The road eastward stretched like a faded ribbon over the hills, lined with sparse bamboo groves and abandoned shrines half-swallowed by creeping vines. Three days had passed since they fled Shunbei and the ruined temple. Baoqin remained asleep for most of that time, her energy flickering like a fragile candle. Sometimes she murmured in her dreams—words from a language Wenyan didn't recognize, though they stirred unease in his chest.
"She's burning through her spirit too quickly," Lianfang muttered on the fourth morning, crouched beside the girl beneath a fig tree. "It's like her soul is smoldering beneath the skin."
Wenyan knelt beside her, pressing the back of his hand gently to Baoqin's forehead. "We need to reach Xi Ru soon. If anyone can make sense of what's happening to her, it's him."
Xi Ru: the scholar of exiled histories, once famed in the court for his treatises on divine bloodlines and ancient pacts. That was before the Order's influence seeped into the emperor's ears like poisoned honey. Now, Xi Ru lived in self-imposed exile at the edge of the Hanjiang Plains, near a town called Reedwater.
"Do you think he'll help us?" Lianfang asked, adjusting Baoqin's cloak.
Wenyan hesitated. "He helped me once before. When I was still just a dusty acolyte in the northern temples. If he remembers that kindness…"
Lianfang raised an eyebrow. "You never told me you trained in the temples."
"I don't talk about it much," Wenyan said quietly, the edge of memory cutting through his tone. "Not after what happened."
She didn't press further.
They traveled lightly, relying on village paths and staying off the main roads. Each day, Lianfang trained Baoqin gently when she awoke—simple stances, breathing, learning to listen to her body. They were small sessions, more ritual than lesson, but they kept the child grounded.
"I don't want to be fire," Baoqin said once, frowning as she balanced on one foot in the tall grass. "I want to be water."
"Water carves mountains," Lianfang replied with a half-smile. "Never forget that."
On the seventh day, the mist finally broke as they reached the flat expanse of the Hanjiang Plains. A solitary hut stood near a willow grove, surrounded by scattered scrolls tied with twine, drying herbs, and carved stone statues sunk half into the dirt.
"This is the place," Wenyan murmured.
He approached and knocked on the crooked wooden door.
There was a pause. Then, a sharp voice from within: "If you've come to ask about phoenixes, I've no time for imperial dogs or dream-chasers!"
Wenyan exhaled and replied, "What if the phoenix is real—and she's already awakened?"
Silence.
Then the door creaked open just enough to reveal a narrow eye beneath thick white brows. The scholar, Xi Ru, now hunched and grey-bearded, squinted at him. "Wenyan… by the Seven Heavens. You're still alive?"
"And in need of your mind."
Xi Ru opened the door fully, casting a suspicious glance at Lianfang and Baoqin. "You've brought a sword and a flame. Sounds like trouble already."
"She's not trouble," Lianfang said calmly. "She's a child."
Xi Ru waved them inside. The hut smelled of dust, ink, and something vaguely sweet. Scrolls were stacked like crooked towers, and a map of the southern provinces had been pinned to one wall, annotated with obscure symbols.
"Tell me everything," the old man said, pouring tea that tasted faintly of orange peel. "Start from the temple."
They told him. About the mirror, the fire, the Order's pursuit. Xi Ru listened without interruption, only occasionally scrawling notes with a worn brush.
When they finished, he leaned back and closed his eyes.
"There's an old legend," he murmured, "of the Phoenix Host. Not reborn, but summoned. A vessel chosen not to become the flame… but to bear it."
"Chosen by whom?" Wenyan asked.
"By the original fire. The one born before dynasty, before gods. It was supposed to slumber forever. But your Order… they've been trying to wake it."
Lianfang narrowed her eyes. "Can it be stopped?"
Xi Ru nodded slowly. "If the vessel chooses her own path."
He turned to Baoqin, who now sat curled on a cushion, eyes wide and tired. "Tell me, little ember. Do you want to be their fire… or your own?"
Baoqin looked at him, her voice barely a whisper. "I want to be… mine."
Xi Ru smiled faintly. "Then we start from there."
But outside, far beyond the hut, a black bird circled high in the clouds—its eyes glowing faintly red.
And in the capital, the Grand Seer of the Order opened his palm to reveal a lock of pale hair, sealed in amber wax.
"She has awakened," he said to the hooded council. "Now the flame must be fed."