[ Tae Hua's POV ]
The rhythmic, metallic clack... clack... clack of Lord Dame's black divination stones faded into a distant hum as I stood frozen in the center of the minimalist study. The immortal's words regarding Xie'en's survival still vibrated violently through my bones, but as my gaze drifted toward a small, polished obsidian mirror resting on the master's desk, my mind was violently pulled backward into the fog of the past.
It was a memory from thirteen winters ago—the very morning before the northern ravine ambush.
I was a boy of five, sitting on the cold stone steps of the Eastern Garden, my knees tucked tightly against my chest as I wept in absolute silence. My royal brothers had spent the afternoon mocking my weakness, telling me that a prince who trembled at the sight of a drawn blade would never be fit to hold an imperial title.
A soft, weightless rustle of silk had broken through my quiet sobbing.
I looked up through a blur of hot tears to see Xie'en standing over me. She wasn't wearing her grand ceremonial robes; she wore a simple, unadorned white tunic, her long dark hair held back by that single, jade-tipped hairpin. She didn't offer me a lecture on royal decorum, nor did she tell me to be brave.
Instead, she knelt directly into the dirt beside me, completely unbothered by the stains on her silk, and extended a small, delicate hand to firmly clasp my wrist.
"Do not listen to the songs of the wolves, Tae Hua," she whispered, her dark eyes reflecting the morning sun with an unyielding clarity that instantly quieted the chaos in my chest. "The court believes that strength is measured by how many lives you can crush beneath your boot. But true royalty is found in who you choose to pull out of the dirt when the storm arrives. If the heavens ever split the earth beneath us, I will hold onto your line. You must promise to do the same for me."
I had nodded dumbly, my tiny fingers gripping her hand until the skin turned white.
[ Present Time — Back to the Wave Surge ]
The memory shattered into a million jagged pieces as the massive wall of saltwater slammed directly into my chest, dragging Weicheng and me off the timber raft and into the suffocating, freezing dark of the abyss.
The saltwater burned my eyes, the immense pressure of the undercurrent roaring in my ears like a thousand dying kingdoms. My lungs screamed for oxygen as the dark sea twisted my body, pulling me downward into the void. Through the murky, foaming water, I looked across the length of the hemp rope. Weicheng's limp, unconscious frame was spinning slowly in the current, his dark hair billowing around his face like a shroud of black silk, the blood from his temple dissolving into the salt.
"If the heavens ever split the earth beneath us, I will hold onto your line."
Xie'en's voice echoed through the chambers of my drowning mind with the piercing force of an imperial trumpet.
A sudden, terrifying realization struck my soul. I couldn't save Xie'en thirteen winters ago. I had let the snow swallow her carriage, let her vanish into the wilderness while I sat safely behind the palace walls. If I allowed this commoner scholar—this stubborn, defiant vanguard who had just stood beside me against the terrors of the tower—to be dragged into the depths of the ocean because of my own weakness, I would never deserve to look at Xie'en's face again.
My fingers, raw and split from the friction of the hemp fibers, locked into an iron, unbreakable clutch around the line. I didn't care if the rope peeled the flesh entirely from my palms. I didn't care if the imperial blood inside my veins spilled out to feed the monsters of the deep.
With a fierce, silent roar of defiance against the sea, I hauled my body forward along the rope, fighting the tearing current inch by agonizing inch until my arm shot through the foam and wrapped violently around Weicheng's waist.
I will not let go, I swore to the dark water as the blackness finally claimed my sight. I will hold the line.