The reflection was gone.
One moment the well had shown him that impossible white-robed double of himself standing beneath a horizon of mourning banners, Gu Yanchen at his side, both of them turning to look out of the water like something that had been waiting its whole existence for him to finally notice it. The next, there was only black water again, ordinary and still, giving back nothing but the bruised red sky.
Lin Yue rose from his crouch slowly, the way a man rises from something he doesn't want to admit had unsettled him.
It hadn't. Not really. But close enough that the distinction felt, for once, worth guarding.
"Lin Yue." Xu Ran's voice, low, urgent, cutting through the quiet that had settled over the clearing since Little Qiao's disappearance. "What did the water just show you? Your face went—"
"Nothing that changes what we need to do," Lin Yue said, which wasn't quite an answer and wasn't quite a lie either.
