Chapter 17: After the storm

The punishment ground lay behind the Heavenly King’s palace, a wide stone courtyard ringed by white pillars and high terraces. At its center stood a circular dais etched with old sigils that pulsed faintly whenever thunder rolled. Word spread faster than wind—by the time the guards dragged Zixuan out, the terraces were already crowded. Courtiers, minor deities, attendants with curious eyes. Whispering rose like gnats.

They hauled her by her bound arms until her knees scraped the stones. When they dropped her, she folded against the floor, breath stolen by the impact. The marble tasted of dust and copper.

Someone in the crowd murmured, not bothering to lower their voice. “Again? That girl is always in trouble.”

“Always,” another agreed. “She doesn’t know her place.”

Zixuan let the words skim over her skin. She fixed her gaze on the rim of the dais and slowed her breathing one beat at a time. She would not beg. She would not ask. She would endure, even if the sky cracked open and poured itself through her.

Bootsteps echoed. Zheyeun crossed the threshold, robes whispering, light catching in his crown. He didn’t raise his voice, yet somehow everyone heard him.

“This ground keeps order,” he said. “Let the lightning remind the realm what respect is.”

The guards pressed Zixuan’s shoulders,her bones were almost crushed. Chains tightened at her wrists, and a bright ring of script burned under her, caging her body in light. It hummed against her ribs.

Aoshen arrived without fanfare. He simply stepped into the ring of onlookers as if he had already been standing there, the air sharpening around him, the temperature dropping a fraction. He took his place opposite Zheyeun, hands folded behind his back, face a mask of winter stone.

Zixuan felt the change in the air and shut her eyes a second longer. Then she lifted her head enough to see him. He was looking past her, through her, like she was a question he had already answered.

Zheyeun lifted one hand. “Ten lightning strokes.”

Thunder gathered above as if the sky itself had leaned down to listen.

A hush fell that made even breathing sound too loud.

First strike.

The bolt came like a cord drawn taut and cut loose. It slammed into her right shoulder and chest, folding her in half. White eclipsed her sight; sound roared until it became silence inside her head. Her body arched and then collapsed again, cheek striking stone. A hiss rose from her clothes where the heat had licked through. She exhaled in a shudder that tasted like iron. No words. Just breath. She forced it steady.

From the terrace, someone whispered, softer now. “She didn’t cry for mercy.”

Shou stood with some fairies under the shade of a pillar. His hands were hidden in his sleeves; his eyes did not blink. One fairy leaned toward him. “She’ll crack by the fifth.”

Shou didn’t answer.

Second strike.

It found her ribs. The pain was not bright this time; it was a deep, grinding weight that shoved everything else aside. She bit down hard, jaw trembling. The shock traveled into her throat, tore a sound loose anyway—a rough, involuntary cry that she strangled halfway and swallowed. Blood spilled warm over her tongue. She turned her head and spat crimson onto the sigil’s clean lines. The ring of light hissed as if insulted.

A guard muttered above her. “Stay down.”

She would have laughed if laughter weren’t a blade in her lung.

Third strike.

The lightning speared her legs. Nerves sang like snapped strings. Her calves seized and shook; her heels scraped uselessly at the marble. A sob rose, raw and humiliating—she pressed it down until it became a dry gasp. She told her hands to unclench. They didn’t listen. She told her eyes to stay open. They did, wide and burning, fixed on the scratch in the stone inches from her.

Across the circle, Aoshen’s gaze did not waver. But the tendons at his wrist stood out sharp where his hands were clasped; frost feathered along the hem of his sleeve and then retreated.

Ziyu had appeared at the back, breathless, hair disordered as if he had run the entire palace. He saw her on the ground and forgot how to breathe.

Fourth strike.

This one raked her spine. She felt each vertebra as if a hot wire ran along the ladder of bones. Her body bowed and thudded back down. A cough tore loose—thick, ugly—splattering a darker red that smeared under her cheek. She forced her lips together. No. No sound.

The crowd had shifted. Less whisper now. More watching.

Fifth strike.

It came angled, like a hook. Her left side flared—sharp, blinding—and something in her chest cracked with a small, traitorous pop. Air refused to come, then flooded in too fast. Tears slipped sideways out of her eyes and soaked into her hair. Not from fear. Not from pleading. Just from the body’s revolt. She blinked them away with stubborn, furious blinks until the world steadied again.

