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Chapter Text

Lan Wangji is greeted at the foot of the mountain by two lady dolls. They sway in the wind, paper-light, with bright red circles on their cheeks and painted-on smiles. One of them approaches him in an odd, floating gait and points at his guqin. Then, she makes an odd rattling noise that shakes her head like a bobblehead toy.

Confused, Lan Wangji stares at her, before she points at the guqin again. He unslings it from his back but then hesitates when she places her paper arms out.

The paper arms form a flat surface, like a table. Lan Wangji realizes with a pang of discomfort that she intends to take his instrument away.

“No,” he says. It comes out sounding a little hesitant, so he clears his throat and tries again, more firmly. “No, I’d like to keep this, please.”

The doll bobbles again, this time a little more insistently.

“This is mine,” Lan Wangji tries to explain to it. To her? He’s not sure that he’s ever seen a creature like this before.

In certain cities, paper effigies in the form of human women are often constructed to follow their masters into the next life. They are burned in a funeral pyre, and the richer households sometimes even designate certain ones to be handmaidens, wagon drivers, kitchen maids, or other useful servants. This one has a youthful appearance and a thin smile, but no other distinguishing features, so Lan Wangji has no way of telling where she was made.

The doll moves toward him, and the painted smile, the smiling eyes, and the strange gait combine to make Lan Wangji just uncomfortable enough to move back.

He doesn’t want to find it intimidating. It’s just one of Wei Ying’s creations, he tells himself.

Then the doll’s mouth stretches open into a gaping black hole, and it screeches. An awful sound comes out from the hollow interior of the doll, loud enough to ring throughout the entire mountain.

Lan Wangji flinches back from the shrill, high-pitched sound.

Instantly, black tendrils bloom from the cracked earth like twisted vines. They cover the foot of the mountain with writhing shadows that seem to reach up all the way from the barrier stones to the sky. The sky darkens, and for a moment, Lan Wangji sees the illusion flicker, revealing mountains of bones and ash.

A cold chill rips through him as the doll reaches out for him again. This time, its paper arms have sharpened into folded talons at the ends.

In the next instant, however, Wei Wuxian suddenly appears out of nowhere, barreling into sight past the screen of shadows.

“Sorry!” he yelps, waving his arms until the shadows dissipate like smoke. The scenery flickers again, returning to a normal, barren street and some withered, wintry trees. “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t expect that to be so loud.”

The doll is still screaming, her jaw dropping inhumanly low. Her eyes have become pools of black ink, hollow and endless.

Wei Wuxian pats the doll gently on her shoulder. Instantly, the screaming stops. Slowly, her mouth closes shut. She seems to go lifeless somehow. The pale white of her face loses some of its lively sheen, and the red spots on her face go a little more flat.

Wei Wuxian, dressed in his dark red-and-black robes, doesn’t look anything like the newly minted Emperor of the cultivation realm. Instead, with that guilty look in his eyes and the panicked smile he is sending Lan Wangji’s way, he looks every bit a schoolboy caught red-handed doing something he shouldn’t be.

Lan Wangji stares at him, suddenly feeling disoriented and off-kilter. He had spent much of the last week’s journey wondering if he had accidentally fallen asleep and woken up in some kind of alternate dimension. Nothing makes sense, not the war, the demands, the summons, anything. He doesn’t know why Wei Wuxian would suddenly declare himself to be Emperor like this. He can’t understand why Jiang Cheng, of all people, would be calling for Wei Wuxian’s head. He had half-wondered if Wei Wuxian had been imprisoned, somehow, and if there was someone else sending out correspondences in his name. Otherwise, why would he be here?

But at the same time, seeing Wei Wuxian alive like this, he is so relieved that he doesn’t know what to think.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says, more than a little stunned. “What are you doing here?”

“Why, receiving guests, of course!” Wei Wuxian pats the doll again in a slightly reassuring gesture. He smiles wanly at Lan Wangji. “I haven’t forgotten all of my manners, you know.”

As he speaks, the painted lady hunches down a little more. She folds her paper hands neatly in front of her and goes utterly still.

“Something you brought must have triggered an alarm,” Wei Wuxian says, still patting the doll a little awkwardly. “It must have been - ah! It’s your guqin, Lan Zhan. I’m sorry I didn’t mention it earlier. Weapons are prohibited here.”

Lan Wangji clutches the strap of his guqin. “This isn’t a weapon,” he says.

A flash of pain crosses Wei Wuxian’s expression. Lan Wangji knows it’s a lie as soon as the words fall out of his mouth. It is a weapon, especially in his hands. But why take it from him? Lan Wangji has never once turned this weapon on Wei Wuxian, not with malicious intent.

“It’s just for music,” he says.

“No music,” Wei Wuxian says with a tone of finality. He smiles apologetically at Lan Wangji. “I’m sorry.”

Lan Wangji stares at him, at a loss for words.

For the first time since coming here, he is keenly aware of his status as a prisoner and not a guest. On the deserted path up to the foot of the mountain, he had been able to pretend. Maybe this was all just one of Wei Wuxian’s games. Maybe he was just lonely, and this was his way of getting social calls. But now, facing him directly, it’s clear that reality is far more cruel.

“This is no different from what Wen Ruohan did,” he finally says, his voice flat.

It’s the wrong thing to say.

Wei Wuxian rarely gets angry. In fact, Wei Wuxian almost never gets angry. Lan Wangji has only seen it a few times before, during the war. Back then, it took genocide and the death of nearly everyone he loved. Now, it only seems to take a couple of words.

“So you think I’m the same as him?”

Lan Wangji watches Wei Wuxian go as cold as a corpse. His heart aches as if he had been stabbed.

He has been angry at Wei Wuxian before. He has even hated Wei Wuxian before, before he knew what he was really feeling. But whenever Lan Wangji gets mad, he is only ever met with a smile and a joke. Why is it that, when their positions are reversed, he can’t think of anything to say?

Wei Wuxian looks away from him. His whole demeanor has changed. Just like one of those dolls, he has become pale and lifeless and distant.

“I suppose you aren’t wrong,” Wei Wuxian says. “From your point of view, we’re all tyrants, aren’t we?”

Lan Wangji swallows. He wants to deny it, but the facts are clearly laid out: Both Wei Wuxian and Wen Ruohan had sought control over the cultivation world. Both of them had committed war crimes in order to achieve their goals. Both of them even had seats of power in some of the most protected fortresses in the world.

“I don’t want you to end up like him,” Lan Wangji says helplessly. He has watched Wei Wuxian take one step after another down this dark path, and he has never been able to say the right thing. Somewhere along the way, he had lost the ability to change anything about Wei Wuxian’s behavior. Somewhere along the way, he suspects, he had just given up. He had just stood by, silent, and stopped thinking of the right things to say. It’s too late for him to start now.

So instead he silently offers up his guqin in a formal surrender.

He had once traveled on the road for a month with nothing more than the clothes on his back and this instrument in his hands, asking every ghost he came across for Wei Wuxian’s whereabouts. It hadn’t helped him much back then, and it probably wouldn’t help him now. Still, it feels wrong to be giving it away.

