Nie Huaisang goes to his knees within the Stone Castles, and does not cry.

He had expected he would.

He had cried innumerable times for his brother, throughout the years left in the wake of their harrowing parting, but they had always been tears of frustration, of fear. Every story he had ever read with an ending that could be considered good had promised him this, this final relief, the screaming, unhinged sob of the released.

It does not come. Nie Huaisang kneels on the stone until his blood has pooled to the floor of him, until the bruises have dug past his skin to mar the very bones of his knees, and it does not come.

How unfair, he cannot help but think to himself, despairing. If this is to be his punishment for all he has done, it is a fate far crueller than the rest. Let it be death, instead.

Nie Huaisang rises to his feet, legs shaking beneath him, hands fisting against his thighs as if the crumple of the silk beneath his fingers can steady his body, can soothe his soul. His brother’s body, one of the few and yet the most important of the spoils he’s claimed from Guanyin Temple, has not moved from the coffin it has been interred in. It will never move again.

Baxia sits, subdued, across his brother’s chest, long cold fingers now returned to their rope around its hilt. Nie Huaisang touches the pads of his fingers to the ornate guard, a habitual flinch pinning itself beneath his skin, born of an old lesson taught a lifetime ago, now, by the strike of Nie Mingjue’s hand whenever he saw the roam of Nie Huaisang’s touch reaching for his sabre. Neither Nie Mingjue nor Baxia lash out at him as he explores.

Something sparks in his mind, an idea more terrible than not, but there is no-one left to stop it from blooming into a fire. No-one left but Nie Huaisang.

“Are you satisfied?” he asks the blade, his brother, himself.

For a time, there is only silence, but when Nie Huaisang wraps his hand firmly around Baxia’s hilt, Nie Mingjue’s hands fall away, and he has his answer.

In many respects, it has always been Nie Huaisang’s unfilial stubbornness that has ultimately saved him from his worse fates.

Nie Mingjue had kept the secret of their sabres from Nie Huaisang for many years, even as he had directed his younger brother to cultivate with his, again and again. Nie Huaisang had wielded it so little despite that; never took to the heft of it, never fed it even the distant taste of blood. When he had uncovered the nature of it for himself, Nie Huaisang had never touched it again. If anyone cared enough to ask as to where it was today, he honestly does not think he could tell them: an armoury somewhere, perhaps, or discarded on a field, long grown over and rusted brittle, the yet-bound spirit intended for it left to rot in their crypts, dissatisfied.

Baxia is too heavy in his hands, too quiet.

Cultivation is an extension of the self, a building and a breaking of the body, a protestation of the soul against what the Heavens have decreed it be allowed. Nie Huaisang knows this. The sabre is not merely a tool, but a body in and of itself, one that is bent to the will of the wielder. One that, in the end, wrecks and ruins the fool who thought it tamed, the hand who dared master it. Nie Huaisang knows this, too.

Nie Mingjue had gorged Baxia to bursting, and gladly. Their appetites were a perfect match, even as they broke one another apart. Nie Huaisang has seen the violence of his brother’s blade spirit, untamed and untempered, for himself: had set it upon enemy and innocent alike, in the long pursuit of an ultimate goal.

Baxia is muted, now. Nie Mingjue had wielded it well, and easily; in Nie Huaisang’s grip, it stutters and stumbles, slips from the sweat that wets his palms. It is too heavy to bear even with the combined strength of both arms. It does not scream its rage.

It is different to his fan. His fan is— a deception, something slight and sly and able to distract and disaffirm. A sabre is, by nature, forthright. Baxia is— a statement. Nie Huaisang cannot hold Baxia in his hands and not be seen for who and what he is.

Nie Huaisang wrings himself dry of spiritual energy within the training yards, for every hour he can spare throughout sparse and sparser days. Baxia does not change, unrelenting and unoppressed, and so it is Nie Huaisang who changes around it, building the strength in his arms to hold it in one hand for longer and longer periods, the strength in his legs to walk with it, to run, to fight.

He expects, with every passing day, with every foothold gained, that he will begin to feel the resistance within the sabre, the push to his pull. That he will wake, one day, and take it in hand to find the poison of its gluttony and malevolence has already rooted deep in his meridians, that he will take it in hand and it will lunge for his throat.

With every passing day, Nie Huaisang takes Baxia in hand, and instead of anything else, it simply feels like, more and more, that the sabre belongs there.

He dreams of Nie Mingjue, some nights.

He has always dreamed of Nie Mingjue, most especially after he was gone, but they had always been— he could never remember them, after, could only tell if they were good or bad by the loss or lightness that followed him into waking.

These dreams, he remembers.

It is not for the best.

