Night of the Frozen Sun. The black eclipse hangs above the frozen crater lake while northern and southern armies wait on opposite ridges with killing lamps and rotting betting slips.

Lian and Yanluo hide in an abandoned eclipse observatory above the lake. Broken bronze astronomical rings frame the dark sky. Snow blows through cracked jade walls.

Outside, both families' search parties pass below. Inside, Lian and Yanluo sit behind a broken astrolabe, hiding their presence and the bond.

The search lights fade. Lian and Yanluo remain in the observatory under eclipse light. Dust, snow, and old star charts surround them. The mood is suspended and dangerous.

A wave of Lian's grief returns under the eclipse. Yanluo feels it and quietly coughs, pressing a fist to his mouth. Lian notices his restraint.

In the quiet, Lian notices the vertical scar over Yanluo's heart under his loosened robe. She reaches out, not quite touching bare skin, tracing the line through thin fabric.

Yanluo smiles beneath Lian's hand in the eclipse-lit observatory. The moment reads as intimacy to Lian, but the composition leaves space for unease: red light along the scar, dice-like stars above.

Lian, exhausted, sleeps beside the dead astrolabe with her sword in reach. Yanluo waits until her breathing steadies, then silently stands.

Yanluo descends alone into a lower chamber beneath the observatory. Nian Cixiao waits unmasked at a stone table, dice arranged in neat columns like an accounting of fate.

The dice display a memory-like image over the table: Yanluo's earlier private bargain with Nian before the oath. This is the reveal that Yanluo arranged the binding and knew the price.

Yanluo loosens his robe in the lower chamber and opens the vertical scar over his heart. Demonic graft-flesh blooms beneath it, ready to receive pain as cultivation power. Nian watches like a delighted accountant.

The page cross-cuts between Lian asleep in the observatory and Yanluo below. The oath thread passes unseen through the stone, linking her sleeping vulnerability to his open graft art.