Wei Wuxian reaches out for him but hesitates halfway.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I know you didn’t mean it like that.”

His fingers land on the guqin instead and settle against the polished wood as if he can’t decide to take it or push it away.

“It won’t be for long,” he says reluctantly. “Just until - until the world stops going mad. Once it’s safe.”

Lan Wangji knows that Wei Wuxian is being unrealistic.

The rest of the cultivation world will never forgive anyone from the Wen clan, not now, and not ever. Like bodies after a battle, their sins piled up one after another until the whole battlefield was cursed. First, they had backed Wen Ruohan into one of the worst tyrants the world had ever seen. Then, the capture of Wen Qing triggered one of the worst massacres the Nightless City had ever seen.

“When do you think that will happen?” Lan Wangji asks gently.

Wei Wuxian plucks idly at a string. For the first time since coming here, Lan Wangji notices the scars on his hands. There are burns on his palms, ridged and darker than the skin around it. His breath catches in his throat.

Wei Wuxian has been using an iron amulet, probably around the size of his palm, so often that the backlash has started to harm his body. Clearly, there is no price Wei Wuxian would not pay for this fragile peace.

“When the sun falls out of the sky, I guess,” he says with a bitter smile. “Or when I kill the whole world. Whichever comes first.”

Chapter Text

Lan Wangji had been to the burial mounds thrice before, in his lifetime. Once, after Wei Wuxian had disappeared for the first time, at the start of Wen Ruohan’s war. Once, during the planning phase of the Sunshot Campaign. And once, afterwards, when a night hunt had brought him close by.

Each time had been a little more different than the last. Looking back on it now, it’s easy to see how things had gotten worse and worse over time. It’s difficult not to blame himself for not noticing it earlier.

Wei Wuxian had once tried so hard to escape this place, and now he chose to stay here willingly. Lan Wangji can think of no explanation for this.

There are a lot of things he can’t explain: why Wei Wuxian refuses to allow musical instruments in the Yiling grounds. Why, as far as he can tell, he and Wei Wuxian are the only living creatures here. Why there are so many paper dolls around, drifting from place to place, seemingly animated by some independent force when not under Wei Wuxian’s direction.

Lan Wangji can do whatever he likes here, with the exception of several things. He cannot try to leave - there is a perimeter set up around the mountain that functions much like a barrier. He cannot hurt or try to hurt any of the paper dolls. At night, several areas of the village become closed off and inaccessible - any movement past sundown triggers an alarm.

But other than that, Wei Wuxian seems perfectly content to let him roam free.

Wei Wuxian is, without a doubt, one of the worst captors in the history of captors. Lan Wangji cannot say that he is surprised. If he had been here as an assassin, Wei Wuxian would be dead ten times over.

Fortunately, he is not here as an assassin.

Instead, in a rather ironic turn of events, Lan Wangji becomes a rule-breaker, in as many ways as he possibly can.

The first thing he tries is to get his guqin back. It’s one of the most precious things he owns, after all, and there aren’t many places to hide it. The Burial Mounds are made inaccessible by treacherous mountain passes, but the compound built into the mountainside is barely half of a ghost town - smaller than most of the settlements Lan Wangji had seen dotting the Jianghu.

He starts, rather audaciously, in Wei Wuxian’s quarters. Unfortunately, there, he is almost immediately foiled by guards at the door. More paper dolls, larger this time, with patterned armor and gauntlets. Their clothing, folded over their chests and arms and legs, creates a ridged kind of armor. Unlike the delicate paper that makes up most of the dolls, these look made of a thicker material. The folded over points look sharp enough to give Lan Wangji pause.

He has never seen funerary dolls made this way before, so he assumes this is another one of Wei Wuxian’s inventions. Several preliminary tests show that they don’t respond to any verbal or visual stimuli. Any projectiles thrown at them - little pebbles, in Lan Wangji’s case - are quickly snatched out of the air with ridged palms.

So then he tries the roof, which - if he was being honest - he did not expect to work. Wei Wuxian should have known better, but then again, maybe he hadn’t imagined that Lan Wangji would be willing to jump on the roof in order to sneak into his room.

Well, he had been wrong, and after removing several cracked roof tiles and wooden slats and promising silently to fix it later, Lan Wangji drops down into a dry, dusty room that looks more like a library than a bedchamber.

There are scrolls strewn about everywhere, and unlit candles half-melted - looking uneven, like they had been left to burn out by themselves. There is very little natural light in the burial mounds, so the whole room is oppressively dark even though it’s the middle of the day. Lan Wangji has to step carefully in order to leave the stacks of books and scrolls intact.

There are several things Lan Wangji is looking for, if he is being honest.

The first is his guqin, and the second is the Stygian Tiger Amulet. The first is unlikely, and the second is near impossible. Lan Wangji suspects that, at this point, Wei Wuxian probably keeps the amulet on his person at all times. He can’t know for sure, and he can’t risk raising any of Wei Wuxian’s suspicion. He is a prisoner here, after all, and Wei Wuxian will probably be guarding the amulet with his life.

The third thing he is looking for are letters from the outside world. Anything from the leaders of other sects, anything from his own home.

He rifles through the letters on Wei Wuxian’s desk. Most of them are sketches. Ideas, made from scribbled, hasty characters strung together into patchwork designs. The first is of a set of nails, seemingly etched with scrollwork that runs down the length of the metal all the way to the tip. The second is a reversed talisman for purging spirits, revised over and over and over again. Based on the crumpled, tossed-away sketches, this one still seems incomplete. Lan Wangji can’t make head nor tails of any of it, and looking at it for too long makes him feel uneasy. He can’t help but remember an argument, multiple arguments, really, about the dangers of demonic cultivation.

Why, why, why had Wei Wuxian gone down this path in the first place? What hold did the Wen Sect have on him, even after all this time?

He checks the shelves lining the walls, the storage chests, the floorboards. There aren’t a lot of places big enough to hide an instrument as big as a guqin. But if Wei Wuxian ever intends to return it, then surely he wouldn’t destroy it.

He has no such luck.

Standing alone in Wei Wuxian’s room, Lan Wangji is suddenly struck by a sense of helpless frustration.

He wouldn’t claim to have ever understood Wei Wuxian, but he had always trusted him. Would Wei Wuxian really destroy his instrument? Were things really that bad?

He closes his eyes. The dimensions of his guqin are clear to him from years of carrying it around. Based on the room around him, unless there are hidden basements or secret compartments, he really can’t think of another place to check.

Unless, even after all this time, Wei Wuxian still liked to play mind games, and put it in the last place Lan Wangji would look.

Lan Wangji straightens, then turns to the door, where the two guardian paper dolls stand just outside. He thinks about their height, and the dimensions of their torsos.

Then he grabs a random scroll from Wei Wuxian’s desk, slams the door open, and runs for it.

Sure enough, as the guardian dolls start to scream, and chase after him, one of them has a visibly heavier gait.

Wei Wuxian reappears after roughly one hour of screaming. The guardian doll alarms were still going off right in Lan Wangji’s face. For the first half hour, he had tried everything short of violence to stop the screaming. He had allowed himself to be captured, which had been a mistake. He had hoped that the alarm would stop after being caught. He had been wrong.

