The lake was black glass under moonlight, every ripple sharp as a blade. I should have been asleep, Lotus scrolls beneath my pillow, discipline as my shield. Instead, my feet carried me to the herb sheds.

He was already there.

Ge Ji Ming leaned against the post, sabers sheathed, face shadowed. His eyes found mine as if he had been waiting for hours.

“You tied the cord,” I said.

“You saw my hands,” he replied. “Does that look like consent?”

Silence stretched between us. The night pulsed with cricket song, the low hum of the lotus hairpin, the memory of resonance too strong to ignore.

“You’ll ruin us both,” I whispered.
“Then let me start with myself.”

He stepped closer. Not a charge, not a warrior’s advance… just a man crossing a space that had been empty too long. When his breath matched mine, the resonance returned, steady, certain.

Our qi spiraled together, the herbs trembling on their strings, the shed walls shivering as if they knew what we dared. His afterimages split and circled me like wolves guarding a pond; my Lotus cycles held him steady, a moon reflecting his storm.

For a heartbeat, it felt like freedom.

Then his voice, low and raw: “Swear it with me. If this bond kills us, let it be together. No one else.”

I should have refused. I should have broken the circle. Instead I heard myself say: “Together. Or not at all.”

The spiral flared. The air itself bent. For an instant the world heard our vow.

And then… quiet. The resonance stilled, leaving us breathless, bound, and terrified.

Because outside the shed, faint and deliberate, came the sound of a single pair of hands clapping.