The Argument Beneath the Glass Sky
Wei Chenxing’s palm burned where the blade had cut. He pressed the wound against his sleeve, watching the blood soak through the dark fabric, and tried to ignore the way Yan Lihua’s eyes tracked the movement.
The crystals had stopped growing.
For now.
They sat on opposite sides of the frozen library, a chasm of shattered bookshelves between them. The air here tasted of old paper and rust, and the light that filtered through the glass ceiling above was the color of weak tea. Wei Chenxing had bound his hand with a strip torn from his inner robe, but the wound still throbbed in time with his heartbeat.
Yan Lihua had not spoken since the crystals receded.
He sat with his back against a pillar carved with weeping faces, his right shoulder wrapped in bandages that Wei Chenxing had improvised from the same fabric. The prince’s jaw was set, his gaze fixed on some point in the middle distance. The black veins on his neck had faded to a dull gray, but they were still visible, pulsing faintly beneath the skin.
Wei Chenxing broke the silence first.
“You should rest.”
Yan Lihua’s laugh was hollow. “Rest. In this place.” He gestured at the frozen library around them—the books suspended mid-fall, the ink droplets caught in the air like frozen tears, the dust motes that hung motionless in the columns of light. “Where time itself has forgotten how to move.”
“The crystals—”
“Will grow again.” Yan Lihua’s voice was flat. “They always do. Your blood only buys us hours, not days.”
Wei Chenxing’s hand tightened on his bandaged palm. The pain was sharp and clean, a welcome anchor in this sea of unreality. “Then we find the core faster. We break the mirror. We end this.”
“End this.” Yan Lihua turned his head slowly, and his eyes were dark and cold. “You speak as if it were simple. As if shattering an ancient artifact that has held my bloodline captive for three centuries were a matter of will.”
“I never said it was simple.”
“You didn’t have to.” Yan Lihua pushed himself to his feet, wincing as the movement pulled at his wounded shoulder. He walked toward Wei Chenxing with the careful grace of a predator who knew he was wounded but refused to show it. “You wear your certainty like armor, Scholar. It’s why the Emperor sent you. Because you believe so absolutely in the rightness of your cause that you never stop to question whether the cost is worth paying.”
Wei Chenxing stood as well, meeting the prince’s gaze. “The cost is your life. I am not blind to that.”
“No. You’re blind to something far worse.” Yan Lihua stopped an arm’s length away. The crystals on his shoulder caught the light, glinting like broken teeth. “You’re blind to the fact that you’re only here because of guilt.”
The word hung in the air between them.
“Guilt?” Wei Chenxing repeated.
“Don’t pretend you don’t feel it.” Yan Lihua’s voice dropped, rough and raw. “Every time you look at me, I see it in your eyes. That flicker of recognition. That ache you can’t explain. You dream of a woman you’ve never met, you recite poems you’ve never learned, and when you touched my wrist in the Border Gate, you saw something that made you weep.”
Wei Chenxing’s throat tightened. He remembered that moment—the flash of a woman’s face in the mirror, the grief that had flooded through him like a river breaking its banks. He had not told Yan Lihua what he saw. He had not told anyone.
“You don’t know what I saw.”
“I don’t need to know.” Yan Lihua stepped closer, close enough that Wei Chenxing could smell the blood and frost on his skin. “I know what I am to you. I’m a debt. A penance. A chance for you to atone for a sin you committed in a life you don’t remember.”
“That’s not—”
“Isn’t it?” Yan Lihua’s hand shot out and grabbed Wei Chenxing’s wrist, lifting the bandaged palm between them. “You cut yourself open for me. You fed me your blood. You did it without hesitation, without bargaining, without asking what I would give in return. Why?”
Wei Chenxing tried to pull away, but Yan Lihua’s grip was iron. “Because you would have died.”
“And why do you care if I die?”
The question struck like a blade between the ribs.
Wei Chenxing opened his mouth, but no words came. Because the truth was a tangled knot in his chest, and he could not find the end of the thread. He cared because Yan Lihua was the only real thing in this nightmare of frozen time and broken memories. He cared because when the prince’s eyes softened, Wei Chenxing felt something warm kindle in his chest. He cared because he was terrified of losing himself in the echoes of a past he could not remember.
But he could not say any of that.
So he said the only thing that felt true.
“I don’t know.”
Yan Lihua’s grip loosened. His hand fell away, and he took a step back. The anger in his eyes flickered, replaced by something that looked almost like disappointment.
“You don’t know,” he repeated. “You don’t know why you’re here. You don’t know why you dream of a dead woman. You don’t know why my curse responds to your blood. You don’t know anything, Scholar. And yet you walk through this realm as if you have all the answers.”
