Light bleeds through rice-paper screens, soft and honeyed, painting the room in the muted gold of late afternoon. Linh's eyelids flutter open, the world returning in fragments: the crisp scent of sandalwood incense, the whisper of silk against skin, the distant hum of birds. His body lies encased in a cocoon of pain, every muscle a knotted cord, every breath a labor. Bandages swaddle him from scalp to hip, their starch-stiff edges scratching at raw flesh. When he tries to flex his fingers, only the ghost of his left hand responds—a phantom twitch where his arm ends now in a stump bound tightly in linen.

He lifts his remaining hand to his face. The bandages there are damp, reeking of medicinal salve. His tongue, swollen and sour, probes cracked lips. Alive, he thinks, though the word feels hollow, a mockery.

The room is a tableau of Moukopl opulence. Lacquered screens divide the space, their surfaces etched with cranes wading through silver rivers—a symbol of longevity, of peace. A low table of black walnut holds a celadon teapot, its curves glazed to mimic jade, and a single white orchid blooms in a vase, petals trembling in the breeze. Above the doorway hangs a scroll painted with the Path of the White Mother, her turquoise pond rippling under a moonlit sky. The air hums with the drone of prayer wheels spinning somewhere unseen, their metallic chimes a constant, dissonant hymn.

Footsteps pad softly beyond the screen. Linh turns his head—a slow, grinding effort—as an elderly woman enters. Her hair is coiled into a silver knot beneath a servant's cap, her robe the pale blue of mourning clouds. She bows low, hands folded at her waist, sleeves embroidered with lotus vines. Her eyes avoid his, fixed instead on the floor's polished cedar planks.

"Young master," she says, her voice a reed-thin tremor. "This humble one is honored to serve you. May I bring water?"

Linh's throat burns. He tries to speak, but his voice fractures into a rasp. The woman moves forward, lifting the teapot with hands that do not shake. Her shadow falls across him, and suddenly he is back in the attic—smoke, Mihin's screams, the sulfur stink of gunpowder. His bandaged hand lashes out, striking the teapot. It shatters against the floor, water pooling like a spilled soul.

The maid stumbles back, a gasp trapped behind her teeth. For a heartbeat, fear flickers in her eyes—a animal recognition of the thing he has become: scorched, feral, a wraith clawed back from the pyre. But decades of service steel her. She kneels, gathering shards with ritual care, her movements precise as a priest arranging altar offerings.

"Where—" Linh's voice grates, a blade dragged over stone. "Where am I?" He claws at the bedsheets, trying to rise, but his body betrays him.

She does not look up. "This is the estate of Lord Li Song, young master. He commanded that your wounds be tended." The maid stands, her composure a mask. "This one will inform His Lordship of your awakening." She bows again, deeper this time, her forehead nearly brushing her knees—a gesture reserved for ancestral altars, for the divine.

The maid's footsteps fade into the hum of the estate, leaving Linh alone with the cranes on the screen. Their poised elegance mocks him—creatures frozen in a moment of grace, untouched by the reek of burnt flesh. His remaining hand drifts to the bandages again, tracing the ruin beneath.

The scroll's White Mother gazes down, her turquoise pond a lie. Linh wonders if she watched as they were dying of hunger and despair. Where were your tears then? The prayer wheels quicken, their chant swelling like flies over rot. He imagines tearing the scroll down, shredding its silk into kindling. But his body refuses him even this rebellion—a puppet with half its strings cut.

Through the screen, the garden's koi glide, their gilded scales catching the light. In An'alm, the Siza elders taught that koi carried the souls of warriors to the afterlife. Where is Mihin now? The thought lodges in his throat. He sees her again—small, sightless, fingers brushing herbs in Qhuag's cottage.

The orchid on the table trembles. Its petals, flawless and white, remind him of the Moukopl banners. Purity. Paradise. Words for fools and conquerors.

A breeze stirs the room, carrying the scent of pine and distant incense. Linh's breath hitches. Somewhere, a servant chants a sutra, her voice weaving through the drone of wheels. He doesn't know the verses—once, he whispered some with Mihin as Qhuag lit the evening candles. "The sun reflects the shadow of the worthy…" A lie. The worthy drowned. The worthy burned.

