The grandmaster was gone.
I must stop him.
Lan stood and ran. She heard Shàn’jun calling after her, felt raindrops whipping her face. Her hands were at the sash around her waist, fingers tugging her ocarina free. It slid eagerly into place between her palms as though with a mind of its own.
Lan slowed her steps and raised it to her lips.
The melody she played flowed through her fingers, her soul. It was one she had held deep in her memory, and it came now like a dream: a bamboo forest, a warm fire, a boy whose coldness had melted like winter to spring beneath the light of her song.
She closed her eyes as she played. A single, hot tear sliddown her cheek, and if it was possible that all the desire in the world could turn back time, Lan thought she might have the strength to do so. To return to that moment in the bamboo forest.
Slowly, the yin died down. Footsteps, padding through the rain toward her. And then a warm hand coming to cup her cheek.
She opened her eyes, and Zen knelt before her. He held one hand to his stomach, where a large gash ripped across his robes. Rain mingled with blood, dripping down his face.
She lowered her ocarina.
“Lan,” he panted, and she flinched at the sound of his voice. Once, her heart might have ached at the sight of him bleeding and injured before her.
But that had been for Zen, the boy who had saved her on the walls of Haak’gong, who had patiently taught her practitioning, who had followed the tenets to the Way with rigid stubbornness.
Who had kissed away her tears and promised she would never need to be alone again.
Looking at the figure before her, dripping yin energies, carrying shadows like black fire, she was unsure where human ended and Demon God began.
“You murdered our grandmaster,” she said. He closed his eyes. His face shifted through emotions as though he wrestled with something inside himself. She continued, “And you used me to see the star maps of the Demon Gods. To find the Black Tortoise. I know what you are and who you are, Xan Temurezen.”
He trembled violently. Rain carved tracks down his cheeks. “I have not been truthful with you about many things,” Zen said, “but the one truth I can neither control nor deny is that you hold my heart, Lan. I have never used you for anything.”
She was glad for the downpour that would obscure the wetness in her own eyes. Behind her, Dé’zi’s body cooled. Soon, it would return to the elements of the earth, the cycle of all things natural in this world.
“None of that matters,” she said quietly, “if you choose a different path to walk. Give up the Black Tortoise, Zen. We will find another way to bring balance to this land and free our people. One without the cost of innocent lives.” She held out a hand.
A shadow fell across Zen’s expression. He closed his eyes and clasped a palm over his face, straining as though battling an invisible force.
Dé’zihad said that the practitioners who channeled the power of Demon Gods lost their bodies, then minds, then souls. Zen was still inside. He was still fighting.
Lan knelt before him and took in the unfeeling, unseeing face before her.This is Zen,she thought.The boy who saved your life. Who has protected you all this time.
Leaning forward, she pressed her lips to the crook of his cheeks, kissing away the rain. It came away salty.
Zen shuddered. After what felt like an eternity, he spoke a single word.
“Lan.”
His eyes opened, and they were clear.
She might have wept in relief. “Yes. I’m here.”
He took her hands in his and traced a thumb over her left wrist. “You have wished for power, to protect the ones you love. There is one last thing your mother hid in your Seal that you have not yet uncovered.”
She had a sudden sense of foreboding.
“I will show you what it is, right now,” Zen said, and dug his fingers into her scar.
Pain seared through her arm. It splintered into her mind,and the world fractured into black flame. She could feel her flesh burning, as though her bones had turned to molten metal and she was melting from the inside out. Darkness shrouded her mind.
Before her: a spot of white, the faintest flicker. Lan reached for it, but the tendrils of dark fire pulled her back. Even as she watched, mind blurring from the pain, the white spot drew closer. It became a dot, then a cracked circle.
