The morning sun spilled through the arched windows of the Luo family library, painting the ancient scrolls in gold. Yuchen sat curled in the window seat, his knees drawn to his chest, a book on pre-Collapse botany balanced precariously on his lap. Outside, the fortress gardens stretched in meticulous patterns—crimson peonies and white jasmine, their perfume drifting through the open window.
Xing lay sprawled across his feet, belly-up, his silver-marked fur warm in the sunlight. The pup had grown since their days in the wastelands—his shoulders broader, his movements more deliberate—but he still flopped like an overgrown puppy when he slept.
A shadow fell across the page.
"You're hiding."
Yuchen didn't look up. "Reading."
Jiang snorted, nudging Xing aside with his boot to steal the other half of the window seat. "Kid, I've seen you fake-read through six years of engine manuals. Try again."
A breeze ruffled the pages. Yuchen pressed his palm flat against the illustration of a long-extinct flower—something called a sunrose, its petals like liquid fire.
"They want me to start training with the other Luo heirs tomorrow."
Jiang scratched Xing's ears. "And?"
"And I don't belong with them." The admission slipped out before he could stop it.
The other heirs had spent their lives in this gilded world—learning its rhythms, its secrets. They spoke in polished phrases and wore their family's history like a second skin. Yuchen still woke some nights gasping for air, convinced the walls were collapsing, that the scent of smoke still clung to his clothes.
Jiang studied him for a long moment before sighing. "You know what your problem is, kid? You keep thinking you gotta choose—wasteland rat or Luo heir." He flicked Yuchen's forehead. "Newsflash: you're both. And that's what makes you dangerous."
Xing yawned in agreement.
Jinhai found them in the ancestral garden, kneeling beside a half-dismantled irrigation pump. Jiang had declared it a "teaching moment"; Yuchen was fairly certain the old engineer just wanted an excuse to get dirt on the pristine Luo peonies.
"The 2043 model's valve system is garbage,"Jiang grumbled, elbow-deep in tubing. "Backfire risk'll take your eyebrows clean off—ask me how I know."
Yuchen, wrist-deep in grease, didn't notice his grandfather's approach until the shadow fell over them.
Jinhai surveyed the chaos—the scattered tools, the uprooted herbs, Xing's happily muddy pawprints tracking across the sacred white sand patterns.
"This," he said slowly, "is a meditation garden."
Jiang wiped his hands on his already ruined pants. "And now it's a useful garden."
To Yuchen's shock, Jinhai knelt beside them, rolling up his embroidered sleeves. "Show me the flaw."
For the next hour, three generations of Luo men bickered over hydraulics while Xing dug up a regrettably expensive fern.
The library was quieter at night, the lanterns casting long shadows across the shelves. Yuchen traced the spines—centuries of Luo history, each volume bound in silk and stamped with the phoenix seal.
A soft click echoed through the stillness.
On the highest shelf, half-hidden behind a treatise on celestial mechanics, sat a small, unmarked box. Inside, nestled in faded velvet, was a child's drawing—a stick-figure family beneath a lopsided sun.
Tianyi, age 5.
Yuchen's throat tightened. His father had stood in this same room, small and bright-eyed, before the world had asked him to be anything but a boy who loved the sky.
Xing nosed his hand, whining softly.
"Yeah," Yuchen whispered, carefully replacing the box. "Me too."
"You're holding the cup like it's a grenade," Elder Luo Meilin observed dryly.
Yuchen grimaced. The porcelain was absurdly delicate, the tea scenting the air with something floral and unfamiliar. Across the table, his cousin Lian—a girl with perfect posture and sharper eyes—hid a smile behind her sleeve.
"Perhaps," Meilin continued, pouring with practiced grace, "we might discuss something more to your taste. The siege of Hangzhou, for instance."
Lian perked up. "Where Great-Uncle Chao redirected the river to drown the Wei-Xing battalions!"
