The sky was still very blue.
That was the first thing I noticed. How blue it was. And how quiet everything had gotten.
Liu Hao was saying something. I could hear her voice — steady, quick, the calm she used when she was trying very hard not to be anything else. Chen Wei answered her in a low tone. I couldn't make out the words. They sounded far away and very close at the same time.
Someone was holding my hand.
I didn't know which one.
Then the sealing started and I stopped being able to think about much else.
It felt like pressure from the inside. Not painful exactly — more like something very large pressing against the walls of a space that wasn't built to hold it. Chen Wei's Qi threading through the cracks in the seal. Liu Hao's following behind it — a different texture, steadier, like stitching. Back and forth. Patient. Careful. Like two people sewing up something that kept trying to tear open again.
I think I said something at one point.
I'm not sure what.
Liu Hao said "I know" very quietly.
And then it was dark.
* * *
I woke up to the smell of smoke.
Cooking fire. Not the wrong kind. Someone had started a fire and something was in it — not giant chicken, something smaller, something that smelled like actual food.
The sky was dark now. Stars between the branches.
I was lying on something that wasn't the ground — a bedroll, folded cloak underneath my head, something draped over me that was too long and probably belonged to someone significantly larger than me. I was very warm. My entire body was registering a long list of complaints that I was choosing to process one at a time.
I turned my head.
Liu Hao was sitting beside me. Close. Hands in her lap, eyes on the fire. She'd cleaned the blood off her face but missed a spot near her jaw. Her hair was slightly undone. She looked tired in a way she would never admit to.
She noticed me without looking over. "Don't try to sit up."
"I wasn't going to."
"You were. I could tell."
I hadn't been. But I probably would have in a minute. "How long?"
"A few hours." She paused. "The seal is stable. We had to reinforce three sections."
"Is that bad?"
She didn't answer immediately, which was an answer.
I turned my head the other way.
Chen Wei was on my other side. Sitting straight, back against a tree, arms resting on her knees. She wasn't looking at the fire — she was looking at me. Like she'd been looking at the same spot for a while and hadn't decided to stop yet.
She looked different.
Not in any way I could name. Something around the eyes maybe. Something that had been very carefully put back in place.
"Hey," I said.
"Hey," she said.
We looked at each other for a moment.
"You stayed," I said.
"Obviously."
Liu Hao made a quiet sound that wasn't quite anything. I decided not to examine it.
I moved my hands slowly. Everything worked. Mostly. My right palm was wrapped — clean bandaging, tight. The rest of me was various stages of bandaged or cleaned or just sore. Someone had cut away what was left of the uniform rather than try to salvage it.
RIP. It had been a good uniform.
I reached into my pocket out of habit.
My fingers found the phone.
I pulled it out slowly.
The screen was shattered. Not just cracked — shattered, a spider web of breaks running from one corner all the way across, deep fissures through the glass, the surface rough under my thumb where it had never been rough before. One corner was dented slightly. The case was split.
I stared at it.
I didn't know when it had happened. Somewhere in the fight, somewhere between the scouts and the running and the bits I didn't fully remember. It must have been in my pocket. It must have taken a hit.
It had already been dead. I knew that. It hadn't turned on since the first day. There was nothing on it to lose.
But it had still been whole.
I ran my thumb across the broken surface. Carefully. The way you move around something that doesn't need any more damage.
Neither of them said anything.
After a moment I put it back in my pocket.
"Okay," I said, to the sky.
A small sound from somewhere to my left.
I turned my head.
Little Carp was sitting a short distance away, cross-legged, watching me with very large eyes. The dried flower was back in her hands — someone had picked it up from the clearing. She had a small scratch on her cheek and someone had braided her hair badly, probably Old Man Shen, which meant it was slightly sideways and coming undone at the bottom.
"Hey," I said.
"You fell down," she said.
"I know."
"A lot of people were scared."
"Were you scared?"
She considered this very seriously. "A little. But I bit him first."
"You did," I said. "Good bite."
She looked extremely satisfied with herself. "Wei-jie said I was very brave."
"You were."
She nodded once, clearly filing this away permanently, and went back to studying the flower.
Old Man Shen was at the edge of the firelight. He looked at me when he saw me looking. His face was difficult to read — it was always difficult to read. He had a new bandage around his forearm and a bruise forming under one eye and he had the look of a man who had done the math on something and was sitting with the result.
