Undone

by Luisseagull

Summary:

Bi-Han is emotionally crushed after his brothers' "betrayal" and his plan's faliure, but he won't let anyone know, first of all - himself. Shang Tsung, though, is fully aware. And intrigued. He is irresistably attracted to this man, able to snap someone's neck with one hand, but crumbling under his own repressed emotions. He sees perfect oportunity he can't help but to grab.

Notes:

So now it came to this. Well...Do not expect anything healty from this two idiots.

Chapter 1: The first crack

The wind howled through the shattered stone like a thing still hungry. It caught the ash in long fingers and scattered it through the broken stronghold—across the ancient ruined banners of dragon army, over the blood-darkened floors, into the open mouths of the people dead all over again.

Bi-Han stood motionless at the edge of the carnage.

The wreckage of their failed rebellion still bled below. Somewhere out there, Liu Kang regrouped with his champions. Somewhere, Kuai Liang was savouring his failure. Some part of Bi-Han knew his brother better than this. But he couldn’t listen to that part while here, in the ruins, with Shang Tsung laughing softly to himself.

“Well,” the sorcerer murmured, straightening his collar as though stepping out of a dinner party instead of disaster, “that could have gone better.”

Bi-Han said nothing.

He stood with arms crossed. Ice fogged around his shoulders, invisible to most, but there—pressing the air thinner. Colder.

Shang’s boots crunched over the littered floors as he walked closer, far too at ease.

“You haven’t spoken since the temple fell.”

“Your titan counterpart could have killed us all”.

“And what I have to do with that?”

Bi-Han’s eyes narrowed.

“You lied.”

“I promised power,” Shang said. “And I delivered—for a time. It was your brother’s meddling that unraveled it. Not mine.”

“You baited me with shadows and tricks.”

Shang tilted his head, amused. “And you took the bait. That says something about you, doesn’t it?”

Bi-Han’s silence was answer enough.

They moved through the ruins like ghosts—survivors, but not unscarred. The walls groaned with old magic and fresh ruin.
“We’ll regroup,” Shang said, voice casual, as if this were all part of the plan. “There are still forces in Outworld who will side with us. Power doesn’t disappear, it changes hands.” He brushed ash from his sleeve.

“Because you play games with power like a spoiled child.”

The look Bi-Han gave Shang was colder than anything his cryomancy could conjure.

“You promised a capable army. I haven’t seen one.”

“And you promised loyalty,” Shang countered, gaze sharp as a blade. “But I saw your eyes when your brother stood against you. And how “capable” you were against him.”

Bi-Han’s jaw tightened.

“Do not speak of him.”

“I’m only observing,” Shang says smoothly. “It’s essential to know your allies.”

“You assume I’m still interested.”

“Well, you’re here, aren’t you?”

That earned a glance under the raised eyebrows. Sharp. Dangerous.

Shang only smiled slowly, stepping closer.

“You didn’t run to Liu Kang. You didn’t beg forgiveness from your brother. That tells me everything I need.”

Bi-Han turned, ice crackling faintly beneath his boots as he moved toward what remained of a corridor. Dust filtered through lightless cracks, and the air grew heavier the deeper they descended.

“Where are you going?” Shang called after him.

“To clean that filth off my armor.”

“Hm.” The smile in Shang’s voice curved into something darker. “Let me know if you need help with the parts you can’t reach.”

Bi-Han paused mid-step.

It was barely perceptible—the twitch of a shoulder, a stilling of breath—but Shang saw it.

No reply came. Bi-Han vanished into the shadows of the fortress.

Shang continues to stand in the half-light, watching the direction Bi-Han had gone, the air still tingling with frost. His smirk faded slowly into thought.

“Interesting”.

 

Next time Bi-Han is in Outworld again, it’s one of the General Shao’s properties.

Maps lay scattered before him—torn, scorched, incomplete. A few marked contacts still loyal to their failed cause. Others showed the positions of Kitana’s divisions outposts, Liu Kang’s temples and paths through Outworld jungles they might use to disappear.

He studied them like it already was a battlefield. Because that’s all the world had ever been.

His breath stayed even, but something twitched in his jaw. For all his discipline, for all his ability to kill without remorse, he couldn’t silence the gnawing agitation just beneath his ribs.

Failure was shockingly new to him. Even worse – uncertainty. But shame? Oh, that was another story, a flame that licked the damn burns over and over again.

“You didn’t run to Kuai Liang.”

Shang’s words had circled his thoughts like vultures. Picking. Tearing.

Bi-Han shoved it down, and it picked at him still, like an ice shard. He tried desperately to get it out until their next meeting. Futile.

He didn’t look up when Shang Tsung finally entered.

“Planning already?” the sorcerer asked lightly, his voice bouncing with amusement against the stone. “I admire the focus. Most men mourn a little longer before rebuilding their empires.”

“I’m not most men,” Bi-Han said.

“No,” Shang said, stepping further into the low blue glow of the room lights. “You’re not.”

He moved like something liquid—never in a straight line, always circling. Watching for the crack in your guard. Bi-Han heard the faint swish of robes, the click of a jar on Shang’s belt as it bumped against his hip.

“I’ve been thinking,” Shang said, as he continued to move closer. “The Elder Gods’ attention is elsewhere. Liu Kang is stretched thin with all these timelines and titans and what not. We could still make use of the chaos. There are plenty of things ripe for destabilization.”

Bi-Han didn’t respond.

Shang leaned over the maps beside him, trailing one finger down a route across the Arktika region on the Earthrealm map.

“You know, I’ve met mentions of other cryomancer bloodlines here as well as in your lands. Such wasted potential for your clan’s influence with a Grandmaster being one himself. What if we made them our soldiers?” His tone was casual, but there was a gleam in his eye. “And, of course, we can also always just breed something new for your Lin Kuei. I could help with all the hard things. Extraction. Amplification. Hybridization. You just need to ensure stable material. And access to your…gifts of course. Think of what power we could command together.”

Now Bi-Han looked up, eyes sharp.

“Forget it. I will not lead my clan into your mad experiments. I won’t be one of your lab rats.”

“No-no,” Shang said, stepping closer, “you’re much more interesting.”

Bi-Han’s discomfort didn’t show in his face—but the air around him cooled sharply.

Shang ignored it.

“You have potential, Bi-Han. But you spend so much of it locked away.” He reached out—just lightly, fingertips brushing the metal clasp at Bi-Han’s shoulder. “What would happen, I wonder, if you let someone else unlock it?”

Bi-Han froze.

Just for a second. Just long enough for Shang to see it.

“Don’t touch me,” Bi-Han said, low and quiet.

“Why not?”

Shang didn’t move his hand. His voice dropped, softer than before, more intimate.

“Do you fear what I’ll do?”

Bi-Han stood abruptly, the chair scraping backward against the stone.

Shang stepped back, hands raised in a mockery of apology.

“Very well,” he said gently. “Another time, perhaps. Anyway, I was sent by Shao to get you. He finished with his interrogations.”

 

The big central room was filled with voices when they arrived. Agitated and deeply warm. Then – with thunder-like laughter.

Shao sat reclined on a throne of blades, like a lion at rest. Reiko stood beside him, arms crossed, still smiling, watching. Bi-Han didn’t like Reiko’s stare right away. He never blinked long enough.

“Finally,” Shao said, “you didn’t hurry. ”

Bi-Han ignored him.

He moved stiffly, despite the heaviness in his body. He hadn’t slept. He hasn't been able to really lately.

And now every minute in this alliance scraped something raw inside him.

“Why am I even here?” he asked flatly.

“Because,” Shang said, sliding beside him with unnatural grace, “You still want a future for the Lin Kuei.”

Bi-Han’s nostrils flare.

Shang gestured toward a burning map on the table—a live projection of realms flickering and overlapping like ghosts.

“Shao wants Edenia weakened,” Shang explained. “I suggested we use your talents to breach the elemental sanctums and trigger a collapse. Discreet. Bloody. Poetic.”

Reiko rolled his eyes, but despite sharing his annoyance with the sorcerer, Bi-Han didn't feel any warmer toward him.

“What do we get?”

“Fun. My pleasant company. Money.”

“No,” Bi-Han said shortly. “The Lin Kuei do not serve like mercenaries.”

Shao finally raised his voice, smirking. “You already are one.”

That should’ve ignited something. Instead, Bi-Han blinked, slowly, eyes going glassy for half a breath.

A chill settled into his expression like frost on metal. That fog again—behind the eyes. Immobilizing. A drowning man under still water.

“There are some quite valuable artifacts that would make trophies unseen for the Earthrealm. Unparalleled. And you want glory, don’t you?” Shang continued. “You lost your family. Your clan is shaken by the change of a course. You need something to restore their spirit. A Grandmaster that leads to the new frontiers. A new legend.”

“New weapons,” Shao grunted. “All that you’ll want from there except of one map. That’s it. And you just have to freeze what we point at.”

“No,” Bi-Han snapped, voice sharp enough to cut. “You don’t get to point to ME.”

He could feel himself pulling away again—retreating behind layers of frost inside his mind. The hot flicker of fire on the walls, the sound of Reiko’s boots tapping stone, Shang’s loud breath too close—it was too much. His thoughts fragmented, slipping from his grasp like snow in the wind.

“Bi-Han,” Shang’s voice came again—even closer now. Too close.

“Bi-Han! Where are you drifting? ”

Bi-Han flinched. Only a little.

“Focus. I said we’re forming a three-pronged strike team. You, Reiko, and me. I’ll handle the Edenian defenses. Reiko the sabotage. You—the kill stroke. You can paint your ice over their temples and call it conquest.”

Bi-Han turned, mechanically, eyes narrowing.

“Why waste your easy chance to become more than a failure? Because that is exactly how you look in their eyes now,” Shang said sweetly.

Silence.

Bi-Han stared ahead, fists clenched at his sides. He imagined other neighboring clans plotting after Kuai spread “lies” about his actions. Imagined Liu Kang coming to his home again, feeling entitled to his loyalty by his weakness. And then imagined the aftermath of his first success without his former second in command. Without anyone. Victory for the clan earned solely by Grandmaster himself. Awed whispers in the main hall. Elder’s impressed nods, going through exotic loot from realms unknown to them. Kuai Liang’s voice, talking about the news when it reaches him wherever he may be, furious and hurt. Tomas’s widened eyes. Lastly, he recalls his father’s final command: “lead them by example”.

“Fine,” he said.

The room stirred. Even Shao seemed amused. He needed redemption. And there was no one else offering it.

“But I don’t take orders from you,” Bi-Han growled.

“Oh,” Shang whispered, walking a slow circle around him, “No one here would dream about that. General has his own men. And orders are not my thing entirely. But you may find that I’m very good at guidance.”

Bi-Han didn’t answer.

He was already retreating again, freezing from the inside out.

 

The staging chamber was deep beneath the fortress, cold and dry, lined with relics from ancient conquests and ceremonial blades mounted like trophies.

Bi-Han had studied them for some time by now. He arrived first.

He always did.

He paced—three steps forward, pivot, three steps back. Movement grounded him. The numbers of the infiltration plan rolled in his mind in sharp clarity: entry time, formation depth, elemental advantage, failure margins. Clean. Sharp. Safe.

What wasn’t safe was the variable: people.

Footsteps echoed down the stone corridor. Reiko entered, armor half-fastened, eyes predatory.

“Still brooding?” he muttered, dropping his pack.