"By blowing up the dam," Yuchen added without thinking.
Meilin's lips twitched. "Indeed."
They spent the afternoon debating military history, the tea forgotten. By sunset, Lian had taught him three dirty limericks about the Wei-Xing patriarch, and Yuchen had—finally—stopped waiting for the walls to close in.
That night, Yuchen dreamed of sunroses.
They grew through the cracks of Border City-17, their roots weaving through rubble and memory alike. When he woke, the first light of dawn gilded the fortress spires, and Xing's head was heavy on his chest.
Somewhere beyond these walls, the world was still broken. Somewhere, Wei-Xing's Titan lurked, and children with too-old eyes waited in glass pods.
But here, now—
Here, there were gardens to tend, and cousins to laugh with, and a grandfather who smelled of gunpowder and jasmine tea.
Yuchen closed his eyes and breathed.
The storm could wait.
The scent of rain-soaked earth filled the eastern pavilion as Yuchen knelt beside his grandfather, watching the morning storm roll across the fortress walls. Jinhai's hands moved with quiet precision over the tea set, the steam curling in the damp air between them.
Xing sprawled across Yuchen's lap, his silver-marked belly rising and falling in contentment as the pup gnawed lazily on a bamboo shoot. The rhythmic patter of rain on tile, the warmth of the tea cup between his palms—these were new kinds of quiet.
"You've been here three months," Jinhai said at last, his voice softer than Yuchen had ever heard it. "And not once have you asked about your parents' resting place."
The tea turned to ash on Yuchen's tongue.
The ancestral tombs lay nestled in the western hills, a valley of white marble and whispering willows. They walked without speaking—Jinhai's broad shoulders cutting through the mist, Yuchen's fingers tangled in Xing's fur.
The twin memorials stood apart from the others, their surfaces unadorned but for two names:
Luo Tianyi and Bai Qingyan
No dates. No epitaphs.
Yuchen reached out, tracing the characters of his father's name. The stone was colder than he expected.
"We never recovered their bodies," Jinhai admitted, the first crack in his armor Yuchen had ever seen. "The Xuanwu's core meltdown left nothing but glass and shadows."
Xing whined, pressing his muzzle against Yuchen's knee.
Something inside him fractured—not the sharp break of a bone, but the slow splintering of ice on a spring pond.
"Tell me about them," Yuchen whispered. "Not as soldiers. Just… them."
And for the first time in his life, his grandfather wept.
They built the fire where Tianyi had once snuck out as a boy—a hidden hollow between the roots of an ancient oak. Jinhai spoke in fragments at first, his voice roughened by memory:
"Your father climbed this tree at six years old to rescue a stranded kitten. Broke his arm in the fall. When the healers scolded him, he asked if they could fix the cat first."
Yuchen huffed a laugh, feeding another branch to the flames.
"Your mother," Jinhai continued, staring into the fire, "once reprogrammed an entire battalion of training drones to serve afternoon tea. Nearly started a war when the Wei-Xing delegation thought it was an attack."
The stories unfurled like banners—Tianyi's terrible singing voice, Qingyan's obsession with rare orchids, the way they'd stolen Jiang's prototype hoverbike for their first date.
As dawn painted the sky, Yuchen realized he wasn't just learning about his parents.
He was learning how to miss them.
The workshop door creaked as Yuchen pushed it open. Jiang looked up from his latest project—what appeared to be a plasma cannon disguised as a rice cooker—and took one look at Yuchen's face before wordlessly pushing a steaming mug toward him.
"He told you, then."
Yuchen nodded, wrapping his hands around the mug. The heat grounded him.
Jiang rummaged through a battered trunk before producing a small holocube. "Your mom left this with me before… well." He activated it with a twist.
A miniature Qingyan flickered to life, her smile brighter than the projection's glow. "For our little phoenix," her voice echoed through the workshop, tinny with age but alive. "When he's ready to fly."