It does not matter how they start, for they all proceed the same: Nie Mingjue comes to him, always looking young and alive, how Nie Huaisang wishes he remembered him. He has no kind words to say, for what Nie Huaisang has done, for what Nie Huaisang has become. All of it disgusts him.

Nie Huaisang had always known that Nie Mingjue would despise his methods, but it aches to confront it, to hear his brother’s voice confirm it. He takes it without argument, takes it and takes it until he wakes, ripped open, restless, undone. It is what he deserves, he thinks to himself; it is penance enough.

Until one night, he finds he cannot take it anymore. He is not sure what has brought him to the point where the bough of his resilence breaks beneath the brunt of his brother’s vehemence, but it does.

“You have no right,” Nie Huaisang whispers out, and though it is so quiet, with how it leaves his mouth, the unexpectedness of it makes it loud. Nie Mingjue stops mid-word, mid-step. Nie Huaisang looks up at him, wide-eyed.

“You have no right,” he repeats, watching it sink beneath the surface of his brother’s stilled expression, rippling out, dispersing it to display the rage underneath.

“Say it again,” Nie Mingjue demands.

Nie Huaisang does, though both of them know it is not for obedience that he again opens his mouth. “You have no right.”

Nie Mingjue is before him at once, leering down at him, eyes black, teeth bared, skin mottled red. It is not because he has crossed the room so fast on his own that he is there in a breath; Nie Huaisang’s breath heaves in his chest from the exertion of running to him to meet him halfway. “I have every right! You have disgraced yourself! Your ancestors! There is no place for you in Qinghe Nie!” With every condemnation, Nie Huaisang’s ribcage draws in on itself, tighter and tighter. “How can you look at yourself, at what you’ve become? You knew better— you were taught better.”

Nie Huaisang can’t breathe, but he can yet speak. “Where did that get you, Da-ge? Can you still look at yourself and be proud of who you are, now that you’re dead?”

Nie Mingjue seizes the neck of his robes, drawing them tight across Nie Huaisang’s throat, like a noose, like a knife. Nie Huaisang feels the laugh well up in him where the air should be. “I gave everything to avenge you! Was I supposed to die for you instead?!”

Nie Mingjue releases him, shoving him back, and Nie Huaisang goes with the flow of it, staggering, as he watches his brother reach behind him. This, this is what shatters him apart, gets the hysterical laugh to spur itself past his teeth— that he is to relive this, too, one of his last memories of his brother, the one where they fought.

Except— there is no Baxia in Nie Mingjue’s hand, this time; no fan in Nie Huaisang’s. Nie Huaisang begins to sob, wretchedly, his body shuddering apart with the fury of it, the violence, the disorder. He begins to fall forward, but instead of the floor on his knees, he feels his brother’s hands catch him under his arms, feels the lie of his warm chest as he’s brought to cradle against it.

“You don’t need to praise me,” Nie Huaisang cries, voice breaking, “you don’t, but can’t you at least thank me?”

Nie Mingjue’s answering silence is harsh, his chest juddering with coiled tension against Nie Huaisang’s cheek, but his touch is soft as it pushes Nie Huaisang’s hair back from his forehead, as his callouses catch beneath his eye socket, wiping his tears away.

His brother does not thank him. His brother does not say anything more at all.

Baxia takes its first life in Nie Huaisang’s hand on a night hunt three weeks later.

He has developed a habit of following some of the younger disciples on their ventures, of late, if only to watch how they wield their sabres, that Nie Huaisang may learn some of his sect’s methods for himself without asking. Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangyao had both taught him these lessons when they were alive, but Nie Huaisang had not learned them, and now it seems— wrong, to seek tutelage from anyone else.

But he has always been good at watching others, at taking what they do and putting it into his own practices.

They discover too late that their quarry is not what it seems, only uncovering the truth when they have sprung its ambush. His disciples form a ring around him instantly, shielding him, their bodies drawn as close together as they can to deny their prey turned predator an opportunity to break their formation.

It has to break, eventually, inevitably, and soon enough the necessity to fight for their survival throws them apart. It is not, in the end, even for his own life that Nie Huaisang draws Baxia from his back: from the dark he sees the gleam of too many teeth and too many eyes, bearing down on one of the disciples closest to him, and he moves with his body instead of his mind to put himself between them.

The monster cannot pull back on its own momentum in time to avoid colliding with Baxia, and, with an unholy, spirit-curdling wail, the mass of its writhing body slides down the sabre until it catches on the guard, slicking Nie Huaisang’s hands with its blood, staining his sleeves and skirts.

The clearing is silent for a heartbeat before the victorious shouts of his disciples swell into a rupturing crescendo, each of them hurdling through the clearing to fall upon him, pulling the corpse free of his blade, probing the blood on his skin and the slits in his clothes for wounds.

