The morning Rhen nearly killed himself, he was trying to be kind.
Suyin had asked him about the Primordial Star Realm. They were sitting in the compound garden — her favorite spot, the bench near the winter cabbages — and she'd put the question to him with her usual precision: "How dangerous is it, really? Not the version you tell the Ancestor. Not the version you tell Mingxue. The real number."
Rhen looked at her. Warm hands, color in her cheeks, ten meridians open now. She was getting better every day. The bond hummed between them, steady and strong, and through it he could feel her concern — not as an emotion, but as a physical pressure, a gentle weight against the inside of his ribs.
The real number. He'd asked the Eternal Vow for a survival assessment two days ago. The answer had been clinical.
**[Survival probability given current cultivation (Chi Sea 5th level), available abilities (Heaven's Will Future Vision, Time Slash, 3 Seconds of Invincibility — single use, expended), and companion strength (Lian Mingxue, Peak Innate with Sovereign's Domain): 41%.]**
Forty-one percent. Less than a coin flip.
Suyin was watching him. Those fierce, perceptive eyes that missed nothing. She'd asked for the real number, and the real number would terrify her.
So Rhen opened his mouth to say, "Better than you'd think."
The Oath ignited.
Pain exploded through his chest — not gradual, not a warning, but a full detonation of white-hot fire that radiated from his core through every meridian, every bone, every nerve ending. He doubled over. His vision went black at the edges. His hands clawed at the bench, fingers digging into the wood, and a sound came out of his throat that wasn't a word — just raw, animal agony.
"Rhen!" Suyin was on her feet. Her hands were on his shoulders. "What's happening? What—"
The pain intensified. The Oath bond between them blazed like a wire touched to a flame, and Rhen could feel the structure of it — the promise, the vow, the absolute commitment to honesty — straining against the half-formed lie that was still sitting in his mouth like a shard of glass.
*Better than you'd think.*
He hadn't even said it. The intent was enough. The Oath had detected the lie before his lips could shape it, and it had responded with the full force of its enforcement clause.
"Forty—" he gasped. The pain eased by a fraction. "Forty-one percent." Eased more. "The survival rate. Is forty-one percent." The pain released him. All at once, like a fist unclenching, the fire went out and he was left panting on the garden bench, drenched in sweat, shaking so badly that Suyin had to hold him upright.
Suyin's face was white. "You tried to lie to me."
"I tried to soften it. The Oath doesn't distinguish between softening and lying." He wiped his face with a trembling hand. His core ached — a deep, structural pain, like something had cracked inside and barely held. "I was trying to protect you from a number that—"
"Forty-one percent."
"Yes."
She sat back. Her hands left his shoulders. She folded them in her lap, and the gesture was so familiar — the controlled, precise self-containment of a girl who'd spent sixteen years receiving bad news — that it hurt worse than the Oath's punishment.
"Don't do that again," she said. Her voice was quiet. The near-whisper. "Don't try to protect me from the truth. I've been dying since I was born. I know what bad odds look like. I can handle numbers. What I can't handle is my husband trying to lie to me about them."
"I understand."
"Do you? Because the Oath just nearly killed you, and you still look like you want to apologize for *scaring me* rather than for *lying*."
She was right. That was exactly what he wanted to do. The instinct to comfort, to shield, to soften the blow — it was wired into him after a century of being the kind stranger who made bad things sound less bad. Healers' assistants learned it. Storytellers perfected it. And the Oath had just declared it a capital offense.
"I will never lie to you," Rhen said. Not because it was noble. Because it would literally kill him if he tried.
"Good." Suyin's fierce eyes held his. "Now. Forty-one percent. What raises it?"
"Higher cultivation. More time to prepare. Better knowledge of the realm's interior."
"You have four days. What can you realistically achieve?"
"Chi Sea seventh level, maybe eighth if I push hard. That raises the probability to—" He paused, checked with the artifact.
**[Chi Sea 8th level with optimal preparation: survival probability rises to 58%. Additional factors: Mingxue's Sovereign's Domain in enclosed spaces provides significant force multiplication. Suyin's Heaven's Eye providing advance intelligence on realm conditions could add 5-8%.]**
"Fifty-eight percent with my cultivation at eighth level. Higher if we use every advantage. Your foresight. Mingxue's Domain."
Suyin nodded. Calculating. The sick girl was gone. In her place sat a strategist.
"Train," she said. "I'll use Heaven's Eye to map what I can see of the realm's interior. And Mingxue needs to practice her Domain in combat conditions, not just in your room."
"You're managing us."
"Someone should. You're too kind, and Mingxue's too angry. Left alone, you'd prepare thoughtfully and she'd prepare violently. Neither approach is sufficient."
Rhen stared at her. She was sixteen. She'd been bedridden for most of her life. And she was organizing their survival with the calm efficiency of a field commander.
"What?" she said, catching his look.
"I'm just wondering what you'd be capable of if you'd been healthy your whole life."
"Probably something terrifying." The ghost of a smile. "Now go. Every hour you spend sitting with me is an hour you're not cultivating."
---
He trained.
Four days of near-continuous cultivation, broken by meals Suyin insisted on and sparring sessions Mingxue demanded. The Chi Sea expanded. Sixth level by the end of the first day. Seventh by the second night. The Heavenly Heart Unfettered Art pulled qi in those slow, patient breaths, and the Oath bonds amplified everything — two connections feeding power into a core that was still learning how to be something other than empty.
On the third day, Mingxue insisted on combat practice.
