Part I — The Waiting
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Morning in Chentang Pass had changed since the boy left.
Two years had passed since the heavens claimed their son. Seven hundred mornings without his laughter. Seven hundred nights without his light. The pond no longer froze, yet the air still held its memory — a chill that outlived winter.
But there was another memory now, older and darker: the night the sea had risen in walls, the night lightning had crowned their garrison commander's house, the night something divine and terrible had been born.
The fishermen no longer went far from shore.
The monks whispered prayers to the Dragon King at dawn.
And Li Jing stood watch each morning, eyes on the eastern horizon, waiting for the sea to remember what it had promised.
**Because the ocean never forgot.**
The people worked, spoke, prayed, but in every silence, in every pause between words, there was an absence. A breath missing. A presence that had once filled the space like sunlight through smoke.
Li Jing stood before the training courtyard, sword unstrapped, hands clasped behind him. The walls were repaired, the earth swept clean — yet his eyes searched for the small footprints that no one else could see.
He'd told himself the silence was peace.
But it felt more like waiting.
---
Madam Yin sat by the pond, as she always did at dawn. She no longer sang. Her hands rested on her lap, fingers tracing invisible circles — the same motion she'd used when soothing Nezha as an infant. Sometimes she thought she saw his reflection in the water, a flicker of gold beneath the surface. Sometimes she whispered his name and watched the ripples carry it away.
The world had gone quiet since the heavens claimed her son.
Too quiet.
---
That morning, the quiet broke.
The sky trembled — not with thunder, but with pressure. Birds screamed and scattered. The air filled with the smell of iron and ozone.
Li Jing looked up sharply, hand instinctively reaching for his sword.
A streak of fire tore across the clouds, splitting them open.
Not a comet.
Not lightning.
A boy.
The heavens burned where he passed.
---
Li Jing's breath stopped. His hand fell from his sword hilt, reaching instead toward the sky as if he could pull his son down through sheer will.
Madam Yin rose from beside the pond, lotus petals scattering from her lap. Her lips formed his name before sound could follow.
"Nezha," she whispered.
Then louder, breaking like dawn: "*Nezha!*"
He was coming home. After two years of silence, of absence, of mornings without light — he was coming home.
Li Jing stood frozen, watching the distant flame arc across the sky. His soldier's mind calculated trajectory, distance, speed. The boy was descending fast — too fast — over the eastern sea.
"He's over the water," Li Jing said, voice tight.
Madam Yin's hand pressed to her mouth. "He's so close—"
But before her cry could reach him, the sea began to rise.
⸻
Nezha fell like a star breaking through water — fast, reckless, radiant. Wind screamed against his skin. The Fire Wheels roared beneath his feet, spitting trails of molten light. The red silk of the Armillary Sash snapped and streamed behind him, alive, thrashing like a living serpent eager for war.
Two years on the mountain. Two years of discipline, of breath-work, of learning to hold fire without burning. Two years of missing home so badly it felt like drowning.
But now — now he could see it.
The coastline below — the glimmer of waves, the thin line of horizon where the sky bent toward the sea. Beyond that, fishing boats. Villages. The thin smoke from Chentang Pass rising like prayers against the dawn.
*Home.*
He could almost smell the incense from his mother's altar. Almost hear his father's measured footsteps in the training yard. Almost see the lotus pond where he'd made flowers bloom with a touch.
*So close.*
His heart hammered against his ribs. The Fire Wheels blazed brighter, responding to his eagerness.
*I'm coming home. I kept my promise.*
He angled downward, crossing from sky to the space above the sea—
And the ocean opened its eyes.
Below, the water rose, folding in on itself. The waves formed a column, then a shape — vast, coiled, crowned with horns of blue jade.
A dragon.
Its eyes like two moons — ancient, patient, and utterly without mercy.
Nezha had never seen a dragon before. Not like this. Not alive and wrathful and vast enough to swallow ships.
But the dragon had seen *him*.
Had watched him since the night the heavens split. Had felt every thunderous heartbeat for seven years. Had waited, as the ocean waits — deep and cold and inevitable.
---
Seven years since the thunder child's birth had split the sky. Seven years since his father, Ao Guang, Dragon King of the Eastern Sea, had named the boy a curse upon the waters. Seven years of watching the surface, waiting for Heaven's mistake to descend.
Ao Bing, Third Prince of the Eastern Sea, had waited long enough.
The time had come.
His father's voice still echoed in the deep: *"The flame-child will return. When he does, the sea will answer."*
Now, as the burning child fell from the sky — hopeful, eager, unguarded — Ao Bing rose to meet him.
