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Chapter Text

Ne Zha was no stranger to paradoxes.
The god of children, they called him, yet in the quiet corridors of heaven,
where the wind whispered secrets only the stars could understand,
There were moments when he felt more like a child than a god.

It was not vanity that made him cherish his title,
but a deep knowing,
a truth as soft as a newborn’s breath, as fragile as a dew-kissed petal.
To guard the laughter of the young,
to cradle dreams before they could be broken,
was there a greater honor?

He had watched the birth of both heaven and earth,
had stood at the precipice of creation
as the void trembled with its first, shuddering breath.
Earth began as a whisper, a pulse beneath the silence,
a lone seed wrapped in the arms of the infinite.
And from that seed, land unfurled, rivers stretched like veins,
mountains rose to kiss the sky.
But the earth, in its beginning, was nothing but a canvas—
bare, waiting, aching for color.

Then came the lotus.

Petals unfurling, slow as the turning of time,
soft as a lullaby sung to the sleeping world.
In its bloom, the earth found healing.
The lotus knew suffering, knew the weight of darkness,
and yet, it rose, always, it rose.

Ne Zha’s father once told him,
"Every wound is a doorway, and every lotus is a key."
The heavens, vast and bright as they were, held their own quiet wounds.
Even gods bled in places unseen,
even warriors carried burdens too heavy to name.

And so Ne Zha stood at the edge of the sky,
where the cosmos curled like ink on parchment,
where the rivers below wound through the valleys like threads in a great, unfinished tapestry.
The earth, he thought, was much like the lotus.
It suffered, it struggled, but it had not stopped blooming.

Then—
a voice, small and trembling as the wind through autumn leaves.

"Please… save her."

Ne Zha turned, and there, in the hush of the forest,
stood a boy, his hands clenched, his face streaked with salt and sorrow.
Jun, the earth whispered his name.
A brother who had prayed for a miracle.
A child who would give anything to take his sister’s illness into his own bones.

Ne Zha had heard many prayers,
but this one. This one felt different.

Perhaps, because once, long ago,
he had also been a child who understood.

So he stepped forward,
and where his feet met the ground, lotus flowers unfurled like fallen stars.
Through the dark, he followed the pulse of the boy’s heart,
through the village bathed in quiet worry,
through the doorway where a mother knelt beside a child too still, too pale.

Yiyao.

Her breath was shallow,
her spirit dimming like a candle guttering against the wind.

Ne Zha knelt.
Not as a god.
Not as a warrior.
But as something softer.

He reached into the folds of his armor,
where a single golden petal lay, weightless as a promise.
It pulsed in his palm, ancient and knowing.

"Lotus petals are born in the depths of darkness,"
he murmured, brushing the petal against Yiyao’s skin.
"But they do not remain there. They rise, they unfurl, and they heal the world around them."

A breath.

A stir of warmth beneath cold fingers.

The petal melted into light,
spreading through her veins like the first touch of spring.
And with it, the sickness unraveled, fading into nothingness,
carried away by the same wind that had once whispered the earth into being.

Yiyao stirred.

Jun gasped.

And Ne Zha smiled.

Heaven was vast, and duty was heavy,
but the earth—
the earth sang.

It sang in the laughter of children,
in the hands of a mother pressing her lips to her daughter’s brow,
in the wind that carried a boy’s relieved sob into the arms of the night.

The stars burned with a purpose beyond mortal understanding,
but even a god, even a warrior, even a restless soul caught between sky and soil could reach down,
offer something small,

something kind,

something that could heal.

Chapter Text

When he was young he was full of fire
Not a spark, not a candle flame,
but a storm of divine combustion, carved from rebellion and purpose,
too bright to be held in a cradle.

And yet, they named him
god of children.

Ne Zha, the eternal youth,
who never aged,
whose eyes held the wisdom of collapsing stars
and the softness of lullabies sung in heaven’s shadow.

He did not mind the title,
he guarded it, like a flame cupped in trembling hands.
He knew the power of it.
Of protecting innocence,
of soothing fevered brows with spells of silk and light,
of guiding orphans through the alleyways of cruel cities
with lotus petals blooming beneath their bare feet.

But gods, too, forget themselves.
Ne Zha had long since wrapped himself in glamours
taller, older, untouchable.
A mask of fire and steel
to hide the child who could never grow up.

Once, there had been a boy—
a boy born of a king and wind,
with flames that could raze the world
and eyes that did not know how to look away.

Red Son.
A child of pride and power,
and oh, how he burned.
He was beautiful in the way destruction often is—
terrifying, and bright,
too bright.

The heavens panicked.
The gods turned their gaze.
And three came forward:
Sun Wukong the trickster sage,
Niú Mówáng the unshaken mountain,
and Ne Zha, the blade of the sky.

Together, they did the impossible.
They split the Samadhi Fire.
Ripped it out of the boy's soul
like surgeons peeling stars from bone.

And from that fire, three rings were born.
Each one a prison.
Each one a mercy.

The heavens gave Ne Zha the map
not to read,
but to guard.
He was not permitted to know where the rings were hidden.
Trust, they told him. Trust your brothers.

So he placed his own ring on the moon,
tucked within the garden of Chang’e, goddess of the moon,
and keeper of jade rabbits
because who better to cradle something so volatile
than one who had waited so long for peace?

He did not ask where Niú Mówáng buried his.
He did not dare to ask Wukong.

(Though Sun Wukong still calls him little prince,
as if centuries mean nothing,
as if Ne Zha didn’t walk the skies before Wukong ever saw a cloud.)

He rolls his eyes when the Monkey King says it,
but he doesn’t correct him.
Not anymore.

Now, he walks the edge of heaven,
map sealed beneath layers of divine silk,
eyes scanning the horizon for signs of disturbance.

The Samadhi Fire sleeps.
The world turns.
Children dream.

And Ne Zha—
eternal, burning, aching—
remains.

He finds comfort in lotus flowers,
growing in the hidden corners of his sky-garden,
each one a quiet promise.
That even fire can be tamed.
That even power can be gentle.
That even children born to destroy
can be saved.

Perhaps that is why he favored Red Son,
once.
Because he saw the fire in him,
and instead of fear
he remembered.
He remembered being a child who held too much light.

And so, the god of children keeps his vigil.
Not as a warrior.
Not as a prince.
But as something smaller.
Something softer.

A guardian of maps,
a keeper of secrets,
a boy in eternal bloom
whose footsteps still leave lotus flowers
wherever they fall.

And far below,
in a world that doesn’t remember,
children laugh.

And the earth, still,
sings.