The cell smelled of iron and wet stone. They had given Wu Kang water but no cloth; blood clung to his jaw in dark streaks. He sat with his back to the wall, unbound now, because chains were pointless for men who had already been broken in half.
The door scraped. Our father stepped in.
The Lord Protector's shadow filled the narrow room, wider than the torchlight allowed. He did not sit. He stood, boots set like stakes, jaw locked.
"You should be dead," he said.
Wu Kang looked up slowly, smiled through the split in his lip. "Then finish the job. The boy outside seems eager."
"You think this is about your brother?" the Lord Protector snapped. His voice was iron striking iron, sparks too small to see. "This is about you. You took the Emperor. You split the court. You forced the hand of every minister who would have held this house together while I lay sick."
"I kept the house standing," Wu Kang shot back. "If I had not taken him, he would already have been a puppet for the South. Or for Wu Jin."
The Lord Protector's teeth bared, not in a smile. "And you think parading him in chains would have stopped them? You have burned every ledger we could bargain with. You have given your brother the right to do what he just did in Huailing."
Wu Kang's smile thinned. "And he enjoyed it, didn't he?"
The words hung between them.
Our father's fist came down hard on the stone wall. Dust shivered loose. "You are my son," he said, low. "The son I raised for this. And now I must stand between my two sons like a wall that will eventually crack. Do you want me to choose which of you to bury first?"
Wu Kang's jaw worked once. "If you must choose," he said, "bury him. Before he buries the rest of us."
Something flickered behind the Lord Protector's eyes — not agreement, but a soldier's instinct recognizing another soldier's measure.
"You think you know him," he said finally. "But the thing in him now—" He stopped himself, as if speaking of it aloud would give it form.
Wu Kang leaned forward. "I saw it on the field. I saw the light bend around him like a bow pulled too far. You sent him south to make him hard, and something else came back. Something that does not blink."
Their gazes locked — two men bound by blood and war, equal in pride, equal in fury.
"You will be paraded tomorrow," the Lord Protector said at last. "Alive. Uncovered. I will not have you killed—not yet."
"You should," Wu Kang said softly. "It would be a mercy."
The Lord Protector turned for the door. His hand lingered on the frame, knuckles white. "Tell me where the Emperor is," he said without looking back.
Wu Kang's laughter was quiet, rasping. "He sleeps where no bell can wake him. Find that place, Father, and you will know whether your house is cursed or merely blind."
The Lord Protector left without another word.
I was waiting in the corridor when he came out. The torchlight showed the lines cut deeper in his face than the sickness ever had.
"You spoke with him," I said.
"He will not talk," Father answered. His voice was steel cooled too fast. "Not yet."
"He knows where the Emperor is," I said.
"Yes," Father said. "And when he decides to speak, we may wish he had stayed silent."
He walked past me, and for the first time I saw his shoulders not as unbreakable but as burdened.
Shen Yue appeared at my side, silent as shadow. Her eyes followed the Lord Protector's retreating figure, then turned to me.
"What did he say?" she asked.
I did not answer at once. I watched the cell door where Wu Kang waited, smiling in the dark.
"He said the Emperor sleeps," I murmured. "And when he wakes, he may not be the man we remember."
The silence under my ribs stirred as if in agreement, as if it too waited for the waking.