The five of them hit the air at once. The black void of the ravine rushed up to meet them.
For a split second, the gravity didn't feel real. It felt like the drop in a roller coaster. It felt like the split second before the bus flipped.
Then, the world flickered. The smell of fresh blood and wet silk vanished, replaced by the scent of lemon-scented floor wax and cheap whiteboard markers.
**[The Flashback: Room 402 - Two Days Before the Crash]**
Lao Shi tapped a map of the Great Jing Empire on the projector. The light turned her skin a sickly blue.
"The Jing Dynasty," she droned, her voice competing with the hum of the air conditioner.
"Known for its 'Three Pillars of Stability': The Silk Merchant, The Iron General, and the Shadow Pavilion. A world of perfect order. A world where everyone had a place."
"A world where everyone was miserable," Han Jue whispered from the back, leaning back until his chair groaned. "Look at the tax records on the Southern provinces. The Marquis was basically a professional leech."
Su Cheng didn't look up from his notebook, where he was busy calculating a gank-rotation for their match that night.
"The Marquis wasn't a leech, Jue. He was a mathematician. He just used people as the currency. It's efficient."
"It's ugly," Zhou Yan (Big Cat) added, tearing into a spicy snack under his desk. "If I were the General, I wouldn't lead those men. I'd just take the cello and move to the mountains."
Lin Kai was half-asleep, his head resting on the cold laminate. "I'd be the guy who doesn't exist. You can't execute a ghost."
Li Feng, the class monitor, leaned his chin on his hand. He looked at the portrait of the Crown Prince on the screen—a man in heavy, golden robes with eyes that looked like they hadn't seen sleep in years.
"He looks like he's holding his breath," Li Feng muttered.
"He was," Lao Shi said, snapping the laser pointer. "He was a boy playing a god. He died at twenty-four when his own brothers jumped from the Dragon Bridge during the Rebellion."
The class erupted in low snickers.
"Jumped?" Big Cat laughed, a piece of snack flying from his mouth. "What, like a synchronized swimming team? That's the dumbest way to end a war. I'd at least go out swinging."
"Ten percent," Su Cheng murmured, tapping his pen. "The probability of surviving a fall from the Dragon Bridge into the Ravine of Sorrows was ten percent. It wasn't a suicide, Yan. It was a gamble."
"Then it's a 'no' from me," Han Jue joked, fanning himself with his workbook. "I don't bet on ten percent. I only bet on a sure thing."
"If we were there," Li Feng said, his voice suddenly quiet, "we'd be the five percent that made it. Right?"
They all looked at him. The "Five-Fold." The team that never lost a match.
"Bro, obviously," Big Cat grinned, punching Li Feng's arm. "Who else is gonna carry you?"
[The Present]
The memory shattered.
The freezing water of the ravine hit Li Feng like a hammer to the chest. The "Imperial Audit" scroll Su Cheng had been waving was ripped from his hand by the current.
Li Feng's heavy robes acted like an anchor, dragging him down into the lightless deep. He tried to kick, but his boots were full of river silt.
The math was wrong, he thought, bubbles escaping his lips as he sank. It doesn't feel like a gamble. It feels like an ending.
Then, a hand.
A rough, calloused hand grabbed his collar. Another hand grabbed his arm. In the dark, cold water, they were no longer a Prince, a General, an Assassin, a Merchant, and a Marquis.
They were five idiots in the water, refusing to let the one drown.
The riverbank was a graveyard of silt and rotted timber.
Li Feng rolled onto his stomach, coughing up a lungful of brackish water. His gold silks were heavy, caked in mud that smelled like a sewer.
Next to him, Zhou Yan lay flat on his back, his indigo tunic torn open. Fresh blood from his ripped stitches seeped into the grey stones.
"Feng?" Zhou Yan rasped. It was a wet rattle.
Su Cheng dragged himself out of the reeds. He reached for a steadying branch, but the shadows moved first.
Lin Kai appeared like a ghost, pressing the notched edge of a dagger directly against Su Cheng's throat. A single bead of red bloomed against the Marquis's pale neck.
"Lin Kai," Su Cheng choked out. "It's me. It's Cheng. Look at me."
Lin Kai didn't blink. His pupils were pinpricks of dark fire. "You killed my sister," he rasped.
The hatred in his voice didn't belong in a classroom. "The Southern Siege. You signed the order to burn the grain stores. She starved because of your 'efficiency,' Marquis."
The blade pressed harder. Su Cheng's brain scrambled.
"When did I do that, bro?" Su Cheng's voice cracked into a panicked pitch. "I was with you at the internet cafe during the Southern Siege! We were playing League! I didn't burn anything but a bag of popcorn in the dorm microwave!"
"The Pavilion doesn't lie," Lin Kai hissed. "I can see the smoke."
"We're a team," Zhou Yan groaned, clutching his bleeding hip. "We're the Five-Fold. We don't do this."
"The Five-Fold died on the No. 14 bus," a voice spat.
Han Jue appeared from the willow trees. He held a straight-edged sword, the tip pressed directly into the center of Zhou Yan's chest.
The "God of Death" was pinned to the mud by the "Merchant."
"I know you," Han Jue said, his hands steady.
"I know your 'Q' keys. But I also know that if the General stands up, he'll execute me for treason. If the Prince speaks, he'll burn my shop. And the Assassin?"
Han Jue looked at Lin Kai.
"He's hallucinating ghosts. He's looking for a sister he never had in Room 402. He's already calculating the distance to my jugular."
Li Feng looked at them. The moonlight caught the silver threads in their clothes. They were beautiful, lethal monsters haunted by lives they never lived.
"The math is simple," Li Feng said, his voice hardening into the Crown Prince's authority.
"We either trust the memory, or we finish what we started on the bridge."
He held out his hand. It was shaking.
"Who's first?"