Chapter Text
Jiang Cheng was going to die.
He was going to fucking die and it would be his own damned fault.
Smoke and blood choked the autumn air, each breath stoking Wei Wuxian's fury as his lungs burned. Grime and gore streaked across his golden armor, the leather clinging to his torso like a second skin. Sweat carved rivers through the dirt on his face, stinging his eyes as he vaulted over a corpse still twitching in the churned mud.
Bodies and blades writhed across the battlefield in a dissonance of clashing steel and dying men. To his left, a soldier's death wail cut short with visceral abruptness. Their defensive line rippled, buckling as the enemy surged forward, white leather armor gleaming through the chaos.
A spear thrust toward his ribs. Twisting away, Wei Wuxian felt the shaft scrape against his armor as Suibian came up in a savage arc. The blade sliced through his attacker's throat, hot blood spraying across his knuckles as the man crumpled. Another soldier in white crashed toward him, sword raised high. Wei Wuxian dropped low, sweeping the legs out from under him, then drove his boot down on the exposed throat before the body finished falling.
Jiang Cheng had no reason to push past the line.
Muscles screaming in protest, Wei Wuxian drove forward, each movement steeped in violence. A sword whistled past his ear, close enough that he felt the air's displacement. Pivoting hard, he slammed his pommel into the attacker's temple. Bone crunched against metal, swallowed by the din.
Impact and reaction blurred together. Suibian found flesh, withdrew, found flesh again. Wei Wuxian's arms trembled with fatigue, each parry a fraction slower than the last. He couldn't stop.
Stumbling over a severed arm, he caught himself and kept moving.
The deeper he pushed, the thicker the enemy grew. These were not the scattered sentries of the perimeter but the concentrated force of their main assault. Breath came in harsh gasps now, his throat raw.
Then, through the press of white and gold armored bodies, he saw it.
A flash of red.
Red armor, dark as arterial blood. The figure moved toward a soldier stumbling backward, the man's eyes widening as he tracked the approaching threat.
Fucking hell.
Bending down, Wei Wuxian closed his hand around a stray spear half buried in the mud. Blood slick wood made his fingers slip along the shaft, and for one terrible heartbeat he thought he'd lose his grip entirely. Wrenching it free, he hefted the unfamiliar weight in his exhausted arms and hurled it toward the man stalking his brother.
The spear flew true, a dark line cutting through smoke and ash.
Wei Wuxian tightened his grip on Suibian, the blade suddenly feeling too light, too inadequate. Cold certainty settled in his gut. That spear would never hit its mark.
It didn't.
The soldier moved with inhuman speed, scimitar catching the spear mid-flight in a casual, vicious strike that sent it spinning harmlessly into the mud. The ease of it was terrifying. No wasted movement. No effort at all.
"Get the fuck out of here!" The words tore from Wei Wuxian's throat, raw and desperate.
"Do you think I need your help—" Jiang Cheng's voice cut through the chaos, indignant and stupidly, stupidly proud.
Wei Wuxian didn't look at him. Couldn't afford to.
The soldier turned toward him with the certainty of a predator selecting prey. No fear in that movement. No hesitation. Nothing that suggested he felt threatened at all. Languid steps carried him forward, almost leisurely, the scimitar already dark with blood dripping in fat droplets to the churned earth. Wei Wuxian's mind raced, cataloging every shift of weight, every angle of approach, searching for weakness and finding none.
The suppressants in his blood felt like poison, dulling instincts that screamed at him to assess this threat properly, to understand what he was facing. Senses clawed at the edges of his consciousness, trying to break through the haze, but all he could grasp was the overwhelming presence of the man before him.
"As your general you will obey me!" The words came out harder than he'd ever used with Jiang Cheng, edged with fear disguised as fury. "Withdraw!"
That was the last second he had to waste on his prideful brother.
The soldier in red surged forward, and Wei Wuxian's world narrowed to crimson armor and the deadly arc of a bloodstained scimitar cutting through the space between them.
Arms nearly buckling, he blocked the strike with Suibian, his grip trembling as he held his stance and finally looked up into the soldier's eyes.
No.
God, no.
Mismatched eyes bore into his own. One dark as the abyss, the other the deepest red. Only one man across both empires was known for heterochromia. One man he was certain he couldn't defeat.
"A general stumbling past enemy lines." The chaos of the battlefield dimmed as that deep voice taunted him, the hardened look in those eyes remaining even as his tone suggested intrigue.
Wei Wuxian forced a bored neutrality into his voice, tilting his head slightly. "I heard Crimson Rain finally graced the battlefield."
A feral smirk pulled at Hua Cheng's features as he shoved Wei Wuxian back, steel screeching against steel.
Taking a second longer to regain his footing would have cost him everything. The scimitar came down in a brutal overhead strike. Wei Wuxian twisted away, rolling to the side and coming up with Suibian already sweeping low toward Hua Cheng's legs. The blade met empty air. Momentum carried him into a spin, away from the scimitar seeking his exposed back.