“And you are still loud,” Bi-Han replied.

Reiko sneered, but said nothing more. He was smart in violence, not conversation.

Then came Shang Tsung—smooth as oil, his very presence hummed in the air. Like he brought a different atmosphere with him.

Bi-Han exhaled heavily.

Shang didn’t look at either of them at first. He moved around the table, whispering into the activation glyphs, the stone flaring to life with glowing blue symbols and flickering projections.

“Our time window is short,” Shang said, voice crisp. “The temple’s patrol shifts in six hours. We strike during the handover. I’ve created a veil for Reiko and myself. Bi-Han, you’ll use the one I prepared for the patch of temple perimeter from the glacial trench.”

“I don’t need a safety path from you,” Bi-Han said coldly. “I make my own.”

“Of course you do,” Shang purred with annoyance, looking up now. “You’re so self-sufficient. Why would I ever even assume.”

Bi-Han didn’t rise to it.

But his fingers flexed.

Reiko chuckled.

“Careful, sorcerer,” he said, “he gets twitchy when you flirt.”

Bi-Han’s head snapped towards him. He blinked and then just stared. He did not understand what in the words Shang had used could lead to Reiko saying something like that. His rage hit the wall of honest surprise. Or has he misheard? Was that crude just telling nonsense just to anger him? But then why in such a strange way?

“What?” Bi-Han heard his own voice somewhere from outside.

“Don’t pay attention to our genius’ observation skills,” Shang Tsung hurried to interfere before Reiko had an opportunity to say a word, “All we need now is to concentrate on a mission at hand. Please, gentlemen."

Bi-Han let the stream of Shang’s words diffuse this weird situation and lull him back into thinking. He tried to replay everything that has been said before and then to parse its implications. But still his brain had caught on a branch—run the words like a puzzle over and over. No definitions matched. He’d lost the thread entirely. He knew that sometimes people understood words differently than him. Like they just heard more in the same amount of sounds somehow. Kuai Liang used to explain some oddities that have proven correct after the clan meetings sometimes. But that was damn politics. And that was the way his fool of a father had governed the clan. Here it should have been nothing like this.

All the time he was engrossed in these slippery thoughts, his body remained perfectly still, blank. And again—Shang had noticed. The hand placed on his shoulder made Bi-Han jolt. He hated it.

“Do you agree with the plan, Grandmaster?”

He hated the smug gleam in sorcerer eyes too. Like he was peeling back layers.

Bi-Han turned away, staring at the projection.

“I lead the frontal breach,” he said. “You two distract the perimeter watchers here and here” He points to the watch points that would stretch the defence to its thinnest in case of alarm with still enough terrain advantage to swift retreat for both saboteur groups. “And then we regroup at the inner vault.”

“Hmm…I see. That is smart. Even better. We are lucky to have your strategic mind with us. Reiko, will you notify your General with Grandmaster’s brilliant adjustments?”

He just nodded and left the room with a grunt.

“Indeed it fits you. So commanding,” Shang murmured, stepping behind him. Bi-Han’s throat closed around something. Anger? Panic? He couldn’t tell. He saw the mission clearly. Saw the ice paths he’d carve into the cliff face, the monks he’d drop with surgical precision. But around the edges, Shang’s voice dripped like poison into cracks.

Distraction. Fog.

Words meant too many things.

People meant even more.

Bi-Han rose up and stepped back hard—foot slamming the stone, anchoring himself.

“Enough,” he snapped. “We leave at sundown. Minimal contact.”

He didn’t wait for a response. He strode out of the chamber like a blade cutting air.

He had to find that damn soldier before they were out. He is done going for a missions with men he did not understand.

 

“What the hell was that?”

Reiko raised his eyes to him, not quite caught off guard, but obviously not expecting such an encounter in the armory.

“I just thought it’s funny,” he said. “How you sit there, with your vacant eyes. Like a clever dog, but the other way around. Don’t you understand what he’s really saying?”

Bi-Han’s jaw flexed.

“He is manipulative. I know that.”

“Oh, I’m sure you think you do,” Reiko said, rising from the bench now. “But you have no fucking idea how it is anywhere near the throne. And that is some exemplary throne snake. But you don’t even see it, do you?”

“I see enough.”

“You sure?” Reiko chuckled. “General told me how you were surprised when your own brother didn’t follow you. And you tried to persuade him? What kind of leader is like that?”

Bi-Han stepped forward, a low growl in his throat. Ice cracked underfoot.

Reiko stepped back.

“Chill. I just want to know with whom I go to battle today. ”

“You speak of loyalty,” Bi-Han growls. “And serve a man who would gut you any minute if he sees it fit.”

“I do. And I am fully aware of it. This is exactly why I stand beside him,” Reiko growled back. “And you, you want power, but you’re not ready to be feared. You’re just… cold.”

That struck deeper than it should have.

“You know nothing of me,” Bi-Han snapped, fists further flooding with frost.

“I know weakness when I see it.”

That was enough.

Bi-Han lunged, fist catching Reiko hard across the jaw. Frost seared skin. Reiko spun and struck back, heavier, dirtier. Their bodies slammed against the stone, ice and blood smearing the wall.

Reiko laughed as they tumbled.

“Oh there it is. There’s the monster. Didn't take too long.”

Bi-Han didn’t answer. He was a silent fury—driven, wild.

They collided again, frost curling up Reiko’s arm, Reiko smashing his elbow into Bi-Han’s gut.

“Enough.”

Shao stepped into the hall, voice like thunder. A deeper gravity entered the air like a blade.

Reiko froze. His lips were bleeding. Bi-Han’s knuckles were leaking cold.

Shao’s eyes flicked between them, unmoved.

“If you want to kill each other, wait until the thing is over. I need both of you intact.”

Bi-Han stood straight, panting shallowly, wiping blood from his lip. Reiko smirked and bowed.

“Just clearing the air before the mission, General.”

Shao looked at Bi-Han.

“If your mind is so easily rattled, Sub-Zero, how are you fit for command?”

Bi-Han didn’t reply.

But something burned behind his eyes now. Cold and treacherously humiliated.

Shao turned and left with no further word. Reiko followed after a beat, leaving Bi-Han behind—half-melted frost dripping from the walls now like sweat.

He pressed his palm flat against the stone. It didn’t help.

There was no ground beneath him. No loyalty. No trust. No brothers. No victory.

 

The Edenian temple cracked like bone.

Bi-Han’s breath misted as he stepped over shattered gold—one boot crushing glass mosaic, the other slick with blood not his own. It had been a swift assault. Brutal. Efficient.

The sanctuary lay in ruin. Lilac and ash mingled in the air. Their elemental wardens had fallen even faster than expected—Bi-Han’s frost striking true where Shang’s corruptive magic twisted the sky. Reiko’s brutality had carved a path through the defenders like a flood of meat.

It was done. Flawless victory.

Still, Bi-Han stood at the broken threshold, gaze lost in the cracked mirror of an Edenian pool—moonlight rippling on bloodied water.

“Glory is ours,” Reiko had said earlier, dragging a torn banner through the soil like a trophy. “You should smile, Sub-Zero.”

Bi-Han didn’t.

He couldn’t make the words feel true.

Even as celebration echoed down the stone corridors back in the tower, loud and warlike. Cups clashed. Not a single man of Shao’s squads was as much as scratched. Some even haven’t drawn out their weapons. Ice was enough for this summer children who have never seen a cryomancer in their life.

Laughter rang the halls sharp like blades. From his chamber, Bi-Han could hear Shao’s voice rising above the din—booming, indulgent, drunk on power.

Bi-Han shifted, sitting alone in silence.

He had not accepted the invitation.

His armor was still on, blood drying in thin flakes at the edges of his gauntlets. He stared at the polished edge of a blade resting on the table, its reflection catching his eyes and throwing them back at him—empty. Impassive.

A single thought rose from the quiet, uninvited:

“I want to go home.”

It stunned him.

What home? The Lin Kuei? Was it really a home without his brothers? Without Kuai Liang?

Something tight in his chest throbbed. An ache that no frost could numb.

Was it grief?

Was it guilt?

No. He wouldn’t give those names power.

Outside, fires split Edenian night. Shang’s laughter danced faint and delighted through the stone, unmistakable, even now, through multiple walls – a little too close. Bi-Han could almost feel it curling behind his shoulder.

He shut his eyes.

The temple had fallen. The prize had been taken. Edenians were bleeding and beautiful beneath their boots.

So why did he feel like he was the one who lost something?

The chamber door opened without a knock.

Bi-Han didn’t even look—he didn’t need to. The scent of rose oil and wine preceded him. The sound of silk brushing stone, of steps too soft to be anyone else here. The rhythm of someone who thought he owned the air.

“You missed the toast,” Shang Tsung said seriously, a bottle in one hand, his robe untied at the throat. “Reiko poured half of it on himself, as expected. Shao praised you. A lot. I promised I’d check on our sulking ice prince.”

Bi-Han stayed seated at the low table. He kept his eyes on the blade’s reflection, though now it held two figures.

“I do not sulk,” he said flatly. “And I have no title except Grandmaster”

“No?” Shang closed the door with his back, smile faintly crooked. “You hide from glory. You sit in silence. If that’s not sulking, then you’re a riddle.”

He crossed the room like smoke—slow, sure. His movements were looser than usual, blurred just slightly by wine. But his gaze was still sharp.

“You were brilliant today,” Shang continued softly. “No wasted motion. No hesitation. You kill like a god.”

Bi-Han’s jaw tensed.

“It’s a standart for Lin Kuei,” he replied.

“Oh, come now. Even you feel something after a triumph.” Shang’s voice grew lower. Impatient. “Or have you frozen yourself so deeply you can’t even taste victory?”

And then, he was behind Bi-Han.

Before he could rise, Shang’s fingers were at Bi-Han’s hair—hand bold and deliberate.

He slipped the tight knot free.

Bi-Han’s breath caught.

His hair, always tied neatly, spilled over his shoulders. Black and soft like snowfall.

He froze.

Shang’s hand lingered, trailing lightly down the back of his neck. Warm against the chill of his skin.

Bi-Han didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. His hands were fists at his knees.

He didn’t know how to respond.

This wasn’t combat. This wasn’t anything he had a name for.

“You’re so beautiful like this,” Shang whispered, his breath suddenly ghosting over Bi-Han’s ear. “Unbound. Almost human.”

Bi-Han surged to his feet then—violently, knocking the chair back. The temperature of the room dropped instantly.

“Don’t you dare to touch me,” he said, voice low, trembling with anger.

Shang just smiled. Not surprised. Not scared.

“Not even if you want it?”

Bi-Han turned his back on him.

“Why did you do that?” Bi-Han’s voice was sharp. Cold.

“I was curious,” Shang said simply. “I wondered how you’d look… unmade.”

He sipped his wine.

“You didn’t disappoint.”

Bi-Han’s fists curled helplessly at his sides.

“You’re drunk. Leave. I do not enjoy fighting weak opponents.”

“Ah.” Shang smiled.

“But that does not mean I will not crush your bones if you try this again.”

There it was. The flash of threat. The chill beneath the surface.

But Shang only stepped closer. One more inch.

“And what if I would enjoy being broken by you?”

Bi-Han went still.

Utterly still.

His mind tried to snap back into form but the words lodged inside him like a foreign body.

It wasn’t that he didn’t understand what Shang meant. It was that he didn’t know why he would say that. And why it made his chest feel like it was burning.

