A faint click of meshing gears came from the mahogany doors.
Yixuan turned her head before she thought about it.
She assumed the wolf Thiren butler had come back for something, or that some urgent document needed the Mayor’s eyes.
It had been barely twenty minutes since the man reported the situation to Mayor Mayflower.
Getting from any other district of New Eridu to this office tower downtown took more than half an hour of travel alone, never mind whatever else he had to deal with along the way.
Yixuan turned the arithmetic over, lifted her teacup, and wet her throat.
The door had not even swung fully open before a man’s voice, edged with amusement, arrived ahead of him.
“Mayflower, you can’t sit still even this early in the morning.
It’s bad enough you work yourself to the bone — you have to press-gang me into it too.” The voice was rich and unhurried, the last syllables carrying a loose, easy laugh.
It landed in the reception hall and thinned out the stiff, formal air in an instant.
Tight nerves loosened without their owners noticing.
Yixuan’s hand stopped halfway to her mouth, teacup and all.
Mayflower set down his own cup and laughed, defeated.
“Miguel, now that is slander.” He stood, straightened the hem of his suit jacket, and fired back with a chuckle.
“Counting from before Gold Rush Day, exactly how many months of vacation have you taken?
If I didn’t find you something to do, I’d end up walking Sixth Street with a lantern trying to track you down and collect on that favor you owe me.” “Don’t start.” Miguel’s voice came nearer.
“That was a vacation for me?
That was me handing you people in government a chance to look good.
And you’ve got the nerve to say the word favor to my face?” The two of them traded jabs with the ease of long practice.
Mayflower talked about the debt Miguel owed him, but he knew perfectly well how the ledger really read.
Miguel had saved New Eridu three times, mended his body as an afterthought, and in the process sent the strength of several people at Victoria Housekeeping shooting upward.
If they ever truly settled accounts, Mayflower could sell himself and still come up short.
They both understood it for what it was: harmless joking between friends.
Miguel walked into the reception hall.
Lycaon held the door for him, respectful, at his back.
Once Miguel was fully inside, the wolf Thiren butler offered the room an impeccable hand-over-heart salute, then drew the heavy mahogany door shut behind him.
Click.
The doors closed.
Yixuan finally got a clear look at the newcomer.
A light gray crew-neck shirt, a sharply tailored black Martin coat over it, brown slim-cut suit trousers below.
Not one unnecessary ornament.
Just the easy, lived-in air of a man who dressed for himself.
The young man stood straight-backed, his features handsome.
The eyes especially — amber irises lit with a gentle warmth.
Yixuan sat on the sofa and went completely still.
From where she sat, that face, that build, even the air that moved with him, gave off an overwhelming sense of wrongness.
And tangled through it was a familiarity that sat right on the tip of her tongue.
As the Sect Master of Yunkui Summit, Yixuan read the flow of qi far better than ordinary people could.
And she could tell clearly that this young man carried no bared edge, no weight of pressure.
He felt as level and unremarkable as any citizen on the street.
That was impossible.
A man Mayflower praised this highly, a man he swore was the only one alive who could save her sister — how could he be ordinary?
More than that, the faint thread of presence leaking off him was something she felt certain she had brushed against somewhere before.
Yixuan stared at Miguel without blinking.
Naturally, Miguel noticed the gaze drilling into the side of his head.
He turned and took the measure of the white-haired woman in the bright yellow Daoist robe.
He had already drawn her entire life out through the Eye of Creation, but this was their first formal meeting, and formalities still had to be walked through.
“Mr.
Mayor.” Miguel raised an eyebrow and tipped his chin toward Mayflower.
“Aren’t you going to introduce our guest?” Mayflower had only just gotten to his feet.
“Ah!
Quite right.
This is the Yunkui Summit —” He never finished.
Everything changed at once.
Yixuan came off the sofa.
There was no warning at all.
She drove off her feet and the hem of her robe snapped through the air behind her.
In the space of a blink she stood in front of Miguel.
She used no Ether energy.
She drew no weapon.