His hand fists the coverlet, the silk biting into his palm. Why me? Not a plea, but an accusation. The prophecy wraps around him like the bandages, tight and suffocating. Son of Nahaloma. A title stitched from others' hope, now a shroud.

The door slides open with a whisper, its paper-paneled frame trembling like the wing of a moth. Li Song stands in the threshold, his silhouette softened by the amber glow of dusk. Gone is the general's lacquered armor, the bloodstained cloak, the aura of divine wrath. He wears a scholar's robe of undyed hemp, its folds hanging loose, as though the fabric itself mourns the weight it now carries. His hair, unbound, spills over his shoulders like ink spilled across parchment, and in his hands he clutches a string of prayer beads—onyx carved into the shape of tear-drops, each one inscribed with a verse from the Turquoise Sutra.

He steps inside and bows, not the shallow dip of a lord to a guest, but the profound ketou reserved for ancestral spirits—forehead to the floor, palms upturned in surrender. The beads click softly against the tatami.

Linh watches him through the slits of his bandages, his breath shallow, each inhale a knife dragged through charred lungs. The man's face is unfamiliar, yet something in the slope of his shoulders, the stillness of his posture, pricks at the edges of memory.

"Who… are you?" Linh rasps, the words tearing free like shards of glass.

Li Song rises, his movements fluid yet heavy, as though the air itself resists him. "A servant," he says, voice low, textured with the gravel of sleepless nights. "Of the White Mother. As are all who draw breath."

Linh's bandaged fingers twitch. His only knowledge of the White Mother is through her zealots' mouths. Her paradise. Her mercy. A bitter taste floods his mouth. He tries to sit up, muscles screaming, but collapses back onto the bedding. The room tilts, the cranes on the screen seeming to take flight, their silver wings bleeding into the blur of tears.

"Why…" Linh chokes, "…am I alive?"

Li Song's gaze fixes on the scroll above the door, the White Mother's lotus cradled in her hands. "You are her son," he says, reverent and raw. "The child foretold in the Sutra of Ascending Dawn, who will lead the faithful to the Turquoise Pond. To let you perish would have been…" He hesitates, the beads tightening in his grip. "…a sin beyond redemption."

Linh's laugh is a broken thing, wheezing and wet. Her son. The prophecy that damned him, that painted a target on his back and a crown of thorns on Mihin's brow. He turns his face toward the koi pond in the garden. "Where is she?" he grinds out. "Mihin. My sister."

Li Song's stillness deepens. "Many were lost in the siege. The rubble we dug you from… we found no one else."

The words hang, sharp and final. Linh's remaining hand claws at the bandages over his chest, as though he might rip out the memory, the image of Mihin's blindfolded face swallowed by flame. His breath comes in jagged heaves, each one a dirge.

"Who," he snarls, "were you… in the siege?"

Li Song does not flinch. "The general who drowned your city. Who broke its walls. Who fed its children to the river." His voice cracks on the last word, a fissure in the ice. "And who now begs your forgiveness, though he knows it cannot be granted."

Linh's laughter erupts anew, a raw, guttural sound that shakes his broken body. Pain lances through him—good, deserved—as tears carve hot trails through the salve on his cheeks. The irony is exquisite: the butcher playing penitent, the divine killer kneeling to the martyr he made. He laughs until his throat bleeds, until the sound curdles into a sob.

"You want… forgiveness?" Linh wheezes, blood speckling his lips. "Burn. Burn with your White Mother. Let her paradise choke on your ashes."

Li Song sinks to his knees again, this time pressing his palms flat to the floor, the posture of a criminal awaiting execution. "I will rot in every hell the scriptures name," he murmurs, "but in this life, I am yours. My hands, my wealth, my breath—all exist to serve you. However you see fit."