Zheyeun’s expression did not change, but one finger tapped once against the arm of his chair. The tapping stopped.

Sixth strike.

The bolt kissed her right forearm. Fingers curled into a wrong angle, numb and burning at once. She stared at her hand like it belonged to someone else. The chain at her wrist hummed with the lightning’s residue, and the smell—burnt cloth, singed skin—rolled over her until her stomach lurched. She swallowed it back down. If she spit bile here, it would be on her pride, and that she would not allow.

A murmur, almost respectful, rose at the edge of the crowd and died at a single glance from a guard.

Seventh strike.

The sky took its time. She knelt waiting, muscles coiled, then exhausted, then coiled again. When it came, it was a clean blow from above that traveled through the crown of her head and out the soles of her feet. Everything went silent inside her. Light without sound. Pain without shape. She realized, distantly, that her lips were forming words. Not help. Not mercy. Just counting. One. Two. Three. The numbers steadied her. By the time sound returned—the ringing, the thunder—she had reached five and lost count again.

Aoshen blinked once. A thin crack traced the flagstone beneath his boot and frosted over, then healed as if ashamed of itself.

Zheyeun’s eyes slid to him. Noted. Returned to the center.

Eighth strike.

It struck where the first had, cruelly familiar. Her body jerked the same way, but slower now, with the heaviness of a puppet whose strings had frayed. Breath rattled in and wouldn’t leave. She forced it out. Forced it back in.

A breeze—impossible in a closed court—slid over the ground, cool against the heat clawing through her. Somewhere, a swallow shrieked once and was gone.

Ninth strike.

The bolt seemed to hesitate above her, then snapped down with a sound like silk torn clean in two. It carved across her chest and ribs in a perfect line. Her body lit up—every nerve a bell ringing at once—and then went gray at the edges. She tasted ash, metal, the bitter after of skyfire. For the first time, black crept over the corners of her vision. She chased it away with a breath that felt like swallowing a stone.

Her lips parted. No plea came out. Only a hoarse whisper, half a laugh that scraped her throat raw. “Not… done.”

Across the ring, Ziyu flinched like the words had struck him.

Tenth strike.

The heavens drew a deep breath. The clouds above rolled inward until the circle of sky was a tightened pupil glaring down. The sigils under her body burned brighter, white to gold. She heard someone praying. She couldn’t tell if it was for her or for the order of things that put her there.

Lightning fell. It didn’t strike—it grabbed. It shook her from the inside out, heat and cold twisting together until her vision burst white and her ears filled with a heavy hum. The chains rattled. The glowing script flared, then went dim.

When it released her, she stayed still. Her chest dragged in a shaky breath and pushed it out again. Blood slid from her lips and smeared across her jaw. Her half-open eyes stayed fixed on the crack in the marble she’d been staring at since the second blow. It didn’t look the same anymore. Smaller maybe. Or maybe she was drifting too far to see clearly.

Her body gave out. The chains kept her wrists bound as she fell backward, hitting the floor with a dull thud. Her arms flared slightly as she landed, the iron links pulling tight and holding them in place even in her collapse.

No begging. No mercy asked. Only breath, thin as silk thread, refusing to break.

Silence spread. Even the clouds seemed to hold.

Zheyeun stood. The gold at his cuffs winked. He lifted his chin toward the circle and let his gaze drift, not to the girl, but to the figure of winter standing opposite him.

“A demonstration,” he said softly, to no one and everyone. “And a reminder.” His eyes settled on Aoshen’s hands, still clasped behind his back. “Did you feel that?”

Aoshen’s face did not change. “Feel what.”

“The pain,” Zheyeun said, all mild curiosity, as if discussing a new flower. “A ripple. There was a crack in the air when the seventh fell. Does your blood stir for your attendant?”

Eyes turned; breath held. The courtyard waited to see him flinch.

He did not. “No.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

It was said so calmly the word itself cooled the stones.

Zheyeun considered him a long moment, the corner of his mouth tilting as if at a private thought. Then he gestured to the guards. “Remove her. Leave no stain.”

They moved forward, careful hands—oddly careful, as if something reverent had fallen and must be lifted without breaking more. Chains loosened. Zixuan’s arm slid limp before a guard caught it and folded it back across her chest. When they lifted her, her head turned toward the ring’s edge by accident or instinct. Her gaze did not find Aoshen. Or if it did, it passed through him like light through frost.

