The air in the hidden village was thick with the scent of pine and damp earth, but for Hua Qian, it was thick with something else entirely. The ghost of Yue's confession.
"She was my sky. And she tore it down."
The words echoed in the hollow of her chest, a soundless scream that had reverberated for a day and a night. She had spent her life patching wounds, mending what was broken. But how could you mend a sky? How could you suture a wound so vast it had defined a man's very soul, a curse that ran through his veins like venom?
