bath towel slipping like a fallen cloud, the body laid bare like white jade—

“Ahhhh! What am I thinking? I’m a pervert! Go die, me!”

Sham couldn’t stand her own daydreams; she started banging her head against the wall like a woodpecker gone mad.

“What are you doing?”

Yun Shi stared, a phantom ache blooming like a bruise in places she didn’t even have anymore.

“Nothing! I’m fine!”

“Sure…”

Suspicion hung between them like a cat’s tail.

“Relax, I’m good. See? I can move.”

Yun Shi stood, testing weight like a reed in wind, signaling the wound could be ignored.

Seeing her color return like dawn on frost, Sham eased a little; but danger still pressed in like ice on a river, and worry wouldn’t melt.

“Hey, do you think we’re going to die?”

The question fell flat, a pebble dropped into deep water.

Yun Shi had no answer at first; silence pooled like ink.

Patrols prowled outside like wolves. Sooner or later, they’d sniff this den. When that happened, the noose would tighten.

Both Sham and Yun Shi had little Mystic Power left; to fight now would be a last flare before ash.

They’d had a gap to flee, but a nameless guard slammed the ring shut like a trap, and the best moment passed.

Now the enemy army pressed in like a tide, walling them in; getting out would be like climbing to the moon.

Yun Shi checked her watch; the hand pointed at two in the morning, cold as a needle.

Dawn was far, and whether they could hold till first light was another story written on ice.

“We won’t die.”

She couldn’t surrender; hope, even a thread, was a lifeline over a ravine.

“We absolutely can’t give up. Give up, and we sit and wait for death like candles in a cold hall.”

Once, she had wanted to give up too; back then, Yun Shi had lost the two who mattered most, grief a winter that froze bone.

She had thought of ending it, like blowing out a lamp. But she remembered Mia’s wish, and survival’s stubborn spark, and she clenched her teeth and walked on through snow.

Because she didn’t give up, she lived, didn’t she?

So this time too—if they didn’t let go, a path would open like frost thawing into a stream.

Boom!

A thunderous blast rolled outside like the sky cracking, and both of them traded a startled look.

A possibility clicked; Yun Shi grabbed Sham’s hand and ran, like catching a falling kite before the wind changed.

Sham was still confused when the wooden door behind them exploded inward, enemies pouring in like a flood with axes.

“Where are they!”

“Hurry, chase!”

When did they get this close!

Sham reeled, but Yun Shi had already dragged her far down the corridor, shadow to shadow.

“They must’ve found our trail and ran to report. We got careless.”

She wanted to keep running, but the road ended like a cliff.

When they burst out of the building, the outside was already ringed, a black net drawn tight.

“Just our luck…”

“Tell me about it…”

A mass of bodies pressed in like a storm cloud, their numbers an iron wall with no gap to slip through.

“How much Mystic Power do you have?”

“Maybe I can fight twenty minutes.”

“I see…”

So this was truly a battle with our backs to the river.

Yun Shi faced them, legs light as reed and heart heavy as stone, yet she didn’t step back.

“Let’s fight together.”

She stood in front of Sham, her voice tinged with dusk yet edged like a blade.

Even if victory was a mirage, they had to carve out a way to run; that was how you kept breath in the body.