Mingxi lifted a palm, foxfire flaring gold across the room. The nearest revenant faltered, shrieking silently as the magic seared its limbs. Mingxi staggered immediately, a grimace flashing across his face, and Poppy’s breath caught. His hand went instinctively to his ribs, as if the strain had pulled at the wound beneath.
Poppy darted between him and the creature. Her moonlight thrummed behind her ribs, bright, loud, straining like a lantern with too much flame inside. The second revenant lunged. She ducked beneath its claws, skirts snapping like banners, and drove her blade into its spine. It collapsed…but didn’t dissolve. It clawed toward Mingxi instead, dragging itself across the stone.
“No—”
Poppy threw herself between them. Her heartbeat thundered, and something inside her broke open. Not pain.
Light.
Silver-white radiance burst from her chest, flaring outward in a wave that struck the revenant full force. It disintegrated in a single flash of dust, and then the room filled with light. Soft, pulsing moonlight poured from her skin—from her face, her hands, her hair, as though the moon itself had been trapped inside her and was finally escaping.
Mingxi froze. Not breathing. Not moving. Barely standing.
“Poppy,” he whispered.
Her knees buckled. He caught her instantly, arms solid and warm around her.
“Mingxi… what’s happening to me?” she breathed.
He didn’t answer.
“Your glow… it’s haloing your face, like silver washing over your features.” He swallowed, awe cracking through his voice. “Yuèguang…”
Her eyes fluttered open, dazed. “What did you call me?”
Mingxi’s jaw tightened, gold flickering in his irises like candlelight through amber. “Yuèguang,” he whispered again. “It means moonlight.”
Her glow shimmered.
“You shine from your heart outward,” he said, voice low, reverent, unguarded. “You rise where there was darkness. You are…” A breath shuddered out of him. “You are the most beautiful light I have ever seen.”
Her light dimmed, exhaustion dragging her downward.
He tightened his arms around her. “Stay with me,” he murmured. “Just breathe.”
“I’m trying…” she whispered and then collapsed fully against him.
Mingxi held her, as though she were a lantern he refused to let break, while the last traces of moonlight sank quietly beneath her skin.
He held her upright with both arms, chest rising in ragged breaths. His wound throbbed with each heartbeat, but he didn’t loosen his hold. The safe house was too quiet—unnaturally so. Revenant ash glittered like frost across the floor. The lanterns flickered weakly, as if afraid to shine.
Poppy’s breath trembled. “Mingxi…?”
“I’m here.”
She leaned against him, barely conscious, her skin still faintly opalescent. Then—
CRACK
The ward line overhead split like ice underfoot.
A low, monstrous roar—psychic, not physical—ripped through the walls. It vibrated in his bones, in the ward stones, in the very air.
Poppy gasped.
Mingxi stiffened.
The roar did not come from the safe house. It came from everywhere: from the shadows, from the leyline beneath the city, from the places where magic had curdled and died.