“You are unwell,” he said finally.

Shang’s smile grew sharp.

“You say that like I don’t already know.”

A silence stretched.

Then – the soft sound of retreating steps. The door opened. Before it closed, Shang said gently:

“If you really don’t want company, you can lock your doors, Bi-Han. But I wonder if you can lock your thoughts.”

That was the first crack.

Chapter 2: Don’t be afraid. You’re doing it right.

Summary:

So here comes the hard part. Our snow queen is up for the ride

The morning came gray and cold, but the halls of Outworld’s fortress pulsed with life. Footsteps echoed. Guards barked orders. Plans moved forward.

Bi-Han stalked through the corridors like a blade with no sheath.

His armor was pristine, his hair tightly bound once more. Not a strand out of place. His movements mechanical, rigid.

Shao arrived soon, followed by Reiko, who immediately gave Bi-Han a long, deliberate once-over before leaning near Shang and muttering something with a grin.

Bi-Han’s jaw flexed. He didn’t ask what was said. He didn’t need to.

“They all know something.”

The meeting began, strategy sprawled across scrolls and projected illusions. Bi-Han snapped through logistics, every word clipped, fast, authoritative. Too fast.

He interrupted. He dismissed. He crushed every suggestion not his own.

And Shang watched him.

He smiled.

When Bi-Han leaned over the map, Shang’s hand “accidentally” brushed his lower back.

 

The training chamber was empty—just as he wanted.

Bi-Han sealed the heavy doors behind him and stood in the center of the room. Stone walls. Dim torches. Silence. Good. No one to see.

He pulled off his gauntlets, set them down with practiced precision, and stepped into a stance. Fist to palm. He exhaled once, sharp and cold.

And began.

Strike. Step. Turn. Spin. Kick. Strike again.

He flowed like a storm—disciplined, deadly, every movement executed with mechanical force. His breath came hard and fast, his brow damp, but he didn’t stop. Couldn’t.

“You’re unraveling,” Reiko’s voice taunted in his memory.

“So fragile,” Shang's echo slithered beneath it.

He struck harder. Slammed his palm into a frozen dummy. It cracked. He spun, dropped low, shattered the next one with a kick, frost lacing across the floor.

Bi-Han hissed aloud.

He drove his knuckles into the stone pillar. Once. Again. Frost bloomed on the surface. A third time. Blood cracked at the edges of his knuckles, but still he didn’t stop. His eyes were vacant, lost in the rhythm, in the noise he could control.

He dropped into stance again—but his arms trembled.

Not from fatigue.

“What did he mean, touching my hair like that?”
“Why would he say that?”
“Why would anyone say that—about me*”

He could feel it again—the moment Shang had slipped his fingers through his hair, so bold, so casual, like he knew. Like it meant something. Something Bi-Han could not afford.

He gritted his teeth and launched into another form. Elbow. Strike. Step. Ice dagger drawn, shattered on the wall.

But the memory wouldn’t leave.

That voice—low, smooth, amused:

“I wanted to see how beautiful you are with your hair loose.”

Bi-Han snarled and slammed his fist into the floor. Ice spiderwebbed outward in violent patterns. He stared down at the frost blooming around his knees, chest heaving.

“He’s mocking you,” his mind insisted. “He has to be.”

“He must know. Somehow. Someone saw—”

But there was no one to see. Bi-Han had never even spoken of it. Never shown. Never acted. He was Lin Kuei.

It had no place. Irrelevant. Forbidden.

So why—why couldn’t he stop feeling this heat in his chest, this nausea at the edge of his throat every time Shang touched him, every time he looked at him with those eyes?

Why did the thought of him knowing make Bi-Han’s stomach twist—not only in shame, but in fear?

No—rage. He repeats it enough times so it sounded almost true. That’s all it was. Rage.

“You are in control,” he hissed to himself.

He stood abruptly, trying to still his shaking fingers as he re-wrapped his hands. Tight. Too tight.

He would bury it. Like everything else.

There would be no cracks. No softness. No slip.

He is not like Kuai.

He is not.

“Are you trying to beat something out of the wall or yourself?.”

Bi-Han suddenly felt such a profound pang of desperation, some unexplainable helplesness that he almost let out a pained sound.

“You.”

“Yes, me,” Shang said, stepping fully into the light, “I was curious where I could find the Grandmaster who hid for the third day in a row. We started to think you returned to your realm without a word or locked yourself away with some injury. I got genuinely worried.”

“You have no right to be here.”

“I go where I please.” Shang tilted his head.

Bi-Han turned then—slowly. Eyes hard. Lips bloodless.

“Leave.”

Shang didn’t. His gaze dropped to Bi-Han’s knuckles. “Hurting yourself to look strong? No one has a single doubt in that. Or is it something…internal?”

“I said leave!”

There was a pained hesitation in his voice. He almost added “please”. And Shang heard it.

He stepped closer. Not touching this time. Not yet.

“Is that how ice is, Bi-Han?” he whispered. “I wonder… would you shatter? Or melt instead?”

Bi-Han lunged before he could stop himself—grabbing Shang by the collar, slamming him against the wall. Ice flared across the stone behind him.

Their faces inches apart.

“You think you can play with me?” Bi-Han hissed. “Mock me? You have no idea what I am.”

Fear touched Shang Tsung’s features for a mere second. And even then he didn’t stop smiling.

“Oh, and I belive that I do,” he murmured. “That’s exactly why I’m here.”

Silence.

Bi-Han’s grip loosened, breath shuddering, but his eyes burned with something wild. Uncertain. Alive.

Shang leaned in—barely an inch—and whispered:

“I wonder… would you let yourself find out?”

“Stay away from me,” Bi-Han growled, the words hoarse with something rawer than rage.

He turned away immediately, shoulders high and rigid. He stormed toward the doors, but stopped just short of them. Breathing hard. Gritting his teeth.

He wanted to go. To leave this place. To return to the cold sanctity of the Lin Kuei stronghold.

“Just walk out calmly”. But his thoughts tangled around itself. If he left now—after Edenia, after the mission, after that scene—it would look like weakness. Like cowardice.

Like running.

“You don’t run,” he reminded himself.

Even as bile crawled up the back of his throat. He closed his eyes, as if that would make the thoughts stop.

But they came anyway.

His runaways. So damn confident in his righteousness.

Bi-Han’s lip curled. He clenched his jaw tighter, a storm beginning to swirl behind his eyes.

“I was always the one who stayed loyal. And yet I am the monster. The traitor. The cold one. Alone.”

He tried to tell himself he didn’t care. Because why would he? What they had was an illusion. A foolish dream that he allowed to bloom right under his nose because he never knew how to take anything from that spoiled child. It won’t survive out there, in the real world without his protection.

Bi-Han was sure of it.

“Then why does it make your chest ache?”

“Why did you want it, too?”

Bi-Han dug his nails into the edge of the door.

Shame flushed hot up his neck.

“I buried it. I killed it.”

He had worked so hard—years of training, silence, control. All of it aimed toward a version of himself no one could question.
And now?

One damn smirk. One whisper.

He was stronger. He had to be.

Because if he wasn't…

Then what was he?

 

Same evening, he went back.

Without ceremony, without explanation, Bi-Han returned to the Lin Kuei stronghold, where halls welcomed him with the cold precision he knew and so longed for—order, silence, steel. Finally.

He threw himself into duty with surgical exactness. Every hour accounted for. Every report reviewed. No time for thought. No time for questions.

Meetings were brief. Training intensified. Punishments grew harsher. Emotion had no place here.

And there was always more work.

Sektor brought it to him—perfectly bound, sharp red calligraphy dancing like flame across the black parchment.

He read her proposals deep into the night, lit only by the cold blue glow of a low flame. Cybernetic enhancements, tactical restructuring, neural overrides. Diagrams and philosophies layered like code—ruthless, inhuman, effective.

It called to him instantly. Something deep in his core responded.

What is a body but limitation? What is pain but inefficiency?

He stared long at the design etched on the page—a clean, metal skeleton. A spine wired with dataflow. No blood. No ache. No heat.

Perfection.

Bi-Han gave it a green light. The very next morning Sektor was at his door.

As she stepped in, her movements crisp as ever, she placed another set of documents before him.

“Updates on the cognitive override matrix,” she said. “I believe it could be adapted to any scale of implementation.”

Bi-Han nodded. Thanked. Turned back to the page.

But she lingered.

He felt it—her stillness was not neutral. It was... attentive.

“I appreciate your trust, Grandmaster. And the swiftness of your vise decision. You are wasting yourself,” she said quietly.

He looked up, brow raised.

“I mean in the Outworld. With them.”

The words hung heavy in the cold air.

Sektor tilted her head, her voice perfectly level. “You were always the ideal, Grandmaster. And you remain so. You brought to the clan another glorious victory. But I cannot but notice how exhausted you have returned.”

Her hand touched his. Just briefly. Just enough.

Bi-Han flinched.

Not visibly. Not in body. But somewhere beneath the frozen surface, something stirred. Something panicked.

He looked at her. Nodded once, sharply. “I’m perfectly fine. Submit the revised parameters I noted. I want a full report by tomorrow.”

Sektor bowed, mechanical and elegant. She left without another word.

When the door closed, Bi-Han leaned forward, palms flat on the desk.

His hair was tied tight again. His spine straight. His eyes dry.

He was perfectly fine.

 

Sektor returned the next day, early.

She didn’t really waited to be summoned anymore.

Her presence had grown more confident since Bi-Han's return, more precise in its timing—always just when he needed a report, a correction, a distraction. She carried herself with the certainty of someone chosen.

Today, she didn’t jit bring schematics.

Just stood before him, adjusted robotic gauntlets in the pale morning light.

“You like it on me?” she said without preamble.

Bi-Han’s fingers stilled.

He didn’t answer.

Sektor stepped closer.

Still, he said nothing.

Then slowly, Bi-Han raised his head. His expression blank, carved in ice.

Her shoulders stiffened slightly, but she did not retreat.
“I have already approved it, Sektor.”

“Yes, but I wanted to know…I want you to like how it looks on me too, Bi-Han.”

They locked eyes. One heartbeat. Then two.

“Why?”

Sektor takes a couple of short breaths and smiles with her regular calm.

“Because it wouldn’t hurt if Grandmaster finds his Madame attractive.” She looked down on him, with overjoyed confidence like she has just won a long sparring match. “You know we would make a perfect ruling couple. Clan needs to see the solid foundation for the future. Your second in command, born and raised Lin Kuei, already managing clan in your absence. And…It was meant to be. Since we were teenagers, I have always suspected you feel something for me. You haven’t shown the same attention to any other woman. I understand you are not used to ask things. So I am the one asking you. Do you like how it looks on me, Grandmaster?”

Her face beamed by the end of the little even-voiced speech. Bi-Han started hearing low-pitched ringing in his ears by the middle of it.

She was not wrong. She has been the closest person to him here. They have been what people probably call “friends” for his whole life. Just a year older, she has been his playmate, his rival in skills, his childhood tormentor even before Kuai was born. And then he knew he could have always counted on her – to have a real challenge for sparring match, to have the mission executed, analyzed and reported, to uphold his narrative about his brothers’ betrayal, to handle the clan affairs while he was away. Indeed he has never treated any woman like her. Because she never was a woman to him. She was an ally. Simple and trusted. Right until this moment.

“This is insubordination,” Bi-Han finally said in a low voice. “And I do not tolerate it.”

