Chapter Text
The girl on the pallet was far too young to be enduring something like this.
Even through the distortion of pain, even with sweat plastering her hair to her cheeks and her body drawn tight with effort, there was no disguising the softness of her youth. Her wrists were narrow beneath his fingers, her shoulders slight, her face still carrying the roundness of someone who had not yet finished growing into herself.
When the contraction tightened through her abdomen, her entire frame seemed to brace in confusion, as though her body had been asked to perform a task it had never been properly prepared for.
She could not have been more than fourteen.
Fourteen, and trembling.
Her fingers were twisted into the front of Xie Lian’s robe with such urgency that the silk had torn beneath her grip. She pressed her forehead against his shoulder as the pain gathered again, breath hitching, small animal sounds escaping her before she could smother them.
“It hurts,” she whispered, the words scraping thinly from her throat.
Xie Lian shifted closer without hesitation, sliding one knee onto the pallet so that she would feel the steadiness of him braced beside her. His palm settled at the back of her head, fingers spreading gently through damp strands of hair- she leaned into him at once, instinct guiding her more than thought.
“I know,” he murmured. “Breathe slowly with me, Suyin. Just keep breathing”
She tried.
She truly tried. Her chest lifted in uneven attempts to follow his rhythm, but when the wave crested it stole whatever composure she had managed to gather. Her back arched, fingers tightening convulsively in his robes, a small, strangled cry escaping before she could swallow it down.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped immediately, as though the noise itself required punishment. “I didn’t mean to- I didn’t mean to be loud-”
His hand came up to her cheek at once, thumb brushing the damp skin there until she looked at him.
“No, don't apologise,” he told her gently. “You’re allowed to cry.”
The words struck something fragile in her and her lower lip trembled before she bit it down again, the habit so familiar it pained him to witness.
weeks ago, when he had first found her, that same mouth had been bloodied where she had bitten herself to keep from sobbing.
He remembered the rain first.
It had been relentless that night, driving most of the villagers indoors long before dusk. He and Hua Cheng had been returning from some odd job Xie Lian could barely remember now when they had heard the shudder of something overturned in the back of one of the storage sheds near the orchard. It might have been nothing- a cat seeking shelter or the wind dislodging a crate.
Instead, when he pushed the warped wooden door open, they found her crouched behind stacked sacks of grain, soaked through to the skin, mud streaked along her calves, arms wrapped protectively around the swell of her stomach.
She had been tiny.
Tiny everywhere except there- where she was big enough that nothing could be done.
Her eyes had flashed white in the dark when the lantern light touched her face. She had bared her teeth and spat at them like something cornered.
“Stay back,” she had hissed, voice hoarse from cold and fear. “Don’t come any closer.”
Her sleeves had fallen back as she shifted, revealing bruises blooming along her forearms in mottled purples and yellows. Her collarbone had jutted sharply beneath her wet tunic. Rainwater had pooled beneath her knees where she crouched, but she had not moved to warm herself.
It had taken hours- so long that Xie Lian had had to send Hua Cheng away to check on the twins and Banyue while he waited.
Hours of sitting just inside the doorway so she could see him clearly. Hours of speaking softly about nothing at all, about tea and dry blankets and the stubbornness of orchard soil in early spring. Hours of waiting while she watched for the trick, the moment he would lunge.
When she finally allowed him to step closer, she had not wept or thanked him. She had only sagged, exhaustion overtaking the last of her fury, and leaned forward until her forehead pressed against his chest as though she had run out of strength to remain upright.
He had felt it then.
The fierce, aching swell of something that had no proper name except protect.
Now, weeks later, that same girl clung to him on the pallet, shaking as another contraction built beneath her ribs.
“I don’t want to die,” she said suddenly, the words breaking from her with startling clarity. “Xie-ge, I don’t want to die.”
Her voice was thinner than it had been that first night in the shed. The defiance had long since worn down, replaced by a trust so fragile it felt like ice in his hands.
