( The sorcery courses by like lightning, formidable and electric, leaving the hint of metallic grains in its wake. He feels, between seas of ferns and crowns of trees above, he has succumbed to foliage, less a silent infiltrator than an accepted protrusion, an extension of the land.

The curse — spell? — does not strike him. He wilts back near a tree's husk, determined first to assess the nature and root of the damage, then, upon sighting Hermione, its cause —

Only to understand with quiet, knowing certainty, the animal rattling of her body, the rigidity of its lines. How she walks and speaks as if her body is a commodity that has long been traded, changing hands with a ghost. Her ghost, he knows, because these woods are of the Huntress, and Wei Ying has receded and withdrawn himself, for horror of her.

She needs more bodies. Wangji's grip crystallises on his sword. )

Greed becomes her. ( But not you. ) Stand down.

( Of two combatants, one bears a sword. The other, a mighty, anemic, all-hailed... stick. )