The air is filled with the fragrance of blooming peonies. Its sweetness promises serenity and prosperity that Qiao Xiu knows will not come to be.

He sits, surrounded by scrolls and books that with each passing week become harder and harder to read. His knowledge is vast even without divine guidance, but there are dozens of scripts and grammars in the heap before him, and he is just one man.

He wonders how much he will remember in two months once the solstice comes.

So he puts all he can to paper. Places and conversations, events and most importantly, names. Everything he’d seen, everyone he’d met, everyone likely to be lost to him soon.

The clouds part, allowing the thin crescent of the moon to shine into the window, and Qiao Xiu feels a pang of regret. It’s still a source of comfort, a guiding light, but it’s shadowed by grief for the divinity he’d served almost all his life, now shattered into pieces for the sake of preserving the whole.

Qiao Xiu’s hair is tied up in a simple bun of the wandering priest, but on a far table, hidden away in a lacquered box, there is an elaborate crown of jade and gold, a god’s echo. A divine blessing and a sign of the trust the gods have put into him.

A burden and a curse, sure to follow his bloodline for generations. A sign of changing times and tangible, disturbing proof that the deities Qiao Xiu serves are gone.

For now, he cannot bear to look at it.

Instead, he turns his eye to the calendar. Another unpleasant duty he took upon himself, as he catalogs all the changes in himself and the leylines he can observe.

Those he doesn’t share with the priests across the world. It’s not a lie, not really – they can, and probably do, see the same changes in themselves.

They all know that solstice is cutting it close.

Qiao Xiu also knows that in a month, their in-person meetings will seize.

A delicate, risky balance of the impeding disaster and their preparedness, the alignment of the planes and the instability of the leylines. Qiao Xiu keeps his notes, hoping to gain some insight, but can still only pray for success.

The success, they all know, would be a relative thing. They are about to cut off the material plane from the rest of the world, something outrageous and unnatural, and the price for the deed is high.

But still, under the gentle glow of the moon, Qiao Xiu writes, for a future where there will be someone to read.

The air is filled with the hopeful fragrance of peonies.

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More Qiao Xiu in The Council and Leylines.