Ziyu stepped down from the terrace before he realized he was moving. He stopped himself at the line drawn by rank and law and clenched his fists at his sides until his nails bit palm.

The crowd broke like a tide withdrawing—whispers returning, softer, less certain.

Aoshen remained where he was until even the thunder gave up its echo. Only then did he uncurl his fingers behind his back. The crescent marks his nails had left in his palm beaded with blood. The frost that had climbed his sleeve retreated in a thin breath, and the crack that had traced the stone at his boot smoothed itself flat again.

Zheyeun’s voice drifted on the last of the thunder, amiable, amused. “So stern. So sure. How tiring.”

Aoshen met his gaze with a look that could have frozen flame. “Order is never tiring.”

He turned. The hem of his robe brushed the last dark fleck where her blood had been. It disappeared beneath white cloth as he walked away. Only when the pillars hid him did his shoulders ease a fraction, like a man remembering how to breathe in a room emptied of eyes.

Behind the dais, down the narrow hall that led away from the punishment ground, the guards bore Zixuan toward the infirmary. Her breath held, caught, held again, thin and stubborn as before. A single strand of hair stuck to the curve of her mouth. One guard, young enough to still believe in mercy, reached to move it and then stopped, lowering his hand without touching her.

On the terrace, Shou watched the quiet closing like a book. A fairy beside him exhaled. “She did not beg.”

Shou’s voice, when it came, was as even as a blade laid on a table. “No. She did not.”

The courtyard was empty now. The lightning was gone, the storm over, but the stones still held heat, and the air carried the tense quiet that comes after a fight no one clearly won.

♡♡♡

They tried to carry her toward the infirmary.

Aoshen’s voice cut through the thinning crowd, quiet but absolute. “She goes to North Hall.”

The guards froze mid-step. No one argued. Chains were unhooked. A cloak fell across Zixuan’s shoulders—his, heavy and cold—before he lifted her with careful hands, as if the lightning still lived under her skin.

Ziyu shouldered through a pair of attendants, color high in his face. “Give—give her to me, I’ll—”

A glance from Aoshen stopped him. Not a glare. Just that narrow, frost-edged look that closed doors without touching them. He turned and walked, robes whispering, Ziyu forced to match his pace like a shadow with clenched fists.

The long corridor swallowed their footsteps. Lanterns smoked faintly. Every few strides, Ziyu made a sound like a word that had broken before it formed.

At the inner gate, he finally exploded. “You treated her like trash.”

Aoshen didn’t slow. “Stand aside.”

“You stood there.” Ziyu’s voice cracked. “You watched the sky tear her open. You watched her cough blood into that idiot's pretty floor. She didn’t beg. She didn’t even look away. And you—”

Aoshen faced the gate, shoulders set, the world behind his eyes reflecting in the lacquered wood. “Are you finished.”

“No.” Ziyu’s hands shook. “Don’t lie to me. Don’t do that stone statue thing. I know you. I know how your jaw locks when you’re holding it in. I know when the floor cracks under your boot. I know when you can’t blink because if you do, it’ll show.”

The silence after hit harder than a shout.

Aoshen’s fingers tightened once around the cloak wrapped over her. The motion was so small it could have been the lantern’s draft. “Obeying law is not cruelty.”

“Law is not an excuse.” Ziyu’s eyes were bright with fury. “And she’s not just an attendant to you, and I hate you when you pretend she is.”

That one landed. Not on his face. Somewhere deeper. Nothing changed outwardly, except for the way Aoshen finally spoke without moving his gaze from the gate. “Open.”

The guards swung the panels wide. He carried her through.

---

He did not stop in the infirmary. He did not stop anywhere. North Hall took the night into its silent rooms and gave nothing back. He set her in her chamber, on a low bed under a pale quilt, tucked the cloak tighter until the shaking in her breath eased from violent tremor to a thin, stubborn thread.

Ziyu hovered at the door and wore his anger like armor. “Say something, or I’ll say everything.”

Aoshen turned away, to the window. The courtyard lay below, empty, scrubbed, spotless. In his mind it was not. He saw lightning again, bright and merciless; he saw her eyes fixed on a flaw she chose as an anchor. He saw the way her lips had moved without sound—counting, maybe. He had counted too. He hadn’t meant to.