He lowered his forehead gently to hers, mindful to keep track of her breathing.
“You are not going to die, Suyin,” he told her, and the certainty in his tone came from the sheer refusal to let the world take this child from him.
At the foot of the pallet, Yanlin worked with steady precision, sleeves rolled high along his forearms, gaze focused and unflinching.
Another wave struck.
Suyin cried out openly this time, fingers clawing tighter into Xie Lian’s robe, her entire body bowing forward as she braced against it. Her face crumpled with effort, lashes clumped with tears.
She looked impossibly young like this.
Only a year older than Banyue was now- stubborn and sharp and still growing into the woman she'd become.
The thought landed heavily in his chest as he felt the tremor running through the girl in his arms.
This was still a child.
A child forced into a trial that should have been years away, if ever.
“Xie-ge,” she whispered once the contraction eased, her breath shallow and shaking. “I’m scared-”
His hand moved slowly down her spine in a grounding stroke, feeling each fragile vertebra beneath his palm.
“I’m here,” he answered.
Outside, the wind brushed against the shutters and rattled them faintly. The lantern light flickered along the walls, casting shifting shadows over the woven mats. Yanlin shifted position at the end of the pallet, his brow tightening almost imperceptibly as he assessed what he felt beneath his hands.
“Daozhang…” he said quietly.
The shift came quietly, almost imperceptibly, but Xie Lian felt it in his gut far before he noticed the shift in his expression- Yanlin’s fingers, which had been working with steady confidence, paused for a fraction too long, and though he resumed at once, the air in the room had already tightened.
Suyin noticed immediately.
She did not know what had changed, but she knew in her bones what danger felt like. Her fingers tightened reflexively in the front of Xie Lian’s robe, and her gaze darted from his face to Yanlin’s and back again, searching for the reassurance that moments before seemed solid.
“Why did we stop?” she asked, her voice thin and unsteady.
Xie Lian’s hand smoothed over her hair in a continuous, grounding stroke, his touch as calm as it had been all night.
“We haven't stopped,” he said gently. “You are doing exactly as you should.”
Another contraction gathered low in her body, deeper than the last. She flinched before it had even fully formed, as though bracing for a blow. Her breath began to stutter.
Yanlin shifted position, more deliberate now, one hand pressing carefully where he had not needed to press before. His brow tightened despite himself, and he inhaled slowly through his nose before speaking.
“The child is turned,” he said quietly to Xie Lian, his voice pitched low but strained around the edges.
Suyin heard it anyway.
“Turned?” she repeated faintly, her confusion immediate and sharp. “What do you mean turned? What does that mean- what’s happening-?”
Xie Lian did not allow his expression to change, though he felt the weight of Yanlin’s words settle heavily in his chest.
“It means we need to be careful,” he said, and kept his voice level, warm and unhurried. “Suyin, you need to listen closely now.”
The contraction struck fully then, and she cried out, the sound high and frightened rather than merely pained. Her entire body bowed forward, fingers slipping on the silk of his robe before tightening again as though she feared he might vanish if she lost her grip.
“It hurts.” she sobbed, breath breaking apart. “It feels wrong- something is wrong-”
Her body knew before her mind could form the thought. The pressure was different. The strain lower and sharper, pulling in directions she did not understand.
Behind her, Yanlin’s composure thinned. He adjusted again, more urgently, his voice now edged with a concentration that she had never heard from him before.
“I-I think we need to guide it,” he said to Xie Lian.
She heard that too.
Guide.
The word twisted in her stomach.
“No,” she whispered, shaking her head even as another wave began to build. “No, no, no- I can’t-”
Her breathing had dissolved into short, frantic pulls of air. She tried to curl away from the sensation inside her, but her body would not obey her. It bore down whether she wished it or not, forcing her to participate in something she had never agreed to.