Sektor shut off like a switched machine. Raised her guards up with a thin line of her pressed lips. She said nothing more. Only nodded once and turned, boots clicking against the polished floor as she exited.

Bi-Han stood there long after she was gone.

Motionless.

Only his pulse betrayed him—heavy and fast, echoing in his throat like panic.

He thought and thought, repeating her words in his mind. She had made it clear. Logical. Clean. A proposal of merging assets. And a good one. e One he would have been simply forced into it, were father alive. It made perfect sense.

He agreed with it.

So why did his whole body feel so … wrong then?

 

He sat alone that night, staring at the stone walls of his chamber.

He had eaten nothing. Haven’t slept.

Spent hours trying to convince himself instead. His mind kept returning to all Sektor’s words.

“We are aligned in purpose.”

It was true.

She obeyed her Grandmaster without question. She knew his mind, his ambition, the structure of his rage.

It would be only logical.

It would be unquestioned.

Safe.

Unlike…

His jaw clenched.

His mind betrayed him. A flicker.

Shang’s voice in his ear. Soft, poisonous.

“I just wanted to see how beautiful you look when you’re not hiding.”

That brush of fingers in his hair.

The heat that climbed up his neck, confused and sharp – wrong.

And suddenly —further back, buried—

The memory of Tomas, barely a teenager. Leaning against the wall after training, eyes soft, mouth bruised from sparring. Laughing at something Kuai Liang said. Bi-Han had looked too long.

He had burned that memory. He thought he had.

But here it was again.

And it felt—

No. He pushed it down. Like a knife through the hand, so it doesn’t reach heart…

“Shang only mocks.
Tomas is gone.
You do not want this.”

He should choose Sektor.

He told himself again. And again. And countless times more.

She is the rational decision. His chance for normality.

And yet…

He closed his eyes, and for just a moment, he imagined Shang’s mouth at his throat, whispering something that made no sense and left him hollowed out and burning.

He shoved the thought away too, hard.

Then stood.

And went back to his paper work.

 

The next day Sektor entered his chamber again without knocking.

She always did that now.

He didn’t look up from the terminal in the lab. Didn’t acknowledge the soft chime of her steps, or the way her stance had shifted—more open. Assured.

There was something in her eyes. Something intentional.

“We are wasting time,” she said.

Bi-Han still didn’t look at her. “Explain.”

“I know what you want,” she said simply.

He stilled. Frozen with horror.

“Legacy. Control. Perfection.”

She stepped closer, slow, deliberate. Like in front of the cage with a snow tiger. “And unity.”

Now he turned. Slowly.

Her mouth curved, just barely.

“I can give you all of that. Without compromise. I can bear the next generation of the Lin Kuei Grandmasters. Secure the future.”

Her fingers, cold and metal-gloved, hovered just above his shoulder.

His breath locked.

He stepped back sharply.

Too sharply.

A flicker of something passed over her face—confusion, then tension.

Bi-Han turned from her again, masking his reaction in motion, in calculation. He walked to the far table, as if examining something, though his hands were clenched behind his back.

“You wish to lead,” she said, voice cool. “Then prove it.”

A pause.

She watched him.

“I have.” And then – sharper “I don’t have to. Not to you, not to anyone.”

He stepped toward her, narrowing the space.

“You designed the Initiative,” he said. “Do you believe in it?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then you prove something. Undergo it yourself. Be the example..”

Sektor blinked. Her composure faltered a fraction. “You want me—”

“To be the first. Show the clan it is not mutilation. That it is evolution.”

His voice was steady. Almost calm, despite rage and panic beating behind every syllable.

“You must embody what you preach.”

Another pause.

Then she nodded, eyes downcast. “I would do it.”

Bi-Han studied her, pulse thudding beneath the armor. He was calculating.

“When they see you emerge,” he said, softer now, “they will follow. Without fear. Without resistance. That will be our legacy.”

And then—

Almost as an afterthought, though perfectly placed and planned:

“And our unity… will be stronger than anything Lin Kuei has seen before.”

He didn’t say union. He didn’t say marriage.

But it hung there anyway.

A middle ground that did not push him in bed with her. A way out, that gave them both what they needed. What clan needed.

Sektor straightened. The flicker of something like triumph passed over her again.

But Bi-Han looked away before she could speak.

He didn’t want to see it.

Didn’t want to feel the weight in his chest—the sickening relief that came from hiding right in front of her.

He would make himself a machine too, in time.

Just not in metal.

 

He issued approval for her partial conversion that night.
And still—
He wished he could feel it.
Wished he could accept her offer without turning her into a machine — not just for strategy’s sake, but truly. Wished he could look at her sharp beauty, her cleverness, her unwavering loyalty, and feel even the faintest flicker of want. Wished he could take her hand, call her his madame, his ruling partner, his wife — and feel whole in doing so.
It would be a neat resolution. A seal upon the storm within him. A return to order.
But every time he imagined it — imagined leaning into her touch, imagined her mouth on his — his stomach turned with a cold, quiet nausea. His throat locked. His skin crawled.
He wanted to feel something.
Or nothing at all.

 

The next morning, the whole Lin Kuei compound was shrouded in frost as if the night had spilled from Bi-Han’s veins and frozen the air itself.
The doors to the command hall slammed open with unnecessary force. Sektor stood at attention, flanked by silent prototypes — steel-eyed and incomplete. Her expression, beneath the red visor, was neutral. Only her slight shift in weight betrayed that she’s noticed something is… off.
Bi-Han did not greet her.
“Status,” he barked.
Sektor immediately stepped forward, handing him a data slate. “Cyber Initiative prototypes 004 through 009 are entering Phase Two of conversion. Combat adaptability is within projected parameters. Neural override functions—”
“Too slow.” His voice cut through her words like ice through glass.
Sektor stiffened. “I’ve followed your directives precisely, Grandmaster.”
He slammed the slate onto the table with a sharp crack. The noise echoed.
“It is your project, Sektor.” His voice was low, almost calm. That’s how she knew he was furious.
The silence hung, thick and stifling.
Sektor lowered her head slightly. “Apologies, Grandmaster.”
Bi-Han turned his back to her, fingers lacing behind him, jaw locked so tightly the tendons strain along his neck. Before he could say anything else, the doors hissed open again.
Footsteps. Light, precise.
A girl entered — young, slight, sharp-featured, pale blue eyes glinting like a dagger's edge. Her lips curled into something between a smirk and indifference. Her breath misted faintly in the cold.
“I was summoned,” she said, as if unimpressed with the company.
Bi-Han turned his head, mildly surprised.
Frost.
She gave her Grandmaster one quick look and short bow. But for Sektor she had a completely different look. She watched Sektor like one studies a storm.
Bi-Han noticed it as soon as he had returned. But said nothing. Like he did now. For what did it even matter if this hot-headed girl is put to use by Sektor? Frost wouldn’t be Bi-Han’s first or even tenth choice for the initiative, but maybe it was a two-birds-with-one-stone situation.
Bi-Han kept an eye on her long ago.
Her name that had passed through Lin Kuei reports before, tagged with minor incidents of insubordination as well as bursts of potential. Frost had been brought in during the last winter campaign, her aptitude in cryomancy noted, her temperament flagged. Now she was always near Sektor.
Always watching. Always ready.
He dismissed it as a strategic pairing — Sektor, efficient and unsentimental, might hammer Frost into something useful. But as days passed, it became harder to ignore the way Frost mirrored her movements. The way they tested cybernetic components together, pale skin beside polished metal, murmuring about conductivity, control, optimization.
Something in the way Frost followed orders did unsettle him a little. Her precision. Her detachment. And perhaps, her ambition — cold and sharp like ice itself — reminded him, in some bitter echo, of himself. But not only.
Frost had the same restlessness in her eyes that Tomas used to have in his earliest days at the stronghold. The same hunger to prove, to become indispensable, to belong.
Bi-Han knew from the reports that she had asked no questions when Sektor had suggested the first neural interface trials. She volunteered to let the engineers splice metal to the base of her skull, for running preliminary tests.
He knew what she was doing. Knew what it meant to chase control this hard.
Because he was doing it, too.
So he simply left without even acknowledging another cryomancer.
And he had never seen how Frost’s eyes flickered to the exposed servos of a half-assembled prototype on the table. Never heard her raspy voice saying “Can’t wait to know how it feels.”
Sektor tilted her head, as something clicked faintly inside her. “You will enjoy being perfected.”
Frost stepped forward slowly. “Is that what it is? Perfection?”
Sektor lifted a hand and placed it against the cool steel of the prototype’s chest. “No pain. No hunger. No distraction of the flesh. Only clarity. Efficiency. Purpose. Everything Grandmaster values.”
Frost studied her. “What he is supposed to be.”
Sektor’s visor turned back toward her. “And you are going to be like him soon.”
There was a beat — too long to be nothing.
“I will surpass him.”
The answer cut clean and confident.
Sektor didn’t respond immediately. She turned back to her work, but there was a shift — a faint nod, almost approval.
“You still need to earn it.”
Frost’s voice got low now. “Then show me.”
Sektor finally turned fully. “You’re not ready yet.”
Frost stepped closer. “Then make me ready.”
The machines hummed around them, casting a sterile glow across the room. For a moment, the only sound was the pulse of power through conduits and cables — artificial veins and hearts preparing the future.
Frost looked into Sektor’s blank visor and saw herself reflected — smaller, flesh-bound, flawed.
But not for long.

 

