Qiping made no noise as a blade was drawn near her throat. It was Xingbei who yelled, causing Yildun to rush to the door with a kitchen knife in hand. The sight of her daughter caused her to stop in her tracks. The love in her eyes disappeared as she saw the way Xingxi held Qiping hostage, with the sword she had seen the girl fly away with five years ago.

“If I meet my demon brethren again, I will skin every single one who bestowed their power upon you,” Yildun said bitterly. “How dare they turn my daughter into a killer.”

Xingxi spared her mother a glance but did not turn her head. “I’m sorry I never came home, Mama, but I knew you wouldn’t understand.” “Understand what, exactly? Your quest for vengeance? Do you think Qiao Village was the first home I’ve seen destroyed? My clan’s banner was burned before I was born, and we were scattered from our homeland. I didn’t take up a bow against the Tang. I survived, and I thought I taught you to do the same.”

“I can’t,” Xingxi said. “I can’t let my father have died in vain.”

“The fact you still fly means he did not.” Yildun tucked the kitchen knife into her belt and walked towards her daughter unarmed. “The years have been hard for us, but I can see they have been worse for you. You have been carving the scar of that night deeper and deeper into your soul, and you have yet to heal.”

Xingxi flinched as her mother raised a hand towards her shoulder. She clutched Qiping tighter, feeling the warmth of the hearth still on her body, the smell of ash, spices, and cooked meat lingering on her skin. With a leap she took them both in the air, away from her mother and brother. He was too young, and she was too mortal, to understand what she must do.

They weren’t nearly as high as when she had taken Xingbei flying; it was harder to remain in the air in her human form, which was necessary in order to wield the Phoenix-Feather Sword.

Qiping did not struggle as she was taken up in the sky. She remained silent and impassive, letting the world come to her rather than reaching out towards it. No word was spoken between the friends; what was there to say?

Instead, Xingxi drew a deep breath and used magic to amplify her voice to call out to the heavens: “Traitor, I know you are watching. Come face me if you want to save your daughter.”

A gust of wind blew from the south, and Xingxi turned to parry a golden blade that came for her throat. The movement caused her to swing Qiping around like a pendulum, and she reinforced her grip as she turned to see the crane floating in the air.

She wore a robe of dark slate gray, the color of stratus clouds bearing rain on the horizon. Even through the lens of hatred, Bixian did not look like the villain Xingxi had imagined her to be. Her face was weary, decorative red flower painted on her forehead starkly contrasting against her pale skin. Her hair was neatly coiffed in two coils, save for several loose strands in front obscuring her left eye. In their brief exchange of blows, Xingxi realized that the woman she had seen as a caretaker for half of her life, the woman she spent the past five years hating, was much frailer in reality than in her imagination. Five years since the fall of the Qiao, Xingxi stood taller than the crane.

On equal footing, ready to strike her down.

“You called for me, Luo Xingxi.”

Xingxi had dreamed of this moment for so long, imagining what she would say to the woman who ruined her life. Faced with reality, she could conjure any pithy threats to throw at the crane. Reverting to her base instincts, she simply glared at Bixian and bared her teeth.

Qiping craned her neck to look at her mother, and Xingxi tilted the Phoenix-Feather Sword’s blade away so it would not nick her skin. “Well?” She shouted at at Bixian. “I have your daughter. Come and fight me!”

“I’m surprised you would fight me at a deficit.”

“It’s not a deficit if you’re afraid to strike me where it matters,” Xingxi said, pulling Qiping close to her chest. “Meanwhile I just need one good strike with my sword. I’ve thought the scenarios through. This is checkmate, you traitor crane.”

Still Bixian did not move; her eyes weren’t even on Xingxi. Quietly she tried to catch her daughter’s gaze, but aside from that initial glance Qiping avoided her eyes, preferring to look down at nothing. No, not nothing, but Xingbei and Yildun looking up from the ground, powerless as the two birds fought with Qiping between them.

Like the tragedy of the four winds. Loving desperately, but each looking in the wrong direction.

With the Phoenix-Feather Sword still at Qiping’s throat, Xingxi shook the Dragonscale Scabbard into hundreds of small scales and launched them at Bixian. The crane drew up a gust of wind to slow the projectiles down and parried each one back with her Knife of Sublimation. The azure scales reformed at Xingxi’s arm into a gauntlet. She used this hand to point at Bixian, her hand now a vicious dragon claw. “You can’t bat away my attacks forever.”

Bixian sighed and sheathed the knife at her side. “You have trained so long, but you still have much to learn.” She raised her free hand to tuck the stray strands of hair behind her ear, revealing her missing eye. “You may have been playing chess, but I have been playing go.”

All of a sudden two black walls slammed into Xingxi from either side. Another slid down in front of her, and Xingxi lost her grip on both Qiping and the sword. She began to dive down to retrieve either, both, but her descent was interrupted by another panel. She hit it with her knee and was only able to glance up briefly as one more panel closed from above. With mounting desperation she sent the azure dragon scales to try and push back the walls by mere numbers. No weakness gave, and the impact of scales sent them flying every which way until there were none left on her person. She was trapped.

No matter how much she pressed against the walls, using fist, claw, or wing, the black walls did not budge. The walls of the meditation chamber drew ever closer, until Xingxi could no longer sustain a physical form and had to condense herself into only spirit. Even with three hundred years of demon magic and the training of a dragon prince, she could not find a way out.

Bixian held out her hand and recalled the meditation chamber, now just a cube that could fit in her palm. With a flick of her robe sleeve, Qiping’s fall was slowed.

Qiping wished she could have kept plummeting, her eyes resolutely looking at everything but her mother. With some difficulty she rotated her body so she was looking up at the sky, orange and red with the setting of the sun. The Phoenix-Feather Sword hung suspended in the sky, as weightless as a dandelion seed. Qiping fell to earth on her back, her gaze never leaving the changing dusk. The Phoenix-Feather Sword fell with her, never moving closer or further away. The only thing that changed was its orientation, rotating until it was perpendicular to the Earth.

Something was holding the sword, Qiping realized. Azure scales reflected the orange sky, the Dragonscale Scabbard Xingxi had used to try to escape reconfigured into criss-crossing wires, keeping the sword in check.

Bixian’s arms were outstretched, waiting to catch her, but Qiping pushed them away the moment she felt silk surrounding her body. Her legs stumbled on the ground and she fell to her knees.

Qiping heaved and her lip quivered, but she could not cry. She could only give a wordless yell when Xingbei tried to approach. She didn’t want his comfort; didn’t want any comfort. She had spent the past five years barely feeling anything, and now she wanted to feel nothing.

Her best friend tried to kill her. She wished that Xingxi had the guts to go through with it.

She looked up to the sky. “Please,” she begged, the sword and the scabbard both.

It was as if a taut wire was cut. The Phoenix-Feather Sword began to fall, and Qiping pushed Bixian aside to meet its trajectory. It would be so easy to leap out of the way of the sword as it descended like a meteor towards Earth, but Qiping fell forward and embraced the cold frost-covered earth as the Phoenix-Feather Sword pierced her left shoulder, the blade cutting through both flesh and soul.

The scattered azure scales swarmed around the Phoenix-Feather Sword and raised it from her body. There was no burst of blood, no squelch of viscera as the scales sealed it in the Dragonscale Scabbard once more. Just the body of Qiao Qiping, lifeless on the ground.