Lan Wangji will never tell Wei Wuxian what he did after the massacre at Nightless City—what his brother would call the only mistake he ever made. Nor will he forget it himself.

Following the tragic and sudden suicide of General Hanazawa, Ogata and Tsurumi debrief.

When they arrive in the Yiling Supervisory Office, Jiang Yanli freshly recovered from fever, Jiang Cheng in a coma, and Wei Wuxian nearly at the end of his rope, Jiang Yanli does what she does best—acts as the warm, nurturing support for her brothers. But she's tired, too.

“Oh,” Qingming breathes out, his shoulders sinking deep with it, “how fortunate.”

Yes, Boya thinks, foolish and giddy and wrecked with affirmation, how fortunate.

Tang Fan is looking at him — hasn't stopped looking at him once, really, in some way, since Sui Zhou stepped over the threshold and into his room — but he's looking at him, now, with a wonder so holy it's encroaching on worship. As though Sui Zhou has shot down a sun for him instead of something else infinitely less incredible.

“They'll have to make a few surgical incisions, of course.” With a single finger of each hand, Tsurumi traced two lines, one across each side of Ogata's face, from the corner of his warped jaw to the centre of his cheek. “You'll still look fetching as ever, I'm sure.”

Xue Ling should rightly leave it be. But: Sui da-ge had brought the magistrate here so he wouldn't be hurt, and he seems prone to injuring himself more than anything.

After— after. When Tang Fan is home, and safe, Sui Zhou sees to it that he is comfortable, then moves to take leave of his imposition.

Surely in a world so vast there lie yet stones unturned— slippery things smalled for his spindling fingers to unearth.

His house has been so quiet without the volume of Tang Fan's life filling it, these last days.