She simply reached out and seized Miguel’s arm.
The smile froze on Mayflower’s face.
He understood exactly what Miguel was capable of.
If the two of them actually came to blows in this room, Yixuan was the one who would be carried out.
He could not let their first meeting sour like this.
“Sect Master Yixuan!” Mayflower called out to stop her, even taking a long stride forward without thinking.
There was no time.
Miguel stood where he was and did not so much as raise an eyelid.
At his level, no matter how fast Yixuan moved, in his eyes it was no different from someone hitting pause.
If he wanted, he wouldn’t even need to lift a hand.
The qi around him alone could have thrown her across the room.
But he didn’t move aside.
He found not the slightest trace of hostility in Yixuan’s face.
What he saw in those golden pupils was a barely contained need to know, and a curiosity that ran close to instinct.
Something was wrong here.
Her hand landed with a sharp smack.
Yixuan’s fingers locked tight around Miguel’s forearm.
Through the fabric she felt the strength stored in that arm.
Steady.
Still.
Miguel let her hold on.
In the script fate had written, this Sect Master was free-spirited and did as she pleased, but at the bone she was a decent woman who knew where lines were drawn and kept to them.
Laying hands on a stranger at first meeting did not fit her at all.
So where had things gone off the rails?
Miguel let his eyes fall shut halfway and sent his vast divine sense out in silence, until it wrapped the whole office tower.
He swept the area carefully, confirming there were no abnormal Ether fluctuations, and no contingency buried here by a certain “shut-in.” Then he cut back into the track of Yixuan’s past and began to read.
The Authority of [Time] began to turn.
Countless images raced through Miguel’s mind.
Training on Yunkui Summit.
Telling fortunes in the market streets.
The daily grind of teaching a disciple.
All of it looked perfectly ordinary.
Until the images rewound thirteen years.
The day of the Fall of Old Eridu.
Eridu torn open from end to end, Hollow Zero blotting out the sky.
Yixuan’s elder sister, the twelfth Sect Master, had forced the sect’s greatest treasure, the Azure Empyrean Sword, to full power in order to cover the civilian retreat.
That blade of light should have split the heavens open, carrying with it a will to die alongside the enemy.
It never swung, because Miguel had moved first.
Then came his scattered Power of Creation, turning into pale blue streamers across the sky, holding her sister on the last thread between living and dying.
All of this Miguel already knew.
But in the instant before the images ran out, his gaze sharpened.
Deep in Yixuan’s memory, in a stretch of the past that should have held nothing but catastrophe, there was something extra.
A blurred smear of light.
And the color of that light was identical to the Power of Creation.
The source of it came from a memory far earlier than that day.
The childhood of two little girls who understood nothing yet.
Then, in the next moment.
The Eye of Creation’s traceback was shut out, as if something of the exact same order of power had cut it off by force.
Miguel surfaced from it quickly.
By rights, the Fall of Old Eridu thirteen years ago was the first time he had ever descended into the Zenless Zone Zero world.
So how could he possibly appear in a childhood memory of Yixuan and Yijiang from long before that?
Either the timeline had bent itself into a closed loop right here, or there was some crossing of cause and effect he still hadn’t caught.
Miguel withdrew his divine sense, and the world in front of him locked back into the reception hall.
Yixuan still gripped his arm, his face reflected in her golden pupils.
“Sect Master Yixuan.” Mayflower had crossed the room in quick strides, his expression turning grave.
“Let go of him first.
Whatever it is, we can talk it through.” Miguel lifted his other hand and cut Mayflower off.
“It’s fine, Mr.
Mayor.” His tone stayed level, his eyes on Yixuan.
“Sect Master Yixuan probably thinks I look familiar.” Yixuan did not let go.
She held his eyes, and that sense of familiarity had swelled beyond all measure the instant she touched him.
“We…” Her voice came out dry, and it shook a little.
She drew a deep breath.
The careless, playful mask fell away completely, and what replaced it was a seriousness that bordered on stubbornness.
“Have we met somewhere before?”