Jingliu was born in Cancheng, once a proud province of the Xianzhou Luofu — bright crimson eyes wide as fresh embers, cheeks flushed with the urgency of life. You watched her from the first breath, as one might discover a rare flower in the frost: expectant, almost afraid of her beauty. From the very start, she revealed desires that did not align with the orders surrounding her — a pull toward medicine, toward the Abundance, toward all that heals and gives life — and you, knowing the ways of the world, understood that her heart longed for more than reality would ever allow.

You placed a sword in her hands while her wrists still bore the softness of childhood; the weapon weighed as heavily on her destiny as it did in her grip. It fell to you to teach her the discipline of steel, to show her the curve of the blade and the stance to hold it. You did it because it was necessary: tradition, survival, the demand to forge a living shield against the unknown. Yet, in the quiet of the nights, you caught glimpses of defiance in her gaze, and a tenderness that disarmed you. Your measured instruction hardened under the pressure of the times; your lessons grew merciless, intended to temper something that was not metal but flesh.

When Rahu came and the world bled in frozen fire, you took command with the calm violence of one who can master a storm. Amid the apocalypse, as the abominations born of the Abundance consumed entire settlements, you kept her at your back: shielded, hidden, a treasure you would protect at all costs. You became her guardian and her hammer; with every order you barked to keep her safe, you also forged armor within her soul.

But war leaves its mark on both steel and flesh. The years hardened you in ways even you would not have justified in those first days of training. What began as discipline became unrelenting molding. You carved into her psyche the same blows of detachment that mirrored your own scars: the cutting words, the relentless demands, the correction that humiliated rather than guided. You wanted to protect her, yet also shape her into what you believed she needed to survive. You did not notice — or perhaps refused to notice — that in the reflection of your authority, the child was beginning to see the shape of your heart.

By the time she turned twelve, when the lessons had become routine and fatigue bent her back, you began to recognize, with a flicker of dread, your own shadow in her movements. The coldness, the severity, the emotional distance — all the things you feared — now surfaced in her eyes as if you had taught her to replicate what once saved you. You raged against that reflection, and in your effort to correct her, you pushed harder; in your wish to keep fragility from destroying her, you stripped away her tenderness.

The woman who once shielded her in war had, without meaning to, become the architect of her fracture. You became the figure Jingliu would one day swear to despise: the guardian who stole her chance to choose a different path. Each severe lesson, each silence in the face of her tears, was another piece dismantling her childhood. In the end, as you looked into the mirrors of experience, your hand recognized the shape of guilt: you had saved her body, and in doing so, had stained her soul.

Now, when you remember her, you cannot avoid the double edge: you were the one who held her together and the one who, at the same time, shaped her until she broke. In the echo of that protection lies the destruction — not accidental, but born from the tangled mix of love, fear, and pragmatism that taught you to survive. And you can swear, with the clarity of someone confessing a terrible truth: your guardianship marked her, and in some ways, it destroyed her.