Breath came in sharp bursts now. Every movement felt like wading through deep water, the suppressants dulling the strength he was born with.
Hua Cheng advanced with surety, inevitable and unhurried. Wei Wuxian met him blade to blade, impact jarring up his arms until his shoulders burned. Ducking under a horizontal slash, he felt wind ruffle his hair and drove Suibian toward Hua Cheng's ribs. The strike only just connected. A shallow cut slicing through the gap in his armor.
First blood.
It meant nothing.
Hua Cheng's expression didn't even flicker. Pivoting with ease, his scimitar opened a line of fire across Wei Wuxian's bicep. Wei Wuxian hissed through his teeth but didn't slow, couldn't slow. Barely faster, his smaller frame let him slip inside Hua Cheng's guard. Another cut, this one across the back of Hua Cheng's hand.
The scimitar came at him again.
Wei Wuxian parried, but the sheer force drove him back three steps, boots skidding in blood slicked mud. A corpse caught his heel. He stumbled, and that moment of imbalance cost him. Steel bit into his side, not deep enough to kill but deep enough that wet heat bloomed beneath his armor.
Spinning away, gasping, he noticed it then.
The space around them had emptied. Soldiers still fought and died mere zhang away, but a void surrounded Hua Cheng, as if the battlefield itself recoiled from his presence. A presence more consuming than even Mingjue's.
Hua Cheng moved again. Wei Wuxian brought Suibian up just in time. The blades locked, and he found himself staring into those mismatched eyes. Something in that gaze made rage flare hot in his chest.
He was being toyed with.
Snarling, Wei Wuxian twisted and broke the lock, slashing wildly. His blade opened a cut along Hua Cheng's shoulder. A victory made hollow by the knowing smile still pulling at Hua Cheng's lips.
The scimitar came up faster than he could track. It caught Suibian at an angle and sent the blade spinning from his grip, impact vibrating through his bones. His hand went numb. Before he could even process the loss, Hua Cheng's boot connected with his chest, and Wei Wuxian went down hard, air exploding from his lungs.
Rolling, he tried to rise, but a hand closed around his throat.
The world tilted as Hua Cheng threw him down again, this time with enough force that his skull cracked against something hard beneath the mud. Stars burst across his vision. The hand on his throat didn't relent, thumb pressing against his windpipe with precise, terrible pressure. Not enough to crush. Just enough to remind him how easily it could.
Wei Wuxian clawed at the grip, vision blackening at the edges. Through the gathering darkness, he felt more than saw Hua Cheng kneel over him, weight settling across his hips and pinning him completely. This close, the alpha's scent finally overwhelmed the cloying reek of blood.
Hua Cheng lowered himself further, until his lips nearly brushed Wei Wuxian's ear, and when he spoke his voice was cold.
"I hope the little soldier was worth dying for."
...Fuck.
Something was wrong.
Dying at the hands of an enemy was one thing, but his body should simply be shutting down. Growing cold, distant, fading into that gentle dark.
Instead, molten lava tore through his veins, unbearable heat building beneath his skin that had nothing to do with exertion or injury. Burning from the inside out, temperature climbing to an unnatural degree as his breath caught painfully beneath those unforgiving fingers.
No.
The answer came with terrifying, inevitable clarity.
The hand around his throat slackened immediately, crushing pressure vanishing as if Hua Cheng had been burned. A sharp intake of breath ghosted against Wei Wuxian's ear, impossibly loud despite the screaming chaos of battle raging around them.
Hua Cheng's other hand moved to his neck, fingers gripping the edge of his armor and wrenching it aside with a force that stripped the leather fastenings. Cool air hit his exposed scent gland. A shudder ran through him, his body's betrayal complete.
Goosebumps erupted across his skin as Hua Cheng took another deep, stuttering breath, drawing in the scent Wei Wuxian had spent years hiding, years suffocating beneath suppressants now failing catastrophically.
"That's impossible—" The words were soft, just more than an exhale, and the wonder in them made his stomach twist.
Wei Wuxian called on every survival instinct he still possessed.
Hand shooting out, he closed his fingers around the hilt of the dagger at Hua Cheng's belt. The blade came free with a whisper of steel. He didn't think, didn't aim, just slashed blindly toward where he knew that beautiful, terrible face had to be. Resistance of flesh. Blood across his own cheek. He used Hua Cheng's moment of recoil to wrench himself free.
Rolling away, his body screamed in protest, every muscle trembling with exhaustion and the beginning stages of a heat that shouldn't be possible. Not here, not now, not with the suppressants he'd taken just this morning. Knuckles white around the stolen dagger, he put distance between himself and the general who was akin to a war god made flesh.
He didn't look back to see the damage he'd done. Didn't dare.
He just ran, clutching the dagger, praying to gods he'd stopped believing in that he would survive this day.
That they both would.