It was snowing. Again.
The gates of the Lin Kuei stronghold stood rimmed with frost, the glyphs carved into the dark stone glowing faintly with the protective wards Bi-Han had reinstated after his return. They had been imperfect. Weak. Neglected by Kuai Liang. But now the clan was secure.
Or so he thought.
He was informed the moment Shang Tsung stepped inside the outer circle borders. Still Bi-Han didn’t rise immediately. Didn’t send the squads. Let the snake come to him.
Shang arrived without escort, as if he had simply wandered into their fortress on the wind. As ordered, the guards didn’t stop him — not even after he smiled at them the way only he could, that uncanny, ageless glint in his eyes, like he knew their secrets.
Bi-Han watched him approach from the head of the grand chamber, seated in his dark chair of blackwood and steel, flanked by blue banners bearing the Lin Kuei sigil.
"You came uninvited," Bi-Han said flatly.
"Ah, but not unwelcome, surely?" Shang replied, shaking snow from his shoulders with theatrical flair. "I bring a gift."
Bi-Han did not speak. He let the silence settle — a cold, warning thing — as Shang stepped closer, the smile on his face curling at the corners like scorched paper.
"You’ll want to hear it," Shang said softly, eyes narrowing. "Shao plans to resurrect Onaga."
The name fell like a stone between them.
Bi-Han’s brows twitched — barely — but inside, his mind locked around the implications. The Dragon King he was reading about feverishly since their plan failed. The Devourer of Realms. A tyrant so powerful even the Elder Gods had turned from him.
"He has the means," Shang continued, pacing now, casually — too casually. "He’s been gathering relics. With your unaware assistance, I dare to say. Now he has the heart — still black and beating. And he has me."
Bi-Han’s eyes sharpened. "You support this?"
"I support ambition," Shang said, running a gloved hand along the edge of the frost-rimmed table. "You of all people understand that. But I do not necessarily support the results of this particular endeavour. "
Bi-Han didn’t answer. He was already calculating. Resurrection of a power like Onaga would mean devastation — or total dominance. It depended on who controlled him. Or whether he could be controlled at all.
"And why do you tell me this?" he asked, his voice low. Suspicious.
Shang smiled — not kindly.
"Because I know you, Bi-Han. You want power. Shao offers chaos. I offer… options."
He came closer. Too close.
Bi-Han stood, and the tension in the room shifted like cracking ice.
"You offer riddles. Poisoned fruit. Nothing of trust," he said, voice clipped.
"You are being unfair." Shang’s gaze flicked to his hands, then back up. “But at least you keep listening.”
He reached up — slowly — and brushed something from Bi-Han’s collar. Snow, maybe. Or nothing at all.
Bi-Han didn’t flinch. His breath, though slow, was held just beneath the surface, shoulders held too tightly, jaw stiff. He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t trust himself to.
Shang’s voice dropped a note lower.
"Why bury yourself in metal and frost?" he murmured. "Do you really chase silence? You’ve built this fortress… So cold it makes me wonder…And shiver."
He leaned in. Too close. His breath warm. Sweet.
Bi-Han pushed him back — not with force, but with presence. A cold barrier between them, forged of restraint. And fear. And shame.
"You’ve said enough."
Shang laughed softly, unfazed. "I never get enough, with you."
He turned, coat swirling behind him, and walked toward the door — but paused at the threshold.
"Think on it, Grandmaster. Shao plays with fire. He’ll burn. Perhaps… we should choose who holds the torch."
Bi-Han remained still for a long time.
His fingers, curled tight at his sides. He stared at the frost on the windows.
“Give it thought,” Shang Tsung had said, voice soft, not like a serpent but like a lover — almost. “I’ll remain… nearby.”
Bi-Han didn’t respond, not aloud. He had only stared, silent as stone, his eyes cold and hard. But his silence wasn’t refusal. And Shang knew it.
Now he regretted it.
The storm had thickened since morning, thick snow pressing against the fortress windows like the slow burial of time. Shang’s presence had already begun to pollute the air like incense—sweet, intoxicating, suffocating.
He stayed in the eastern wing, the guest quarters reserved for honored allies — an irony not lost on either of them. Allies. Bi-Han could hardly breathe knowing the man was under his roof.
Sektor, of course, hadn’t trusted him the second he entered. Her wariness had been written in her stiff posture, her bristling precision, her half-second pause before answering his questions. Frost had looked at Shang like a storybook villain made flesh.
Bi-Han had watched the exchange with arms crossed and pulse quickened, unable to decipher the true nature of his discomfort.
“Why would you allow him to remain?” Sektor had asked bluntly, later that night when they met in the observatory to go over tactical protocol. Her tone had been even, but not without edge. “He is a manipulator. You owe him nothing.”
“I didn’t say he could roam freely,” Bi-Han replied coolly. “He is watched. Closely.”
“And yet you did not refuse him.”
Bi-Han had said nothing to that. He hated how much she always noticed.
Now, pacing his quarters in the deep hours of night, he felt the weight of his indecision bear down harder than ever. The thought of Onaga's return should have seized him entirely. Strategizing. Risk assessment. Tactical pathways. And yet…
All he could think of was Shang’s eyes.
That look. The one that suggested he already knew something Bi-Han didn’t want to name. That he saw him, in ways no one had ever dared. Not his brothers. Not his soldiers. Certainly not Sektor.
He loathed how much space it took up inside him.
His mind fought back: You are Grandmaster. You do not entertain fantasies. You control it. All of it.
But the thought of telling Shang to leave—to banish him—tightened something sharp and unfamiliar in his chest.
What would Shang do if ordered out? Smile, probably. Say something clever. Maybe even thank him. Then leave. Just like that.
The thought chilled him.
He didn’t want to see Shang walking out those gates again. Not with that knowing look. Not with that smirk. Not with victory gleaming in his eyes simply because Bi-Han had flinched first.
Let him stay a little longer, Bi-Han told himself. Only to learn more about Shao’s plans. Only for strategy. Only because the Lin Kuei must prepare.
Only because the alternative—
No. He didn’t finish the thought.
He stood by the window and stared out into the snowfall, hands clenched behind his back.
“Just a little longer,” he murmured to no one.

The new research wing of the compound was cleaner than any other, even medical.

Too clean.

Gone were the sounds of young initiates sparring in the snow-dusted courtyards, the wooden clack of staff against staff. Gone were the training cries, the human grunts of frustration and triumph. There was silence, sterile and cold.

Despite being the first first place that drew his genuine interest, it made him look and feel absolutely out of place.

Shang Tsung stepped through the gates like a breeze of warm rot, wrapped in deep green silk, eyes dancing with recognition. Sektor met him just inside the war hall.

“You weren’t invited,” she said, helmet under one arm.

“I rarely wait for invitations,” he replied, gaze already drifting past her, toward the heart of the fortress. “I heard your clan was undergoing… renovations.”

Sektor said nothing. But the corner of her lip twitched. “We’re purifying weakness.”

“Oh?” Shang’s smile widened. “That must be why the air smells like scorched flesh and fear.”

Her fingers tightened on her helmet. “State your purpose.”

“I only wanted to see my friend.” He paused, relishing the way her jaw ticked. “You wouldn’t happen to know where your Grandmaster is, would you?”

She narrowed her eyes.

“He doesn’t want to see you.”

Shang tilted his head with mock innocence. “, I think he will.”

Without waiting for permission, he moved past her, trailing a subtle perfume aroma in his wake. Her unease followed him like a shadow.

He found Bi-Han in the data hall, lit only by the glow of terminals. Alone, as always. His hair was tied tighter than ever. His hands were gloved. No skin exposed. He didn’t turn when Shang entered.

“I see you’ve found religion,” Shang said softly, voice echoing in the steel chamber. “Devotion. Martyrdom. Self-mutilation. Very you, Grandmaster."

Bi-Han froze.

Then, slowly, he turned.

“You have no place here. Stay in the chamber I gave you or better go away.”

Shang only smiled. “You think machines will free you?” He walked closer, circling, gaze sweeping over the scrolling cybernetic designs and the progress report on Sektor’s conversion. “Or are you just hoping that once the body is gone, there will be nothing left to betray you?”

Bi-Han’s jaw locked. “Leave.”

But Shang’s tone shifted — lower, smoother now.

“I thought you were different,” he murmured, eyes shining. “But here you are. Trapped again. By yourself this time.”

A pause.

Then, softly:

“I could offer you something else. There are ways to be free that don’t involve removing your flesh.”

Bi-Han stepped forward like a blade.

“I told you—”

“Yes, yes. You’ll break my bones.” Shang’s eyes sparkled. “But you didn’t. Not then. Not now.”

He reached out again — only barely, fingertips brushing the edge of Bi-Han’s sleeve.

Bi-Han didn’t move. But the fog was back in his eyes, that stillness that wasn’t calm but collapse. A system error beneath the ice.

Shang watched it. Studied it.

“You’re trying so hard,” he whispered. “To be clean. Straight. Sharp. Efficient.”

He leaned closer.

“But you weren’t made for that.”

Silence stretched between them like a wire.

Then, before it could swallow them completely, the door slid open. Sektor returned, her voice clipped.

“He said leave.”

Shang turned to her. Studied her now. The light from her eyes was no longer natural. Already altered. Already beginning.

He chuckled.

And for Bi-Han’s ears only, he murmured:

“She won’t save you.”

Then louder, with a performative bow:

“Grandmaster. Enjoy your kingdom of circuits.”

He left.

The air felt even colder once he was gone.

Bi-Han stood still for a long time.

He did not move when Sektor asked if he was well.

 

The training yard smelled of scorched metal and ozone.
Frost’s cryomantic discharge cracked across the practice dummy’s chestplate, sending a spray of frost and sparks in all directions. She exhaled, sharp and satisfied, her breath curling in the cold air.
“Better,” Sektor said from the edge of the yard, arms behind her back. “But the core spin on your follow-up was half a second late. That delay costs kills.”
Frost rolled her shoulder. “I'm still adjusting to the servo assist.”
“You asked for it,” Sektor replied, stepping closer, the glowing red of her ocular implant scanning the damage pattern on the dummy. “Evolution has no room for complaint.”
From across the courtyard, Shang Tsung watched.
He leaned against the stone pillar like he had all the time in the world — as if he belonged here. Eyes half-lidded, faint smirk tugging at his lips, observing them both like a man perusing instruments at a bazaar.
Frost was the first to notice. She wiped her forehead with the back of her glove, then narrowed her eyes. “What do you want?”
Shang gave a mock bow. “Simply appreciating Lin Kuei ingenuity. It is… efficient.”
Sektor’s gaze was flint. “You have no business here.”
“Don’t I?” Shang asked smoothly, beginning to step closer. “Bi-Han has granted me courtesy. I assumed that extended to admiring his ambitious little inventions.”
Sektor didn’t move. “You admire what you don’t understand.”
“On the contrary,” he purred. “I understand perfectly. A new era. A new clan. One that leaves the softness of flesh behind and becomes something immortal. Cold, precise, untouchable. Just like your Grandmaster likes it.”
There was a pause. Just long enough to become uncomfortable.
Shang let it bloom, then struck.
“I must ask, though… is it the cybernetic design that excites him most? Or the loyalty of its architect?”
Frost looked between them, eyes narrowing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.” Shang smiled. “Idle curiosity. You see, Bi-Han’s mind is… complicated. Wound tight. Fascinating.”
Sektor didn’t reply. Her body tensed slightly.
Shang tilted his head. “And you — you must be very special. To be allowed such closeness. I envy you.”
The venom was subtle, almost sweet.
“I should warn you,” Sektor said finally, her voice low and metallic. “He doesn’t tolerate those who disrespect his boundaries. He has broken stronger men for less.”
“Ah,” Shang mused. “But sometimes what appears as disrespect is simply... recognition. It can be disarming, no?”
He met her eye with unblinking calm. “Tell me — does he flinch when you touch him too?”
Sektor’s expression sharpened — a flicker, fast and thin.
Shang caught it. That was all he needed.
He bowed again, smiling.
“Well. Enjoy your upgrades, my dear. I’ll leave you to your drills.”
He turned, his coat trailing behind him like a shadow stitched to ice. He left the courtyard in no hurry at all.
Behind him, Frost spoke up. “What the fuck was that?”
Sektor stared at the training dummy, then past it, toward the main keep.
“I don’t know,” she said, voice tight.