Linh stares at the man who took his arm, his city, his sister. The man who now offers his throat. He could demand death. Could demand Li Song flay himself alive on the steps of his own estate, could watch the crows feast on his guilt. But the fire in Linh's chest has dwindled to embers. There is no vengeance vast enough to fill the hollow where Mihin once lived.

"Leave," he whispers.

Li Song hesitates, then bows once more, forehead to wood. As he rises, his sleeve brushes the shattered remnants of the celadon teapot still littering the floor. A shard pierces his palm; he does not wipe away the blood.

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At the door, he pauses. "The White Mother's grace is… not gentle," he says, almost to himself. "But it is relentless."

...

Winter sharpens its teeth on the estate. Linh's room stays stifling—braziers glowing with cedar coals, their smoke coiling into shapes that haunt the corners. He has learned to sit upright, though his spine protests like splintered timber. The old maid trims his bandages daily, her hands steady as she peels away layers of rot and rebirth. He no longer fights her. Not because he has surrendered, but because his rage has hardened into something colder, quieter—a blade being whetted in the dark.

Li Song comes at the same hour each dawn, his shadow stretching gaunt across the tatami. He brings offerings: scrolls, incense, a chalice of snowmelt blessed by temple monks. He speaks of the White Mother's mercy, of the Turquoise Pond's healing waters, of destiny's patient loom. Linh turns his face to the wall, counting the cranes on the screen until the general's voice dissolves into the hum of the prayer wheels.

But the body remembers violence.

When the maid dozes by the brazier, her knitting needles slack in her lap, Linh drags himself to the courtyard's edge. The cold sears his lungs, the snow burning his bare feet. He hurls himself toward the frozen pond, imagining the ice cracking like An'alm's walls, the water swallowing him. The maid's scream pierces the stillness. Guards haul him back.

Another dawn, he smashes the celadon teacup, presses a shard to his throat. The maid wrestles it from him, her strength belying her frailty. Blood beads on both their palms, mingling on the tatami.

"Why won't you let me die?" he snarls, voice raw as a fresh wound.

She says nothing.

The storm arrives on the solstice, snow devouring the mountains, the estate reduced to a pale smudge in the white. Li Song enters without knocking, his robe dusted with ice. In his hands, a scripture box of lacquered cedar, its surface inlaid with mother-of-pearl cranes.

"The White Mother's light endures even in darkness," he begins, kneeling by Linh's bed.

Something snaps.

Linh lunges, his bandaged hand closing around the general's throat. They crash to the floor, the scripture box spilling open. Scrolls unfurl like tongues, their silk gleaming with gilt characters. Li Song does not resist. His eyes, wide and wet, reflect the brazier's flame—a man already kneeling at the pyre of his own making.

"Enough," Linh hisses, his grip tightening. "I am Nahaloma's son—not hers. Your White Mother is a lie. A Moukopl lie."

Li Song's breath rasps, but his voice stays soft, a priest reciting rites. "The White Mother… is married to the Sun Father. His fire lives in her waters. Their union…"

Linh freezes. The words clot in his skull, dissonant, impossible. The Siza elders never spoke of consorts. Nahaloma ruled alone, a solitary inferno above all the other gods.

Li Song lifts a trembling hand, gesturing to a scroll. The text swims—ancient Moukopl script. "The Black Father," Li Song chants, "cast his reflection into the White Mother's Pond. From their mingled light, a child will rise—a bridge between flame and flood, who will lead the lost to paradise."

Linh releases him, recoiling. "You twist your own lies. You think I'll believe this… heresy?"

Li Song crawls to the scroll, his fingers tracing the glyphs. "The Siza call him Nahaloma. We name him Hei Fu, the Black Radiance. Your people sing his ballads at dawn; mine burn incense to him at dusk. The White Mother came from the West, from the Tortoise Mountain, where our ancestors first kindled fire from stone." He looks up, blood trickling from his lip. "You are both. Black and white. Beginning and end. Born in fire and water. You are infinite hatred and endless compassion. You are everything."

The room tilts. Linh's scars pulse. He sees Qhuag's cottage again, the witch's voice murmuring over herbs: "All gods are hungry. All gods are lonely." Had she known? Had anyone?