The image shifted—a young Tianyi, grinning as he balanced a giggling baby Yuchen on his shoulders.
Xing's tail thumped against the floor as Yuchen pressed his forehead to the cube and let the tears come.
Mornings began differently after that.
Yuchen still trained—blades at dawn with Jinhai, tactical simulations with Elder Meilin, the occasional illicit explosives lesson with Jiang. But now there were other hours too:
—Reading his mother's research journals in the orchid garden, Xing dozing in the dappled sunlight.
—Learning his father's favorite folk songs from the castle's oldest cook.
—Sneaking sweets from the kitchen with Cousin Lian, their laughter echoing down the servants' passages.
The grief didn't vanish. It simply made room—for memories that were no longer just shadows, for a family that was no longer just ghosts.
The letter arrived on a day thick with the promise of summer storms.
Yuchen recognized the looping script before he even broke the seal—Vera Sutherland, her message brief and characteristically blunt,
"Heard you're officially a fancy Luo heir now. Come visit before you turn into one of those stuffy statues. Bring the mutt."
Jiang snorted when he read it. "That Sutherland girl's got a death wish."
Jinhai merely sighed and ordered the royal skimmer prepared.
As they soared above the clouds—Xing's nose pressed eagerly to the window, the fortress shrinking behind them—Yuchen realized something unexpected.
He wasn't running toward something.
Nor was he running away.
For the first time in his life, he was simply…
"Leaving Home for a while"
The Sutherland Dynasty's coastal fortress rose from the sea like a blade of white stone and blue glass, its spires catching the afternoon sun. Yuchen pressed his face against the skimmer's window as they descended, watching the turquoise waves break against the jagged cliffs below. Xing stood on his hind legs beside him, paws on the dashboard, his tail wagging furiously at the scent of saltwater.
Jiang, sprawled across the passenger seat with his boots on the console, smirked. "Try not to gawk, kid. They're already gonna think we're country bumpkins."
The skimmer touched down on a landing pad that jutted over the ocean, its surface inlaid with swirling mother-of-pearl designs. Before the engines had fully powered down, a familiar figure came striding across the platform—her pale blue flight suit fluttering in the sea breeze, silver hair tied back in a messy braid.
Vera Sutherland stopped just short of the skimmer's hatch, hands on her hips. "Took you long enough."
The Sutherland stronghold smelled like the ocean—brine and sun-warmed stone, with an undercurrent of something metallic that Yuchen recognized as charged plasma. Vera led them through airy corridors open to the sea winds, pointing out landmarks with the irreverent pride of someone who'd grown up climbing its forbidden towers.
"—and that's the old prison tower," she said, jerking her thumb at a slender spire crusted with barnacles. "Now it's Aunt Mari's teahouse. Long story involving a bet and six barrels of whiskey."
Xing trotted ahead, his nose working overtime at the unfamiliar scents. Every few feet, he'd pause to sneeze violently at some new ocean smell.
Jiang nudged Yuchen. "Told you we should've left the mutt home."
Vera grinned. "Nah, the dolphin's gonna love him."
Yuchen blinked. "The what—"
A thunderous splash echoed from the courtyard below.
The "dolphin" turned out to be a genetically enhanced orca-killer whale hybrid named Neptune, who currently occupied an Olympic-sized pool in the center of the fortress. His sleek black-and-white form glided beneath the water's surface, occasionally breaching to spit arcs of saltwater at passing servants.
Vera leaned against the pool's edge as Neptune circled below. "Dad's pet project. Smarter than most of our politicians."
Jiang eyed the massive creature warily. "Please tell me you don't feed visitors to it."
"Only the boring ones." Vera tossed a fish into the water, which Neptune caught mid-air with terrifying precision. "So, Heard you blew up your family's superweapon. Nice touch."
Yuchen stiffened, but Vera's grin was approving.
