"Until sunrise," Shuyin said. "Maybe longer. The creatures will weaken without magic to feed on. Eventually they’ll desiccate."
"And if they don’t?"
"Then the mansion becos their tomb," Shuyin said flatly. "I’ll reinforce the seal remotely, make it permanent. We can build a new ho sowhere else."
Lu Yuze’s hand found hers. "Together?"
"Together," she confird.
The convoy began to move, pulling away from the sealed mansion. Through the rear window, Shuyin watched it recede into the distance. Behind them, creatures writhed against the barrier, trapped and furious, their bioluminescent bodies pulsing against the silver seal in futile rage.
She’d won this battle. Barely.
Even though every inch of their bodies ached.
But the war wasn’t over. The Lin family still waited, oblivious to what was coming. Her stepmother, her stepsister, her father, all of them secure in their stolen empire, thinking themselves safe.
They had no idea that the daughter they’d discarded was on her way. And she was done playing nice.
Then, without warning, Shuyin laughed.
It started small, a quiet huff of breath, before bubbling up into a genuine giggle, the kind that ca from sowhere deep and uncontrollable. She pressed a hand to her mouth, but it didn’t stop. Her shoulders shook with it, her body curling slightly as the laughter spilled out.
"Haha... damn you monsters!" she gasped between giggles, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. "Of all the things to happen tonight....."
Lu Yuze just watched her. He’d seen her fight creatures from another dinsion. He’d seen her cast spells with the last of her life force. He’d watched her carry him through a shattered window without breaking stride.
And now she was giggling in the back seat of a moving car like she’d just survived sothing mildly inconvenient.
He said nothing. Just watched, a small, quiet smile pulling at his lips.
Her laughter faded slowly, dissolving into sothing softer, a breathless, tired amusent that settled over her like a blanket. She leaned back against the seat, staring at the ceiling of the car.
"I’m realizing now," she murmured, almost to herself, "just how bad it is to use magic in the mortal world."
"Oh?" Lu Yuze said.
"Mm." She closed her eyes briefly. "The consequences ripple outward. Not just the creatures, everything. The energy it leaves behind, the attention it draws. I was careless."
She said it plainly. Not with guilt exactly, but with the quiet recognition of soone cataloguing a mistake they intended never to make again.
Then her expression shifted.
It was subtle, a slight tightening around her eyes, a softening of sothing else beneath it. She turned to face Lu Yuze, and he noticed it imdiately.
Her eyes were glistening. But not the way they had before, not with emotion or pain. Sothing was gathering at the corners of her lashes, tiny, luminous droplets that caught the dim light of the car’s interior and held it. They didn’t fall the way tears did. They pooled, collected, growing slowly into perfect, shimring pearls that rolled gently down her cheeks.
Lu Yuze’s brow furrowed. "Shuyin?"
She didn’t seem distressed. If anything, she looked almost calm, her expression quiet and deliberate as she raised both hands beneath her face. The pearl-like tears gathered in her palms, one, two, five, eight of them, each one catching the light like a tiny, liquid gem. They were faintly warm, almost alive, pulsing with a soft inner glow.
She watched them settle in her hands for a mont, turning her palms slightly as if counting them.
Then she reached out and placed them gently into Lu Yuze’s open hand.
He looked down at them. They sat in his palm, delicate and strange, radiating a faint warmth that seeped into his skin.
"These are enough," Shuyin said quietly. Her voice had lost its earlier amusent. It was steady now, careful. "To cure your injuries. Everyone else’s too. The burns, the cuts, all of it."
Lu Yuze stared at the pearls, then back at her. "Your tears do this?"
"Only when I’m depleted," she said. "The magic has to go sowhere. When there’s nothing left to cast with, it finds another way out." She shrugged, as if this were the most ordinary thing in the world. "Think of them as... concentrated dicine. One pearl per person should be more than enough."
He turned one over in his fingers. It was lighter than it looked, almost weightless, and it humd faintly against his skin, not unpleasantly. Like a heartbeat that wasn’t his own.
"And the staff?" he asked. "The maids who saw the creatures..."
"I’ll clear their mories," Shuyin said. Her tone was matter-of-fact, but there was sothing careful underneath it. Sothing that acknowledged the weight of what she was saying. "They shouldn’t recall any of it. Not the attack, not the creatures, not the seal. As far as they’re concerned, tonight was uneventful."
Lu Yuze nodded slowly. He understood. Not just the practicality of it, a maid telling soone about interdinsional parasites would raise questions no one could answer, but the delicacy of the thing itself. Shuyin was erasing soone’s lived experience. Rewriting their mory is like editing a docunt.
It was powerful. And it was not sothing to be done lightly.
"You’re sure about that?" he asked. Not challenging. Just checking.
"I have to be," she said simply. "This world isn’t ready for what I am. What can I I do? If even one of them rembers and talks..." She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t need to.
Lu Yuze closed his fingers around the pearls, holding them carefully against his palm. "When will you do it?"
"Tonight, in a few hours. When I’ve recovered enough." She leaned her head back against the seat again, the brief surge of energy already fading. "It won’t hurt them. They’ll just... wake up with a quiet night behind them instead of a terrifying one."
"A kindness, then," Lu Yuze said.
"A necessity," Shuyin corrected. But then, softer: "Both, I suppose."
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