“What,” Wei Wuxian puffs, after racing up the mountain and disabling the guardian dolls, “the hell did you do, Lan Zhan?!?!?”

“I broke into your room,” Lan Wangji says, clipped. He still has his hands pressed tightly to his ears. “I went through the roof. There’s a hole now, I’m sorry. I was going to fix it.”

Wei Wuxian gives him an exasperated look. “Why?”

“Why not?” Lan Wangji shoots back, ill-tempered. He had not enjoyed being screamed at, for an hour straight. With his ears, and at that proximity, it had been torture.

“I - ” Wei Wuxian cuts off, looking a little bit lost. He probably hadn’t seen Lan Wangji this pissed in years. “I mean, are you - are you unhappy, here?”

Lan Wangji lowers his hands and gives Wei Wuxian a look.

“Your servant paper dolls bring me three meals a day,” he says, his voice tight. “They watch over me all the time, and ensure that my every need is met. I am not beaten, or starved, or mistreated in any way. As your prisoner, I have no complaints.”

He watches Wei Wuxian to see where the knife lands. To his surprise, it never does.

Instead, Wei Wuxian gives him a wan, resigned smile. “Good,” he says. Then he looks up at one of the guardian dolls, the one with Lan Wangji’s guqin still hidden inside it’s body.

The doll makes some strange movements with its hands, signing something with paper fingers that bend with joints that Lan Wangji had not noticed. It makes an odd sound, too. A low, gravelly chirrup that sounds like an animal trying to speak in a human language.

“Thank you,” Wei Wuxian says, smiling at the doll. Then, he holds his hand out to Lan Wangji.

“If you’ve satisfied your curiosity,” he says, “Can I have my scroll back?”

Lan Wangji hesitates, as if caught. Then, with a sigh, he digs inside his robes to return the scroll he had snatched randomly from Wei Wuxian’s desk.

This one is the drawing of the long nail, with etched scrollwork down the sides. It looks completed, or at least there are no scribbled or crossed out markings on it that Lan Wangji has seen on Wei Wuxian’s other work.

“What are you making?” Lan Wangji asks, just to see if he will get an answer. The real question he wants to ask is: What have you made? He has an uneasy suspicion that this project, whatever it was, has already been completed.

Wei Wuxian glances down at the scroll, and sighs.

“It looks like a weapon, doesn’t it?” He crumples it up. “It’s not, though. It’s supposed to be a cure. Like medicine, really. Only it doesn’t really work. Not yet, anyway.”

Lan Wangji feels cold, all of a sudden. “What is it supposed to cure?”

“Me,” Wei Wuxian replies cryptically.

Then, before Lan Wangji can get a clearer answer out of him, Wei Wuxian signals for the guardian doll to let go of him.

“Don’t get into any more trouble,” Wei Wuxian says, preparing to leave. Then, with a laugh: “I can’t believe I’m saying that to you of all people.”

Five minutes later, he has to come rushing back. This time, it’s to stop a servant paper doll from screaming.

Lan Wangji, safely perched on a rooftop, watches from a distance. He had been smarter about things, this time. Or so he’d thought.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian complains. “Will you stop whistling at my dolls!”

“I like whistling,” Lan Wangji replies, straight-faced.

Wei Wuxian’s mouth twitches.

“Damn it,” he says. “I get a heart attack every time an alarm goes off, thinking that something happened to you.”

Lan Wangji stares down at him haughtily, which is difficult to do when holding a roof tile and hiding from screaming dolls, but he manages it somehow.

“Alright, fine, you win,” Wei Wuxian says, throwing his hands up. He points at the paper dolls, who all seem to turn on a silent command, and start walking away. “No more dolls near you, at least for today. You can dig around this place all you want. Please don’t trash my things, but I’ll understand if you do.”

And obviously, without a token, and without any weapons, Lan Wangji would be unable to leave this place.

Lan Wangji tries not to watch the dolls leave, especially the one carrying his guqin inside it.

“I was just trying to fix the roof,” he says.

“I know,” it’s difficult to tell if Wei Wuxian believes him or not. In any case, he looks too frazzled to interrogate Lan Wangji further. “Now please, stop getting into trouble. If you do, I really can’t save you this time.”

Chapter Text

Lan Wangji tries several things, after that. At first, he tries to find another instrument, thinking that maybe Wei Wuxian left a random pipa hiding in one of the other buildings. Then he tries looking for some strings, although he doubts Wei Wuxian would leave any of those lying around also. Unfortunately for him, both times, nothing turns up.

Then he tries to press against the barriers of his little makeshift prison, whistling Inquiry in the hopes that any lost soul might take pity on him and give him answers. Unfortunately, after what seems like hours of this, Lan Wangji is forced to conclude that apparently no lost souls are to be found around the burial mounds, which should be impossible. It’s either that or his whistling is even worse than he’d thought.

Once he gives up on that, Lan Wangji tries fashioning a makeshift instrument out of whatever he can find. The closest thing he manages to make is a drum. He tries tuning it, but the wooden bowl snaps and shatters in between his hands when he twists it too tight.

At last, frustrated, he shoves it all underneath a loose floorboard and resolves to get back to it later.

Eventually, Wei Wixian comes back, bringing all of his paper dolls with him. With Wei Wuxian there, Lan Wangji isn’t able to really try anything.

As an apology, Wei Wuxian has somehow managed to transport nearly five thousand books from the Cloud Recesses to fill the shelves of his new home. Lan Wangji comes back to his rooms to find a half dozen paper dolls scurrying about, carrying stacks upon stacks of books.

He stops at the entryway. His first instinct is to be terrified for the scraps of broken instrument pieces he has hidden under a floorboard. He quickly realizes, however, that none of the painted dolls are rattling, which means that none of them have detected anything suspicious. Instead, some of them even seem to have an apologetic air about them. They swivel and bob their heads quickly when they see him coming, and they quickly get out of his way when he enters the room.

“What are you doing?” he asks a doll passing by. It swivels its head around nearly 180 degrees to keep smiling at him. In response, it gives him a cheerful little squeak that sounds vaguely musical.

Lan Wangji doesn’t find that helpful, but he decides to find it cute. He bites back a small laugh.

“You’re smiling,” Wei Wuxian says, behind him.

Lan Wangji startles, and then turns around. Wei Wuxian is hovering in the hallway, his dark sleeves trailing down messily from his shoulders. He crosses his arms and gives Lan Wangji a relieved smile.

“Good,” he says. “If you’re smiling, then maybe there is some hope for me yet.”

Lan Zhan decides at the last minute not to ask him for news of the Cloud Recesses, if anyone’s alive, where he got all those books.

Instead, he nods to the little paper doll that is now shelving scrolls of music scores up onto a high shelf. “Where did these dolls come from?”

“I made them!” Wei Wuxian says proudly.

It’s a lie, or at least it’s an omission from the entire truth. Lan Wangji had noticed it immediately: there were the faint shadows of souls attached to each and every one. He’d never seen anything like it before, and if Wei Wuxian won’t tell him, then Inquiry is the only way to find out what those things actually are.