“I never claimed to have answers.”
“You don’t need to claim them. Your certainty is written on your face every time you look at a riddle and decide you can solve it.” Yan Lihua turned away, his shoulders rigid. “But this is not a riddle. This is my life. My curse. My bloodline’s sin. And you—” His voice cracked. “You are only here because some ghost from a thousand years ago decided to wear your face.”
The words hit harder than Wei Chenxing expected.
He stood in the frozen library, surrounded by books that would never be read, and felt the weight of Yan Lihua’s accusation settle on his shoulders. It was true, wasn’t it? He had come to the Northern Wastes because the Emperor ordered it. He had agreed to be Yan Lihua’s Curse-Breaker because it was the only way to survive. He had cut his palm open because the alternative was watching the prince die.
But beneath all of that, beneath the logic and the survival instinct and the duty, there was something else. Something that had been stirring in his chest since the moment he saw Yan Lihua on that blood-soaked road, standing among the corpses of shadow-beasts with black veins crawling up his neck.
He had felt a pull. A recognition. A sense that he had been here before, in a life he could not remember, with a person he had never met.
And that terrified him more than any curse.
“You’re right,” Wei Chenxing said quietly.
Yan Lihua stopped. He did not turn around.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” Wei Chenxing continued. “I don’t know why I dream of a woman I’ve never met. I don’t know why your curse responds to my blood. I don’t know why I feel like I’ve known you for a thousand years when we only met three weeks ago.” He took a breath. “But I know one thing.”
Yan Lihua turned his head, just enough to show the sharp line of his jaw.
“I am terrified of losing myself in this place,” Wei Chenxing said. “Every time I see a reflection, I expect it to move on its own. Every time I close my eyes, I see memories that are not mine. I am drowning in a past I never lived, and the only thing that keeps me anchored is you.”
The silence stretched between them, thick as honey.
Yan Lihua turned fully. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes were bright, almost feverish. “You’re afraid.”
“Yes.”
“You, the scholar who faced down the Emperor himself. The man who wrote a memorial that broke the sky. You’re afraid.”
“Terrified,” Wei Chenxing repeated. “And I don’t know how to stop being terrified. But I know that when I cut my palm open and fed you my blood, I wasn’t thinking about guilt or past lives or debts. I was thinking about you. About the fact that I did not want you to die.”
Yan Lihua’s breath caught. It was a small sound, barely audible, but in the frozen silence of the library, it rang like a bell.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Yan Lihua whispered.
“I know exactly what I’m saying.” Wei Chenxing stepped forward, closing the distance between them. “I am saying that I do not know who I was in a past life. I do not know if I loved you or betrayed you or died for you. But I know who I am now. I am Wei Chenxing, a disgraced scholar who would rather die than watch you turn to crystal. And I am choosing to stay.”
Yan Lihua’s hand rose, trembling, and touched Wei Chenxing’s cheek. His fingers were cold, colder than they should have been, and the black veins on his wrist pulsed beneath the skin.
“You are a fool,” Yan Lihua said, but his voice was soft.
“I have been called worse.”
“You will regret this.”
“Probably.”
“I am cursed. I am dying. I am the echo of a man who betrayed you in a life you cannot remember.”
Wei Chenxing reached up and covered Yan Lihua’s hand with his own. The bandaged palm pressed against the prince’s cold fingers, and he felt the resonance between them—a thrum of energy that hummed beneath his skin.
“Then let me remember,” Wei Chenxing said. “Let me face whatever past is waiting for us. But do not push me away because you think you are protecting me. I am not a child. I am not a ghost. I am here, in this moment, with you. And I am not leaving.”
Yan Lihua’s eyes glistened. He did not cry—princes did not cry, especially not cursed princes in the heart of a frozen nightmare—but something in his expression cracked, just a little.
“You are impossible,” he said.
“I have been told that too.”
Yan Lihua laughed. It was a broken sound, rough and raw, but it was real. He pulled his hand away from Wei Chenxing’s cheek and stepped back, composing himself with the practiced ease of a man who had spent his entire life hiding his emotions.
“We should move,” he said, his voice steadier now. “The crystals will grow again. We need to find the core before they reach my heart.”
Wei Chenxing nodded. He turned toward the exit of the library, but Yan Lihua’s voice stopped him.
“Scholar.”
He looked back.
Yan Lihua stood in the pale light, his bandaged shoulder gleaming, his dark eyes fixed on Wei Chenxing with an intensity that made his breath catch.
“Thank you,” the prince said. “For staying.”
Wei Chenxing smiled. It was a small thing, fragile as glass, but it was real.
“I never left,” he said.
