Wu Shuang turned her face toward the floor. The mosaics had settled on a single design: not lotus, not eye, but a closed fist of petals. Beneath it, the faintest throb of a deeper heartbeat. "He is still below," she whispered. "And closer, every time I breathe."
"Then breathe less," Wu Jin said, and hated himself for the joke when it sounded like counsel.
Below, the wound in the dark widened like a pupil. Wu An pressed his forehead to cold stone until the stone learned his temperature. The voice that had no mouth moved in the damp: river, gate, oath, son. It did not call itself Emperor but spoke as if emperor were a function of gravity rather than crown.
Who remembers hunger? it asked in the tense that never required an answer.
"I do," Wu An said, and felt a sliver of himself remain in the answer like bone left in broth.
Who binds rivers to obedience?
"No one," he said. "We argue with them until they forget the way to sea."
Who keeps his promise when the gods sleep?
"Fathers," he said. "And those who learn to hate them."
A thin laughter traveled the rock like a blade. Every dynasty begins with a wound.
"Every one ends at the same scar," he said.
The not-light throbbed. It did not bless him. It did not refuse him. It learned his breath and made a rhythm from it. He turned and descended a passage whose angle disagreed with the idea of up or down and found, at its end, a mirror of black jade broken across like undeserved ice. The same archaic sigil that had sealed his father's first pact had been carved upon it—a lotus whose petals were clenched like a fist.
Wu An knelt. His reflection offered him nothing but a silhouette with teeth. He laid his hand upon the mirror and the surface shivered. Water somewhere far away began to lift.
"Father," he said to the stone, to the river, to the air, "I have seen your bridge. I will build mine from ruin."
The mirror showed him the River Hei, the line of weary men, the Lord Protector seated a horse that no longer trusted ground. The surface of the water trembled as if a drum had been struck beneath it.
Shen Yue drew breath like a knife. "What are you—?"
"Listening," he said, and extended his fingers into the reflection. The river rose to meet him.
That evening, the Zhou envoy returned for private audience. Wu Jin received him without festival: fruit, rice, wine without perfume. The conversation was as clean as a blade. The envoy observed that balance was a virtue; Wu Jin agreed that waiting to see who fell first was also a kind of balance. The envoy smiled as if offered a mirror. "May Heaven grant us patience," he said. "For your sake and ours."
"When patience is exhausted," Wu Jin replied, "I hope Heaven remembers who asked for it."
He walked the envoy to the threshold himself, as good kings do, and did not watch him leave. When the hall was empty, he spread a map and placed three stones upon it: one at the passes, one at the Hei, one at Ling An's heart.
"Come far enough," he said softly. "Come see."
He reached for the sealed dispatch from the river that he had not read. He broke the wax with his fingernail. The paper was warm in his hands. Letters refused to hold still. He did not force them. He let the ash of his previous doubts fall upon the page; the ash arranged itself into names of the fallen and the living and a vow made by a man who had once cut his palm over a basin.
"Father," he said quietly. "Hold a while longer."
The floor shuddered, so faintly that only those listening for it could hear, as if something beneath the palace had acquired lungs.
Wu Shuang stood at the window, the false sun haloing her profile. "The First Bloom leans," she said. "Do you feel it? It's turning toward him."
Wu Jin closed his eyes. "Everything is."
At the River Hei, night forgot to arrive. A pale light spread across the water without consenting to come from the sky. The southern banners blurred as if a hand had rubbed the colors while paint was wet. The drums stuttered. The horses stamped as if the ground had thickened.
The Lord Protector held his men by the spine. "Steady," he said. "Whatever it is, it bleeds."
The river lifted, not in waves, but in sheets, drawn upward as if strings had been affixed to its skin. Men stared at their reflections and saw no faces. The light on the surface opened like an iris. For a heartbeat the old warrior thought he saw a boy kneeling over a mirror far away, hand extended, eyes blank with purpose.
"An," he said to the river. "What bridge are you crossing now?"
The water answered by forgetting to be water. The banks groaned. The first rank stepped back involuntarily as the reflection grew, not outward but inward, deepening into a depth that had no measure.
Above, somewhere far away, bells rang once and did not ring again.
The Lord Protector raised his sword, and the blade hummed with the same note the city had begun to breathe.
"Hold," he said. And the river opened.