 

The lights in Bi-Han’s chamber flickered faintly. Cold wind whistled through the cracks in the high stone walls. He sat still, back straight, hands resting on his knees — the picture of meditation. But his mind was a blizzard.
He hadn’t moved in over an hour.
And yet still he burned.
The silence inside the stronghold was absolute, broken only by the quiet breath of frost curling around the corners of the room. His eyes were open, but unfocused. Not seeing the room. Not seeing anything at all.
Just… thinking. Imagining.
It started like a mistake. A flicker of thought that slipped through the cracks in his discipline. “What if I let him know?”.
He clenched his jaw.
The image of Shang Tsung was there. That smug, irritating, soft-mouthed bastard. Always smiling like he knew something Bi-Han didn’t.
Effeminate. Coy. Beautiful, in a theatrical sort of way. Ridiculous robes. Perfumed speech. Not like a man at all.
Not like him.
Not like his brother.
Not like Tomas, either. Tomas had been quiet. Clean. Still. Tomas had looked at Bi-Han once and the world had bent around it — something shameful and raw in how much he wanted to be seen. But that was over. He’d gone with Kuai Liang. Left him.
And Bi-Han—
He stared at the frost forming on his gauntlets.
“What if Shang is my only chance?”
The thought lodged itself deep, disgusting and unrelenting.
Shang was dangerous. Manipulative. Probably playing him like a goddamn flute.
But… He noticed. He had called him beautiful before, unprompted, unafraid.
Bi-Han shifted. The cold inside his chest bloomed wider.
He hated this.
He hated how his stomach twisted when he remembered Shang’s fingers undoing his hair. Hated how his skin remembered the touch. Hated how part of him wanted to be touched again — more. Wanted to know what it would feel like if someone looked at him and meant it. If someone wanted him, the way he had never been wanted.
He had been feared. Obeyed. Respected.
And never desired.
Never cherished.
He pressed his fingers against his temple hard, as if he could crush the thought before it took root. He should be ashamed. He was ashamed. These were the things his clan — his family — could never know. He had buried every trace of this thing inside him long ago.
But it lived. Still. Somehow.
An ember gone cold. But still whole.
He stood up abruptly, the motion sharp, slicing through the stillness. He paced once, twice, toward the far wall. There was nowhere to go.
His fists clenched.
The thoughts came again. Uninvited, unstoppable.
“What if I went to him?”
Stupid. He would never do such a thing.
“What would I even say?”
He imagined it. Standing in Shang’s doorway. No armor. No mask. Maybe even his hair loose — like Shang had left it that night. Like he liked.
What would he say? “I’m here”? “Make it stop”?“Do what you want”? He felt sick.
Shang would smile, of course. That smug, serpent’s smile. He would speak softly, too softly, like always.
And what then?
Bi-Han had no idea what came next. No blueprint. No training. No language for this thing inside him.
He imagined letting Shang touch him again. On purpose, this time. Imagined the weight of it — warm hands on his shoulders, down his arms, against his back. Imagined what it would be like to be kissed.
Would he allow it? Would he return it? Would he freeze in place?
He had never done anything like it. Never even dared try. His hands were built for violence, not for… that.
Would Shang laugh?
Mock him?
Would he say something clever and cruel, then walk away and tell the others? Tell Reiko? Tell Kuai Liang?
Bi-Han’s breath hitched.
“No one can know.”
But still, the vision lingered.
Shang, leaning in. His mouth near Bi-Han’s ear, whispering something indecent, sinful. His fingers at the collar of Bi-Han’s robes. Bi-Han, rigid, but not pulling away. Allowing it. Maybe even closing his eyes.
“I just want to know what it feels like.”
He buried his face in his hands.
He would never do it. Never speak it. Never act on it.
Never.
“Unfair,” he thought.
Unfair that Kuai Liang and Tomas had walked away with everything.
Always together.
Unfair that he had done everything right, followed every rule, mastered every discipline — and still, all he had was this helpless rage.
He needed somewhere to put it. To store. To drawn it. He told himself he'd go there just to distract himself. Just enjoy its emptiness. It's decay. How the old man is not here anymore.

Still deep down he knew the truth.

Bi-Han had sealed that part of the Southern wing off long ago. Once his father’s private quarters, it had become nothing more than storage, stripped of its former authority. It hadn’t been touched in years.

Bi-Han stood before it now like a man before a tomb — rigid, unwilling, but drawn all the same. He had ordered it cleared. Not a single trace of the old Grandmaster was supposed to remain. And yet, the stale air inside still carried that smell. Of dried paper, of old oil, and faintly — of something harsher. Sour and fermented.

“He always smelled like that when he drank.”

Bi-Han stepped inside.

Stood still in the middle of the floor, hands limp at his sides.

He had told himself, once again – this room meant nothing. He had risen far beyond the shadow of that man.

“You would’ve called me weak,” Bi-Han thought. “Or worse. Confused. Polluted.”

He paced to the corner where the old desk used to be. For a moment, his fingers hovered — reaching out instinctively before clenching into a fist and pulling back.

“You were never this quiet when you were alive,” he muttered under his breath.

His voice echoed in the empty stone.

“Did you know what I am? What I think about now?” He breathed sharply through his nose, jaw tight. “No. Of course you don’t. You’d spit on me if you knew.”

He laughed, low and bitter.

“I enforced every rule you drilled into me. I became everything you demanded. And still…”

His eyes wandered to the locked chest in the corner — the one he’d never bothered to open. Inside, there might be old bottles, dusty and sealed. His father’s favorite poisons. He had removed all alcohol from the compound years ago. Ordered it, enforced it. That law had been his own decree. Lin Kuei would never again see their Grandmaster drunk. Never see him falter like his father.

He suddenly wanted it. The burn. The loss of clarity. The surrender. Something to take the edge off this raw nerve inside him — the one Shang Tsung had touched with his velvet words and honeyed eyes. The one Tomas had awoken years ago just by looking at him too long.

“You disgusting thing,” he thought. “You would destroy everything for a chance at something…rotten. Soft. Like them. Like those two you couldn’t keep.”

He crouched down and dragged the chest open with a sharp grunt. Only empty scroll cases and a few rusted weapons inside. No bottles. Nothing he could use to soften the sharpness inside him.

He slammed the lid shut with a growl, rising to his feet.

“Even that,” he thought. “Even the vices you left behind, I can’t have.”

“Was this what you felt, old man?” he hissed, “Did you drink because you couldn’t bear what you were?”

He wanted to destroy something. To shatter glass against the wall. But there was nothing left here to break. Only himself.

He closed his eyes. His throat ached.

There was nothing in this room but ghosts. Of the man he swore never to become. Of the things he wasn’t ever allowed to want. Of the family that no longer stood at his side.

He wanted to scream.

But he didn’t.

He turned in the center of the room again, breath heavy.

“I don’t need your approval,” he whispered to the walls. “You’re dead.”

And still, he felt watched. Judged. As if that gaze was in his blood now, not just the room.

As if he would never be free of it.

“Fucking coward.”

The words tore from Bi-Han’s throat as he slammed the door shut behind him, the echo cracking like a whip through the hallway. His pulse thundered in his ears as he stalked down the corridor. Purposeful, but uncoordinated — fast, frantic, like his body moved before his mind could catch up.

Guards and servants scattered at the sight of him. Some lowered their eyes. Some didn’t dare breathe.

He didn’t see them.

The pain was unbearable — not sharp, not clean, but hot and festering. A wound ignored for too long. He could taste it in his mouth.

The doors to the guest chambers loomed ahead.

Bi-Han didn’t knock.

He slammed his fist against the door. Once. Twice.

Then he shoved it open.

Shang Tsung looked up from where he lounged, legs crossed on a low divan, sleeves loosened, a book in one hand, wine glass in the other – of course he had brought his own bottle.

He blinked once. Calmly. Like he’d been expecting this.

“Bi-Han,” he purred. “I was hoping—”

“Shut up.”

Bi-Han crossed the room in three strides. His shoulders were squared like he was ready for war, like he was about to grab Shang by the throat and break his spine against the wall.

But he stopped, just close enough to feel the warmth from Shang’s bare collarbone, just far enough to not touch.

“What the fuck do you want from me?”

Shang set the glass down with exaggerated care. “So,” he said softly, head tilting. “You’ve decided to speak with me after all.”

Bi-Han’s hands curled into fists at his sides. His eyes burned.

“I want you to stop pretending,” he said.

Bi-Han’s breath hitched. That smile was the worst thing — not cruel, not mocking. It was gentle. Pitying.

“Pretending what, exactly?” he snapped. “That I am not disgusted by your voice? That I don’t see what you’re doing? I see. I’m not—”

“Disgusted?” Shang echoed, standing now, carefully, like he was approaching a frightened animal. “Is that what you tell yourself?”

He stepped forward.

Bi-Han didn’t move.

“You came here,” Shang said, voice low. “You stormed through your whole fortress just to see me. Do you want to know what I think, Grandmaster?”

Bi-Han’s heart was pounding so hard he thought it might crack his ribs.

“I think,” Shang said, “you are trembling on the edge of something you’ve never dared touch. And you’re afraid if you do, you won’t be able to stop.”

Bi-Han’s mouth opened. Nothing came out.

“You want to know what I want?” Shang whispered. “I want you. Even if you hate yourself for it.”

His hand came up slowly — as if offering something dangerous and soft all at once — and touched a lock of hair that had come loose over Bi-Han’s temple.

That's when he flinched — not away, but inward. His body remained rooted to the spot, his eyes locked on Shang’s, wide and wild.

“Say it,” Shang said. “Just once. Just for…”

Bi-Han’s jaw clenched. His voice, when it finally came, cracked like frost breaking underfoot.

“…Shang.” Bi-Han’s voice dropped. “If you finish that sentence—”

“What will you do?” Shang’s voice was suddenly closer. “Prove me right with your hands around my throat? You want to kill this part of yourself so badly,” Shang whispered. “But I see it. In your silence. In your eyes. In your fury.”

Bi-Han’s hand twitched. Frost pulsed under his palm, longing to lash out.

“You think I’m mocking you,” Shang added, softer now, daring to close the space between them. “But I never have.”

Bi-Han’s voice cracked. “Then what do you call this?”

“Hope,” Shang said.

Silence stretched like a blade between them. Bi-Han was frozen — not with ice, but with the unbearable, unnamable gravity of it all. He didn’t move as Shang reached forward, slowly, and touched the edge of his sleeve.

“Just tell me what you want. And I’ll follow.”

Bi-Han’s throat was a knot. He hated this. Hated how the words twisted something deep inside him.

“I should freeze your tongue to your spine,” he muttered. Closed his eyes. Didn’t move.
Not when Shang lifted a hand to his face. Not when fingertips traced along the edge of his jaw. Not even when Shang leaned closer, his breath warm against Bi-Han’s mouth.
He knew he should have stopped him.
He didn’t.
Shang kissed him.
Not playful, not cruel. Not scary.
It was… gentle.
For a moment, he stood frozen, mouth unmoving, eyes wide in disbelief.
Then something inside him buckled.
His fingers clenched in Shang’s robe, dragging the sorcerer forward with a suddenness that cracked all pretense. He kissed him back — too harsh, too desperate, all tension and shame and hunger poured into one violent motion.
Shang moaned softly against his mouth.
Bi-Han shoved him back against the wall.
“I don’t know what you think this is,” he growled, voice hoarse, fractured, breathing hard, hands trembling where they gripped fabric. “You want to humiliate me?” he snarled. “Make me your joke?”
“No,” Shang whispered. “I want you to finally stop punishing yourself.”
Bi-Han let go of him like he’d touched a brand. His face shut down.
Shang just stood there, breathing, waiting.
“This didn’t happen.”
Bi-Han’s eyes locked on him one last time.
And then he left.