“It’s going to kill me,” she gasped, the words tumbling out with desperate certainty. “It’s going to kill me, I knew it would, I knew-”
Xie Lian caught her face in both hands, firm enough that she could not turn away.
“Look at me,” he said quietly.
Her eyes were wild now, unfocused with fear and pain, tears spilling unchecked down her temples.
“I’m here,” he continued, steady as stone. “You stay with me.”
At the foot of the pallet, Yanlin spoke again, more urgently this time.
“Daozhang, I need you here-”
There was no time to hesitate.
Xie Lian felt her grip tighten violently as he began to shift away from her side. The moment his weight lifted from the pallet, she sensed the change and her panic flared fully.
“Don’t go,” she cried, reaching for him blindly as another contraction seized her. “Please don’t leave me- please-”
He caught her hand before it could claw at empty air.
“I am not leaving you,” he said, and even as he moved, he kept hold of her fingers for as long as he physically could before repositioning beside Yanlin.
From where he now knelt, Xie Lian could see it clearly in the lamplight.
Two small feet had emerged first, slick and fragile, toes curling weakly against the air. They looked impossibly delicate, attached to a body that was not yet free. The sight sent a cold weight through Xie Lian’s chest, though his hands remained steady as he moved into position.
Yanlin shifted beside him without question, his expression tight but composed, adjusting the clothes beneath the girl’s hips and bracing where needed.
He watched Xie Lian’s hands and followed.
Above them, Suyin tried to lift her head to see what was happening, but another contraction dragged her back down into the pallet. She screamed, the sound cracking into sobs halfway through.
“What is it?” she cried, her voice raw with confusion. “Why does it feel wrong? Why won’t it stop?”
Her body bore down again despite her protests, muscles straining around something that resisted the path it was meant to take.
Xie Lian placed one hand carefully around the emerging legs, supporting their weight without pulling. His other hand hovered, assessing, feeling for how the child lay within her. He could sense the misalignment beneath his fingertips, the way the small body was angled in a manner that would not pass easily.
“You need to push when the next wave comes,” he said evenly, projecting calm as though nothing were amiss. “Keep breathing.”
She shook her head violently, tears streaking sideways into her hair.
“I don’t want it,” she sobbed, her words breaking apart. “I don’t want it, I don’t want-”
Another contraction seized her before she could finish. Her back arched off the pallet. Her fingers scrabbled blindly for him and found only air before clutching at the bedding instead.
Blood spilled more heavily then.
It came in a sudden rush, dark and thick, soaking into the bedcloths beneath her. Yanlin’s breath caught despite himself as he moved swiftly to contain it, pressing fresh linen beneath her and meeting Xie Lian’s eyes with unmistakable urgency.
Suyin felt it- she felt the warmth between her thighs and the slickness spreading too quickly beneath her.
Her face drained of what little colour remained.
“I’m bleeding,” she choked. “I’m bleeding-”
“You’re still with us,” Xie Lian said firmly, not allowing his tone to waver. He shifted closer, one knee braced hard against the pallet as he assessed the child’s position more fully.
The legs had emerged to the hips, but the body had stalled. The shoulders had caught.
He inhaled once, slow and deliberate, then slid his free hand carefully inside, fingers gentle but precise as he sought to adjust the angle. He felt the small curve of the child’s spine, the delicate resistance of bone and muscle pressed wrong against the narrow passage.
Behind him, Suyin cried out in horror as she felt the intrusion.
“No,” she sobbed, thrashing weakly. “No, don’t- please don’t-”
Yanlin moved at once to steady her, his hands firm at her hips and thighs.
“Stay with us,” he urged, his voice strained but steady. “Don’t twist away, Suyin. It needs to come out-”
Her body trembled violently beneath their hold. She tried to curl away from the sensation, but another contraction bore down before she could escape it, forcing her to participate in the very act she despised.
“It’s killing me,” she screamed, utterly convinced now. “It’s tearing me open-”
Xie Lian did not withdraw his hand.