“Are they alive?” he wonders aloud.

Wei Wuxian hesitates. A strange expression flickers across his face.

“Yes?” he says. Lan Wangji glances sharply at him. “No? No.” The paper dolls all swivel their heads to look at him. “Yes, sorry! Yes, they’re alive!”

Lan Wangji’s breath catches in his throat.

Wei Ying, what have you done?!?

All the dolls seem to freeze. For a moment, time seems to stop for them in that little room. The dolls clatter, then go still. It’s almost as if their cores have shut down somehow. The sudden silence is jarring.

When Lan Wangji turns to look at Wei Wuxian, Wei Wuxian is clutching the Stygian Tiger Amulet in his hand, his eyes glowing red.

“It’s complicated,” he says with some effort. He gives Lan Wangji a tight smile. “Try not to bring this up too much where they can hear you, alright? It’s not good for them. This is … a sensitive subject.”

The amulet, burning, fits perfectly against the mark on his hand. Wei Wuxian meets his eyes again, looking oddly pleading. He is waiting for a verbal agreement. He knows how binding it is, for Lan Wangji.

“Okay,” Lan Wangji says, feeling numb. “Okay, I wont bring it up.”

The amulet disappears.

The dolls all go back to what they were doing.

Dammit, Wei Ying, Lan Wangji thinks. First it had been raising the dead. Then it had been animating objects. Now, he could attach souls to inanimate objects too?

Where had those souls even come from?

Lan Wangji feels a formless frustration rise up inside of him. He wishes he could go back to their early days, when Wei Wuxian could talk and talk about all these wild ideas he had, and they would just be speculation. Lan Wangji could scold him for being thoughtless and poke holes in his theories. It would be a game. There would never be any real danger.

Now theory had become reality, and the reality had become a far darker place then either of them could have imagined.

In the distance, a rattling scream echoes up the mountain. Wei Wuxian stiffens. It had been an alarm. Lan Wangji recognizes it immediately.

When Wei Wuxian looks at him sharply, Lan Wangji immediately raises his hands.

“It wasn’t me this time,” he says.

“No, it’s not that,” Wei Wuxian replies quickly. “I’ve never heard this alarm before.”

He moves toward the sound, then stops short. His eyes, when they collide with Lan Wangji’s, are full of doubt. He doesn’t know what’s out there. It could be an army, here to kill him. It could be a fox stumbling into someplace that was off-limits. It could be anything.

Lan Wangji makes a snap decision.

“Take me with you,” he says.

Wei Wuxian looks surprised by his decision, then nods. He doesn’t summon Suibian. Instead, he thrusts his palm downwards and the Stygian Tiger amulet forms a seal beneath him. Lan Wangji can feel the thrum of power from that thing, pulsing, low and wrong.

Wei Wuxian wordlessly offers a hand. Lan Wangji doesn’t let himself think about it for too long. He takes it.

In a moment, they’re soaring into the air, following the sound of that haunting, rattling wail.

“It’s not an intruder,” Wei Wuxian says, his voice low but still audible beneath the rushing air. “It’s not danger, either, although something could have tricked them. They don’t - they don’t always see everything clearly.”

Lan Wangji files that information away for later too.

“Will we run into your barrier?” He asks.

“Not when I have this,” Wei Wuxian answers, pointing at the amulet.

Beneath them, the jagged mountain peaks are showing signs of scorched earth, ash, and blackened trees. There had been a fire here, but not recently.

Then the trees clear away completely, and Lan Wangji nearly loses his balance in midair from shock.

Below him, glittering like a thousand stars, catching the setting sun and reflecting the light, is a mass of swords stuck in the dirt.

“Wei Ying?” He asks, a little strangled. Please don’t tell me that’s a mass grave. A dead man for every sword would be unthinkable.

Wei Wuxian looks down and barks out a short, surprised laugh.

“Oh, that,” he says, like it’s an everyday sight to him. Like he covers entire mountains with swords for fun.

“What is that?”

Wei Wuxian gestures at the scene below them with a sarcastic, grand gesture.

“I’m creating a sword graveyard,” he says. “When I captured the Nightless City, I took everyone’s sword by force. Then I scoured every city for miles and took all of the swords I could find there too. That way, I bought myself some time. They’d have to forge enough swords for an army before they can come and kill me.”

He laughs. “It’s a brilliant idea, isn’t it?”

Lan Wangji forces himself to tear his eyes away from the sight. “I suppose?”

If you were mad enough to do it, and confident enough in your ability to stay alive after having made everyone your enemy…

Abruptly, the sound from the dolls cease. Wei Wuxian nudges them gently in the direction of that sound.

They land at the top of a burnt hill, where a group of paper dolls have congregated around a tree.

Lan Wangji hops down, wishing he still had a weapon. Wishing he had his sword, or an instrument. Anything. The paper dolls don’t seem hostile, but there are a lot of them here.

But as he approaches the tree cautiously, he catches sight of something that makes him forget about the dolls completely.

There is a small white figure curled up in the shadows of the tree, shivering like a leaf.

A Yuan.

The boy has somehow wedged himself inside of a tree hollow, and is hiding from the reach of all the paper dolls. He is too terrified to scream. His little dark eyes dart back and forth like a trapped animal.

Lan Wangji’s breath rushes out of him in a shocked exhale. “That’s -!”

Wei Wuxian stops dead, as if he had been frozen. He makes an inhuman sound, like a scream cut short.

“A Yuan!”

The paper dolls continue to reach into the tree hollow, trying to touch the young boy. He cringes away from them, letting out a soft, almost soundless whimper.

The dolls jostle against each other, but they can’t form any words, only the occasional, distressed rattle. It doesn’t look like they are trying to hurt him. Instead, their motions seem almost…pleading? They look like they are trying to pull him out, but don’t have the strength for it.

Lan Wangji shoves himself through the crowd of paper dolls, reaches into the hollow of the tree, and pulls A Yuan out.

A Yuan makes a sharp, distressed sound.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Lan Zhan soothes. His heart is pounding wildly in his chest.

When he whirls around to find Wei Wuxian, he discovers that Wei Wuxian has been stopped, surrounded by paper dolls, all rattling at him. Wei Wuxian is covering his ears and squeezing his eyes shut. His expression sends a shard of ice into Lan Wangji’s heart.

“What is it?” Lan Wangji asks sharply.

“I didn’t know,” Wei Wuxian says in a harsh whisper, almost like he’s talking to the dolls instead of Lan Wangji. “I didn’t know, I didn’t know -”

Lan Wangji takes a step toward him, but instantly senses that it had been a mistake, once all the heads turn toward him.

Wei Wuxian’s head snaps up. His eyes are red, glowing, and monstrous.

“Get him out of here!” Wei Wuxian orders. There is a strange, awful sound in the air, getting more and more intense. It feels like a scream, inhuman and translated into a register that Lan Wangji can’t hear but can feel.

“GO!”

Lan Wangji doesn’t ask. He turns and carries A Yuan away from the dolls mobbing Wei Wuxian at a dead run.

