Rui Jiang POV;
Rui had always known how to endure.
Earth did not protest when burdened.
It accepted weight, absorbed pressure, and remained.That was what guardianship demanded.But as he sat alone beneath the Sky Dominion, Rui realized something had changed.
The imbalance he had absorbed no longer burned—it ached. A deep, lingering
heaviness settled beneath his ribs,spreading slowly through his limbs. He breathed
through it, steady and practiced.He had felt worse before.
What unsettled him was not the pain.It was the memory of Yang's arms catching him before he fell.
The wind had stopped completely in that moment. Not forced. Not commanded.
It had simply… waited. Rui pressed his palm lightly against the stone floor. The earth answered faintly, distant but present.Enough to keep him grounded.
"You don't get to decide alone anymore" Yang had said. Rui let out a slow breath.
He had lived his entire life deciding alone.
Footsteps approached—measured, familiar.
Rui did not look up when Yang stopped a few paces away.
"You should be resting," Yang said.
"I am," Rui replied. "This is rest." Yang's silence stretched longer than usual.
"You're still absorbing residual instability," Yang said finally. "I can feel it in the air."
Rui's lips curved faintly. "So now you feel what I feel." Yang frowned. "That isn't what I meant." Rui looked up then.
Yang stood rigid, hands clasped behind his back, eyes sharp but troubled. The wind around him moved carefully, restrained in a way Rui had never seen before.
"You didn't have to catch me," Rui said quietly. Yang's jaw tightened. "You would have collapsed."
"And if I had?"The question hung between them. Yang answered without hesitation.
"Then I would have taken the burden myself."Rui froze.
"That would have destabilized the wind," Rui said.
"I know."
"Then why—"Because," Yang interrupted, voice low, "I am tired of watching you carry everything." The honesty struck harder than any accusation.
Rui looked away first.
"That isn't your responsibility," he said.Yang stepped closer. The air shifted, not threatening—protective.
"You made it mine when you stepped into my realm," Yang said. "When you corrected my wind. When you stood your ground."Rui swallowed.
"You still see me as a risk," Rui said.
"Yes," Yang replied. Rui's chest tightened.
"And?" Rui asked.
"And I see you as necessary."The words settled slowly, dangerously.
~~~
Later, after Yang left, Rui lay back against the stone, staring up at a sky that did not belong to him. Earth endured.Wind commanded.
But something fragile was forming between them—something neither element was built to handle.
Rui closed his eyes.This is dangerous, he thought.Not because Yang was cruel.But because he was learning to care.And Rui did not know how to survive that.
Far away, unseen and unheard, the ground beneath the realms shifted—not in collapse, but in preparation.And beneath layers of calm water, the Brilliant of Water brightened, its pulse quickening, as if ready to reveal what it had been hiding all along.