Chapter 23 #2
The approach alone was treacherous—a narrow defile carved by ancient rivers, walls of rust-red stone rising hundreds of feet on either side.
In summer, the gorge was said to glow like flame in the setting sun.
In winter, it became a frozen hellscape of ice and shadow, where wind howled through the chasm with the roar of a great cat.
They found the first bodies on the twelfth day.
Yun-yao’s mare shied violently, nearly throwing her. Then she saw what had spooked the horse—a hand, protruding from a snowdrift. Feng Kai dismounted and carefully brushed away snow.
Red uniform. One of the Huoqu.
They found three more before the light failed. Each time, Yun-yao forced herself to look, to confirm it wasn't him. Each time, relief eased her chest.
“Make camp here,” Feng Kai ordered as dusk painted the gorge in shades of blood and shadow. “Tomorrow we search properly. In teams. Lady Wei—” He turned to face her. “You should prepare yourself. The General may be—”
“I know.” She cut him off before he could say it. Dead. The General may be dead. “I know.”
But the rabbit pendant burned against her skin, and in her mind’s eye, the white rabbit still ran. Wounded, exhausted, but alive. Still alive.
Hold on, she thought into the gathering darkness. Just one more night. Hold on for me.
She cast the stones one final time that night.
They scattered across the snow in a pattern that made Feng Kai inhale sharply. Not scattered—arranged. Nine stones forming an arrow, all pointing in the same direction. And at the arrow’s tip, the stone marked with the character for “life” glowed faintly in the firelight.
“There,” Yun-yao whispered, pointing toward the deepest part of the gorge, where shadows pooled thick as ink. “He’s there.”
“That’s a dead end,” one of the guards protested. “The gorge narrows to nothing. No one would take shelter there—”
“He didn't choose it.” Yun-yao gathered the stones with hands that no longer trembled from cold. The days of hardship had burned away the softness, leaving something tempered behind. “He’s trapped there. But he’s alive.”
She stood, the stones clutched in one hand, the jade rabbit hot against her collarbone. “We leave at first light. And we bring him home.”
Around the fire, thirty guards nodded. Not one voice raised in protest.
The General’s witch wife had spoken.
Dawn broke gray and bitter over Fire Tiger Gorge.
They moved in careful formation—Feng Kai at the lead, Yun-yao behind him, the rest fanned out in pairs. The gorge narrowed as they progressed, walls closing in until they walked single file. Ice crusted everything, treacherous and beautiful.
Yun-yao’s breath clouded white in the frozen air. The rabbit pendant had grown so hot she could feel it through multiple layers of clothing. Her heart hammered against her ribs in time with each step forward.
The white rabbit in her mind ran faster, faster, crashing through undergrowth and ice with desperate speed. Close. So close.
“Lady Wei,” Feng Kai’s voice was soft, almost reverent. “Look.”
The gorge had opened into a small hollow where winter-bare vines clung to the cliff face like skeletal fingers. At first, Yun-yao saw nothing—just rock and ice and the bodies of enemy soldiers scattered in the snow, frozen in their final moments of pursuit.
Then she saw it: a dark gap in the stone wall, half-concealed behind a tumble of rocks and dead vegetation. A cave entrance, barely visible, and recently collapsed.
The spectral white rabbit, gossamer and gleaming, spirited into the cave opening.
“There!” She stumbled forward, boots sliding on ice. “He’s in there!”
Feng Kai gestured sharply. “Clear the entrance. Careful, the rocks may still be unstable.”
The guards worked quickly, passing stones hand-to-hand. As the opening widened, Yun-yao caught the faint smell of old smoke and something else—infection, fever, the sour-sweet scent of wounds left too long untended.
When the gap was finally wide enough, she didn't wait for permission. She squeezed through, heart hammering, into darkness that gradually resolved into dim shapes as her eyes adjusted.
The cave was small, barely ten feet deep. Dead embers marked where a fire had once burned. Little bones and crumbs lay scattered near the entrance... he'd had food, at least initially. Bloodstained bandages. A waterskin, frozen solid.
And there, slumped against the back wall, wrapped in a torn military cloak—
Zhen-ting.
“No. No, no, no—” Yun-yao crashed to her knees beside him. His face was flushed with fever, sweat beading on his forehead despite the cold. His breathing came shallow and rapid. When she pressed her hand to his cheek, his skin burned.
“Zhen-ting!” She patted his face urgently. “Zhen-ting, can you hear me?”
“Yao-yao?” Zhen-ting’s opened slowly, unfocused, glazed with delirium. They lingered on her for a second but drifted closed again. “You can't be here. You're home. Safe. I made sure... made sure you were safe...”
“I am here.” She gripped his burning hand between both of hers. “I found you. You're going to be fine.”
“Not real.” His head lolled back against the stone. “Always dream... of you...” His eyes drifted closed again. “Don't leave. Even if... not real... stay...”
“The rocks... couldn't move them...” His voice was a cracked whisper, words slurring together. “Tried... too heavy...”
“I know. I know.” She ran shaking hands over him, finding the source of infection by smell before sight—a deep wound in his left side, poorly bandaged, the edges angry red and weeping. “Feng Kai! I need the medical supplies NOW!”
The scarred captain squeezed through the entrance, took one look at Zhen-ting’s condition, and swore. “Infection’s bad. He’s been like this for days at least. We need to move him. Get him warm. Clean the wound.”
Yun-yao held Zhen-ting’s hands tightly as Feng Kai began carefully cutting away the ruined bandage. “I'm here,” she said softly. “I found you. You're safe now.”
But he'd already slipped back into unconsciousness.
As the guards worked to clean his wound, pack it with medicine and wrap him in warm blankets, Yun-yao pieced together what must have happened.
He'd been ambushed. Wounded. Made it to this cave with a handful of supplies. Probably spent the first days or week in relative safety, rationing food, tending his wound as best he could.
But infection had taken hold. Fever weakened him. And then—the rockfall, sealing him inside. Too weak to move the stones. Too far from help to be heard.
He would have died here. Alone. In darkness.
If she hadn't come.
Thank you, she thought as she touched the casting stones through her clothes. Thank you for guiding me through ice and avalanche and doubt, to him.