Behind him, the sound of a flute cuts through the air.

The child clings to his neck and Lan Zhan hopes that his hold is secure enough, that he isn’t making a mistake. Wei Wuxian controls those dolls, doesn’t he? They wouldn’t hurt him, would he. He was their master. They were his creatures. Right?

He doesn’t know. He can’t even begin to guess.

All those hours, learning everything his masters had been willing to teach him, and now all Lan Wangji can do is run.

Chapter Text

He ends up bringing A Yuan back to the compound. He doesn’t know anywhere else to go. More importantly, he doesn’t think A Yuan has anywhere else to go either. Wei Wuxian doesn’t show up.

Lan Wangji tries to distract himself by preparing food, coaxing soup down A Yuan’s throat, spoonful by spoonful, and trying to understand what happened to him.

A Yuan is filthy. His face is covered in soot and his feet are muddy, and from the way his small hands shake around the congee bowl, he must not have eaten in days.

Try as he might, Lan Wangji can’t coax words out of him. All of his gentle questions are met with wide, dark, terrified stares.

The compound is strangely dark and quiet without the paper dolls around. Lan Wangji has never been so aware of their absence as he is right now. He had been ignoring them up until now, unsettled by their unchanging smiles and the way they all held their paper lanterns up at an angle, like they were part of a funeral procession wherever they went. But now, with all of them gone, Lan Wangji is forced to acknowledge how strange all of this was.

In the Nightless City, back when Wen Ruohan had been at the height of his power, the thousands of servants and members of the Wen Sect had filled the halls and palaces to the brim. They had all come, attracted by the promise of more power, more influence, or maybe just more safety.

In the silence of the Burial Mounds, the only servants are the masses of paper dolls. They tend to the farms, do laundry, run patrols and guard the entrances to the mountain. They act like humans, but they aren’t humans. They are half-human, cobbled-together automatons with souls attached.

Lan Wangji reaches out with his sleeve and gently wipes the soot off of A Yuan’s face to the best of his ability.

“What happened to you?” he wonders aloud. What happened to the rest of you?

A Yuan clutches the sleeve of Lan Wangji’s robes. Hesitantly, Lan Wangji bends down to pick him up. A Yuan makes a sound, formless, too garbled to be a word. His mouth opens but his tongue moves uselessly, almost like he can’t control it. Then his face twists, upset, and he hides his face in Lan Wangji’s shoulder.

Lan Wangji begins to pat his back unthinkingly. It is a gesture half-remembered from his childhood, but it seems to work well. A Yuan lets out a shuddering breath and settles down.

“Shhhhh,” Lan Wangji soothes. “Shhhh. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

By the time Wei Wuxian finally shows up, Lan Wangji has managed to give A Yuan a bath and find him clean clothes. After the trembling had stopped, A Yuan had somehow come to understand that Lan Wangji meant him no harm. After that, he had remained mute, but had started to take direction well.

He is sleeping in Lan Wangji’s arms, being rocked back and forth, when Wei Wuxian stumbles into view.

Wei Wuxian looks wrong, somehow. There are pieces of fabric torn off from his clothing, as if someone with claws had sliced through it repeatedly. His hair is loose from its usual ponytail, and his ribbon is so covered in dirt that it’s more black than red.

But worst of all is the resentful energy rising off of him in waves. He looks more like a demon than a human, more dead than alive. For a heart-stopping moment, Lan Wangji wonders if Wei Wuxian had finally crossed over some invisible line for good, if he had been dancing on that tightrope for so long that one slip, one fall, could make him lose his humanity forever.

Wei Wuxian stops dead in his tracks when he sees Lan Wangji in the room.

His shoulders sag in relief. He leans against the doorway and slowly sinks to the ground, and suddenly Lan Wangji sees him again. Just a young man, tired to the bone and worn out from all the fighting, desperately in need of some saving.

“Is he alright?” Wei Wuxian asks.

“He has a high fever,” Lan Wangji says. “He doesn’t seem to remember me anymore. He doesn’t seem to remember anything.”

“Can he speak?” Wei Wuxian asks.

Lan Wangji shakes his head.

Wei Wuxian’s expression crumples.

Lan Wangji remembers the bright-eyed, curious child that had followed him around the last time he was here. His arms tighten around A Yuan.

“What happened?” he asks carefully.

Wei Wuxian looks away.

“What do you think happened?” he asks bitterly. “The jianghu descended on this place when I was gone. They burned down the entire town in the middle of the night. I came back to ashes, Lan Zhan.”

Lan Wangji feels a slow sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach.

“They didn’t sound an alarm. They didn’t say they were coming. They didn’t give anyone a chance to escape.”

“You didn’t know that he was alive,” Lan Wangji says softly.

Wei Wuxian just looks at him, eyes empty. Sometimes, Lan Wangji isn’t sure how much of Wei Wuxian is papered over pleasantries, and how much is this: this soulless husk of a person barely holding on to life. There’s an effort to his animated smiles, his speech patterns, everything about him. Lan Wangji has known him for long enough, has watched him long enough, to know that Wei Ying hasn’t really smiled once since he got here.

“You know,” Wei Wuxian says. “I spent so long thinking that he was gone, that there was nothing else I could do for him. I still don’t know if I really believe that he’s still alive. It feels like it could all go wrong in an instant.”

The resentful energy has mostly faded off of him by now. As he speaks, the rest of it disappears, leaving him mostly human again.

“Come here,” Lan Wangji says. “He’s just sleeping.”

Wei Wuxian drags himself over to the two of them. Wordlessly, he comes up behind Lan Wangji and curls one arm around his waist and leans his forehead against his shoulder.

Lan Wangji finds that he can’t move. Wei Wuxian is warm against his back, his hair spilling down against the uncovered part of his arm. He’s so close that Lan Wangji can count his heartbeats, if he dared to do so.

“Back in the Nightless City,” Wei Wuxian says, “You said something to me that I can never forget. You said that I was right - that what I was doing, it wasn’t wrong. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.”

His voice breaks. He pulls Lan Wangji closer.

“Do you still believe that?” he asks.

Lan Wangji instinctively reaches over to thread his fingers through Wei Wuxian’s hair. He doesn’t know why he does it. A few years ago, even a few months ago, the gesture would have been unthinkable. But something about Wei Wuxian, curled up and lonely at his side, makes his heart ache as if it had been stabbed by needles.

“I still believe in you,” he says.

Wei Wuxian doesn’t seem to believe him. His breathing shifts slightly, almost like he’s afraid of something. Lan Wangji wonders if this is his way of chasing away nightmares, if the physical contact is his way of grasping for a lifeline. Surely that’s all this means, right?

“Have you ever done something you’re ashamed of?” Wei Wuxian asks.

Lan Wangji thinks back to Phoenix Mountain. Thinks back to all the times he’s said or done the wrong thing, or failed to make someone laugh.

“Yes,” he says.

This is not the answer Wei Wuxian had been expecting; he blinks and straightens from his heavy lean against Lan Wangji’s back.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“As in,” Wei Wuxian presses, “You’ve done something that you consider reprehensible. Totally unforgivable. Something that you’d never forgive yourself for. But, then again,” he huffs with amusement, “With your personality, you’d probably find many things unforgivable.”

