The mist hung low in the valley, curling like serpents between the jagged peaks. A faint glimmer of moonlight struggled to break through, casting pale streaks across the wet ground. Lian Jun sat cross-legged on the crumbling stone bridge, toying with the 昏暗的knife in his hands. The blade was dull, its edge pockmarked with tiny chips that caught the light like tired stars. It was not a weapon for a hero, not anymore.

“I told him I’d return by the first frost,” he muttered, the words leaping unbidden from his mind to his lips. Each syllable echoed through the empty air, bouncing off the cliffs and fading into silence. It wasn’t that he was speaking to himself—Lian Jun’s thoughts always felt louder than the world around him anyway, like waves crashing ceaselessly inside his skull.

“You always tell people things you don’t mean,” said a woman’s voice behind him, sharp as the metallic tang of blood. Lian Jun did not flinch, though he knew who it was.

“Lin Yueying,” he said softly, as if testing the name on his tongue. “Still following me, I see.”

Yueying’s shadow stretched long and jagged, a blot against the moonlight. She stepped closer, her boots crunching the gravel beneath. Her outline wavered in the mist, as though she were something ethereal and not flesh at all. “You’re running out of people to lie to, you know,” she said flatly. “Your actions pursue you like wolves. And wolves do not let go once they taste blood.”

Lian Jun turned the knife in his hands. There was a glint on the blade—a tiny smear of rust or blood; it was hard to tell in the light. He wondered if it even mattered. His thumb traced the edge, and his thoughts unraveled, each one snagging on the last like tangled threads.

“You came here to fight, didn’t you?” Yueying’s voice was low, steady. She was always steady, always immovable. He used to pride himself on being the wind to her stone, but tonight, the weariness in her tone made her stone feel more like iron: unyielding and cold.

“I came here,” Lian Jun said, his tone distant, “to finish what I started.” The words surprised him even as they escaped his lips. What had he started? A feud? A promise? His mind flickered back to faces—clear for a moment, then lost in shadow. A young boy clutching his wrist, his mouth smeared with rice. An old man with a beard like wispy clouds, whispering riddles over tea. Chlorine-green eyes, staring back at him through the dim light of a brothel window. His life flicked across his mind like staccato flashes of lightning.

“You don’t even know what ‘finish’ means,” Yueying snapped. The disdain in her voice flared, a sudden spark in the haze. “Your knife is blunt, Jun. Just like your truths. What exactly are you chasing?”

He exhaled. She was always right. The knife in his hand suddenly felt heavier, but it wasn’t the knife at all, of course—it was the weight of everything bound to it. He looked at her, her silhouette now clearer under the breaking moon. Her face, barely visible, carved of sharp lines softened only by the hint of grief she no longer bothered to hide.

“You should go,” he said. And for the first time all night, he meant it.

“I can’t,” Yueying replied, the faintest quiver in her voice. “Causality isn’t done playing with either of us. We broke too many pieces of the same mirror, Jun. Don’t you remember?”

He remembered. He didn’t want to.

Somewhere in the distance, the night unveiled itself in fragments: the cry of a lone wolf, the rippling of water against stone, the thin whistle of the wind winding between the peaks. He rose, his knees stiff, the 昏暗的knife dangling from his fingers like a limb he was ready to sever.

“I never did believe in mirrors,” he murmured, almost to himself.

Yueying stepped closer, her breath soft against his neck. “And yet,” she whispered, “the shards always find their way back to us. Every action a cut. Every lie a shard. You thought you could escape the glass, but you—you don’t run from yourself, Jun. Not even in the Wulin.”

He tilted his head back, eyes tracing the stars as though searching for something lost.

And then, without another word, he let the knife slip from his fingers. It fell soundlessly, swallowed by the dark waters below. Yueying said nothing as she watched it go, her face unreadable. The air between them was heavy, thick with moments unsaid and scars unseen, but the silence was enough.

In the end, it always was.