Li Song presses the scroll into Linh's hands. The silk is cold, the ink raised like scars. Black Father. White Mother. A child of ash and ichor. The words blur, but the glyphs remain—Nahaloma's sun-wheel intertwined with the Moukopl's crescent pond.

"Lies," Linh whispers, but the tremor in his voice betrays him.

Li Song bows until his brow touches Linh's foot, a vassal to a throne of bones. "Test it. Plunge this scroll into flame. If it burns, I am a liar. If it endures…"

The brazier crackles. Linh hesitates, then hurls the scripture into the coals. Flames leap, tongues licking gilt characters—but the silk does not blacken. The glyphs glow, sun and moon spiraling into a single, blinding helix.

The maid gasps, clutching her amulet of the White Mother. Li Song watches, tears cutting through the soot on his face.

Linh staggers back, his breath a ragged saw. The fire dances in his remaining eye.

Li Song's voice is a ghost. "Paradise waits."

Linh closes his eyes. Mihin's face. Gankou's laugh. The taste of human meat. He sees now the shape of the trap—holy, inexorable.

"What paradise," he says softly, "is worth all this suffering?"

"It is your duty," Li Song replies, "as the bearer of suffering, to carry it for the sake of the world."

...

The mansion's gates yawn open, revealing a world sheathed in ice. Servants scuttle across courtyards paved in jade-green slate, their breath blooming in hurried clouds as they scatter salt to melt the snow. Linh sees none of it clearly. His vision swims through the slit of his hood, the world reduced to smears of white and gold, the sting of cold gnawing at the damp bandages beneath his travel coat. Li Song carries him as one might carry a sacred relic—arms rigid, head bowed—past palanquins draped in tapestries depicting the White Mother's thousand-eyed gaze.

The carriage waits in the outer court, a lacquered black shell hitched to six white stallions. Li Song lays Linh on cushions lined with snow-leopard pelts, their fur still clinging to the musk of the hunt. The interior reeks of myrrh and iron, a censer shaped like a phoenix dangling from the ceiling, its wings spread mid-immolation.

"Where…?" Linh's voice is a frayed thread.

"Chun'antu," Li Song says, tucking a heated stone wrapped in silk against Linh's chest. "Three leagues north of the ruins."

The city emerges through the carriage's lattice windows—a labyrinth of ice-glazed rooftops and narrow canals choked with frozen reeds. Chun'antu's walls bear the scars of past rebellions: cracks patched with mortar the color of old bone; watchtowers draped in banners. The streets teem with peasants wrapped in moth-eaten wool, their faces gaunt under hats. They part for the carriage, bowing as it passes, fingers brushing amulets of the White Mother hung around their throats.

The pagoda rises at the city's heart, a nine-tiered spire clawing at the leaden sky. Its eaves bristle with iron bells, their clappers frozen silent. A crowd clusters at its base—starved faces flushed with hope, hands clutching offerings of withered lotus roots and bird skulls. They stir as the carriage halts, a murmur swelling into a roar.

"Hei Fu's heir! The White Mother's son!"

Li Song steps into the light, raising his arms as if gathering the adulation like sheaves of wheat. His robe, stark white against the snow, makes him a specter, a priest-king carved from moonstone. He turns, opens the carriage door, and reaches for Linh.

"Do not shame them," he murmurs, though his eyes say do not shame me.

Linh's legs buckle as his feet touch the ground. The cold sears his lungs, the hood slipping to reveal bandages yellowed with old pus. The crowd's cheers falter—a heartbeat of doubt—then surge louder, desperate. A woman hurls a string of dried chrysanthemums; it catches on Linh's shoulder, petals crumbling to dust.

Li Song props him upright, an arm around his waist, and leads him toward the pagoda's shadow. Linh's gaze sweeps the crowd—peasants, merchants, soldiers with Moukopl sigils on their helms—then freezes.

There.