He adjusted carefully, guiding one shoulder free with the smallest controlled rotation, his movements exact and reverent, refusing to rush and put her at risk despite the blood that continued to flow too freely around his wrists.
He could feel her strength thinning beneath the strain. Her breath came ragged and uneven, bordering on hysteria.
“I’m going to die,” she sobbed, the words dissolving into a broken wail. “Xie-ge, I’m going to die-”
“You are not,” he said, and there was steel beneath the softness now. “Suyin, I won't let you die.”
The next contraction struck with brutal force.
She screamed as though something were being ripped from her, her entire body bowing forward, muscles straining past their limit. Blood slicked his hands. Yanlin pressed hard at her abdomen to assist, sweat gathering along his temples as he followed Xie Lian’s movements without question.
The child slipped free into Xie Lian’s hands in a rush of warmth and blood, impossibly small and slick against his palms. For one suspended breath the room held still around them, as though the world itself had paused to listen.
Then a thin, wavering cry tore into the air.
Xie Lian saw the way Suyin flinched.
He was already moving.
With the same precision he had used to guide the shoulders free, he cleared the airway in one swift motion and placed the newborn into the waiting cloth Yanlin held open beside him. There was no time to linger- no reverent pause to turn the child toward its mother as they snipped the cord tying them together.
Yanlin did not hesitate either. His eyes met Xie Lian’s only long enough to confirm what they had already agreed upon weeks ago. Then he wrapped the infant securely, pressing the precious life close enough to muffle the sharpness of its cries just a little.
The sound dimmed but Suyin flinched anyway.
“I don’t want it,” she murmured hoarsely, her voice barely coherent through exhaustion and shock. “Please… take it away.”
“It’s gone,” Xie Lian answered at once.
Yanlin was already moving toward the door, steps swift but controlled, his figure slipping into the corridor without ceremony. He would not return.
The arrangements had long been made; Hua Cheng had already found a young couple far from the village, far from any whisper of this night- people who had prayed and prayed for a child and been denied one by fate until now.
The door slid shut and Xie Lian breathed deeply, trusting that the child would be safe with his husband.
Silence settled heavily in the room but stillness did not follow.
The bleeding had not stopped.
It flowed too freely still, soaking into the layers of cloth beneath Suyin’s hips, staining the woven mat beneath the pallet. Her skin had taken on a frightening pallor, lips paling as her breath thinned into something uneven and distant.
“Xie-ge, I’m cold,” she whispered, though sweat still clung to her hairline.
Xie Lian returned to her at once, kneeling close enough that his thigh pressed firmly against hers. He gathered her into his arms before she could drift further, one hand braced against her abdomen, the other cradling the back of her head against his shoulder.
Borrowed power stirred at his core.
It came warm and steady, familiar as breath, a thread of warm spiritual energy that Hua Cheng had pressed into him just this morning- without condition and without limit. Xie Lian let it flow carefully now; It seeped through his palm into her trembling body, knitting what had torn, urging vessels to constrict, coaxing her blood to remember its place.
Her breath hitched sharply at the sensation.
She did not understand it- all she knew was that the tearing pain began to dull, that the warmth flooding her abdomen shifted from terror to something gentler, something holding her together from the inside out.
She clutched at his robe weakly, fingers trembling.
“Am I-” she tried, but the words dissolved into a broken sob.
“You’re still here,” he said softly, rocking her without thinking, the motion instinctive. “You’re still here, Suyin. You’re still with me.”
The bleeding slowed enough that her pulse steadied beneath his thumb- enough that the ashen cast of her skin began to soften by degrees.
Her body, however, did not calm so easily. Once the immediate danger receded, the shock took its place and she began to shake from the sheer aftermath of everything she’s been forced to be brave through.
“I thought it was going to kill me,” she whispered, the words tumbling out between shallow breaths. “I thought it would split me open and I would just… disappear.”
