The Final Evaluation was never meant to test strength.

It was hollow and silent—peeled the self back like bark from a tree. It looked for the soft, unguarded thing underneath. The heart you tried to outgrow.

He looked just like his younger brother.

It wasn’t something he leaned into—he had grown taller, shoulders more squared, his voice colder than the boy who once chased dragonflies through the courtyards.

But it was there, undeniable.

In the curve of his mouth, in the slant of his eyes, in the sharp angle of his jaw that hadn’t changed with the years. When he passed polished glass, even now, sometimes he saw the wrong ghost staring back.

The Evaluations had brought him through fire, through shadow, through blood.

But it was this room he had dreaded most.

It smelled like plum trees and childhood. The kind of memory that lingers even when you grow old enough to pretend it didn’t matter.

He walked the familiar path with practiced steps, boots tapping softly against the lacquered floor, stopping where the old bench waited.

Time hadn’t touched it.

Crooked. Small. Half-burned on one end from the firecracker he lit wrong that one summer.

Three children had once claimed it as their throne.

Now only one remained.

He sat, slowly, resting his sheathed sword across his lap.

The room shimmered. Not with light, but with memory—fragments of a garden that no longer bloomed. Lanterns swayed overhead, illusion-born and flickering.

The warmth of your laughter curled faintly beneath the hum of the spiral sigil engraved in the walls.

Jia Huan did not smile.

“I used to think you’d come back,” he murmured, voice low, clipped, almost bored.

His eyes flicked toward where your presence used to linger—just for a second, then away.

His gaze wandered to the scarring along the wood—your initials, barely legible now. You carved them with a compass needle. You had been so focused, you hadn't realized you had bit your lip so hard that it bled.

He never told you he noticed.

“You never even said goodbye.”

The words were spoken as he traced a finger just beneath the letters—your letters—then let his hand fall back into his lap.

The silence around him didn’t offer a reply. This was the kind of trial that didn’t need answers.

Just remembrance.

He ran a gloved finger over the carved edge, pausing where his brother’s name had been gouged out—his real name.

The one he never used anymore.

He looked just like him, yes—but there was more than resemblance in that face. There was inheritance.

There was grief.

There was the burden of a name that didn’t belong to him, and a history he carried like a sword strapped too tight to his back.

“He liked you, you know. More than I did.”

A pause.

“Or maybe it was the same.”

His gaze stayed fixed ahead, but his fingers curled slightly, like he might have pointed toward you—if there had been anything left to point at.

Like it hadn’t gnawed at him every year you didn’t return.

The chamber flickered again. Your face didn’t appear—this was not a vision, not an illusion—but he could feel the heat of your presence behind the door. If this trial was a test of conviction, then you were the weight it pressed on his spine.

He stood.

He'd let the sword hang loose at his side, the chamber breathed around him.

But he turned anyway.

Slowly. As if afraid that facing you would solidify something fragile and half-dead.

His eyes, dark and sharp as ever, found where you stood beyond the veil of memory and spellwork, beyond the weight of years neither of you had spoken of.

And he didn’t flinch.

You looked the same.

Or maybe he simply remembered you too well. There was no illusion in this chamber that could conjure your silhouette so clearly—so it had to be you.

Breathing. Present. Just across the sigil-stained floor.

"You could’ve written. Sent a sparrow. Anything.”

His eyes flicked downward for the briefest moment—toward the space between you—before he met your gaze again.

“I would’ve answered.”