When Shen Xiao spiraled, Bai Zhi burned from the inside out.
Neither could truly hate the other. Because their bodies refused it.
They were tethered. Cursed and entangled endlessly and forever in this life.
The ritual ended in silence.
Ashes were scattered across the railway floor. The priest was gone. The woman in scarves vanished like mist. The only sound left was Bai Zhi's uneven breathing and Shen Xiao's trembling exhale against the crook of her neck.
He had stopped bleeding and she had survived.
But something inside her had begun to break.
They walked home that night under the shroud of streetlight and guilt. Neither of them spoke. He carried her part of the way and she didn't protest.
She bled four days after. Cramping, fever, and dizzy spells. She thought it was a side effect of the ritual, a consequence of the tether. Shen Xiao sat by her side, every shudder she gave mirrored in his body like a curse.
Until the day it came.
