Fair vantage, nostalgic. He does not begrudge the high rise, for all it tempts him like itch at the end of his fingertips, where they stand to sharpen into claw, to reach for Lily ever so often and reassure himself of her balance. Footing is a tenuous barter, for warriors unlearned, and Lily's gift of dexterity lags behind the feral strength of her spirit.

Still, they stare down like kings, and above them a starless sky groans its silent, awed stupor. Penury ever fills his body to burst with fatigue, with the inexorable evidence of his failure: he cannot cure all, cannot harness whatever magic would provide these people their succor. Mundane wrongdoings of inequality cannot be severed by the sword. Perhaps Lily, with her fickle stick —

But then, they want for time here, hunt of the dead hot on their steps. Want for strength depleted, redistributed, ill invested. Lan Wangji's one hand binds behind his back, fist knotted, and he thinks — to throttle the unfairness of the world, how the bones would break. How he thinks of their snap.

"They claim drought." No, a sharper word of it, the curse revealed under true skins. "Dark waters."

Superstition, for how they frame the sickness of the waters. "Returned, as pestilence. Its first cure unnamed."

There must have been one, surely, if ever the dark waters cleared or were dispelled.