The Celestial Gate didn't open with light.
It opened with silence.
One moment the sky was empty. The next, the air was gone, replaced by a pressure that made Li Jin's teeth ache. Stone steps unfolded from nothing, white and cold, leading up into a corridor that shouldn't exist above the clouds.
He was dragged up them. Lian Yue walked beside him, chains of light binding her wrists. Her face was calm. Too calm.
He hated it.
The interrogation chamber was circular, no doors, no windows. Just a floor of polished jade and a dais at the center where the senior enforcer stood. The eye on his mask never blinked.
"Leave us," the enforcer said. The other two dragged Li Jin forward and shoved him to his knees before the dais.
Li Jin didn't fight it. Fighting now would get him killed before he got answers.
"Explain the contract," the enforcer said to Lian Yue. "How was it formed? Who permitted it?"
Lian Yue didn't answer immediately. She looked at Li Jin first.
He gave her the smallest nod. _Say what you need to survive._
"We don't know," she said. "It activated when our skin touched. Neither of us invoked it."
"Lies." The enforcer's voice didn't rise. It didn't need to. "Starweave Contracts are made by blood and oath. You would know."
Li Jin felt the chains tighten. The bond yanked, and a spike of pain shot through his chest. He gritted his teeth to keep from making a sound.
"Then check," Lian Yue said. "Cut me open. You'll find no blood oath. No Heavenly seal. Only the bond."
The enforcer tilted his head. "You believe we won't."
"I believe you need me intact," she said quietly. "Or you would have already severed the bond and killed him."
Silence.
The enforcer stepped down from the dais. He stopped in front of LiJin, looking down at him like he was inspecting a stain on a robe.
"Mortal," he said. "Do you know what you've done?"
Li Jin spat blood on the jade floor. "Saved her life. Again. You're welcome."
The enforcer didn't move. But the air grew heavier.
"Interfering with Heaven's decree is treason. The punishment is soul erasure."
Li Jin met his gaze. "Then erase it. But you won't. Because she's right. You need her."
The bond flared, hot and sudden. Not pain this time. Memory.
Li Jin saw it: Lian Yue as a child, standing before a council of silent figures, being told her fate was sealed before her birth. Saw the loneliness in it. Saw the moment she decided she'd rather fall than live like that.
He saw it because she was feeling it, and the chains couldn't stop that.
The enforcer noticed.
"Sever the emotional link," he ordered. "Now."
Two chains wrapped around Lian Yue's throat and chest. They didn't strangle. They squeezed, targeting the bond itself.
Lian Yue gasped, knees buckling.
Li Jin moved without thinking. He surged forward, shoulders hitting the enforcer's legs. It did nothing. He was thrown back like a rag doll, ribs screaming.
But his hand caught Lian Yue's.
The moment they touched, the chains shuddered.
The bond didn't break. It inverted.
Pain flowed the other way. Li Jin took it all. His vision went white. He heard her say his name, but it sounded distant, underwater.
When he came back to himself, he was on the floor, and Lian Yue was kneeling over him, chains gone.
The senior enforcer was staring at his hands like they'd betrayed him.
"Impossible," he said. "Heaven's chains cannot be broken by a mortal."
Li Jin coughed, tasting copper. "Maybe I'm not mortal."
"Or maybe," Lian Yue said, standing, pulling him up with her, "you've been wrong about what Heaven can and can't do."
The senior enforcer recovered fast. He raised his hand.
"Hold them."
But the chamber door exploded inward.
Guards—mortal guards, in mismatched armor and with terrified faces—poured in.
At their front was a girl Li Jin recognized. Yao, one of his smuggling contacts. She looked like she hadn't slept in days.
"Prince LiJin!" she shouted. "We're getting you out!"
Chaos erupted.
Lian Yue didn't hesitate. She grabbed Li Jin's hand and ran.