Lan Wangji's body is moving before his mind has fully ordered his priorities. Luckily, both agree that the senior disciple ahead of him, with a killing intensity in his eyes, is the most important threat to disarm. Bichen sweeps out in an arc that rips the senior's lesser blade from his hand, before swinging back to carve a deep rift along the sword arm. He kicks the man towards the oncoming disciple behind him, buying himself a breath so he can deal with his brother. Lan Xichen might not intend to kill Wei Wuxian, but he nonetheless cannot allow him to get close enough to try.

Against his older brother and Shuoyue, he is much closer to his match. The two swords clash and shriek against each other, sword glare throwing distorted shadows back and forth across the cave. Two more seniors are pressing in towards them, and he is pulled away from Lan Xichen to respond to their attacks.

Fighting three cultivators at once, while both defending and finding a way to disarm the man who should be his ally, is not the way he had hoped to start his new life. Crowding impatiently into the chamber, some of the other Lan seniors have started flinging talismans over the shoulders of the men who are actually fighting. They are minor charms so far, things he can deflect and dispel with Bichen, and they create as much difficulty for his opponents as for him. The oddly jaunty tune that Wei Wuxian is pulling out of Chenqing, however, is screwing the tension in the enclosed space higher and higher.

Lan Xichen is acting under a disadvantage that the other men don't have, he notices. They want to kill the Yiling Patriarch, and if Hanguang-jun stands in their way—he's chosen his side and must accept the consequences. That is to say, they've taken him at his word.

(He slides Bichen between the ribs of a grey-haired disciple, one of his distant cousins. The man coughs blood and begins to fall, but Lan Wangji is already moving backwards to parry a blow from Shuoyue and his cousin's face slips from his mind like water.)

His brother, meanwhile, is fighting like they did while training, back in the Cloud Recesses. There's no question of him giving quarter, or insulting Lan Wangji or himself with less than his full effort, but it's equally impossible that he would seriously injure him, let alone kill. As for Lan Qiren, he has stepped back to let the others subdue his wayward nephew.

The memory of Lan Xichen and himself as students gives him an idea.

Spinning in the transition from one attack to another, he raises his offhand to shoulder height and makes the gestures for a spell he could invoke in his sleep. Any teacher of the Lan sect could, if they'd thought of it.

Chenqing's voice is abruptly cut off. Wei Wuxian forces out the muffled wail of a bad student subjected to the Lan silencing spell.

Into the sudden silence, Lan Xichen shouts, "Peace!"

Swords clatter to a temporary halt. Lan Wangji knows the violence will pick up again at the slightest provocation, and hopes his brother can turn the moment to their advantage.

His heart drops as he remembers: they aren't on the same side.

Lan Xichen is already speaking.

"Look," he tells the seniors, several of whom are pressing their own acupoints to stop blood pouring out from their wounds, "Hanguang-jun has stopped Wei—has stopped the Yiling Patriarch from playing. He still stands against demonic cultivation. This is a misunderstanding." He looks meaningfully at Lan Wangji. "We will bring him back to the Cloud Recesses for healing and discipline, and everything will be handled properly."

Lan Wangji has not moved. Lan Xichen narrows his eyes at him. "Wangji," he prompts. "Your sword. Lower it."

Bichen's blade, held in front of his chest, is already clean of blood. He hesitates. Taking a risk, he cautiously turns his head back to glance at Wei Wuxian, whose pantomimed response eloquently conveys, Do what you want. It's none of my business any more!

"Brother, take our uncle and the seniors back to Gusu," Lan Wangji says. His voice is low but steady. "Wei Wuxian and I will go into the mountains. Do not follow us."

"Enough." Lan Qiren's tone is final. It's the voice of a man setting down something he has cherished for over twenty years. "Finish this now."

This time, the fight doesn't feel quick. The Lan disciples rush towards him like the spring meltwater swelling a river, a force that ought to overpower him and press him, both of them, down to the bottom to drown. To him, though, their movements are so slow that in the time between seeing where a strike is aimed and the blade's collision, he could block it three times over. He sends swords spinning and dodges magical attacks with a dreamlike lack of effort.

Time slowing down during battle is not a new phenomenon. Lan Wangji has fought enough in the Sunshot Campaign that he is familiar with what the immanence of death does to the mind and the body. When he looks back on these moments, though, he will feel that something more was happening. There is an inevitability to each lunge, each slash or parry. He must defend Wei Ying and get both of them out through the ranks of cultivators, so every movement is predestined, with no alternative possible.

Once again, he is inflicting bloody violence on body after body wearing Lan robes and cloud-patterned forehead ribbons.

These aren't fierce corpses, though. These are men he has studied under, nighthunted with, eaten alongside, his entire life, and as he cuts into their flesh, they know exactly what he's doing to them.

He uses the cave's narrow, uneven form to his advantage; the hours he spent in thought while Wei Wuxian sagged against him have paid off. In close combat, he shoves his opponents onto the blades of their brother-disciples or feints so that they dash their own heads into the rock. He drags Wei Wuxian behind him by the upper arm, step by tortuous step towards their freedom. When he wobbles and falls, Lan Wangji catches him. When he can't—or won't—regain his feet, Lan Wangji hoists him onto his shoulder and uses the extra momentum to bring Bichen down diagonally across the face of a disciple who had lunged forward to run the Yiling Patriarch through.