---
"Thunder child," the dragon's voice rolled across the water like a tide made of stone. "I have dreamed of this moment since the night you were born."
Nezha pulled up short, the Fire Wheels hissing against sea spray. His hand moved instinctively to the Universe Ring at his wrist.
"I am Ao Bing, Third Prince of the Eastern Sea," the dragon continued, his form coiling higher, scales gleaming with suppressed lightning. "You are the one they call Nezha — Heaven's fire, born of storm and defiance."
The trident in his hand gleamed with deep-sea light.
"For seven years, my father has spoken your name like a wound. For seven years, the ocean has held its breath, waiting for this reckoning."
Nezha's chest tightened. He'd heard stories on the mountain. Taiyi had spoken of the Dragon Clans, of debts unpaid between Heaven and Sea, of cosmic balance disrupted by his birth.
But hearing and *seeing* were not the same.
The dragon was vast. Ancient. Wrathful.
And Nezha understood, with sudden terrible clarity, that this was not about him — not really.
It was about what he *was*. What he represented. The imbalance his birth had created.
---
"I didn't choose to be born this way," Nezha called across the waves, and he hated how young his voice sounded against the ocean's roar.
Ao Bing's laugh was bitter as brine.
"Neither did I choose to inherit my father's fury. Yet here we are, little flame — two sons carrying debts we did not make."
The dragon's eyes narrowed, and for a moment, something almost like sorrow flickered across his ancient face.
"My father's shame is my burden. Your existence is my enemy. And the ocean—"
He raised his trident, and the sea answered, waves rising like walls around them.
"—the ocean does not forgive."
---
Nezha's hands clenched. The Ring spun from his wrist, orbiting him in arcs of golden light. The Sash coiled protectively around his shoulders, alive and watchful.
Behind the dragon prince, he could see the shore. Could see Chentang Pass in the distance, so close he could almost touch it.
His mother. His father. Home.
*Right there.*
And this dragon stood between him and everything he'd longed for.
Something flickered in Nezha's chest — not rage, but desperation. Two years of loneliness. Two years of holding back, of discipline, of choosing restraint.
And now, at the threshold of home, fate had sent him one final test.
He thought of the Fire Vein trial. Of the shadow-self he'd integrated, not destroyed. Of Taiyi's words: *"Mastery is choice."*
He could choose.
He could turn back. Fly around. Avoid this.
Or—
Ao Bing lunged.
The choice was made.
Nezha hit the surf in a storm of steam and flame. The sea hissed as if in pain, retreating around him in a circle of boiling white.
He didn't stop.
The Fire Wheels lifted him above the waterline, wind coiling beneath his feet. The Ring spun faster, a golden blur. The Red Sash moved of its own will — the cord he'd been born with, finally awakened — whispering across the air in serpentine loops.
Then he saw the shadow beneath the waves. Immense. Moving fast.
The ocean exploded upward.
Ao Bing erupted from the water, body coiling through the sky, scales gleaming with living light. He struck first — trident slicing downward with the force of a thunderclap.
Nezha raised his ring.
Metal met divinity.
The impact shattered the air. The sound rolled for miles, echoing across Chentang Pass like the sky breaking.
---
On the shore, Madam Yin's knees buckled.
Li Jing caught her, one arm around her waist, the other hand white-knuckled on his sword hilt — though no blade could reach that far.
They watched, helpless, as their son collided with the dragon prince in a burst of fire and water, light and fury.
"He's fighting," Madam Yin whispered. "He's so close, and he's—"
Her voice broke.
Li Jing's jaw clenched. His eyes never left the distant battle.
"He's trying to come home," he said quietly.
And neither of them could do anything but watch.
⸻
---
Nezha was thrown back, the Fire Wheels flaring to stabilize him. The Sash wrapped around his arm, tightening, steadying.
He looked at the dragon — at Ao Bing's eyes, burning with duty and rage and something else. Something that looked almost like recognition.
*Two sons carrying debts we did not make.*
Nezha's breath came hard. His hands trembled — not with fear, but with the weight of what was about to happen.
He didn't want this.
But the dragon was between him and home.
And he had promised he would return.
"I don't want to fight you," Nezha said, one last time.
Ao Bing's expression shifted — pain, regret, resignation.
"Then you understand nothing of honor, little god."
The trident gleamed.
"But perhaps you will, before the end."
He lunged again.
And this time, Nezha met him.
Fire and water.
Thunder and tide.
The reckoning, seven years in the making, had finally begun.
⸻
**End of Part I — The Waiting**
*Next: Part II — The Flame and the Deep*