The wooden door swung open. He stood in the entrance, the glow from the lantern casting a sheen of gold over his silver hair. At the sight of me, he blinked as though taken aback, even though few things could catch him unaware.

“You came.” His tone lifted with surprise as he stepped aside to let me in.

Did he think I would not? Eager to shed the burden of a mortal parent, easily forgotten in the realm where the years had no meaning and illness dared not trespass? He did not know me, but we had time. All the time in the world.

His house was furnished with an elegance that was unexpected, given its unassuming exterior. A blue-and-white porcelain tea set was laid on a table of prized zitan wood, its barrel-shaped stools tucked beneath. Scroll paintings hung from the walls, some depicting scenes of temples and pavilions amid lush pine forests. One caught my eye, of a woman—my mother—I realized with a start. Not the goddess flying among the clouds in ornate silk robes, as the mortals often depicted her—but clad in a plain robe, standing in a garden of peonies. The artist had captured the graceful curves of her face, the tilt of her eyes, and more than that, the radiance in her expression. Mortal and incandescently happy.

I inhaled sharply, catching the scent of incense in the air. Only then did I notice the lacquered altar before the painting, laid with plates of pears, oranges, and sponge cakes. A brass burner sat among them, crowded with incense sticks already burned down.

“Why this? Mother is alive,” I blurted.

He stared at the painting, his shoulders hunching inward. “They say the incense smoke carries our prayers to the gods. I did not think it was true, yet I lit them every day in hopes my words would somehow find their way to her.”

It was a trait we both shared: dreaming of the impossible, reaching for it all the same. Something caved in my chest. For all these decades, despite the irrevocability of their parting—my parents had yearned for each other. The sorrow, regret, and misunderstanding that tainted their past had not diminished their love.

“Father, you do not need the incense. You will see Mother again soon. You can tell her yourself.”

Light flared in his pupils, impossibly bright. “Did you find the elixir?”

I pulled the jade bottle from my sleeve and offered it to him with both my hands. As the filigree goldwork in the stopper caught the candlelight, it glowed like it was afire.

“This belongs to the Celestial Emperor. How did you get it?” he asked hoarsely.

“I stole it.” I felt no shame in taking the elixir from the emperor, though I had been drowned in remorse to accept it from Zhiyi. His Celestial Majesty had taken enough from my family: my father’s immortality, my mother’s freedom, and now our home.