( To think the Yiling Patriarch surrendered the sword, only to twist his knives with fervor. Lan Wangji heeds him, having never learned to turn away. Listens and does not laugh and gods and dogs and the bite of both quick and stormed and cunning, blood only rabidly red on the first draw. After, infection and sickness, the easy contagion of fear. Both religion and canines weaponise terror.

Here, before wreaths of chains that lour back, unmoving, he feels, too, compelled to dread. To hate that which wishes to intimidate him, an itch crawling up his fingers, riding his knuckles, pulling his hands taut in a steeled fist's bind as if the creature beneath his skins grows too large, too broad for its confinement.

And he touches the shackles, hand dripping over Wei Ying's below. ) They bred you.

( The Wen. Their burial grounds. Their nightmares, their deaths. How many traps and talismans did Wei Ying weave and string, alone, like beads added to his good-luck chain? For their glorious carnage during the Sunshot campaign? How many Wen yet died to forge him?

He smiles. Cleaved, sharp, it suits another mouth. Crests and breaks on his lips, like tidal waves. )

It cannot be you who passes. I forbid it. ( Hear him say it, and the choice might as well be his own. )