Ziyu’s voice softened, and somehow it made the words cut sharper. “You should have stopped it."

Aoshen stood long enough that the glass breathed fog under his breath and cleared again. Then he crossed the floor in that unhurried, devastating way of his and stopped at her bedside.

She was paler than the quilt. The lightning had left no visible scorch now, only a wrongness in the air, like the aftermath of a storm that hadn’t decided to end. Her lashes trembled. The cloak smelled faintly of frost and cedar and iron.

She squirmed, barely a twitch, and the movement snagged something in his chest. Her lips moved. The sound came like a thread pulled through cloth.

“Aoshen…”

His breath misstepped. He did not take air for a second, as if the room were suddenly too small for it. A single tear slid toward her ear. He reached out, slow as if the air might shatter, and brushed it away with his thumb.

Her eyes opened. They were not steady, but they found him as if she had known exactly where he would be.

“You’re… here.”

Aoshen’s face settled into cold again, the way snow resettles after a branch shakes. “You’re awake.”

Ziyu took the hint and backed to the threshold, anger still sparking off him, but leaving them the room. “I’ll be outside,” he said, which meant I’m not going far.

The door closed softly.

For a moment, only breath moved. Hers thin and stubborn; his measured like he was pacing inside his own ribs.

Then she spoke first, voice rasping. “Why are you like this.”

He didn’t answer. She pushed herself up on her elbows and grimaced, but refused his hand when he shifted to steady her.

“Say it,” she said, eyes hot. “Say whatever cruel, neat thing you’ve already prepared.”

“Rest,” he said. “You talk too much when you’re injured.”

“And you talk too little when you’ve done something unforgivable.”

That slid under the armor. He took a step back. She followed with words because her body couldn’t.

“You helped me in the Underworld,” she said, breath catching. “You carried me when I fell. You—” her throat tightened— “you looked like you cared. We came back and you froze me out like none of it happened. Your moods are—” she searched for a word and found the right one— “unstable. You are ice until you’re not and then you are ice twice over. It drives me insane.”

His eyes cooled. “I owe you nothing.”

She laughed—a broken little sound. “Then why are you here.”

He didn't bother with excuses or apologies. He only said what was necessary.

“To ensure you don’t die in my hall.”

“Liar,” she whispered.

The air strained, and then broke.

“你为什么这样对我？”

(Pinyin: Nǐ wèishéme zhèyàng duì wǒ?)

[English: Why do you treat me like this?]

Aoshen’s answer came cool, precise, and it still cracked at the edges.

“这里是天界，不是你的梦。”

(Pinyin: Zhèlǐ shì Tiānjiè, bùshì nǐ de mèng.)

[English: This is the Heavenly Realm, not your dream.]

“我没有做错什么。”

(Pinyin: Wǒ méiyǒu zuòcuò shénme.)

[English: I didn’t do anything wrong.]

“你在殿中顶嘴，你以为没有代价？”

(Pinyin: Nǐ zài diàn zhōng dǐngzuǐ, nǐ yǐwéi méiyǒu dàijià?)

[English: You talked back in the hall—did you think there’d be no price?]

Her eyes burned. “你在冥狱救了我，回来就当我不存在。”

(Pinyin: Nǐ zài míngyù jiùle wǒ, huílái jiù dāng wǒ bù cúnzài.)

[English: You saved me in the Underworld, then came back and acted like I don’t exist.]

His voice sharpened. “救你是因为职责。”

(Pinyin: Jiù nǐ shì yīnwèi zhízé.)

[English: Saving you was duty.]

She shook her head, pain sparking down her neck. “你的忽冷忽热把我逼疯了。”

(Pinyin: Nǐ de hūlěng-hūrè bǎ wǒ bī fēng le.)

[English: Your hot-and-cold drives me mad.]

Something snapped—quiet, decisive.

He raised his voice for the first time, the sound low and rough like thunder under snow.

“你太天真，又太愚笨！”

(Pinyin: Nǐ tài tiānzhēn, yòu tài yúbèn!)

[English: You’re too naïve, and too foolish!]

She fired back, breath hitching but eyes bright.

“那你教我！别只会躲在冷脸后面！”

(Pinyin: Nà nǐ jiāo wǒ! Bié zhǐ huì duǒ zài lěng liǎn hòumiàn!)