He tightened his hold around her, one hand smoothing slowly down her back in a continuous, grounding stroke.
“It did not,” he said. “And you did not.”
Her fingers crept higher into his robe, clutching now with the blind desperation of someone who had been too close to falling.
He could feel how fragile she was in his arms. The bones beneath her skin too sharp. The tremor that would not fully leave her limbs. It struck him again, with a weight that refused to lessen, how wrong it was that someone so small had been made to endure something so violent.
A frightened child, forced into a trial no child should know.
He shifted slightly and drew her more fully into his chest, cradling her with the same care he used when the twins fought, or when Banyue’s stubborn bravery cracked under hurt she would not name. His palm traced slow circles along her spine as he let her cry without interruption.
“I hate it,” she murmured again, though the hysteria had softened into something smaller now. “I hate that it was inside me.”
Her voice carried no malice toward the child, only toward the memory of what had been done to her.
“You will never have to endure this again,” Xie Lian promised quietly.
She shuddered against him.
“You’re safe now,” he continued. “You don't ever have to see it. You can rest- You can stay with us, and I’ll teach you to read just like I promised. You can sit beneath the orchard trees and do nothing at all if that’s what you want. No one will decide your body for you ever again, Suyin. I promise.”
Her breathing began to slow as he pressed gentle promises against her sweat soaked brows.
He rocked her gently, back and forth, back and forth, until the violent tremor in her limbs lessened into small aftershocks. Her fingers remained tangled in his robe, but the grip eased from panic into need.
“I’m tired,” she whispered faintly.
“I know.”
For a fragile moment, it seemed the worst had passed.
Then something stirred around them.
It began as a subtle shift in the air, a vibration beneath the skin that had nothing to do with the room or the bleeding or the child already gone. The borrowed spiritual energy within him reacted first, flaring softly as though in recognition of something far greater calling to it.
Suyin felt it immediately.
Her body stiffened in his arms.
“What is that?” she asked, sudden panic flashing through her exhaustion. “Why does it feel- why does it feel like that?”
The air grew lighter, charged, the space around them thinning in a way that had nothing to do with mortal breath.
Xie Lian closed his eyes briefly, he knew what was happening with frighting clarity- had felt this exact sensation twice before.
No.
Not now.
Not while she's shaking in my arms.
He lowered his head close to her ear, speaking quickly but without panic.
“I’ll come back,” he said softly.
Her entire body went rigid.
“Come back from where?” she demanded, hysteria sharpening her voice. “What’s happening?”
The pull strengthened without mercy.
It was not a suggestion and it was not a request; it was a command that reached into the marrow of him and seized with undeniable summons.
He felt the moment his feet left the ground.
Suyin screamed.
Her hands tore at his robe, clinging with all the strength her fragile aching body had left. For a heartbeat she rose with him, dragged partially from the pallet by sheer refusal to let go. Her fingers slipped on silk slick with blood and sweat.
“Don’t leave me,” she sobbed, her voice raw with terror. “Please, please don’t go-”
He caught her wrists gently but firmly, forcing her hands to loosen before the pull could injure her.
“I’m coming back,” he said again, and there was no doubt in it, only urgency. “You’re safe- just stay with your Hua-ge-”
As though summoned, the door burst inward and wood splintered against the wall as Hua Cheng crossed the threshold- a look of sharp, stricken disbelief painting his features as the sight before him resolved.
The broken lanterns, the blood-soaked pallet, the trembling girl reaching upward- and at the centre of it all- Xie Lian suspended in gathering light.
For the smallest fraction of a moment, Hua Cheng did not move, for all he could do was look.
“Gege…” The words left him softer than they had ever been, threaded with something dangerously close to fear.
Their eyes met.
Hua Cheng did not reach for him immediately. He understood too well what it meant when the heavens called like this. He understood what it had cost before.
Xie Lian saw it at once- the calculation behind Hua Cheng’s stillness, the unspoken question.
