" Yujin shouldn't have gone alone."
That thought clawed at Xiao even as he tightened the red ribbon at his wrist... its cheap dye almost bleeding onto pale skin.
He'd tried to act unbothered, tossing playful words over a wine cup. But the truth gnawed at his ribs.
Yujin had left before dawn, without a farewell, only a single note:
"I'll be back later… don't wait."
Xiao had smirked at the words, teasing in silence:
"As if I wouldn't wait, Lan-Hun Yujin."
But the smirk never reached his chest.
The emptiness behind it stayed.
In the alleys of Yinshi, moonlight sliced through fog like thin blades.
Yet shadows hide more than stray cats and dripping eaves... sometimes, they hide killers.
The blade came swift: a hiss of steel, flash of moonlit edge, pain so sharp it swallowed sound.
Yujin glimpsed only dark eyes, coiled with something old...ancient, patient, waiting.
Then the figure vanished, cloak dissolving into night mist.
A threat? A warning?
Or the first blow of something deeper than even Lan records recall?
All day, whispers had tugged Yujin further in:
An old talisman spoken of only in debt-laden sect scrolls. Jiang Clan cultivators, traveling north, vanishing before dawn. The ever-present silence in Cloud Recesses since Wei Wuxian's fall.
Ten years, yet the sect still walked in the shape of that absence.
Lan Wangji had returned from three years' punishment, but even now, it was said he sat at dawn before the Cold Pond, as if listening for footsteps that never again crossed the stone.
At first, Xiao had teased himself warm with memories:
Yujin's face darkening in annoyance.
The half-growled scold: "Lotus seed, don't look at me like that…"
The hand that hovered at his waist... too gentle for a man who claimed not to care.
But midnight passed.
The courtyard bell chimed once, twice, then again... each strike scraping Xiao's bones raw.
Even the bruises from earlier... refusing a client's hand, then a slap for his insolence... seemed dull next to the ache blooming behind his ribs:
"What if this time, he doesn't come back?"
When dawn bled pale over tiled roofs, Xiao could no longer sit idle.
He bribed a servant boy... copper slipping from shaking fingers...to run toward the path Yujin always returned by.
The boy returned, breathless, cheeks red with fear.
"Childe Lan… was carried away. By men in perple robes with an embroidered moon… and white robes with a cloud at the shoulder."
Relief struck so hard Xiao staggered against the window frame.
The Lan brothers found him. He's alive…
But it brought no calm.
If Yujin needed to be carried, how deep had the blade gone?
At Yeyan Clan's quiet hall, pale robes knelt around the injured youth.
One brother laid a palm on Yujin's chest, spiritual light pooling like dawn across torn fabric.
"Why did you go alone, A‑Yujin?" the younger whispered, breath shaking.
In fevered half‑dream, faces tangled in Yujin's mind: Xiao's half‑lidded grin; the shadowed attacker's dark eyes; and behind them all, Cloud Recesses cloaked in silence.
Wei Wuxian's name hovered unspoken...legend, caution, curse.
Will I vanish into silence too?
Far above, in the cold halls of Cloud Recesses, whispers curled under stone eaves.
Lan Wangji stood by the Cold Pond, unmoving even as mountain wind pulled at white robes.
Behind a scroll screen, Lan Qiren murmured to a junior:
"Watch the Yeyan boy closely. What stalks him may not be after him alone."
Farther still, in candlelit dusk, the true enemy traced blackened runes on yellowed paper.
A single petal drifted from a dying branch.
A petal has fallen. Let us see what else will break.
By nightfall, Xiao sat unmoving at his window.
Food cooled beside him, untouched; even wine tasted like dust.
What twisted in his chest had no name: guilt, dread, longing... all tangled until they felt the same.
One thought burned brighter than bruises or fear:
Just come back. I don't care if you scold me. Just come back.
In fevered sleep, Yujin saw a face he did not know... older, scar crossing the cheek.
And words that felt carved into bone rather than heard:
"Even lotus roots rot, given time."
He woke, breath ragged, the echo bitter on his tongue.
Prophecy? Memory? Warning?
"Next time," he swore into the dark, "I will not go alone."
[ End Of Chapter 12 ]