❃ 𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑 ❃

🔹𝕾𝖎𝖝𝖙𝖞 𝕱𝖎𝖛𝖊🔹

It had been one month already but still there was no sign of Wei Wuxian. The Qishan Wen had been taken down and the cultivation world got back its peace.

The Cloud Recesses was built again and the other clans which too suffered, had now rebuilt their homes.

The world was in peace but not Lan Wangji. And not the Jiang family except Yu Ziyuan.

"Wei Ying!"

Lan Wangji shouted himself awake, choking on a sob as sharp pain shooted across his back. In his panicked state, he rolled out of the bed, languidly pulling the tangled covered away from his body, wheezing as he landed on the floor with them in a heap. His nostrils are flaring, expelling a pained hiss. His heart pounds, irregular beats supplying to his fear-stricken mind that he's going to die because he can't breathe.

He's stuck in an image of Burial Mounds, where the fog was choking and the shock was numbing and oh god, he thinks, as he losed himself in the suffering of then, he can't breathe, he's forgotten how. His hand clutched at his chest, swallowing with difficulty through his shuddering breaths. His forehead was lined with sweat, robes sticking uncomfortably to his skin and he tried to suppress the tremor that shoots up through his body, every movement making him light-headed, struggling as he forced himself to swallow down the pained whimper of a name that demands to push past his lips.

Wei Ying.... An image of him falling flashes through his mind, paralysing him. Wei Ying was dead! Or that was what everyone said! That thought, so loud in the silence of the room was what shattered his chest open, shards piercing through his pale skin. It was what tightened the chord inside his chest until his lungs were burning with the process of keeping him alive. The more he thought about Wei Wuxian, the more his heart bled for him, and the more he wished he could stop his thoughts altogether. His husband was thrown down in the Burial Mounds and none has ever escaped that place! It was impossible for his husband to be an exception!

Struggling through the untamable roar of voices that festered inside his mind, he tried to get air back into his squeezed lungs. He inhaled through his nose for a few seconds and then exhaled through his mouth, eyes screwed shut as he tried to recite the rules of the Gusu Lan Sect in an attempt to calm his mind and separate himself from his pain. It was a method Lan Xichen taught him when things had become too overwhelming and he found himself claustrophobic in his own mind.

The rules were hardly in the right order, messily remembered but he started listing as many as he can through the static in his mind. Do not kill within Cloud Recesses...Do not fight without permission...Do not commit acts of promiscuity...Do not go out at night...Do not make noise...Do not walk too fast...Do not sit with a disgraceful pose...

When he felt as if he wasn't being choked, chest less tight and breathing came with more ease he slumped against the bed. The pain had meaning, so he bore it, not minding the weight of carrying it around. He should be resting but it was the hardest thing to do.

Like this, his mind chased him and he can no longer run away, sleep far forgotten with the looming agony that didn't let him breathe let alone allow him to rest.

Wiping his clammy palms against his clothes, he tried to navigate in the darkness, eyes scanning around him. Simplistic furniture, the accordion partition with a painting of drifting clouds, a guqin table that lay horizontally in front of it. On top of it, a three-legged incense stands in the corner, a hollowed-out incense burner made of white jade emitting a soft, lingering smoke, filling the whole room with the chilling scent of sandalwood. It did little to calm him, but he remembered with certainty where he was – but little of how much time had passed.

Eventually his eyes landed upon the window's edge, looking out to the sky above, distracting himself with the stars that twinkle and shine, bright against the inky black. Like this, he fell into the easy habit of reminiscing. He knew no sky will ever compare to the endless, sparkling galaxies that used to belong in dark silver eyes, the star's light flowing through a young boy's skin, burning and burning and brightening something so beautiful until it crumbled and self-destructed. It could be months, and Lan Wangji knew he will still wake with the unbearable sadness that clinged to his heart. He could remedy it with time and yet still; it will stick stubbornly. The universe was cruel like that, cruel enough to wake him up from his happiest memories.

Every time he woke up, blurry eyes blinking into focus the details slip from his mind, becoming fuzzier as time faded them. Some appeared more often, dazzling with flames that enthral, endless depths of constellations hidden behind eyes glazed over with stardust. It's those dreams he'd never wanted to wake from, bringing about a nostalgia that softened his face, and manifested the longing he feels into a deep and hollow ache. A beautiful, treacherous dream full of a familiar face he longed to see.

Some nights, he woke up to a blazing inferno over his entire body, screaming from the scorching flames that make him feverishly cold, and he begs and begs for it all to stop, wanting nothing more than to crawl into the depths of time and change everything that happened. But the universe, he had to keep reminding himself, was cruel.

When the moon ascended over the sky, Lan Wangji recollected a youthful smile, lively and warm that had his heart starting its excessive pounding again, but for what others consider all the wrong reasons. It could be days, months, and Wei Wuxian still found a way into his head, reminding him of the things he yearned for in excess. He could wish and wish and yet the facts remained the same. Wei Wuxian was everything he wanted, and simultaneously everything he couldn't have because-

Wei Ying was dead. No! His mind screamed for it to be false, but....

"Wei Ying...!" Lan Wangji sobbed. "Where are you? Come to me!"

Wei Wuxian had disappeared for almost three months now. There was no single sign of his husband! He had been thrown down in the Burial Mounds and Lan Wangji just felt his heart shatter into pieces thinking of it!

He regretted leaving Wei Wuxian's side back then on Lotus Pier. He should have stayed by his side, by his husband's side. He should have been with him when he had been devastated, consoling him that he was with him, protecting him! But none has happened and now it was too late to mend things!