With a fluid motion, Lan Wangji lifted his hand, and a soft golden light bloomed from his palm. It shimmered in the shape of a butterfly—elegant, impossibly delicate—and hovered in the air like it had thoughts of its own. He whispered something low and sharp under his breath.
The butterfly pulsed once, then darted toward the pile of rubble. Somehow, impossibly, it slipped through a narrow crack and vanished into the dark.
I stared, wide-eyed. Okay. That just happened.
"...What was that?" I asked, my voice barely keeping up with my brain.
"A message," Lan Wangji said simply.
I blinked. "A message? Like—messenger butterfly?"
He nodded once. "To General Lan. He will know where to find us."
Oh my god.
I recognized it. That butterfly. That was the butterfly. The one from the lake scene. The beautiful, heart-wrenching moment. Except this wasn't a drama anymore.
"General Lan?" I echoed. "Wait… who is that?"
Lan Wangji didn't answer, just stood there all stoic and brooding. The golden light was gone now, leaving us once again with the soft flicker of the hovering fireball. A silence settled in—thick and heavy. I glanced toward Wei Wuxian. He hadn't stirred since I bandaged him.
"How long until help comes?" I asked, trying to sound calm but failing completely.
"Three days," Lan Wangji replied, his voice quiet. Almost apologetic.
"Three days?!" I echoed. "We're trapped in a cave with a maybe-dying guy and no exit, and we're just supposed to... chill for three days?"
"There is no choice," he said.
Of course there wasn't. There never was in these kinds of stories. But this time, I wasn't watching it unfold from my couch. This time, I was in the cave. With dirt in my shoes, and cuts on my hands, and an unconscious fictional man who might actually bleed out in front of me.
And nothing about it felt romantic.
Lan Wangji sat beside Wei Wuxian, his expression unreadable, his posture rigid. The moment he looked away, I rummaged through my first aid kit again. It was already half-empty, and we hadn't even made it to day one.
But—thank the prepper gods—tucked between the gauze rolls and ibuprofen packets were three energy bars.
"Oh thank God," I whispered. "I love you, protein bars."
Not ideal, but not nothing. I held one up toward Lan Wangji. "Here. Food."
He examined it like I'd just handed him a suspicious artifact. "What is this?"
"It's a protein bar," I said. "Food. Compressed. Efficient. Mildly disgusting, but you won't die."
He didn't move. "Cultivators can go without food for days," he said politely, like he was trying not to offend the protein bar's honor.
"Okay, great. But Wei Wuxian is injured. He's lost blood. He needs something. Food. Water. Anything." My voice softened. "He's not okay."
That got his attention. He took the bar without another word and set it beside Wei Wuxian—not opening it, but not pushing it away either.
I leaned against the cold wall of the cave and exhaled slowly, the exhaustion hitting me all at once. Everything ached. My brain felt like it had been put in a blender and then set on fire. But I couldn't sleep. Not with Wei Wuxian like this. Not with the walls still trembling in the back of my mind.
Lan Wangji sat across from me in silence, his fireball casting shadows across his face. He didn't look at me, but I could tell he was watching. Thinking. Worrying. Just like I was.
I pulled my knees up to my chest, resting my chin on them.
This was real.
Somehow, impossibly, painfully—this was real.
And we had three very long days to survive.
"Water!" I said suddenly, the thought hitting me like a slap. "Right—we need water. We won't last three days without it."
I turned to Lan Wangji, my voice hesitant. "Do you think there's any in the cave? Like... is it safe to explore further?"
He didn't answer right away. Instead, he closed his eyes, still and quiet. For a moment I thought he was ignoring me—until I realized he was listening. Not to me, but to the cave.
After a few tense seconds, he opened his eyes. "I hear dripping," he said. "This way."
We moved deeper into the tunnel, his steps smooth and measured, mine… less so. The floating lights he summoned hovered just above the ground, appearing one after another like breadcrumbs made of starlight.
Eventually, he stopped and pressed his hand to the damp wall. "Here," he said quietly.
A thin stream trickled down the stone, catching the light in glistening drops.
He took off the outer layer of his robe—because apparently people like him don't even flinch at the idea of wet silk—and held it beneath the flow. The fabric absorbed the droplets like a sponge.
"I have an idea," I said, quickly emptying my first aid kit and carefully setting its contents aside. "We can use the container."
I took the wet robe and twisted it over the empty kit, squeezing out every precious drop. It wasn't much, but it was water.
"We'll have to boil this before we drink it," I muttered, glancing around. "I don't exactly have a camp stove."
Lan Wangji, of course, raised one elegant hand and conjured a small, controlled flame like it was the easiest thing in the world.
"Oh," I said. "Right. You're a walking fire starter."
The water began to bubble almost instantly. My eyebrows shot up. "How hot is that fire? Do your fingers even feel the temperature?"
Fantasy world. Fantasy world, I chant in my head.
He didn't respond. Then we walked back, carrying the water container with us.
I sat back down and watched the scene unfold—the glow of the fire, the way shadows danced along the cave walls, the gentleness in Lan Wangji's movements as he helped his unconscious companion drink.
And that floating fireball? Still there. Still flickering mid-air like a glowing orb of what the hell.
In the show, Lan Wangji didn't have this ability. This was new. Different.
Wrong?
"Lan Wangji," I said hesitantly, voice barely above the crackle of the fire. "In the drama… you don't have fireball powers. That's not... a thing you do."
He looked at me. Calm. Puzzled. "Drama?" he repeated.
Right. TV. Cameras. Editing. Not concepts he would know. I winced.
"Your powers," I said instead, trying to redirect. "They come from cultivation, right?"
He nodded. "We cultivate spiritual energy to shape it, control it. This is basic technique."
Basic, he says, like he didn't just boil water from a glowing ball he willed into existence.
I nodded slowly, pretending to understand.
Cultivation. Qi. Spiritual energy. These were things I'd read about in novels or seen in shows. Fiction. Fantasy.
Except now I was sitting in a dark cave, sharing protein bars and boiled cave-water with Lan freaking Wangji while Wei Wuxian lay unconscious at our feet.
So I'm in a Xianxia world, I thought, blinking at the realization. Like, an actual one. Not a theme park version. The real, ancient, death-is-everywhere one.
It was one thing to binge-watch people duel with spiritual swords on a Friday night.
It was another to be here. Powerless. Untrained. Just a girl with a first aid kit, a few snacks, and a rapidly unraveling grip on reality.
What the hell did I get myself into?