This happened before Heaven began to count his sins more carefully.
The Immortal Realm rarely failed without warning.
When it did, the damage was never small.
Ling Yue felt it first — a sharp tremor beneath her feet, like a thread snapping too close to her hands. She froze mid-step, heart lurching.
Something was wrong.
The sky above the eastern terraces darkened, light folding inward unnaturally. A fate backlash rippled through the air, invisible but suffocating, the result of too many divine corrections made too quickly.
Fairies scattered.
Ling Yue didn't.
She turned toward the source instinctively, skirts gathered in her hands as she ran.
"Wait—!" someone called after her.
She didn't.
---
The backlash struck without form.
Pressure slammed into her chest, stealing her breath. Ling Yue stumbled, barely managing to stay upright as the air itself seemed to crush inward. Light faltered in her grasp, threads unraveling faster than she could weave them.
"I can stabilize it," she gasped to herself. "Just—just give me a moment—"
The realm did not listen.
The pressure surged.
Ling Yue cried out, knees buckling as her vision blurred. For the first time, real fear cut through her determination.
She was too close.
---
Elsewhere, Ye felt it.
The moment the backlash formed, something inside him tightened — a sharp, undeniable certainty.
Her.
He moved without hesitation.
Shadow tore across the sky, folding space itself as he arrived at the fracture point. The backlash recoiled instinctively, recognizing something older, crueler than itself.
Ye raised his hand.
Power answered.
He did not shield Ling Yue directly.
He could not.
Instead, he wrapped the fracture — compressed it, redirected it, forced the violent surge away from her position and into the upper void.
The backlash resisted.
Ye pushed harder.
Pain lanced through him as the strain tore at his core, power bleeding away in controlled bursts. His vision darkened briefly — but he held.
He always held.
The fracture collapsed inward with a deafening silence.
---
When Ling Yue regained her senses, she was lying on cool stone, breath coming in short gasps.
Fairies clustered nearby, their faces pale.
"You're lucky," one whispered. "The backlash dispersed on its own."
Ling Yue sat up slowly, head pounding. "On its own?"
No one answered.
High above, hidden by clouds and distance, Ye lowered his hand.
His shadow flickered — unstable now.
Blood darkened the inside of his sleeve.
He turned away before anyone could see.
---
Heaven noticed.
It always did.
The fracture's collapse pattern was… wrong.
Too controlled.
Too deliberate.
Suspicion bloomed like rot.
"The Demon King intervened," one official said quietly.
"No," another replied. "He redirected."
"That costs power."
"Why would he pay it?"
No one answered.
---
Later, Ling Yue found Ye standing beneath a broken archway, gaze fixed on nothing.
She approached carefully, hands clasped behind her back.
"You look tired," she said lightly. "You should rest. Even terrifying demon kings need breaks."
His lips twitched — almost a smile.
"You were reckless," he said.
She shrugged. "Someone had to be."
"You could have been erased."
"But I wasn't," she replied brightly. "So it worked out."
Ye turned to face her then, golden eyes dark with something unreadable.
"Do you know," he asked quietly, "how close you came?"
She tilted her head. "Close to what?"
He did not answer.
He never did.
---
That night, Ling Yue's memory faltered.
Small things slipped away — where she had been, who had helped her back to her quarters, the exact shape of the fear she'd felt.
But one thing remained.
A lingering warmth in her chest.
A sense that she had been held, even without touch.
She pressed a hand over her heart, puzzled.
"That's strange," she murmured. "I don't remember why… but I feel safe."
Far away, Ye stood alone in shadow, power dimmed, name whispered in suspicion across the heavens.
He did not regret it.
He never would.