Smoke beneath the lanterns

Yanlu City, during the Ghost Lantern Festival

The city was burning.

Not with flame — but with light.

Paper lanterns floated like fire spirits into the sky. Crimson, gold, and ivory glows shimmered across rooftops and waterways, their flickering shapes mirrored in the slow-moving canals that split Yanlu in two.

It was the Ghost Lantern Festival, the one night in the year when the living spoke to the dead.

But for Tyan Shi, the dead never left.

They followed him like shadows.

He pulled his hood down tighter, weaving through the crowded night markets. Children wore fox masks and danced around burning incense sticks. Elderly monks knelt at shrines, whispering names of lost sons and daughters. Lovers tied silk wishes to trees heavy with flame-colored ribbons.

Tyan didn’t belong in this city. Not anymore.

Not among laughter. Not beneath lanterns.

He wasn’t here for joy.

He was hunting.

The Ghost of Vengeance

His target was a name from the past: Elder Gulan — once the third-ranking sword master of the Golden Tempest Sect, now hiding as a traveling merchant under an assumed name.

Gulan had helped orchestrate the betrayal.

The day Tyan had been dragged into the courtyard, falsely accused of harboring forbidden power…

The day they shattered his guqin, burned his robes, and left him for dead…

Gulan had stood at the edge of the flames.

Now it was his turn to burn.

Tyan slipped down an alley where the noise of the festival thinned. The laughter grew distant. Only drums remained, and the faint chime of bells swaying in temple winds.

He passed a woman lighting incense. A child crying for a lost father. A beggar singing an off-key ballad about a river god’s curse.

Tyan’s chest tightened.

Not from pity. From memory.

> “Don’t think. Just act,” he whispered to himself.

But his fingers brushed over the scar on his chest, where the glowing Heaven’s Vein mark had started to stir again. It hadn’t throbbed this strongly since the night he first woke from the grave.

Something was near.

Something familiar.

The Silent Tea House

He arrived at an old wooden gate, barely standing. The name on the signboard was half-worn: House of Autumn Leaves.

A former meeting place for scholars and exiles. Now abandoned. Or so they thought.

He pushed the door open.

The scent of burnt herbs filled the air. Dust danced in the slanted light of a single flickering lantern. The room was empty — no furniture, no cups, just scorched floorboards and a trail of footprints left in ash.

At the center was a mark drawn in quick, delicate strokes —

A silver blossom.

Tyan stared.

A sound rose in his chest, but never made it to his lips.

His vision blurred for a moment.

Not from pain.

From recognition.

But he didn’t say her name.

Not yet. Not aloud.

Instead, he drew his sword just an inch — the air around it crackled.

> “So… I’m not the only one hunting ghosts tonight.”

Above the Lanterns

Across the city, perched atop a quiet temple roof overlooking the water, Xuneer stood barefoot in the moonlight.

Her robes flowed with the wind, white and pale violet, like cloud threads woven from starlight. Her silver hair gleamed faintly, bound loosely with a red ribbon — frayed at the edge, old.

She didn’t watch the lanterns. She watched the city’s shadows.

Beneath her calm expression was a storm she no longer fought.

> “He's alive,” she whispered.

The spirit fox at her feet — a creature woven from mist and charm — shifted nervously.

> “I felt it, too,” she added. “He’s in this city. He doesn’t know I’m here. And I… don’t know if I want him to.”

She looked down at her hands — one of them still bore a scar from that night five years ago.

The night she made the choice that split them apart.

A soft breeze carried the scent of sandalwood from the festival streets.

And something else.

Fire. Old fire.

Her fingers curled into fists.

> “I’ll find you,” she whispered. “But not yet. Not like this.”