"Wei-Xing's been scrambling ever since. Rumor says their research division started drinking before noon." She tossed another fish. "Course, now they're doubling down on that Titan project."
Jiang's hand twitched toward the plasma pistol at his belt. "How bad?"
"Bad enough that the Valois are nervous." Vera's gaze flicked to Yuchen. "Which is why you're here."
Neptune chose that moment to surge from the water, drenching them all in salt spray. As Yuchen sputtered, something hard and smooth bounced off his chest—a data crystal, now floating in the pool's shallow steps.
Vera winked. "Dolphin-delivered diplomacy. Don't say we're not classy."
They reconvened on a private stretch of beach, the setting sun painting the waves in shades of fire. Vera activated the data crystal, projecting a holographic map over the wet sand.
"Wei-Xing's moved their Titan project here," she said, zooming in on an island chain northeast of Shanghai. "Deep underground this time. Our scouts can't get close."
The image shifted to show schematics—partial scans of something massive taking shape beneath the earth.
Yuchen's stomach twisted. "It's bigger."
"And they've solved the neural overload issue," Vera confirmed. "Turns out kidnapping psychic-class awakened children does wonders for your R&D."
Xing growled, his silver markings pulsing faintly.
Jiang spat into the sand. "Bastards never learn."
Vera collapsed the hologram. "Here's the fun part—the Valois want an alliance. Temporary, obviously."
Yuchen frowned. "The gene-mod aristocrats?"
"Who better to counter Wei-Xing's psychic puppets?" Vera stretched, her joints popping. "They're sending an envoy tomorrow. Some cousin of theirs who's apparently 'cultured' enough to tolerate us barbarians."
Jiang snorted. "This oughta be good."
A wave crashed against the shore, erasing their footprints as they walked back to the fortress.
That night, Yuchen found Vera on the western battlements, her face turned toward the sea. Without her usual smirk, she looked younger—almost vulnerable.
"You don't have to do this, you know," she said quietly. "Play the heir game. Fight their wars."
Xing flopped onto her feet, as if sensing the shift in mood.
Yuchen leaned against the sun-warmed stone. "Do you?"
Vera laughed, but it was hollow. "Sutherlands don't get choices. We're too good at building weapons." She flicked a shell fragment into the dark. "But you... you burned yours down."
The ocean breathed between them, steady as a heartbeat.
"I'm not giving up," Yuchen said at last. "Just fighting differently."
Vera studied him for a long moment before nodding. "Then tomorrow, we show the Valois what happens when monsters make allies."
Somewhere below, Neptune breached in a shower of phosphorescent spray, the sea glittering like a sky full of falling stars.
The Valois envoy arrived at dawn, his sky-yacht cutting through the morning mist like a blade of silver and cobalt. From the Sutherland battlements, Yuchen watched the vessel descend—its hull engraved with the Valois crest: a double helix entwined with a sword.
Jiang leaned against the parapet beside him, squinting. "That thing's gotta be at least sixty percent pretentious."
Vera snorted, adjusting the high-collared jacket her attendants had forced her into for the occasion. "Wait till you meet the peacock riding in it."
The yacht's gangplank lowered with a hiss of hydraulics. Out stepped a young man draped in layered silks the color of deep ocean and twilight, his pale hair braided with sapphire threads. A live peacock perched on his shoulder, its iridescent tail feathers brushing the ground.
"Ah," Jiang said. "You meant that literally."
The envoy swept toward them with the grace of a dancer, his every movement calculated to draw the eye. The peacock fanned its tail as he bowed.
"Lucien de Valois," he introduced himself, his voice smooth as aged wine. "At your service."
Vera's smile was all teeth. "Let's skip the courtesies. You're here because Wei-Xing's Titan could glass your gene-labs before breakfast."
Lucien's peacock made a sound suspiciously like a laugh.