[English: Then teach me! Stop hiding behind that cold face!]

“你不懂规矩。”

(Pinyin: Nǐ bù dǒng guījǔ.)

[English: You don’t understand the rules.]

“那你从不说！”

(Pinyin: Nà nǐ cóng bù shuō!)

[English: Because you never say!]

“闭嘴。”

(Pinyin: Bìzuǐ.)

[English: Be silent.]

“我不会。”

(Pinyin: Wǒ bú huì.)

[English: I won’t.]

The two minutes stretched and snapped between them, words thrown like blades and caught with bare hands. Her voice frayed. His steadied into ice. The room tightened around the argument until there was only breathing and the taste of lightning left behind.

He moved first.

Not away—forward. He caught her wrist, the one the chain had scorched inside, and his other palm hovered above the space between her ribs where the ninth strike had laid its clean line. His touch was careful, as if the air had become glass.

“别动。”

(Pinyin: Bié dòng.)

[English: Don’t move.]

She went still on instinct, not obedience.

He closed his eyes. Power settled—not the killing cold of the field, not the brittle frost of the court. This was focused, restrained, a steadying winter that preserved instead of destroyed. The room cooled by a breath; the lantern flame steadied. A pale gleam seeped from under his palm and threaded along the line of pain, collecting the splinters left by the lightning and pressing them back into wholeness. The worst of the ache unknotted, not erased—made bearable.

She realized she was shaking only when the shaking stopped.

His hand slipped away. He didn’t look at what he’d mended. He looked at her eyes, then away, like her sight was disgusting.

It was.

◇◇◇

Zixuan lay on her bed, blood dried along her sleeves and lips. Aoshen stood over her, eyes narrowing.

“You know,” he said, voice flat, “you look exactly like a newborn piglet right now.”

She blinked. “…What?”

“All slick with blood, weak, and pathetic,” he continued, stepping closer. “Really, it’s… impressive, in a tragic sort of way.”

Her hands clenched the sheets. “I’m fine. I—”

“Fine?” he cut her off, voice cold. “You’re a mess. A sticky, pitiful mess. Congratulations, little piglet.”

She hissed through gritted teeth, but he didn’t flinch. “And don’t even think about glaring at me. You earned this appearance.”

She groaned, turning her face into the pillow, bloodstains and all. “Why do I even let you talk to me?”

“You asked for honesty,” Aoshen said, voice sharp, stepping back. “Consider it delivered.”

Aoshen lingered at the doorway, his gaze was steady, cold as stone, but beneath it lurked a flicker of impatience.

“明天休息好了，再来我的殿。”

Míngtiān xiūxí hǎo le, zài lái wǒ de diàn.

“Come to my hall tomorrow, once you’ve rested enough.”

Zixuan’s shoulders stiffened. Her hands flexed at her sides, as if willing herself not to tremble. She didn’t lower her gaze, didn’t give him the satisfaction.

“我最不想做的就是在你的殿里冻着！”

Wǒ zuì bù xiǎng zuò de jiù shì zài nǐ de diàn lǐ dòng zhe!

“The last thing I want is to be freezing in your hall!”

Aoshen’s lips twitched, not quite a smile, more like the edge of one. “你怕冷吗？我还以为你只怕雷。”

Nǐ pà lěng ma? Wǒ hái yǐwéi nǐ zhǐ pà léi.

“You afraid of the cold? I thought you only feared lightning.”

Zixuan shot him a glare that could melt ice. “我宁愿被雷劈也不想被你冻着。”

Wǒ nìngyuàn bèi léi pī yě bù xiǎng bèi nǐ dòng zhe.

“I’d rather be struck by lightning than freeze in your hall.”

Aoshen arched a brow, his eyes narrowing. “听起来你很会挑刺。”

Tīng qǐlái nǐ hěn huì tiāo cì.

“Sounds like you have a talent for picking fights.”

She pressed her lips together. Her chest was steady now, her mind sharp. “那我就保持天赋吧。”

Nà wǒ jiù bǎochí tiānfù ba.

“Then I’ll just keep my talent intact.”

Aoshen’s gaze softened just a fraction before he turned, leaving the hall with a faint echo of his footsteps. Behind him, Zixuan exhaled, half in relief, half in simmering irritation, the tension lingering like static in the air.