Wei Ying, what have you done?

“Only a few things in this world are truly unforgivable,” Lan Wangji says, even though he knows it’s probably the wrong thing to say.

“Hey,” Wei Wuxian says, with a touch of dark humor. “Do you think if you were King of the Underworld, and I were a visitor at your gate, my crimes would be so unforgivable that you’d turn me away?”

“No,” Lan Wangji says.

It’s not the answer Wei Wuxian had expected. He pokes at Lan Wangji’s cheek. “How can you sound so certain? It’s almost as if you know everything about me.”

“I do,” Lan Wangji says, with certainty.

“Is that so?” Wei Wuxian laughs.

“Well, not everything,” Lan Wangji admits. His heart is suddenly racing. This is the first time he’s heard Wei Wuxian really laugh in a while.

“What don’t you know about me?” Wei Wuxian asks, smiling a little and indulging him. “You know, all you have to do is ask.”

Lan Wangji suddenly realizes that this might be his only chance. Wei Wuxian is unusually lucid right now, some of his old playfulness shining through his eyes. He hasn’t touched Chenqing at all today. If Lan Wangji is going to ask, it might as well be now.

“Those paper dolls,” Lan Wangji says. “They’re your Wen Clan villagers, aren’t they?”

Wei Wuxian’s smile freezes. Lan Wangji can hear the tiny, invisible crack of his glass heart taking another blow.

Suddenly, Lan Wangji hates this, all of it.

He used to think Wei Ying would never hurt him, not intentionally. He used to think that Wei Ying had a good heart, the best kind, the kind that didn’t need three thousand rules and chains in order to be good.

But now, seeing Wei Wuxian’s fingers twitch toward his flute, he isn’t so sure.

“Wei Ying,” he says gently. Wei Wuxian barely seems to hear him.

“You’re a man with a moral code,” Wei Wuxian says, an undercurrent of something strange in his voice. “Tell me: was it wrong for these people to die?”

“….yes.”

“Then, was it wrong of me to bring them back?”

Lan Wangji used to hate questions like these. Trick questions, based on impossible assumptions, like being able to bring someone back to life in the first place.

Now that they are no longer based on impossible assumptions, Lan Wangji discovers that he still hates questions like these.

“What do you want me to say?”

Wei Wuxian looks away.

“Nothing,” he says, sounding tired.

The remnants of the Wen clan, although they claimed to be innocent, had all been wiped out. There had been no such thing as innocent. Such was the logic of warfare, and grudges, and bloodthirsty cultivators.

I’m sorry, Lan Wangji wants to say, but the hypocrisy of it sticks in his throat and refuses to come out. What can he say? What does he know? He is someone who seems to have made the wrong choice at every turn.

“I thought they were all killed,” Lan Wangji says quietly. This had been the incident that had started Wei Wuxian’s initial rampage. If they had all been killed, except for A Yuan, then these paper dolls should be considered ghouls.

The old rhyme runs through his mind: Spirits are formed from living creatures; demons are formed from living humans; ghouls are formed from dead humans; monsters are formed from dead creatures.

Wei Wuxian understands where he’s coming from immediately. His expression hardens.

“It’s not that simple,” he says. “We were taught that the soul leaves the body after the moment of death, that there’s no way of putting it back. But I’ve found that isn’t always true. Sometimes, the soul sticks around. Why else do you think we have ghosts?”

Lan Wangji thinks of the mad scribbling diagrams he had seen in Wei Wuxian’s rooms, and says nothing.

“They won’t hurt you,” Wei Wuxian says, standing up. Lan Wangji misses the heat of his body almost immediately, and shivers. “They won’t hurt A Yuan either. I promise.”

“I believe you,” Lan Wangji says, looking down at the sleeping A Yuan.

“I still have some other things to take care of,” Wei Wuxian says, preparing to leave. It seems like this short break was all he had allowed for himself. “Take care of A Yuan for me? As long as he’s safe, then there’s a chance that all of this suffering and pain still might have been worth it.”

Lan Wangji nods, watching him go. He can’t help but wonder if Wei Wuxian had even considered his own suffering as a part of the equation.

That night, he dreams that he is inside a vast underground prison. This prison is odd, because it is made up of hundreds of layers, each stacked on top of each other, as far down as you can see. Lan Wangji it’s in one of the lower layers, and strangely, he knows two things.

He is the only one not in chains, and he knows how to get out.

Even though everything is underground, strangely, it’s not like they can’t see. The light here is not sunlight. Instead, there is an artificial quality that reminds him of witch lights, which are only bright enough for you to see your hand but no further.

“Let us out,” someone whispers from behind the bars, but when Lan Wangji turns to look, all of the prison cells are empty.

He pulls at the lock anyway. Breaks it. As the door swings open, shadows materialize out of the threshold and into the open..

During the prison escape, each step up is a grueling process of pulling down ladders, disabling the guards, and combing the prisoners on that floor so that they are free. Naturally, things get easier as they free more people, but Lan Wangji stops midway, during the crush of bodies frantically climbing over each other on the escape ladders.

The escape has only started from his level and has gone upwards from there. But what about all the prisoners beneath him? Would anyone think to go back for them?

Even as he hopes so, Lan Wangji is pretty sure no one will. So, nervous and uneasy, he begins to climb back down the ladder.

Not everything in the underground prison is human. In the dark, he sees the shapes of huge creatures milling about in the shadows. Giant panthers made out of a ghostly material that swipe right through him as if he were incorporeal. Swaths of ghosts with empty black eyes, clamoring to climb up the ladder even though they know they cannot live in the sun.

Chapter Text

A Yuan does not get better, but he also doesn’t get worse.

As the days blur into weeks, his speech and his memories fail to return. Wei Wuxian tries at first to cajole the young boy into remembering him, but his red eyes and moving shadows end up terrifying A Yuan instead. After one last, heartbreaking attempt that had left A Yuan sobbing in Lan Zhan’s arms, Wei Wuxian had fled Lan Wangji’s quarters entirely.

In an odd, twisted, reversal of the first time they’d met, A Yuan clings to Lan Zhan and hides from Wei Wuxian. Lan Zhan can tell that it destroys Wei Wuxian to see A Yuan without a single flicker of recognition for him. To have hope that someone still knew him, only for it to be taken away. Lan Zhan hadn’t blamed him for breaking.

Nowadays, Wei Wuxian disappears for long stretches of time, going beyond the barrier to “settle some matters” in the outside world. Lan Wangji tries to pry more details out of him, but without much success. Wei Wuxian still seems to genuinely believe that he can set things right. Which is another mystery, as far as Lan Wangji is concerned. He has never known Wei Wuxian to be delusional.

In any case, whenever Wei Wuxian leaves, it is often for several days at a time.

So, instead of trying to coax some sense into Wei Wuxian, Lan Zhan had taken the opportunity to get his guqin back from the guardian paper doll.