They walked out of the frozen library together, side by side, and behind them, the books remained suspended in their endless fall, waiting for a reader who would never come.
The crystals had stopped growing.
For now.
They sat on opposite sides of the frozen library, a chasm of shattered bookshelves between them. The air here tasted of old paper and rust, and the light that filtered through the glass ceiling above was the color of weak tea. Wei Chenxing had bound his hand with a strip torn from his inner robe, but the wound still throbbed in time with his heartbeat.
Yan Lihua had not spoken since the crystals receded.
He sat with his back against a pillar carved with weeping faces, his right shoulder wrapped in bandages that Wei Chenxing had improvised from the same fabric. The prince’s jaw was set, his gaze fixed on some point in the middle distance. The black veins on his neck had faded to a dull gray, but they were still visible, pulsing faintly beneath the skin.
Wei Chenxing broke the silence first.
“You should rest.”
Yan Lihua’s laugh was hollow. “Rest. In this place.” He gestured at the frozen library around them—the books suspended mid-fall, the ink droplets caught in the air like frozen tears, the dust motes that hung motionless in the columns of light. “Where time itself has forgotten how to move.”
“The crystals—”
“Will grow again.” Yan Lihua’s voice was flat. “They always do. Your blood only buys us hours, not days.”
Wei Chenxing’s hand tightened on his bandaged palm. The pain was sharp and clean, a welcome anchor in this sea of unreality. “Then we find the core faster. We break the mirror. We end this.”
“End this.” Yan Lihua turned his head slowly, and his eyes were dark and cold. “You speak as if it were simple. As if shattering an ancient artifact that has held my bloodline captive for three centuries were a matter of will.”
“I never said it was simple.”
“You didn’t have to.” Yan Lihua pushed himself to his feet, wincing as the movement pulled at his wounded shoulder. He walked toward Wei Chenxing with the careful grace of a predator who knew he was wounded but refused to show it. “You wear your certainty like armor, Scholar. It’s why the Emperor sent you. Because you believe so absolutely in the rightness of your cause that you never stop to question whether the cost is worth paying.”
Wei Chenxing stood as well, meeting the prince’s gaze. “The cost is your life. I am not blind to that.”
“No. You’re blind to something far worse.” Yan Lihua stopped an arm’s length away. The crystals on his shoulder caught the light, glinting like broken teeth. “You’re blind to the fact that you’re only here because of guilt.”
The word hung in the air between them.
“Guilt?” Wei Chenxing repeated.
“Don’t pretend you don’t feel it.” Yan Lihua’s voice dropped, rough and raw. “Every time you look at me, I see it in your eyes. That flicker of recognition. That ache you can’t explain. You dream of a woman you’ve never met, you recite poems you’ve never learned, and when you touched my wrist in the Border Gate, you saw something that made you weep.”
Wei Chenxing’s throat tightened. He remembered that moment—the flash of a woman’s face in the mirror, the grief that had flooded through him like a river breaking its banks. He had not told Yan Lihua what he saw. He had not told anyone.
“You don’t know what I saw.”
“I don’t need to know.” Yan Lihua stepped closer, close enough that Wei Chenxing could smell the blood and frost on his skin. “I know what I am to you. I’m a debt. A penance. A chance for you to atone for a sin you committed in a life you don’t remember.”
“That’s not—”
“Isn’t it?” Yan Lihua’s hand shot out and grabbed Wei Chenxing’s wrist, lifting the bandaged palm between them. “You cut yourself open for me. You fed me your blood. You did it without hesitation, without bargaining, without asking what I would give in return. Why?”
Wei Chenxing tried to pull away, but Yan Lihua’s grip was iron. “Because you would have died.”
“And why do you care if I die?”
The question struck like a blade between the ribs.
Wei Chenxing opened his mouth, but no words came. Because the truth was a tangled knot in his chest, and he could not find the end of the thread. He cared because Yan Lihua was the only real thing in this nightmare of frozen time and broken memories. He cared because when the prince’s eyes softened, Wei Chenxing felt something warm kindle in his chest. He cared because he was terrified of losing himself in the echoes of a past he could not remember.
But he could not say any of that.
So he said the only thing that felt true.
“I don’t know.”
Yan Lihua’s grip loosened. His hand fell away, and he took a step back. The anger in his eyes flickered, replaced by something that looked almost like disappointment.
“You don’t know,” he repeated. “You don’t know why you’re here. You don’t know why you dream of a dead woman. You don’t know why my curse responds to your blood. You don’t know anything, Scholar. And yet you walk through this realm as if you have all the answers.”
“I never claimed to have answers.”