 

The sound cracked through the silence of his quarters. Still trembling, Bi-Han pressed his back to the hard wooden door, breath catching sharp in his throat.
He didn’t know how he got back here.
He barely remembered the walk — only the heat burning under his skin, the sick twist in his stomach, the phantom of lips against his own.
He touched his mouth, as if to wipe it off. Nothing was there. Nothing but the tingling echo of what he let happen.
Bi-Han tore off his gloves. His armor followed, piece by piece, yanked off with a violence he didn’t feel anymore. He couldn’t feel. His body was numb and his mind was screaming.
He stumbled toward the washbasin and gripped its edge so tightly his knuckles paled. He stared at his reflection in small mirror — shadowed eyes, pale skin, a man who looked too much like his father.
“You disgrace,” he whispered.
The word didn’t sound like his. It sounded older. It sounded like the voice he’d buried deep, the one that lived in his spine.
He shook his head.
"No. No, I didn't— He—"
But he had. He let Shang touch him. Let him kiss him. Let it happen — and worse — wanted it.
Bi-Han gasped and turned from the mirror like it could see too much. He paced. Then stopped. Then paced again. A storm twisted inside him, a pressure that made his skin too tight, his breath too short.
Shang’s voice came back to him. Tender. Knowing.
Bi-Han slammed his fist into the wall. Once. Twice.
He sank to his knees, breath ragged. He pressed his forehead to the floor.
Why?
Why him?
Why now?
Why not someone like Sektor, devoted and strong and normal?
Why not someone he could control?
Why not no one at all?
He curled in on himself, arms around his ribs like they could hold him together.
It made him sick.
It made him ache.
No one could know.
No one could ever know.

Shang didn’t bother masking his steps. And… the door was unlocked.
Bi-Han sat slumped against the far wall, still, eyes glassy and far away. He didn’t look up when Shang entered. He didn’t speak.
Shang crossed the room slowly, deliberately, like a man approaching a sleeping beast. He knelt down in front of Bi-Han, just out of reach, voice a whisper just above silence.
“I thought you might do something reckless,” the sorcerer said, voice low, almost kind. “Or tragic.”
Silence.
“I know,” he kept, “what it’s like to be starved.”

Bi-Han flinched, but still didn’t look at him.

Shang tilted his head. “I’ve seen it in you. That ache that keeps you locked in your own skin, unable to breathe.”

Still nothing.

“I can give you what no one else has,” Shang went on, softer now, like a secret passed from breath to breath. “What no man or woman ever dared offer. I can give you pleasure that will tear your soul open and put it back together, over and over. I can make you feel wanted, worshipped, or ruined in all the ways you secretly crave.”

Bi-Han’s jaw clenched. He looked at Shang at last, and his eyes were furious. Terrified.

“You think you know me?” he said, voice brittle with restraint.

“I know what I see in you,” Shang whispered. “And I know what I’ve felt when you look at me.”

He reached up, slowly, deliberately, brushing his fingers along the edge of Bi-Han’s jaw—gentle, testing.

“Get out,” he growled, voice barely more than breath. “Leave now, before I—”
Shang smiled. Closer now, his voice velvet.
“You think this is shame,” he said. “But it isn’t. You could keep your power, Bi-Han. Your status. Your legacy. And I would serve it. I would serve you.”
His fingers finally grazed Bi-Han’s hand. Cold against heat.
“You’re not weak,” Shang said softly. “You’re just... untouched.”
And something in Bi-Han’s face shattered, briefly. His expression flickered, and his lips parted.
“Don’t—” Bi-Han whispered, broken and furious. “Don’t you dare pity me.”
“You’re shaking,” he said, a little gentler now. “Bi-Han… I can stop. You only have to say it.”
But he didn’t say it.
Bi-Han didn’t say anything at all.
So Shang moved his fingers over Bi-Han’s shoulder, across the strong ridge of muscle, and then down — over his chest, the thick linen tunic doing nothing to hide how his breath hitched, how the contact burned through the fog in his mind and sent panic spiraling down his spine.

Bi-Han snapped.

He grabbed Shang by the front of his robe, hauled him back with a furious hiss of breath — but he didn’t strike. Didn’t push him out. He just held him there, as if struggling with the urge to crush or kiss.

Shang could taste the fear on Bi-Han’s lips.

Even as he kissed him — slow, coaxing, exploratory — Bi-Han was rigid in his arms. His breath shuddered against Shang’s mouth, his body responding in fits and bursts, raw arousal bleeding through every clenched movement.

Shang’s hand moved carefully along his side, caressing up under the folds. He felt Bi-Han’s body shiver, twitch. His thighs were clenched tight, spine stiff, jaw locked. But there it was again — that soft sound escaping him, unbidden: a low moan, half-muffled.

He was aroused. Overwhelmed. But his body was trying to keep control, to survive the moment instead of surrender to it.

“Bi-Han,” Shang said, pulling back just enough to meet his eyes.

Bi-Han looked away. His cheeks were flushed — not just with heat, but shame.

“You think I’ll hurt you?” Shang asked softly.

Bi-Han’s jaw worked — a muscle twitching, a storm flickering behind his eyes. He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

“You’ve never done this before, at all” Shang said quietly.

Bi-Han stared straight ahead, like if he didn’t move, didn’t breathe, it wouldn’t be true. But Shang felt the way his body trembled under the truth.

“You don’t trust me,” Shang continued, still gentle. “And I don’t blame you.”

He let his hand fall, making space.

Bi-Han’s jaw trembled slightly, his whole posture seemed somehow smaller. By now he was leaking, throbbing, his body betraying him in every way it could, but his heart pounded with dread, and every muscle in him braced as if waiting to be struck down for this weakness.

“I can stop,” Shang murmured. “You only have to say it.”

Bi-Han said nothing.

Because he didn’t want him to stop.

Shang tilted his head. “You won’t. That’s fine.” Just for a beat he let the triumphant smug glimpse on his face. “Then, let me ask you something. Whose touch wouldn’t make you afraid? Whose hands could reach you without your body locking?”

There was a silence, heavy and trembling. Bi-Han refused to speak, refused to answer, but his eyes shifted — and Shang caught it.

That flicker of conflict.

“I can give you a gift,” Shang whispered. “A rare one. Perhaps the rarest of all.”

Bi-Han frowned, wary.

“Your first time. It doesn’t have to be me.”

The air between them grew sharp.

Bi-Han blinked. “What the hell are you even…”

“I can shift. Take the form of anyone you choose. Anyone you trust, or longed for, or only imagined. I can make them real for one night. Let your first time be what you've always dreamed of ”

Bi-Han’s mouth opened.

“I would give you that,” Shang said. “And I would never speak of it again, unless you wished me to.”

Bi-Han looked stunned. Angry. Cornered. But beneath it, the temptation broke out like fire

A deep, awful ache of longing.

A chance to rewrite what he’d been denied all his life.

But to say a name? To even think of one?

It made his skin burn.

It made him afraid of himself.

He wanted to spit venom, to tear Shang down for even suggesting such sorcery.

Because the image had already surfaced.

The shame boiled under his skin instantly.
For a long moment, he said nothing — then, barely audible:

“…Tomas.”

The name fell soft. Devastating.

Bi-Han couldn’t lift his gaze. His hand came up, fingers dragging over his face, as if covering his eyes might protect him from being seen in this state.

“I don’t—” Bi-Han’s voice cracked, and he cursed under his breath. “I don’t know why I said that. Forget it. This was a mistake.”

But Shang didn’t move. Didn’t laugh, didn’t sneer. His voice, when it came, was astonishingly gentle.

“I won’t.”

Bi-Han’s hands curled into fists.

“I said—”

“And I heard you. You don’t need to explain. You don’t need to apologize for desire. Ever. Least of all to me.”

Bi-Han shook his head. “You don’t understand. He’s—” He stopped himself. Jaw working. “He was just a boy when I— When we—”

“Looked at each other?” Shang supplied, soft. “Hungered in silence?”

Bi-Han finally met his eyes, filled with fury, confusion — and something like grief. “You think you understand. But you don’t. He’s with Kuai now. He left. I betrayed him. I was cruel to him. There’s nothing pure left in what I felt. Or still feel. It’s twisted.”

Shang’s head tilted slightly. “And yet it’s still yours.”

Bi-Han closed his eyes, as if that might stop the whole world from spinning.

“…Don’t make him,” he said suddenly.

“Okay.”

Bi-Han looked like a man unraveling at the seams, threads snapping one by one.

“I…I don't know. I don’t want to be alone anymore,” he muttered.

Shang’s hands were still, patient.

“Just say it again,” he said, gently. “Say what you want.”

And Bi-Han breathed out, broken and low:

“Tomas.”

The shift was quiet — barely a flicker of light, no sound to mark it. But when Bi-Han lifted his head and looked, it was no longer Shang standing there.

It was him.

Tomas.

Only — not the one he remembered from the Lin Kuei courtyard, or from late-night patrols with wind tousling his silver locks. Not the boy with fire in his heart and wonder in his eyes. This Tomas stood tall, composed, regal even, cloaked in the shroud of his Titan self, as Bi-Han had seen him once through a veil of flame and smoke — the only version Shang has remembered during the fight with his Titan counterpart. A vision from the dark mirror of the Order. His beauty was terrible. Violent. And wholly unreachable.

Bi-Han couldn’t breathe. A burn shot through his chest.

"No," he rasped, standing as if against a wave. His voice shook. "No — not like that. Not him."

Titan-Tomas tilted his head, expression serene. Too serene. Not his.

Bi-Han stepped forward, reluctant, trembling. “He wasn’t like this.”

Shang remained silent within the illusion, letting Bi-Han reach out with his words.

“…He was never this composed,” Bi-Han went on, eyes devouring every detail. “He laughed too loud. He never stood still. He fidgeted, talked too much, picked at his nails when he was anxious. He always forgot his gloves. He—”

He broke off. His voice softened.

“Make the hair longer. He liked it tied back, but it always slipped loose. His shoulders were smaller. His voice — his voice cracked when he was angry.”

“Younger too?”

Bi-Han's cheeks went red again.

“Yes.”

Slowly, before his eyes, Tomas changed. The Titan melted away — piece by piece — until what remained was close to his Tomas. The one from the past. Younger, a little wild around the edges, with that spark behind his eyes. And a hesitant, softness in the way he looked at Bi-Han.

Bi-Han stared. The burn in his chest grew sharper, unbearable.

“…Why,” he whispered, barely able to form the word, “would you do this for me?”

The silence hung. Then Tomas — Shang, still — stepped forward in that borrowed skin, hands at his sides, gentle.

“Because I want to. Because I want to give you something no one else can,” he said.

His voice carried not mockery Bi-Han expected, but seduction.

“And because I want you,” he added, softer still. “Even when you thought you were invisible.”

Bi-Han’s throat tightened.

He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t even nod. The air between them was thick with memory and shame and a longing so deep it scraped the bones.

Their lips met with a silence so profound it seemed to absorb the sound of the wind outside. At first, it was just that — a press of mouths, unsure, feverish, a quake running through Bi-Han’s body as if he’d been struck by something vast and final. His hands trembled where they gripped Tomas’s—Shang’s—shoulders. The illusion was too perfect. Too gentle. Too much like a dream he should not be dreaming.

Tomas kissed him back — soft, patient, reverent. And that undid Bi-Han more than any demand or seduction ever could. He groaned, low and broken, and pushed Tomas down onto the bed beneath them, clumsy with urgency, need catching fire in his veins.

His body knew what it wanted. But not how. His lips trailed down the side of Tomas’s neck, breath hot, desperate. His hands slid over cloth and muscle and the heat of another body that didn’t reject him. He felt drunk on it — not in control. Like this wasn’t real. Couldn’t be.

He moved his hips against Tomas without thinking, moaning softly when their bodies met, then froze, gasping. His cheeks flamed. The heat behind his eyes was near-blinding.

“I don’t—” Bi-Han rasped. “I don’t know what—what I’m supposed to do.”