"You have techniques," she said, tossing him a wooden training sword. They stood in the family's private training ground — a walled yard with padded floors and reinforced columns. "You have the Time Slash and the Future Vision. But you've never used them in a real fight. The contest doesn't count — that was three seconds of borrowed power against an opponent who underestimated you. In the Primordial Star Realm, nothing will underestimate you. Everything will try to kill you."
"Encouraging pep talk."
"I don't do pep talks. I do preparation." She drew her own training sword. "Come at me."
Rhen activated Heaven's Will Future Vision. The world sharpened — not the slowed-time clarity of the invincibility, but a different kind of enhanced perception. He could see Mingxue's movements before she made them. Not far ahead — fractions of a second, tiny previews of where her weight would shift, which hand would strike, what angle the blade would take.
He swung. Mingxue parried, pivoted, and put him on the ground in three moves.
"You're reading my intentions," she said, standing over him. "But you're not fast enough to act on what you see. Foresight without speed is just watching yourself lose in advance."
"Poetic."
"Get up."
They went again. And again. And again. Each time, Rhen's foresight showed him Mingxue's attacks before they came. Each time, his body — still rejuvenating, still adapting, still fifty years too slow — couldn't translate knowledge into defense.
But something was changing. On the twentieth round, he dodged a strike he shouldn't have been able to dodge. On the thirtieth, he landed a counter that made Mingxue grunt. On the fortieth, she had to activate a flicker of Sovereign's Domain to overpower his defense.
"Better," she said, and the word cost her something.
"You sound like it hurts to say that."
"It does." She sheathed her training sword. "Your body is catching up to your mind. A few more days and you'd be dangerous."
"We don't have a few more days."
"No. We don't." She wiped sweat from her forehead. Without the armor, training hard, she looked like what she was — young, athletic, beautiful in a way that was all function and no decoration. The scar on her collarbone was visible above her training shirt's neckline. "The Time Slash. Use it on a target. Not me — the training dummy."
Rhen turned to the wooden dummy at the yard's edge. He reached for the technique — the Oath-granted blade skill that didn't cut flesh but cut *time*. It unfolded in his mind: a specific angle, a specific intent, channeling qi through the blade edge and imposing it on the target's lifespan.
He struck.
The wooden dummy aged. In the space of one breath, the wood darkened, cracked, dried out. Grain that had been tight and young became loose and brittle. The dummy didn't break — but it looked like it had been standing in the rain for fifty years.
Mingxue stared at the dummy. "That technique drains *lifespan*."
"Yes."
"If you used that on a person—"
"They'd age. Rapidly. How much depends on how deeply the technique connects and the target's cultivation level. Higher cultivation provides more resistance."
"That's not a combat technique." Mingxue's voice had changed. Softer. Something closer to awe, which she clearly hated. "That's an execution technique. One clean hit on anyone whose defenses drop for a second, and they age a decade in a heartbeat."
"I don't plan to use it on people."
"The forbidden zone doesn't have people. It has beasts and monsters and treasure hunters who'd kill you for your entry token. You'll use it on all of them." She picked up her training sword again. "Let's go. Again. You need to land the Time Slash on a moving target, not a post."
They trained until the sunset turned the yard orange.
---
On the fourth day, Suyin reported her foresight.
"I can see fragments of the realm's interior," she said. They were in Rhen's quarters — all three of them, gathered around a low table where Suyin had drawn a rough map based on her visions. "The entrance leads to a broken landscape — shattered stone, floating debris, remnants of ancient structures. The air is thick with wild qi. Beasts gather near the ruins, feeding on the residual spiritual energy."
"How many?" Mingxue asked.
"I can't count them. But the density increases as you move toward the core. The outer edges are manageable — Chi Sea cultivators can handle the beasts there. The inner reaches..." She shook her head. "I saw something in the deep interior. A guardian. I couldn't see it clearly — my vision blurred when I tried. But it's powerful. Pure Yang realm at minimum."
"We're not fighting something at Pure Yang realm," Mingxue said.
"We don't have to fight it," Rhen said. "We have to get past it. The Fate Fragment is at the core. If we can reach it without engaging the guardian—"
"You plan to sneak past a Pure Yang realm guardian beast."
"I plan to be creative."
Mingxue looked at Suyin. "Your husband is going to get us killed."
"Probably not," Suyin said. "His survival rate is up to fifty-eight percent."
"Fifty-eight—" Mingxue pressed her palms against the table. "You're telling me I'm walking into a forbidden zone with a fifty-eight percent chance of survival?"
"Sixty-three," Suyin corrected. "I factored in my foresight contributions. It adds about five percent."
Mingxue stared at her sister. Stared at Rhen. Stared at the crude map on the table.
"Sixty-three percent," she said. "I've fought battles with worse odds."
"Have you?"
"No. But it sounded confident." She stood. "We leave at dawn. Pack light. Bring nothing you can't run with." She pointed at Rhen. "And don't you dare try to lie about anything while we're in there. If the Oath drops you in the middle of a fight because you tried to spare my feelings, I'll kill you myself."
She left. Rhen and Suyin sat in the quiet.
"She's scared," Suyin said.
"I know."
"Are you?"
Rhen considered lying. Felt the Oath stir — a gentle warmth, a reminder.
"Yes," he said. "I'm terrified."
Suyin took his hand. Her warm fingers wrapped around his, and the bond between them hummed like a plucked string.
"Good," she said. "Terrified people plan better."