He nodded once.
I nodded back.
The survivors were quiet around the fire. Not the terrified quiet from the cabin — something different. Heavier. Like people who had seen something they hadn't sorted out yet and were giving it time.
I understood that.
The fire crackled. Someone had actually put spices in whatever was cooking, which meant one of the noble friends had taken charge of it, because neither Liu Hao's competence nor Chen Wei's everything extended to camp cooking, and Old Man Shen's previous contribution had been edible in the way a boot is technically edible.
I was thinking about nothing in particular when Liu Hao said, quietly, "I should tell you something."
I looked at her.
She was still watching the fire. Her hands had shifted slightly — fingers laced together now, like she was holding something steady.
"Chen Wei," she said. "That's not her name."
I waited.
"In the cultivation world, we sometimes reverse names when we go to mortal realms. Easier to pass unnoticed." A pause. "Her name is Wei Chen."
Something clicked quietly in the back of my head.
Wei Chen.
Wei Chen.
I said it once, very quietly, to try the shape of it.
"Wei Chen," Liu Hao confirmed.
I looked across at her. She was watching me now, expression still, waiting.
"Wei Chen," I said again.
Something moved at the corner of her mouth. Almost nothing. But there.
"You reversed your name," I said. "And I just called you Chen Wei for—"
"Yes."
"This entire time."
"Yes."
"You didn't tell me."
"No."
I stared at her. "Why didn't you tell me?"
She was quiet for a moment. "You seemed very confident about it."
Liu Hao was looking very intently at the fire.
I put my head back down on the cloak and looked at the stars. "Wei Chen," I said again, to the sky.
"You'll get used to it," Liu Hao said.
"Is YOUR name reversed?"
"No."
"So when I asked—"
"Ji Rui. I told you. You were very committed to your theory."
I had been. I had been extremely committed to my theory. "This is very embarrassing."
"It is a little embarrassing," Wei Chen agreed pleasantly.
I closed my eyes. "Okay. Wei Chen. Got it. I'm not calling you anything else starting now."
"You'll slip."
"I won't."
"You will."
I probably would. But I was going to try very hard not to.
The fire crackled. The stars stayed where they were. My hand with the wrapped palm was resting on my chest and it hurt in a dull, distant way that I was managing to mostly ignore.
After a while Liu Hao stood. She moved around me quietly and came back carrying two things — one in each hand. She crouched down at my side.
"When you're recovered," she said. "You'll need somewhere to put things."
She held them out.
In her right hand: a ring. Simple. Dark metal, some kind of engraving along the band. Small enough to look like nothing.
In her left hand: a bag. Compact. Good leather, closure at the top, worn in a way that meant someone had actually used it and then maintained it well.
"Storage ring," she said, tilting her right hand slightly. "Storage bag." The left.
I looked between them.
"What do they do?"
Liu Hao closed her eyes for a moment.
"They hold things," Wei Chen said. Not unkindly.
"How many things?"
"More than you'd think."
I looked at the ring. I looked at the bag. I thought about the broken phone in my pocket and the bracelet from the ruins and the sword that I still had not asked anyone about properly and the fact that I had no uniform anymore and nothing to put anything in.
"Which one's better?"
"Depends what you value," Liu Hao said.
Wei Chen said nothing, which meant she had an opinion she was keeping to herself, which meant she thought one of them was obviously correct and was waiting to see what I picked.
I picked up the ring.
Wei Chen looked at it for a moment. Something in her expression shifted — very small, very quickly — and went still again.
I didn't ask about it. I put it on.
It fit.
"Okay," I said.
"Okay," Liu Hao said.
The food was ready. Little Carp announced this at a volume that startled three people and woke up one refugee who had been dozing at the edge of the fire. Old Man Shen helped me sit up slowly and handed me a bowl without commentary, which was the kindest thing he had done so far.
I sat there, sore and patched up and minus one school uniform, eating something that actually tasted like food.
Wei Chen sat beside me.
Liu Hao sat on the other side.
The fire burned low and warm. Little Carp told everyone in detail about biting the scout's arm — twice, because some of the noble friends missed it the first time — and Old Man Shen's expression did something that might have been, if you were very generous, almost a smile.
I held the bowl with both hands and let the warmth come through and thought about nothing for a while.
Just the fire.
Just this.
Just here.