Lian looked shattered, like a willow beaten by rain, and it scared Aer to the bone. She’d never seen Lian cry this hard.

“N-no… it’s not… I didn’t… I haven’t…”

Lian tightened her grip, a steel band closing over Aer’s wrist like a cold shackle.

“Aer… why did you lie to me?”

Pain bit into Aer’s wrist like a trapped nerve. She almost let a groan slip.

“N-no… that’s not it… listen… let me explain…”

Because she said that, Lian let go. Air rushed back into Aer’s lungs like a swimmer breaching the surface. Hope flickered—thin as a moth’s wing, but there.

Smack!

Fate loves its cruel games; hope and disappointment arrive like thunder and echo, one on the heels of the other.

Lian’s small, soft hand whipped across Aer’s face, a clean crack that rippled through the room like a snapped reed.

“How many more times are you going to lie to me!”

The burn on Aer’s cheek prickled like chilies on raw skin, but the worse sting was Lian’s voice, a wounded animal keening in a storm.

None of it mattered. What mattered was Lian, a fire in the snow, burning and brittle.

She was angry—truly, utterly angry.

In more than a hundred years, Aer had never seen Lian like this. Not a spat, not a sulk. This was wildfire, not a spark.

Guilt and regret rose like smoke. Aer lifted her right hand, trembling, and tried to stroke Lian’s hair.

“Lian… I’m sor—”

Smack.

Lian knocked her hand away without mercy, and Aer’s hand hung there like a struck bird, stunned midair.

“I don’t want an apology! That does nothing. I want to know how long you lied to set up today! Since Ling entered the Underworld? Since you met us? Or was it the first time you left me, swearing you had a plan to carry out?”

Aer went silent. Her silver-white hair sank like a curtain, hiding her face in a winter veil.

At a time like this, her answer didn’t matter. The truth was already a blade laid bare.

“Has your kindness to me always been fake? You swore we wouldn’t lie. And yet you lied for so long—just to kill Ling. You promised me. You promised!”

Aer said nothing. There was no rebuttal. Every word was a needle, and she’d sewn this wound herself.

But Lian took that silence for cowardice, and flight is the one thing she cannot stand.

“Say it! Answer me! Why! What made you do this! Is your heart only full of killing? Why are you so fixed on killing Ling!”

Her temper climbed like a rising tide. She slammed Aer down, straddled her stomach like an anchor on a stormy deck, and fisted her collar. Anger and sorrow flared in her eyes like twin torches, heat searing straight through Aer’s chest.

Drip…

A droplet struck the floor like a small bell. Aer heard it, and felt the damp bloom over her heart like melted snow.

Lian’s grip eased, her strength flowing out of her fingers like sand through a sieve.

Tired? Maybe. She felt like a kite that had cut its own string.

“Aer… don’t stay quiet… please? I’m begging you. Tell me… why did you lie… Is it because I’m unbearable… or… sob… or…”

Tears brimmed and spilled like a river over a broken bank. They slid down her chin, fell onto Aer’s chest, and soaked through cloth like rain darkening stone.

Aer lifted her hand again, careful as if touching moth wings, and wiped them away. This time, Lian didn’t slap her.

“Lian… I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I didn’t think it would cut you this deep. I’m sorry.”

She guided Lian’s head to her chest, a harbor against the wind, and Lian didn’t resist. She rested there and let her tears flood Aer’s breast like warm rain.

“Lian… since you want the truth, I’ll give it. You know what ties you to Ling. She came from you. She belongs to your soul. She’s a part of you. And I hate her. She stole your body and your name. You have a new name now, but I still hate her. So I left a new body in that ruin on purpose, a baited lantern in the dark, to draw you there—so that, in the crucial moment, you and Ling could merge again.”

Lian’s tears stilled. She lifted her head and stared into Aer’s eyes like a blade meeting a blade.

“That’s all?”

Aer let out a brittle laugh, the kind that tastes like iron.

“Heh… I can’t hide anything from you. That was one reason. The other—the real one—is that the World Consciousness will reject you.”

When she said World Consciousness, a shadow crossed Aer’s eyes like a cloud dimming the sun, too brief for Lian to catch.

“Why would that thing reject me for no reason? What did I do wrong?”

“Your soul is complete. Ling’s soul is also complete. Just as no two leaves are truly alike, this world’s rules don’t allow two identical complete souls. Even if your memories and paths differ, the essence is the same. So the World Consciousness, a safety system woven through the sky, will push you out.”

Lian listened, and the shape of it settled like frost. She was a bug in the code, a thorn in the weave.

There were only two fixes. Repair—merge with Ling again, stitch the split back into one cloth. Or delete—erase herself or erase Ling, a choice like a sword with two edges.

Either path was a cliff in fog. Either ending tasted like ash.