Near the pagoda's base, a dozen figures kneel in the snow, their hands bound behind them with iron cuffs, eyes sewn shut with thread. Siza warriors, their faces etched with fading sun-glyphs. Yohazatz riders, their braids matted with blood. Linh recognizes the man at the front—Ghuba. His left ear is gone, the wound crusted black.

Li Song stops before the prisoners. The crowd falls silent.

"The White Mother's justice is merciful," Li Song announces, voice echoing off the pagoda's tiers, "but it requires a vessel. A voice." He turns to Linh, fingers digging into his arm. "You are that voice. Choose their path: pardon, or purification."

The Siza lift their heads at the word purification. Ghuba's stitched eyelids twitch. He hears, Linh realizes. He knows.

Linh sags against Li Song, his whisper raw. "This… is your repentance? A performance?"

Li Song's reply is a breath, meant only for him: "This is godhood. You bleed, they believe. You choose, they obey."

The crowd leans forward, breath held. Snow begins to fall, catching in Linh's hood, melting against his bandages. Somewhere, a thawing bell clangs, its sound warped and mournful.

Ghuba's lips move, shaping a word without sound. Traitor.

Linh stares at the prisoners—at the men who followed him into the flood, who carved Nahaloma's sigils into their shields. He sees Mihin's face in the snow, her voice in the wind: "We could have had goats."

He opens his mouth.

"You kneel before a ghost," Linh begins, his voice a frayed whip. The crowd stills. "A ghost of An'alm. Of butchered mothers. Of children fed to the White Mother's mercy." His bandaged hand rises, trembling, toward the Moukopl banners snapping in the wind. "You ask me to choose their fate? Look at what your empire has already chosen for them!"

A ripple passes through the crowd—a murmur, a shifted foot, a child's whimper smothered by its mother's palm. Li Song's fingers dig into Linh's arm, a silent warning.

Linh shrugs him off. "I am Nahaloma's blood. The White Mother's shadow. And I say no more." His voice cracks, then swells, raw and resonant. "No more walls drowned. No more sons butchered for your paradise." He turns to the prisoners, their sun-glyphs peeking through grime. "We rise. As flame."

The crowd erupts. Fists punch the air; a drumbeat starts, throbbing like a warped heart.

Linh watches the crowd cheer in the palm of his hand, then clenches it, his whisper a blade. "You want a god? I'll give you one."

He strides to the prisoners, his coat billowing like a vulture's wings. Ghuba's head lifts, nostrils flaring at the scent of danger. Linh crouches, his breath fogging the frozen thread sealing the warrior's eyes. "Do not forgive me," he murmurs, so faint even the wind steals it.

Standing, he raises his arm. The crowd's roar crests.

"Mercy," Linh declares, "is the lie of conquerors. This—" He gestures to the prisoners. "—is the White Mother's truth. To be reborn, we burn."

Li Song snaps his fingers. Soldiers emerge, dragging braziers of smoldering cedar. The crowd chants now, a guttural hymn: "Purify. Purify."

Ghuba does not struggle as they douse him in oil. His lips peel back in a grin, teeth red with bitten blood. "I will devour your soul." He whispers, wishing to be reborn as an evil spirit.

The torch falls.

Flames erupt, gold and voracious, swallowing the prisoners. The stench of burning flesh blooms, sweet and putrid, as the crowd's chant twists into screams of ecstasy. Ghuba's body arches, a blackened effigy, his laughter echoing even as his skin sloughs away.

Linh turns to the crowd, the heat blistering his bandages. "Today, a new dynasty is born. I, Hluav Linh, am born. Not from ash, but through it. The Siza revolution will continue to scorch this corrupt world until it is cleaned of all filth. Only I am the one who can save this world!"

Bashi, a priest of the White Mother prostrates himself. Li Song watches, his prayer beads frozen in his fist.

As the pyre gutters, Linh collapses to his knees, snow hissing against his smoldering coat. The crowd surges forward, hands grasping to touch his hem, his scars, his godhood. Li Song pulls him back, into the shadow of the pagoda.

"LONG LIVE HLUAY DYNASTY! MAY IT RULE FOR A THOUSAND YEARS!"

Set the world ablaze.

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