On the seventh breath, the lake answers me.
Ripples fold inward, a quiet spiral that settles the nervous crown into a thin hush. Beyond the water, Sky Wolf banners snap like a whip in the spring wind. Their champion steps into the ring, twin sabers resting on his shoulders, the metal catches the sunlight in to clean bright lines.
Ge Ji Ming.
We had never truly met. Rival sects don't exchange tea, only blows. However, rumors run faster than feet that carry them, Sky Wolf's beloved prodigy with blades that sing, was promised by a pact to the lady of Vermilion Teahouse. A marriage that stank of fat money and safe passages, a link in a chain to be polished.
I exhaled the eighth breath. Moon-Breath Lotus. Petal tier cultivators in the audience sense the shift, the pool in my dantian smoothing, the world narrows to a point of light at my sternum.
The guardian ribbon falls.
Ji Ming moves first, not to charge, a subtle shift in Heaven-Stride. His afterimage peels away, a pale wolf leaping left while his body glides right. The sabers don't whistle, they hum a harmony that prickles the hairs along my arms.
I meet him with Lotus Mirror Hand, the soft catch that turns an opponent's force back toward its source. Steel kisses my palm through a sheath of qi and skates harmlessly past my waist. He smiles; a small, surprised thing, like a sun slipping through a storm.
"You're Lotus," he says, a whisper not meant for the crowd.
"And you're Sky Wolf," I return, pivoting, letting his second strike eat empty air. "Try not to look shocked."
We exchange a dozen movements in the time it takes a petal to fall. His footwork splits into a double; mine seals into a circle. The crowd roars, but inside the ring the noise is distant bells.
Then it happens.
On my inhale, his right blade dips into the same rhythm. Not mockery, not an accident, resonance. The hum of his sabers lifts in pitch, threads the breath inside my chest, and for a heartbeat, our qi patterns overlap like two pond rings meeting at the shore.
The world flashes white.
I'm standing in the same place, but the ring is an echo and the lake beyond is suddenly vast, every ripple, every insect, the hidden root snarls beneath the pier. Jimmy's face pales. He stumbles half a step, sabers flared wide.
He felt it too.
Shuangxin. Twin-heart attunement. The kind of mistake that binds fates together and gets people killed.
"Again," he raggedly breathes, not to me, not to anyone, the word dragged from somewhere raw.
I don't oblige. A second resonance would brand us both. Instead I turn the circle tighter, Quiet Pond seeping along the boundary of the ring. The spectators' cheers dim to a muffled throb; even the banners seem to slow.
"Clever," he says, fragments of praise tucked into a feint. His left blade flicks low, right snaps high, making a scissor for my throat.
I plant my hairpin between us. Silver touches steel and chimes. The lotus engraved there glows faintly, brightening at proximity to destiny threads. My breath catches.
Across the stage, beyond the judges and their ink-black sleeves, a woman in vermilion watches with her fan half-raised. Face serene. Eyes sharp. The pact made flesh.
Kang Ya Zhen.
My distraction nearly costs me. A nick along my sleeve—fire races skin-deep where his qi grazes. I answer with Silver Thread Needles, three thin darts lancing toward shoulder, wrist, ankle. He knocks two aside; the third stitches a warning line across his cuff.
We break apart.
"Lotus," he says again, and this time my sect name is something like an apology.
"Sky Wolf," I echo, with a sly smirk, and this time his sect name tastes like promise.
The guardian lifts a hand to call the exchange; the tournament rules cap rounds before blood can sour into a vendetta. However, the lake gives a small, secret shiver under my soles. My qi wants the overlap, the inexorable click of gear into gear.
I step back and bow. "Your blades sing. I prefer silence."
He bows in return, sabers crossing before his heart. "Then I'll learn to listen."
The guardian's ribbon slices the air, once more. The round concludes. Polite clatter from the stands, the rustle of coins changing hands. I retreat toward White Lotus Hall's dais, pulse steady by force, hairpin cooling against my scalp.
Elder Miao pours tea as if nothing interesting has occurred. "A lively exchange," he says, steam wreathing his smile.
"He followed my breath," I murmur.
"I noticed." His eyes crease. "So did the lady in vermilion."
I glance, and Ya Zhen is gone. A red lantern sways where she stood, thin as a tongue.
"Elder," I say, the word a petition.
"Later," he replies, voice soft. "For now, drink. The world hears more than we intend."
I take the cup. Lotus tea is simple: heat, water, leaf, attention. My hands are steady enough to pass for calm. Inside, my pool is a sky full of wolves.
When the tournament disperses, dusk settles over the lake in violet layers. Lanterns bloom along the footbridges. I leave the safety of our pavilion for the herb sheds, the place where White Lotus discipline feels like breath and not iron.
He's there already.
No armor, no banners. Just Ji Ming leaning against the shed's shadowed wall, sabers sheathed, hair damp from a hurried wash as if he tried to rinse the Wolf from his skin.
"You're not subtle," I say, refusing my heartbeat to dance with quickness.
"I am terrible at subtle," he admits. "But I'm good at footwork. If anyone followed me, they'd have already lost my trail." A grin, crooked. "Except you."
The herb-shed air smells of drying chrysanthemum and cut pine. Between us, the space is a tightrope. I should send him away. I should raise a barrier and call a senior. I should remember the silver thread humming in my hairpin and what it means when two patterns meet.
Instead I say, "Breathe."
He does. I match him. Inhale four, hold two, exhale six, Lotus, not Wolf. His chest rises on my pattern, not his, and the hum returns, faint, like a kettle starting to think about singing.
"Why is this happening?" he asks, eyes on my mouth as if the answer lives there.
"I don't know," I lie, because to name Shuangxin aloud calls it closer.
"Will you…" He breaks off, looks away. When he looks back, the jest is gone. "train with me. Just enough to understand it. So neither of us dies by accident."
"Just enough," I agree, knowing there is no such amount.
The first time we move together without steel between us, the shed breathes with us. The hanging herbs quiver. Dust motes sway in time. His afterimage splits and then, impossibly, finds me, two paths aligning as if the ground beneath us were always one road pretending at forks.
My hairpin glows. His sabers hum in their sheaths.
Outside, a small sound breaks through, a rope creaking. I snap the Quiet Pond veil up and gesture at him to stand still. Through the slit between boards, a red lantern drifts past the shed door and pauses, as if listening.
We wait. The lantern moves on.
Only then do I let my breath out. He lets his out with mine, and there it is again… the echo, the answer, the promise.
"Tomorrow," I say.
"Tomorrow," he agrees.
We step away at the same time and bump anyway. He laughs under his breath. The sound slides under my ribs and stays.
When I finally return to the pavilion, Elder Miao sits awake with a single candle, its flame cupped in his palm. He doesn't glance up.
"You were late," he says.
"Yes, Elder."
"Be earlier," he says, as if he's asked me to steep tea two breaths longer. "Resonance draws hunters."
"Who hunts resonance?"
"The ones who profit from vows," he answers, and lifts his hand. The candle goes out without smoke.
In the dark, my hairpin hums, and far across the water, a lantern flickers red as a wound.