That night, the city dreamed the same dream.
Every sleeper found themselves standing in knee-deep water that mirrored nothing. A figure walked before them, its footsteps forming ripples that curved into letters. Those letters turned into mouths, and the mouths whispered their names backward. When they awoke, each throat was sore, as if they had been chanting for hours.
The priests called it a blessing. The healers called it plague. The ministers called it treason to doubt. And so the dream returned the next night, and the next.
Wu An reached the cavern beneath the god-pit on the seventh night. The air there was heavy, metallic, laced with the scent of rain before thunder. The water on the floor reflected nothing. The remnants of his army knelt in circles, their bodies pale as marble, their chests rising and falling in unison. They did not look at him; they did not need to. They were already part of him.
He pressed his hand to the ground. The sigil of the He Lian Dynasty—two lotus blossoms entwined around an open eye—flared beneath his palm, then reversed itself, the petals folding inward until they formed a spiral that sank into the rock.
"It begins," he said.
The soldiers behind him spoke as one, their voices hollow and layered. "It begins."
The entire cavern pulsed once, as if the heart of the city beat below instead of above. The light in the ceiling fissures flickered. On the surface, every lantern along the main avenue flared blue and went out. For a single breath, Ling An vanished into darkness.
When the lights returned, nothing was quite where it had been. Streets bent differently. Doors faced wrong directions. The citizens told themselves it was their memory that had changed, not the city.
Wu Shuang woke in her chamber gasping. Her palms were slick with blood where the veins had broken. She felt his presence like a tide pressing upward from beneath the palace. "He's moving," she whispered.
Wu Jin sat at the writing table, drafting another decree by the light of the false sun that floated outside the window. "He can move," he said without looking up. "He cannot rise."
But the ink in his brush thickened, turning blacker than shadow. The words he wrote began to curve into shapes he had not intended. He dropped the brush; the script kept writing itself.
Beneath them, the ground breathed.
Shen Yue knelt beside Wu An in the cavern. She had begun to forget when she last slept. Around them, the dead whispered continuously, their voices forming a wind that never ceased.
"What are you doing?" she asked, though her voice barely existed.
"Planting," he said. "They built this city on bones. I am only teaching the bones to remember."
"Remember what?"
He smiled faintly. "What unity costs."
The voice inside him stirred again. They called themselves divine, it said. Show them divinity.
He opened his hand, and the air trembled. The sigils on his skin flared white, then red, then disappeared entirely. The reflection of the Blessed Eye in the water above began to pulse faster, as if drawn downward. In its glow, the faces of his dead soldiers looked almost peaceful.
Wu An closed his eyes. "Rise," he said.
The word was not a command. It was a law.
Stone shifted. The tunnels groaned. A new sound, low and vast, rolled through the foundations—a breath turning into a heartbeat.
Up in the Lotus Hall, the ministers froze. The throne trembled. Dust drifted from the ceiling. The second sun outside flickered once, dimmed, then flared twice as bright.
Wu Shuang clutched the edge of the dais. "Do you hear that?"
Wu Jin's reply was barely a whisper. "He's not finished."
Far below, Wu An stood amid the shining fissures, his shadows swaying behind him. His eyes reflected no light at all.
"They think they own unity," he said. "Let them feel what unity truly is."
He raised his hand. The city answered. Every wall, every bone, every prayer began to hum the same note. It spread outward, quiet at first, then louder, until even the air shivered.
And somewhere in the depths, the ancient voice that had waited since before heaven was born murmured, satisfied, Now you understand.