With A Yuan acting as a talisman of sorts, warding away any Yiling Laozu, Lan Zhan doesn’t even need to hide his guqin particularly well.

The only problem is, he still can’t play Inquiry. Not without setting off every single paper doll in the vicinity.

“What was it this time?” Wei Wuxian asks, sounding exhausted. There are dark circles underneath his eyes and his hands are cold when they come up to brush Lan Wangji’s cheek. His fingers come away red with blood.

“It was an accident,” Lan Wangji lies. He has gotten good at lying, recently. He tells himself that it was only recently. “We were just playing, I was tossing him around a little and one of the paper dolls thought he was in danger. It didn’t mean to hurt me.”

He had sliced his own cheek open on one of the paper doll’s nail-file-thin fingers, silently apologizing for framing it. But what could it do? Speak up and contradict him?

“How is he?” Wei Wuxian asks.

Lan Wangji hesitates.

“I got him to laugh today,” he says. This part, at least, was not a lie. “That’s why I was tossing him around. He needs you, you know. Even if he doesn’t remember you. He’ll never stop being afraid of you if you never show up.”

Wei Wuxian’s brief flare of hope dims in his eyes.

“So he still doesn’t remember me?” he asks.

Lan Wangji shakes his head, no.

For some reason, a strange kind of relief flits over Wei Wuxian’s face in response.

“It’s better that way,” he says, turning away.

When he leaves, this time, he doesn’t come back for nearly a month.

In the empty hours that he leaves behind, Lan Wangji fills his time with taking care of A Yuan, talking to him, teaching him, watching the awareness slowly return to his eyes. The first time A Yuan points to the table, then makes the sign for hungry, Lan Zhan almost tears up.

There is still something preventing him from speaking. Not a curse, or a spell, at least not any kind Lan Wangji was familiar with. But as the burn scars fade from his skin, hints of the vibrant young child he’d once met start showing up again.

Three weeks into Wei Wuxian’s longest absence yet, Lan Wangji starts to teach A Yuan how to play the guqin.

It starts off as a gamble. Every day, after dinner, when A Yuan is happy and relaxed and leaning sleepily against his side, Lan Wangji pulls out his guqin and plucks out a few harmless notes.

The paper dolls have learned not to react to this by now. As long as Lan Wangji is careful to never shape the notes into anything complex, as long as he is careful to keep it simple and devoid of spiritual energy, the paper dolls will not scream.

One day, A Yuan is sitting in his lap, watching the strings vibrate with a keen sort of interest. Some of Lan Wangji’s melancholy had leeched out into the music. It had been three weeks since he had last seen Wei Wuxian. A part of him wondered if he would ever see him again.

Then A Yuan reaches out and touches the string, palms down, muffling the sound by accident.

Lan Zhan looks down at him, fond and amused.

“Want to try?” he asks.

A Yuan, he discovers, can do whatever he likes with the guqin without it being registered as a weapon. He seems to have permissions through a loophole.

Maybe Wei Wuxian simply hadn’t thought of it. Or maybe, now that Lan Wangji knows that the paper dolls are actually the remnants of the slaughtered Wen clan, the paper dolls have an indulgent soft spot for their clan’s youngest child.

Lan Wangji teaches him how to play in fits and starts. A Yuan is willing to learn, but his hands are still barely the size of Lan Wangji’s palm. The guqin strings are harsh and unforgiving on his skin, and it takes a long time for the boy to build up any calluses. They start slow, with Lan Wangji trying to figure out two things at once: How to teach a five year old how to play, and how to do it without setting off any alarms.

Although, at this point, Wei Wuxian seems to think that the alarms are Lan Wangji’s attempts to get him to see A Yuan again. Or maybe he’s just so used to the false alarms that he no longer even needs an explanation.

Lan Wangji doesn’t know. He can’t tell what Wei Wuxian is thinking.

Every time they meet, Wei Wuxian looks more and more off somehow. The veins in his right hand look charred and black. He stinks of burning metal and blood. Whenever Lan Wangji tries to touch him, he shivers and his skin feels clammy and cold even though it feels like there should be a fever raging just beneath the surface. There is a perpetual strain in his eyes and a silent howl of thousands of ghosts haunting his every step. He is holding himself together by a single thread.

It’s the side-effects of using the amulet. Lan Wangji knows it. Wei Wuxian knows it. But somehow, over the course of all of their conversations, it just never comes up.

“You need to stop pushing yourself so hard,” Lan Wangji says instead.

Wei Wuxian smiles tiredly at him.

“Jiang Cheng sent me a letter today,” he says. “Their scouts have found traces of my work with the paper dolls. They can’t get through the barrier, but who knows what they could have seen? Now they think I’m raising an army of the dead, and it’s all I can do to keep the others in line.”

“But you’re not,” Lan Wangji says, stunned.

“It doesn’t matter,” Wei Wuxian looks away. “To them, I might as well be. All I want is to give them - if not a life, then at least a semblance of one. It’s my fault they’re dead.”

“That’s not true.”

“It’s my fault they’re dead.”

Nearby, some of the paper dolls freeze in place. Their joints lock up and in the slightly windy breeze, they seem to be swaying back and forth unsteadily.

Lab Wangji stares helplessly at Wei Wuxian as he has to go over to them and fix them, once again. Watching him work on the paper dolls reminds Lan Wangji of a stage hand, working on costumes and designs for a theatre, saving away in order to keep the show running. To keep everything on the stage working smoothly.

“I’ve been trying to find a way out,” Wei Wuxian says later, watching the paper dolls amble away. “But I’m running out of time.”

“Then let me help,” Lan Wangji says impulsively.

Wei Wuxian looks guilty for a moment.

“You already have been,” he says haltingly. “Just by being here, I mean. You remember more things than I give you credit for.”

What does that mean? Lan Wangji wonders.

But soon, it won’t matter anyway. A Yuan is improving, bit by bit. Several weeks into Lan Wangji’s lessons, something just seems to click. He starts spending time on the guqin all on his own, surrounded by a captive audience of paper dolls, plucking at the strings and poring over the musical notations that Lan Wangji has made for him on stolen paper.

Three months, four stolen notebooks, and five false alarms later, A Yuan learns how to play Inquiry.

A Yuan’s Inquiry is rough at first, but it doesn’t matter, not with his kin so close by. The melody shivers into the air with just a hint of spiritual energy, and even a little bit of it is enough.

Slowly, the notes spell out: h-o-w-d-i-d-y-o-u-d-i-e-?

The paper doll sits, knees folded neatly beneath it, and reaches out to pluck out the notes: i-a-m-n-o-t-d-e-a-d

On the morning that Jiang Cheng finally shows up to the mountain, Lan Wangji wakes up with a splitting headache.

His dreams have gotten more and more vivid lately: A bubbling pool of blood in a dark cave. Air so thick with miasma that he could barely breathe. Burned corpses, clawing their way out of a cave, screaming just like those paper dolls.

And Wei Wuxian, sitting in the midst of it all, holding skull-piercing nails in the palm of his hand.