The snap of a forehead ribbon, its two ends flying apart in a spray of blood, is an image he'll see many times in his mind's eye.

By the time they reach the vine-shrouded cave mouth, Lan Wangji has almost begun to believe that this carnage will go on forever; that his punishment for having defied the Lan is an eternity of mutilating his own people. When the last man falls to his knees and no one surges up to replace him, Lan Wangji almost stumbles. It's quiet, all of a sudden. Groans drift towards him from the carpet of casualties, mixed with the words of simple spells for battlefield medicine. No one seems to have any more appetite to pursue him.

Ducking his head to walk out into the forest, he is completely unprepared for the lightning bolt of pain that hits him.

The spiritual barrier in front of him stretches like a spiderweb as Lan Wangji slowly collapses. It's a crueler spell than the one that guards the entrance to the Cloud Recesses, which kicks an intruder smartly back onto the path: all the way to the ground, he stays in contact with the seal, and it hurts the entire time. He tries to keep Wei Wuxian clear, but knows he's failed from the way he flinches against his shoulder.

They lie together on the grit and stones, for how long he doesn't know, until white forms swim in the air above him. Blinking, Lan Wangji makes out his older brother and uncle looking grimly downwards.

"Wangji," Lan Xichen says sadly, "you knew we couldn't let you leave."

They keep him immobilised beside Wei Wuxian, with a stronger variant of the silencing spell, until they have finished triaging the wounded and planning their next steps. Lan Qiren, who is waxen with shock but apparently uninjured, is going to send up a firework to summon whatever help the depleted Lan sect can muster. Lan Xichen will escort him back to the Cloud Recesses. The question of his discipline is left as a matter for later discussion. The unspoken implication is that it depends on how many of the senior disciples' lives Lan healing can save.

"Will you be able to ride Bichen?" asks Lan Xichen, after he has bowed a farewell to Lan Qiren. Having set off the signal flare, the older man has retreated back into the cave to sit down, and Lan Xichen is visibly relieved.

Lan Wangji nods. He has not taken his eyes off Wei Wuxian since he was released and told to stand up, ready to leave. Now he opens his mouth, but it's empty: words are completely inaccessible. An unbridgeable gap has opened up between the need to tell his brother something very important and his ability to speak at all. Sometimes when this happens he can get out useless words, phrases that he's prepared or heard before that aren't relevant, but clear the way for what he really needs to say. This time, though, even that recourse is gone. He's too tired. He's too full of despair.

"We could let him go, here, on this mountain," Lan Xichen says gently, for all the world as if replying to a question Lan Wangji had actually asked. "He would have a fair head start before the others get here. It's possible no one would find him."

The thought of a head start making any difference to the slumped figure in front of them, his head on his knees and his black robes covered in dust, is absurd. Lan Wangji shakes his head. He pulls his gaze away from Wei Wuxian and meets his brother's eyes instead.

"He absolutely cannot return with us." There's a warning in Lan Xichen's voice, as if Lan Wangji needed it. Then he sighs. "But Burial Mound is not so far out of our way, I suppose."

They fly abreast of one another through the fading light. In the lowlands, the sun would still be setting, but here they're in the long shadows of the mountains and the stars are already lighting up above them, one at a time. With Wei Wuxian draped across his shoulders, Lan Xichen's posture and balance on Shuoyue are exemplary; all that gives away how exhausted he must be is a certain rigidity in his limbs. Lan Wangji follows him automatically, adjusting Bichen's speed and altitude without any conscious decision of his own. This detour from their journey home is a gift to him, one he knows he doesn't deserve. Both he and Wei Ying are alive and near one another, for now. He keeps his mind blank to avoid spoiling the moment with thoughts about the future or the past.

At the foot of Burial Mound, his brother squats to lay Wei Wuxian on the discoloured wild grass and takes several deliberate steps away. He stands with his arms crossed, Shuoyue sheathed at his side, looking up at the impenetrable gloom between the trees as Lan Wangji kneels down.

Resentful energy is rising from the ground beneath Wei Wuxian like wisps of smoke, even here at the edge of his territory. Although he doesn't look any healthier, his face relaxes, the deeper lines of stress fading away. The looseness of his limbs is a mockery of the boy on the tree branch. He lifts his eyelids just enough to give Lan Wangji a long, dark, somehow dangerously inviting look.

"Wei Ying," Lan Wangji whispers. It's not at all unusual that these are the first words that come back to him.

"Lan Zhan." He draws a breath to say something more, but the silence stretches out between them for a long time. His expression changes, a barrier falling between them. "Lan Zhan—thank you." The scratch of a laugh. "Now, get lost!"

"You're not... staying here?" Lan Xichen seems surprised when Lan Wangji approaches him, eyes downcast.

"I took up my sword against you, against Uncle and against thirty-three of our sect," he says. "I injured them gravely, even after the losses we suffered in... recent years." He was going to say, in battle against the Wens, or perhaps, in the Nightless City, but both of those were too painful. "If I am permitted to bear the consequences of my actions, then I must."

He can't bear to look at his brother's face, so Lan Xichen's reaction is hidden from him. "Come on, then," he hears at length, and the Two Jades of Gusu mount their swords and turn their faces away from the charnel hill.

Beneath them, the spirits are welcoming home Wei Wuxian, who has made his decision as well.