Will you be okay?
He smiled, even as the light climbed higher along his body.
“I will,” he said, and the certainty in it was not empty bravado, he meant it. “I promise.”
The force tightened again, lifting him further from the floor.
“San Lang,” he continued, his voice carrying clearly despite the strain in the air. “Make sure the children aren’t afraid.”
Hua Cheng’s jaw tightened, not in anger, but in effort to remain steady.
“They won’t be,” he answered immediately. “I’ll tell them you’re coming back.”
The light flared, brilliant and unforgiving.
Suyin sobbed openly beneath them, reaching upward though her strength had nearly fled.
Hua Cheng stepped forward then, one hand rising as if he might anchor him through touch alone.
“Come back quickly,” he said, and for once there was no teasing lilt beneath the words, only naked hope.
“I will,” Xie Lian repeated.
The air split.
With a thunderous crack that rattled the walls and sent dust falling from the rafters, the light collapsed inward and vanished.
Hua Cheng stood for the briefest heartbeat, hand still half-raised, as though the space before him might reverse itself if he waited long enough.
On the pallet, Suyin made a broken sound and folded forward, her fingers still curved in the shape of fabric that no longer existed. The shock that had held her upright finally gave way and her body trembled violently, too weak to sit and too frightened to lie back.
“Xie-ge,” she sobbed, the name dissolving into something small and lost.
Hua Cheng moved at once- he had promised to look after the children- and in this room that was her.
He crossed the space in two steps and dropped to his knees beside the pallet, the splintered door forgotten behind him. One arm slid firmly around her shoulders before she could tip forward completely, gathering her up against his chest with steady, controlled strength.
She did not resist him- she did not even seem to register who had caught her- she simply clutched at the nearest solid thing, her hands tangling into the front of his robe as though she feared the air itself might steal him too.
“He left,” she cried, her voice ragged and hoarse. “He left me-”
“He didn’t leave you,” Hua Cheng said quietly.
He adjusted his grip so that she was properly supported, one hand braced at the back of her head, the other firm across her shoulders in a hold that did not waver. Her trembling carried through him, thin and relentless, like the aftershocks of a quake.
He tilted his chin upward once, just once, his gaze lifting to the empty space where the light had consumed Xie Lian.
The air there still felt wrong; stretched thin and echoing with divinity.
His expression tightened as a silent calculation passed behind his eye. He knew what ascension meant to his beloved- he knew what it took.
He exhaled slowly and lowered his gaze again, returning his full attention to the child shaking in his arms.
“He promised to come back,” he said, and there was no tremor in his voice. “Your Xie-ge does not break his promises easily.”
Suyin shook her head weakly, tears soaking into the front of his robe.
“It felt like he was being pulled away,” she whispered. “L-like something took him.”
Hua Cheng’s hand moved slowly down her back, steady and rhythmic, mirroring the same grounding motion Xie Lian had used moments before.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “Something did.”
Her fingers tightened reflexively.
“Will it keep him?” she asked, her voice small and fragile again.
His gaze lifted briefly toward the ceiling, toward the heavens that had dared to claim him.
“No,” he said, and there was a depth in the word that carried centuries of certainty. “It will not.”
She continued to cry, exhaustion and shock draining what little strength she had left. He adjusted her carefully, drawing her more securely against him so that her weight was fully supported, mindful of the blood-soaked linens beneath her and the fragility still lingering in her body.
The room smelled of childbirth and iron and the faint trace of divine light.
Outside, the orchard leaves rustled faintly in the night breeze as though nothing had changed.
Hua Cheng kept one arm around her and looked up once more at the place where Xie Lian had vanished, his expression unreadable but intent, as if memorising the exact shape of the absence.
Then, he lowered his head again and held the trembling child in his arms until her sobs began, slowly, to quiet.
“He’ll come back soon,” he said softly, more to the room than to her.
And above them, the heavens had claimed a god who had never asked to be taken.