“You don’t need to claim them. Your certainty is written on your face every time you look at a riddle and decide you can solve it.” Yan Lihua turned away, his shoulders rigid. “But this is not a riddle. This is my life. My curse. My bloodline’s sin. And you—” His voice cracked. “You are only here because some ghost from a thousand years ago decided to wear your face.”
The words hit harder than Wei Chenxing expected.
He stood in the frozen library, surrounded by books that would never be read, and felt the weight of Yan Lihua’s accusation settle on his shoulders. It was true, wasn’t it? He had come to the Northern Wastes because the Emperor ordered it. He had agreed to be Yan Lihua’s Curse-Breaker because it was the only way to survive. He had cut his palm open because the alternative was watching the prince die.
But beneath all of that, beneath the logic and the survival instinct and the duty, there was something else. Something that had been stirring in his chest since the moment he saw Yan Lihua on that blood-soaked road, standing among the corpses of shadow-beasts with black veins crawling up his neck.
He had felt a pull. A recognition. A sense that he had been here before, in a life he could not remember, with a person he had never met.
And that terrified him more than any curse.
“You’re right,” Wei Chenxing said quietly.
Yan Lihua stopped. He did not turn around.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” Wei Chenxing continued. “I don’t know why I dream of a woman I’ve never met. I don’t know why your curse responds to my blood. I don’t know why I feel like I’ve known you for a thousand years when we only met three weeks ago.” He took a breath. “But I know one thing.”
Yan Lihua turned his head, just enough to show the sharp line of his jaw.
“I am terrified of losing myself in this place,” Wei Chenxing said. “Every time I see a reflection, I expect it to move on its own. Every time I close my eyes, I see memories that are not mine. I am drowning in a past I never lived, and the only thing that keeps me anchored is you.”
The silence stretched between them, thick as honey.
Yan Lihua turned fully. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes were bright, almost feverish. “You’re afraid.”
“Yes.”
“You, the scholar who faced down the Emperor himself. The man who wrote a memorial that broke the sky. You’re afraid.”
“Terrified,” Wei Chenxing repeated. “And I don’t know how to stop being terrified. But I know that when I cut my palm open and fed you my blood, I wasn’t thinking about guilt or past lives or debts. I was thinking about you. About the fact that I did not want you to die.”
Yan Lihua’s breath caught. It was a small sound, barely audible, but in the frozen silence of the library, it rang like a bell.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Yan Lihua whispered.
“I know exactly what I’m saying.” Wei Chenxing stepped forward, closing the distance between them. “I am saying that I do not know who I was in a past life. I do not know if I loved you or betrayed you or died for you. But I know who I am now. I am Wei Chenxing, a disgraced scholar who would rather die than watch you turn to crystal. And I am choosing to stay.”
Yan Lihua’s hand rose, trembling, and touched Wei Chenxing’s cheek. His fingers were cold, colder than they should have been, and the black veins on his wrist pulsed beneath the skin.
“You are a fool,” Yan Lihua said, but his voice was soft.
“I have been called worse.”
“You will regret this.”
“Probably.”
“I am cursed. I am dying. I am the echo of a man who betrayed you in a life you cannot remember.”
Wei Chenxing reached up and covered Yan Lihua’s hand with his own. The bandaged palm pressed against the prince’s cold fingers, and he felt the resonance between them—a thrum of energy that hummed beneath his skin.
“Then let me remember,” Wei Chenxing said. “Let me face whatever past is waiting for us. But do not push me away because you think you are protecting me. I am not a child. I am not a ghost. I am here, in this moment, with you. And I am not leaving.”
Yan Lihua’s eyes glistened. He did not cry—princes did not cry, especially not cursed princes in the heart of a frozen nightmare—but something in his expression cracked, just a little.
“You are impossible,” he said.
“I have been told that too.”
Yan Lihua laughed. It was a broken sound, rough and raw, but it was real. He pulled his hand away from Wei Chenxing’s cheek and stepped back, composing himself with the practiced ease of a man who had spent his entire life hiding his emotions.
“We should move,” he said, his voice steadier now. “The crystals will grow again. We need to find the core before they reach my heart.”
Wei Chenxing nodded. He turned toward the exit of the library, but Yan Lihua’s voice stopped him.
“Scholar.”
He looked back.
Yan Lihua stood in the pale light, his bandaged shoulder gleaming, his dark eyes fixed on Wei Chenxing with an intensity that made his breath catch.
“Thank you,” the prince said. “For staying.”
Wei Chenxing smiled. It was a small thing, fragile as glass, but it was real.
“I never left,” he said.
They walked out of the frozen library together, side by side, and behind them, the books remained suspended in their endless fall, waiting for a reader who would never come.