---
That evening, Lady Yin made lotus porridge, as she used to when he was small.
The air filled with warmth, woodsmoke, and the faint hum of cicadas outside. The scent wrapped around Nezha like an embrace—familiar, safe, *home*.
Li Jing sat near the door, methodically sharpening his sword with slow, rhythmic strokes—not because it needed sharpening, but because his hands needed something to do. He watched his wife feed their son, watched the boy lean into her lap, and said nothing.
Some things were too sacred for words.
---
Nezha ate in silence, each bite grounding him further into a life he thought he'd lost. The warmth of the porridge, the slight sweetness of the lotus seeds, the texture he remembered from childhood—all of it pulled him back from the cold depths of guilt and memory.
When the bowl was empty, he leaned against his mother's lap, the way he once had as a toddler. Her fingers threaded through his hair, gentle and slow. The motion lulled him, though the weight of what he'd done pressed at the edges of his mind.
For a moment, he simply let himself be small again—not divine, not powerful, just a child seeking comfort from the one person who had always given it freely.
"I hurt someone," he whispered, voice barely audible. "Someone who didn't deserve to die like that."
Lady Yin's hand paused for just a heartbeat, then continued its gentle rhythm through his hair. She didn't ask for details. Didn't need them.
"Then carry that pain gently, my son," she said softly. "It means your heart is still your own."
He closed his eyes. "I was supposed to protect people."
"You still can," she said, and there was such quiet certainty in her voice. "Starting with yourself."
Her hand traced the curve of his cheek, the warmth of her palm steady against his skin.
Nezha wanted to speak again—to confess everything, to fall apart completely—but the exhaustion caught him first.
He drifted between waking and sleep, half-dreaming of mountains and fire, of waves rising high enough to touch the moon, of eyes like drowned moons sinking into darkness.
The guilt stayed, but softened—not gone, just quieter under her touch.
Outside, the night deepened.
The lotus pond shimmered under starlight. Crickets sang. A breeze carried the faint scent of rain from the east—not the clean rain of spring, but something heavier, salt-tinged, carrying the ocean's breath.
Li Jing finished with his sword and set it aside. He moved to the doorway, looking out into the darkness. The stars were bright tonight, but there was a haze on the eastern horizon—clouds gathering over the sea.
He knew what was coming.
A commander learned to read the signs: the unnatural stillness in the air, the way birds had stopped singing hours ago, the copper taste on the wind that came before battle.
The Dragon King would come. Perhaps tomorrow. Perhaps the day after.
But not tonight.
Tonight belonged to his family.
He glanced back at his wife and son—Lady Yin singing softly now, a wordless lullaby that had no beginning and no end, just the rise and fall of a mother's voice. Nezha's breathing had slowed, deepened. Sleep was taking him at last.
Li Jing allowed himself a small, sad smile.
*One night,* he thought. *Give them one night.*
He would stand watch until dawn. And when the sea came—when Ao Guang arrived with all the weight of oceanic fury—Li Jing would meet him at the gate.
It wouldn't be enough. No mortal blade could stand against a Dragon King.
But he would try anyway.
Because that's what fathers do.
Inside, Lady Yin's voice wove through the quiet like thread through silk:
*"Born strange, but born mine...*
*Born to shake the world, but held by love...*
*Born of Heaven's fire, but cradled by mortal hands..."*
She didn't sing the words aloud—just hummed the melody she'd invented the night he was born, when the storm had raged and the world had trembled and she had looked at her impossible son and chosen love over fear.
She hummed it now, and Nezha's face relaxed, the tension bleeding from his shoulders.
For the first time in two years, he looked like a child again.
Not a weapon. Not a divine being. Not a killer.
Just her son, sleeping in her lap.
She brushed a strand of hair from his forehead and let her tears fall silently.
She knew what was coming too.
Mothers always knew.
But tonight, she would hold him and pretend the world outside didn't exist. That the sea was just water. That tomorrow would never come.
*One more night,* she prayed to no god in particular. *Just one more night before the world takes him again.*
⸻
---
## **The Storm Gathers**
Far below the eastern horizon, beneath the surface of the sea, the water had grown colder.
The Dragon King's palace no longer trembled—it was perfectly still, frozen in the terrible calm that comes before catastrophe.
Ao Guang sat upon his throne of jade and pearl, his ancient eyes fixed on nothing, seeing everything. The ocean currents carried news to him: the direction of winds, the whispers of fish, the taste of a child's divine fire lingering in the water where his son had died.
He had waited.
Listened.
Given the flame-child and his family one day to say their goodbyes.
*One day,* he thought, and the thought was both mercy and cruelty. *One day of peace before I take what is owed.*
Tomorrow, he would rise.
Tomorrow, he would bring the tide to Chentang Pass.
Tomorrow, Li Jing would learn that mortal love, however fierce, could not shield a child from cosmic law.
But tonight...
Tonight, the Dragon King sat in his grief and let the mortal family have their last evening together.
Even the sea, it seemed, understood the value of a final goodbye.
⸻
In the small house by the pond, unaware of the mercy and threat both gathering in the depths, a divine child slept at last.
His mother's lullaby threaded through the night—soft, wordless, the same melody she had hummed when he was born in fire and thunder.
His father stood watch at the door, hand resting on sword hilt, eyes on the eastern darkness.
And for one fragile, precious night, there was peace.
The kind of peace that comes not from safety, but from love—the choice to hold each other close even when the storm is visible on the horizon.
The kind of peace that exists not because danger has passed, but because family has decided that *this moment* matters more than *the next one*.
One night.
One final night before the reckoning.
And in that night, a mother sang, a father kept watch, and a child dreamed of lotus flowers blooming under stars that would not judge him.
⸻
The tide would come.
The fire would answer.
But not tonight.
⸻
He came home covered in blood. She washed his hands and called him hers. He confessed his guilt. They held him anyway.*
*For one night, love was enough.*
*Tomorrow, the sea would come calling.*