Slowly, methodically, blank-faced, he drives the nails into the heads of each shadowed figure that passes by him. Then, he rips the shadow out of the ground and casts it into an origami shape. His hand burns, and his veins glow a hot lava red as it reaches into the spirit realm and drags the soul back into the physical realm. The paper twists back and forth until it becomes the shape of a human. The paper arms jerk, then the legs begin to move, and soon the cave is filled with paper dolls.

“I know you’re not dead! Come out and face me, Wei Wuxian!”

Jiang Cheng’s voice booms out, magically enhanced by a spiritual array that splits the earth beneath his feet. It’s a warning, backed up by an army behind him.

Lan Wangji jerks to his feet. With a bolt of ice-cold clarity, he is suddenly sure of what Wei Wuxian is trying to do.

He looks down at A Yuan, who clutches his guqin and looks back up at him. A silent understanding passes between them.

“Get your things,” he says to A Yuan. “We’re leaving.”

Lan Wangji catches Wei Wuxian just in time, before he heads down the mountain.

“You’re going the wrong way,” he says.

It feels good to finally, finally be able to say that to Wei Wuxian. To finally have a direction to point to that says this way, not that way.

Wei Wuxian smiles at him helplessly, but Lan Wangji is blocking his path, and he is not going to let Wei Wuxian sacrifice himself for nothing again.

“Get out of my way,” Wei Wuxian says. “My brother is calling. He’s brought a whole army for me, too. It would be rude to leave them unanswered.”

When Lan Wangji doesn’t smile at his joke, his smile fades. “I’m not going to kill them, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Lan Wangji shakes his head. He reaches for Wei Wuxian’s hand, but Wei Wuxian backs away, his fingers tightening around the amulet he always carries now.

“I know what you’re trying to do,” Lan Wangji says. “It won’t work, Wei Ying.”

His fingers wrap around Wei Wuxian’s wrist. Wei Wuxian freezes. Moments later, Lan Wangji pulls out a series of skull-piercing nails.

The skull-piercing nails are intricately carved out of black metal, and the design is slightly changed from what Lan Wangji had last seen on the scrolls in Wei Wuxian’s study. They should be slightly warm from Wei Wuxian’s body heat, but instead they feel icy cold against Lan Wangji’s fingertips.

In the silence that follows, Wei Wuxian’s face drops into a terrifying, exhausted blankness.

“It won’t kill him,” Wei Wuxian says. He makes no attempt to take the skull-piercing nails back. “It’ll just make him leave me alone.”

“It’ll make him forget you,” Lan Wangji says. And it might still kill him anyway.

“It’s the only way,” Wei Wuxian insists, and suddenly Lan Wangji feels a flare of uncontrollable anger.

“This is your ‘only way’?” he asks. “You made skull-piercing nails that can work on live humans instead of fierce corpses, and the next thing you want to do is try to use them to draw all your enemies here, to the mountain, and - what - make the whole world forget about you?”

“To cure the whole world of me,” Wei Wuxian says, and laughs bitterly.

Lan Wangji tosses the nails away. Wei Wuxian’s eyes never leave his face.

“You were going to do it to me too,” Lan Wangji says. “And A Yuan.”

Wei Wuxian doesn’t deny it. Lan Wangji’s heart settles into a strange, booming rhythm that he can feel throughout his whole body.

“Is this really what you want?” Lan Zhan asks. “To be left alone?”

Wei Wuxian’s expression cracks, then visibly breaks.

“What was I supposed to do?” he asks. “My parents never taught me how to survive in this world, so I did the best that I could on my own. Jiang Cheng’s family took me in, so I can’t help but love him as a brother. His family died because of me, so I can’t help but owe him my life. Wen Qing saved his life, and so I can’t help but owe the Wen clan my loyalty.”

His hands come up to cover his eyes, fingers digging into the skin of his face. “But then the Wen clan was wiped out and hunted down in retaliation for the war, even Wen Qing, and this time I could do something about it. And I did. I saved them. I was finally able to do something, and I don’t care what you think, Lan Zhan. I’d do it a million times over. But now my own brother is at the bottom of the mountain with an army that is here to kill me and the Wen clan all over again. What was I supposed to do, Lan Zhan? They’ll never let us live, not unless they forget about us entirely. Not unless I make them forget, even if it includes -”

Lan Zhan grabs him by the wrists before he can do any more damage to his face. “It doesn’t have to be like this,” he says.

“I don’t see another way,” Wei Wuxian says raggedly.

Lan Wangji grabs Wei Wuxian’s hand and places it over his heart. He doesn’t know what else to do. It’s like some kind of madness has infected him, making him dizzy and reckless, making him say whatever comes to his mind.

“A Yuan has been playing Inquiry,” he says. “He’s been talking to the paper dolls, telling them what’s going on, how they got here. Wei Ying, all they want is for you and A Yuan to be happy. They don’t want you to stay here, fighting some battle that you cannot win, all to give them a few extra days at the cost of your life. And A Yuan’s.”

Wei Wuxian looks up at him, startled.

“When…?” he asks, then blinks.

Lan Wangji can’t help but smile down at him.

“I know you think I’m trapped here, and that making me forget you will set me free,” he says. “But the truth is, I came here to free you, and I’m not leaving without you.”

“All those - all those alarms,” Wei Wuxian says, not quite hearing him. “That was - that was on purpose?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Lan Wangji sees the paper dolls amassing into a crowd. He turns to find them all gathering on the road, an army large enough to rival the one at the foot of the mountain.

But these aren’t soldiers, and Wei Wuxian doesn’t intend to use them for war. They’re just ordinary people, ones given an extra lease on life, enough time to save one more of their own.

A Yuan bursts through the crowd of paper dolls, panting and still clutching Lan Wangji’s guqin. He looks up at Lan Wangji with a feverish determination, then points to the paper dolls.

“I…brought them,” he says haltingly, the words thick on his tongue but still intelligible. “They’re…all here.”

Wei Wuxian stares at A Yuan, then seems to fold completely. He collapses onto his knees. Lan Wangji goes with him, keeping his hands on Wei Wuxian’s wrists and holding him steady.

“A Yuan,” Wei Wuxian says, his voice thick with emotion. “I thought…I thought you -”

“It took some time,” Lan Wangji says. He leans his forehead against Wei Wuxian’s. “But he got better. Just like you will. I promise.”

He gently pries open Wei Wuxian’s fingers, one by one.

At last, Wei Wuxian lets the amulet fall.

[Epilogue]

A Yuan’s fingers move fluidly across the guqin strings. Each plucked note is sharp and sorrowful. The boy’s head is bent over the instrument, his brows furrowed. Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian both hover over him protectively, in case anything goes wrong.

But nothing will. The paper dolls that make up the last remnants of the Wen clan are not fierce corpses, or tortured souls clinging desperately to life, nor do they have any remaining grudges against the living. They give up their connection to the physical realm easily, like a breath being exhaled.

One by one, the paper dolls begin to collapse like their strings have been cut.

When Jiang Cheng arrives with his army of cultivators to the Burial Mounds, all he finds is a graveyard of swords and lifeless paper dolls scattered around, abandoned library, and a single chunk of metal, melted down beyond recognition. There is not a soul to be found.