The path back to the servant quarters felt longer than it had that morning.
Shen Liuyin's legs trembled with every step, but she didn't run. She couldn't. Her body had gone too numb. Her knees still stung from the stone floor, and her hands had small bloodied crescents where her fingernails had dug into her palms. She didn't notice.
The world around her blurred.
The scent of spirit blossoms. The whisper of immortal formations overhead. The soft footsteps of passing disciples.
None of it mattered.
Only her sister's name beat against her skull like a desperate drum.
"Please be breathing. Please be warm. Please still be waiting."
---
She turned the last corner into their wing.
The door was slightly ajar.
Her heart stopped.
"Yueyin?"
Her voice cracked.
She stepped inside.
---
Silence.
---
The room smelled of dried herbs and something else—stillness, the kind that wrapped around the edges of grief and refused to let go.
Shen Yueyin lay on the mat, her small body curled into a loose ball. Her arms rested limply beside her, her hands open. One of them still clutched the frayed ribbon Liuyin had tied in her hair that morning, now unspooled and crumpled with dried blood.
Her eyes were closed.
Too still.
---
"Yueyin…?"
Liuyin knelt beside her.
The warmth was gone.
Her skin felt soft, cool.
Not icy yet—but not alive either.
---
Liuyin reached forward with shaking fingers and brushed her sister's hair back from her forehead.
It stuck in clumps to her skin.
Her lips were pale.
There was a slight smile still frozen on her face.
As if… she had still believed. Until the end.
"You… waited for me."
Liuyin's throat closed.
Her arms moved without thought, pulling the small body into her lap, holding her gently, the way their mother used to when storms frightened them at night.
She rocked slightly.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
She whispered nonsense—empty promises.
"It's okay. I'll get the medicine now. I know where it is. Just a little longer, okay?"
Yueyin didn't stir.
---
Time passed.
She didn't move.
Eventually, someone knocked at the door and peeked in. A servant girl saw them—froze—and left without a word.
No one disturbed her again.
---
As the moon climbed higher, Shen Liuyin's breathing evened out. Her arms were still wrapped around her sister's body, but her face was blank.
Her tears had never come.
---
Sometime later, she reached for the broken ribbon in Yueyin's hand and gently pried it free.
She folded it carefully, smoothing it out as best she could, and tucked it into her sleeve.
Then, finally, she lay her sister down on the mat again.
She sat there for a long time, just staring at the wall.
---
"He could've saved her."
The thought came softly. Not angry. Not hateful.
Just true.
---
One pill.
One order.
Even one glance.
That's all it would've taken.
But Ji Yuanheng had looked at her—not with cruelty, not with pity—but with nothing.
She wasn't even a speck of dust to him.
---
She thought she'd cry.
She didn't.
She thought she'd scream.
She couldn't.
She just sat there, her hands folded neatly in her lap, her heart silent for the first time since she arrived at the estate.
"I thought he was a mountain.
I thought he was worth climbing."
She let out a sound. It might have been a laugh.
Or a breath.
Or the sound of a dying girl finally giving up.
---
Outside, the spirit blossoms continued to fall.
Inside, Shen Liuyin burned.
But no flames showed—yet.
---
Later, just before dawn, she lit a single lantern by the bedside and reached beneath her mat. She pulled out her parchment journal—the one she used to write all the little things he never knew.
His favorite tea blend. The way he walked. That one time he paused mid-step when she passed by and she thought—maybe, maybe he knew.
She stared at the pages.
Then she tore them out.
One by one.
She fed them to the lantern flame in silence.
They curled, darkened, turned to ash.
---
By the time she reached the last page, her hands were shaking again. Not from sorrow.
From something deeper.
Something sharp.
Something alive.
---
When she looked up, her reflection in the water basin had changed.
Her eyes were still brown—but behind them, something pulsed.
Something red.
Something ancient.
Just a flicker. A spark. Gone before she could blink.
But she felt it.
The beginning.
---
She picked up her hair comb and snapped it in half with one hand.
The sound was soft.
She placed the pieces beside the ashes of her journal.
Then she stood.
---
And for the first time since her arrival in the Ji Clan estate, Shen Liuyin felt nothing at all.
Not fear.
Not grief.
Not love.
Just the slow, steady hunger of something that had been waiting far too long.