Nie Huaisang feels—

He feels—

The next dream he has of them after the night hunt, they are in the room Nie Mingjue burned. It is how Nie Huaisang remembers it when it was still untouched, awash with sunlight and filled to the brim with every pretty thing Nie Huaisang had found and made and decided needed to be kept.

He thought his brother’s presence in such a place would fill him with trepidation; would be herald to a nightmare. It is not. Nie Mingjue approaches him, unarmed, unangered, his expression complicated, but soft.

They both look down to Nie Huaisang’s hand as one, where his fingers are curled around Baxia’s hilt. Nie Huaisang blinks at it, and then looks up at his brother, imagining his face must mirror his brother’s own shock. Even if this is a dream, how could he not know that he’s holding something so heavy?

“What have you done?”

Nie Huaisang tries to sink back from him, but Nie Mingjue’s hand cuffs around his wrist, the grip gentle but the pressure insistent enough to chain him in place.

“Can we have one night where you do not berate me?” Nie Huaisang asks, somewhat frailly. He has not cried again in any of these dreams, not since the first time, but he has grown bolder in them, more indignant in the face of his brother’s various disapprovals.

Perhaps it is foolish to ask a spectre within a dream anything, but it is no more foolish than many other things Nie Huaisang has done, things he will surely do.

“Huaisang,” Nie Mingjue chastises. He does not sound angry. He sounds— Nie Huaisang shuts his mouth, bottom lip trembling, and does not resist as his brother lifts his arm. He holds it and Baxia out effortlessly, his free hand lifting from his side to trace the flat of the sabre’s blade.

“I don’t know,” says Nie Huaisang, to the question his brother cannot bring himself to ask. It is the truest ignorance he’s had in so long that he almost can’t recognise the feeling of it, of being bereft of knowledge and understanding. He does not know why Baxia is not killing him like it did Nie Mingjue. He does not understand what is setting them so far apart.

Except—

Except, as he looks at his brother’s face, Nie Huaisang realises, perhaps, that he does.

He had hastened to return his brother’s body and his brother’s sabre to their ancestral halls, mindful of the limit to the blade spirit’s satiety. And yet, there was only so fast he and his people could move, belaboured by a coffin. Still, not once had Baxia thrashed against its bonds, or lunged for the closest live body to sup its blood.

Nie Huaisang had dismissed it, then, as lethargy following a particularly filling meal: Baxia had spilled so much blood at Guanyin Temple, after all.

Nie Huaisang finds he cannot dismiss it again, now.

“You,” whispers Nie Huaisang. His mouth remains open, awaiting more words that do not— cannot come.

Nie Mingjue releases his arm, allows it to fall back to his side, allows Baxia to fall from his hand to the floor. It can’t be. He repeats it in his head, again and again, like a prayer of hope, a mantra of disbelief. It can’t be— but haven’t stranger things happened?

Could it not be possible that these are not dreams, not quite, but visits?

Baxia had taken Nie Mingjue’s life from him, after all. And for one moment, one glorious, gory moment, that night in Guanyin Temple, had there not been the opportunity for Nie Mingjue’s spirit, splintered and spent, to take something back?

For a part of it, a small, shattered fragment, to slot itself between the cracks of the blade spirit and root in its soil, tainting it?

“Da-ge.” Nie Huaisang reaches out with trembling hands, and Nie Mingjue cups his elbows, guides him home, to where his arms wind tight around his waist and Nie Huaisang’s cheek rests against his sternum.

Nie Huaisang wakes all too soon, but it is to tears on his face. To the sensation of his heart unclenching, relief flooding through his body, washing away all of the grit and debris that has been so long speared through every stretch of him that he’s forgotten just what he feels like, to be barren of burden, free of regret.

At last, he thinks, and he laughs.

Nie Huaisang knows the importance of words most of all, and does his best to keep himself true to them.

Though he no longer hides his competencies, he remembers what he owes, and what he knows to be his place. That which is not his business will always remain so, but for the fate and wellbeing of Qinghe Nie, there is no question as to how far he will go.

He sits upon his throne in the Unclean Realm, the sabre of his brother in a place of honour at his side. When duty asks for it, Baxia slides free of the rack, answering the call of his hand.

But duty asks for so little of that, as of late, in Qinghe Nie. For appearances are fragile things, and strength is not so simple or straightforward as to be believed. But words, for Nie Huaisang, are not easily dismissed, even when they are unspoken; even when their promises remain unsaid.

Nie Mingjue had promised to protect him. Even in death, this promise of his is met. But Nie Mingjue had also promised to protect their legacy, their sect.

One oath does not outweigh another, and so that second promise had long ago fallen to Nie Huaisang with Nie Mingjue’s death. But it is only now, at long last, that Nie Huaisang is truly seeing to it that it is a promise kept.