"Direct," Lucien mused. "How refreshing." His gaze slid to Yuchen. "And you must be the infamous Luo heir who turned his family's superweapon into scrap metal."
Xing, who had been sniffing the peacock with intense focus, chose that moment to sneeze directly onto Lucien's polished boots.
A beat of silence.
Then Lucien laughed—a bright, unexpected sound. "I like your hound."
They convened in the Sutherland's war room, where a holographic map of the Pacific conflict zones flickered above a table carved from whalebone. Lucien's peacock—apparently named Versailles—strutted along the table's edge, occasionally pecking at the holograms.
"Our intelligence suggests Wei-Xing's Titan will be operational within three months," Lucien said, tapping a jeweled finger on the table. The projection zoomed in on the underground facility. "But they have a weakness."
The image changed to show a slender, dark-haired girl in a Wei-Xing lab coat, her wrists marked with the same silver circuits as the Titan pilots.
Yuchen's breath caught. "That's—"
"Dr. Lin Mei," Lucien confirmed. "Lead architect of the Titan project. Also, according to our sources, the woman currently sabotaging it from within."
Vera leaned forward. "You're telling me their head scientist is a traitor?"
"A mother," Lucien corrected softly. "Her daughter was taken in the last round of 'recruitments'."
A heavy silence settled over the room. Even Versailles stilled, her feathers drooping.
Jiang broke the quiet with a sharp exhale. "So what's the play?"
Lucien smiled. "We give the good doctor what she needs to finish the job."
That evening's banquet was a masterclass in political theater. Sutherland retainers served course after course of delicacies—glazed abalone, fire-pepper crab, towers of tropical fruits carved into floral shapes—while the conversation danced around everything but the looming war.
Lucien held court with effortless charm, debating poetry with the Sutherland elders while Versailles stole shrimp from his plate. Vera, playing the part of the unruly host, "accidentally" spilled wine on two separate diplomats.
Yuchen picked at his food, his mind racing.
"You're brooding," Jiang muttered beside him. "Eat something before you pass out."
"I'm thinking," Yuchen corrected.
"Same difference."
A shadow fell over them. Lucien had broken away from the crowd, his peacock-less for once.
"Walk with me," he said, too quietly for others to hear.
The Sutherland's night-blooming garden was alive with bioluminescent flowers, their petals glowing softly in the dark. Lucien led Yuchen to a secluded fountain, where the sound of water masked their words.
"You recognized Dr. Lin," Lucien said without preamble.
Yuchen tensed. "She was at Border City-17. Worked with the children in the pods."
Lucien's expression darkened. "Then you know why we must act quickly." He withdrew a tiny data chip from his sleeve. "This contains the access codes for Wei-Xing's northern supply routes. Get it to her."
"Why me?"
"Because you've walked their halls." Lucien's gaze was uncharacteristically serious. "And because no one expects the Luo heir to crawl through the shadows."
A rustle in the bushes—Xing emerged, his muzzle stained with what appeared to be stolen dessert. Versailles fluttered down from a nearby tree, alighting on Lucien's shoulder with a haughty chirp.
Lucien's mask of elegance slipped back into place. "Think about it. Or don't." He shrugged. "But if you choose to move, do it before the new moon. That's when their security rotates."
As he walked away, Versailles dropped a single iridescent feather at Yuchen's feet.
Yuchen found Jiang on the beach, sharpening his knife by the light of the setting moon.
"We're doing it," Yuchen said.
Jiang didn't look up. "Figured."
"You're not going to argue?"
"Kid, you blew up the Xuanwu. Pretty sure sneaking into a Wei-Xing base is a step down." Jiang tested the blade's edge. "Besides, I already called Jinhai."
Yuchen blinked. "You what?"
"Told him we're borrowing a stealth skimmer. He said to bring back some of that Valois wine if we survive." Jiang sheathed the knife. "Oh, and that you're grounded for life after this."
Xing barked his approval as the first light of dawn touched the waves.