Tomas only smiled up at him, sweet.

“You don’t have to know,” he said.

But that was the problem.

Bi-Han cupped Tomas’s jaw with one hand, thumb brushing the cheek he’d never let himself touch in this way, and his breath caught again when Tomas leaned into it. Trusted him. Wanted him.

“I don’t know what’s…” Bi-Han whispered, ashamed. “What hurts. What’s good.”

Tomas reached up and threaded his fingers into Bi-Han’s hair — loose now, dark strands slipping over his shoulders — and tugged gently, coaxing.

“Let me show you.”

Bi-Han hesitated, breathing ragged, his hips trembling as they pressed together again.

“Tell me if I do wrong,” he said.

“You won’t.”

“Tell me if I hurt you.”

“You won’t.”

Bi-Han groaned again, and this time when he kissed Tomas, it was less desperate, more open. Still clumsy — but he allowed himself to stay in it. Allowed himself to feel Tomas’s hands guiding him lower, to where their bodies ached for friction, for discovery, for permission. He guided Bi-Han’s hand to his own buckle, let him decide. And Bi-Han, with shaking fingers, undid it.

When Tomas’s hand finally slid down to wrap around him, Bi-Han gasped.

His hips jerked.

He wanted to pull away. Or press closer. Or disappear entirely.

He was hard — too hard — sensitive like he’d never felt before, not even in lonely nights of confusion and shame. His cock pulsed against Tomas’s palm, and the touch felt like fire. Too much and not enough.

“Breathe,” Tomas whispered. “It’s alright. Just breathe.”

He did. Barely.

Tomas kissed his throat, his chest, his ribs. And Bi-Han let his eyes close. Let the touch take him. He felt like he was being undone at the seams. His mind was running too fast to hold onto anything except the pressure of skin on skin, Tomas’s lips against his neck, Tomas’s voice — gentle, guiding, calm.

“Touch me too,” Tomas murmured.

And Bi-Han did, clumsy, almost afraid. His hands explored as if navigating blind — over the curve of a shoulder, the hollow of a hip, down the plane of Tomas’s stomach. When Tomas gasped softly at one movement, Bi-Han repeated it, fascinated and panicked by the effect he had.

He didn’t last long. His body, starved of any real intimacy for so long, betrayed him quickly. He was already leaking, grinding against Tomas in slow, desperate movements, held back only by the fear of hurting him.

“I can’t,” he groaned, voice thick and ragged. “I’m going to—”

“I see,” Tomas whispered. “Let me.”

He pulled back and smiled with a playful wickedness that wasn't really Tomas’s, but also wasn't completely foreign to him.

He sat Bi-Han at the edge of the bed, spread his thighs slightly apart. The air in the room was heavy — thick with heat, with silence, with the weight of what was about to happen.

Bi-Han couldn’t hold that gaze for long.

This was him. Tomas. Kneeling between his legs. Looking up at him like he was something precious.

He looked away.

“You don’t have to,” he said, voice sharp out of instinct — self-protection dressed in command. “I didn’t ask you for this.”

“I know,” Tomas said. His hands rested gently on Bi-Han’s knees. “But I want to.”

That made Bi-Han’s stomach lurch. He swallowed hard. He felt the urge to snap at him again, to say something cruel and dismissive, but the words dried in his mouth.

Tomas leaned forward. He kissed the inside of Bi-Han’s thigh — slowly, reverently.

A sound tore from his chest, somewhere between a gasp and a growl. He didn’t mean to make it.

Another kiss. Higher this time. Then a third, just at the crease where his leg met his hip. And then Tomas looked up again, patient, seeking something unspoken.

This Bi-Han forced himself to meet his eyes.

“Don’t stop,” he said hoarsely. “Please.”

Tomas nodded.

He reached for Bi-Han’s cock again — thick, twitching with need — and wrapped his hand around it with devastating care. Bi-Han jerked at the contact.

He had touched himself before, of course. In secrecy. With shame. With anger, sometimes — punishing pleasure. But never like this.

Tomas’s mouth came down — slowly, torturously slowly — and when his lips touched the head of Bi-Han’s cock, Bi-Han’s entire body tensed like he’d been struck.

It was unbearable.

The heat. The softness. The wetness.

Bi-Han bit down on his own knuckle to stop himself from making a sound. But when Tomas’s lips wrapped fully around him, sinking inch by inch onto his length, he couldn’t hold back. His hand shot out, clutching at Tomas’s hair, unsure whether to pull him closer or push him away.

“T-Tomas—” His voice cracked.

Tomas hummed around him.

Bi-Han’s head fell back. His eyes squeezed shut. His hips bucked once, instinctual, and then he immediately stilled, ashamed.

Tomas pulled off slowly — lips glistening, a thread of saliva still connecting them — and looked up at him, not with judgment, but affection.

Bi-Han’s chest tightened. He hated how much that meant to him.

Then Tomas leaned in again — and this time, his mouth was more confident, more insistent, tongue swirling, lips sucking gently, his hand stroking in tandem. Bi-Han couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. The sight of Tomas’s mouth wrapped around him, pink lips flushed and slick, eyes fluttering closed in concentration — it did something to him he didn’t have words for.

It undid him.

This was what people wrote songs about. What they killed for. What he had believed he would never have.

He trembled violently. His thighs began to shake. His hand clenched tighter in Tomas’s hair, though his touch stayed soft.

“I’m—” he warned, but it was already too late.

He came suddenly, desperately, his body bucking forward, a strangled cry ripped from his throat like something primal and wounded and overjoyed all at once. His vision went white. His fingers went numb.

And Tomas didn’t move. He stayed, swallowing, holding him through it.

When Bi-Han finally looked down — red-faced, humiliated, dazed — Tomas wiped his mouth and smiled. Just a little. Smug. But also warm.

Bi-Han opened his mouth to say something. But instead, he reached out with both hands and pulled Tomas up against him, clutching him like he might fall apart otherwise.

His forehead rested against Tomas’s shoulder, damp with sweat, his muscles finally loosening after being clenched for what felt like hours. He wasn’t used to this stillness. He didn’t know what to do with it.

Tomas held him.

And yet something stirred in Bi-Han’s chest. Not panic. Not regret. Not yet. But a quiet, burning need. To not let it end like this.

He swallowed hard. Pulled back. His eyes met Tomas’s — or Shang’s, but that wasn’t what he saw right now.

What he saw were lips that had been on him. Flushed cheeks.

Bi-Han looked down. He saw Tomas’s cock, hard, full, visibly aching. The sight made his mouth go dry. He wanted to do something. He needed to.

"I want to return it,” he said gruffly.

Tomas smiled softly. “Then let me lie back.”

They shifted, Tomas reclining against the headboard, legs spread slightly, breathing calm and open. Bi-Han sat between them awkwardly at first, staring, then lowering himself.

He hadn’t done this before. Never thought he would. His hands trembled slightly as he wrapped them around Tomas’s shaft. It twitched in his grasp. Bi-Han flinched at first. Then steadied. Tomas let out a sigh — not impatient, just encouraging.

He had done something right. For once.

A thought crept in — uninvited, intense, terrifying. It had surfaced before, a shadowy image from things he’d overheard in barracks, stories spoken crudely or whispered as bragging. It was different now. He didn’t want it as violence or power.

He looked down at Tomas — at Shang — uncertain.

"I want… to be inside you.”

But just as Bi-Han began to fumble — uncertain hands at his own length, half hard still, lining up clumsily, heart hammering — Tomas pressed a hand to his chest, stopping him gently.

“Wait,” he said softly. “We would need to use something. You’ll hurt me if you don’t.”

Bi-Han stilled, startled. “What—what do you mean?”

“Lube,” Tomas said, reaching to the side, pulling out a small vial from where it had been tucked in his clothing. “And fingers first. You have to work me open.”

Bi-Han flushed deeply. His whole body recoiled in awkwardness, shame.

“I don’t—”

“I’ll show you,” Tomas said calmly. “You want to make me feel good, right?”

Bi-Han gave a stiff nod.

Tomas kissed him softly, reassuring. “Then listen to me.”

He guided Bi-Han’s hand, poured a generous amount of the clear slick gel onto his fingers. Then he lay back, knees drawn up slightly, eyes never leaving Bi-Han’s.

“Go slow. Just one finger at first.”

Bi-Han obeyed. His hand shook slightly, but he pressed the tip of one finger against him, watching how Tomas breathed through it, how his muscles responded. It was so strange — to do something so intimate, so hidden.

When Tomas asked for a second finger he added it with care, watching his own hand disappear inside someone else’s body. Tomas moaned, head falling back. The sound made Bi-Han twitch, fully hard again.

“Good,” Tomas murmured. “That’s good. Now—are you ready?”

All Bi-Han could do was to nod.

“Go slow.”

Bi-Han did. The first inch was unbearable — too tight, too hot, Tomas’s body clenching and resisting, and Bi-Han’s instinct was to stop, to pull away.

But Tomas pulled him down, kissed him through it.

“Don’t be afraid. You’re doing it right.”

When Bi-Han finally slid inside, it stole the breath from his lungs. He felt everything. Tomas beneath him. The wet heat, the hold. The shocking intimacy of it. No sparring match, no enemy’s blood had ever made him feel so alive.

He didn’t move at first. He didn’t dare.

But Tomas urged him gently. “You can move. Just listen to me. Follow my rhythm.”

Bi-Han moved — shallow thrusts, unsteady at first, then deeper, more sure. Tomas’s hands were everywhere — his back, his hips, his face. His voice whispered steady encouragement. And Bi-Han—Bi-Han burned.

He buried his face into Tomas’s throat, groaning helplessly.

And when Tomas moaned his name, tugging him deeper, Bi-Han almost sobbed.

He would never forget the sound. The feeling. The impossible closeness.

It was the first time anyone had wanted him. And he didn’t want it to end.

He moved slowly, too aware of every twitch beneath him, every noise Tomas—Shang—made.

“Harder,” he whispered. No hesitation, no shame. Just desire, sharp and clear. “I want it rough, Bi-Han. I want you rough.”

Bi-Han froze, still buried deep. His stomach clenched.

Tomas looked up at him — Shang in that form, the form Bi-Han had chosen — and there was no fear. Just want. That sweet mouth swollen, red. Hair stuck to his temples, throat marked already.

“I want to feel everything you can give.”

The words struck like lightning. Bi-Han’s hands gripped Tomas’s hips too hard. He heard him gasp — but it wasn’t a sound of pain. It was invitation.

He pulled back and slammed in hard, dragging a ragged sound out of Tomas’s throat. Shang’s throat.

“You want this,” Bi-Han growled, voice wrecked, eyes wild. “You asked for this.”

“Yes,” Tomas choked, legs wrapping tighter around Bi-Han’s waist. “I want you.”

Bi-Han’s rhythm turned savage — hard, deep thrusts that made the bed shake beneath them. He watched how Tomas took it, how his eyes fluttered, how he liked the force, the aggression. Bi-Han couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to. Every time Tomas moaned his name — every time he said harder — Bi-Han gave it to him.

Sweat dripped from his forehead. His muscles ached. But he needed to mark Tomas, to bury himself until there was no doubt who he was inside. Who he belonged to. Who this pleasure was for.

Tomas scratched down his back, pulling him closer, whispering filth and worship both.

“You’ve thought about this, haven’t you?” Tomas’s voice came, but it was unmistakably Shang beneath the skin. “All those cold, lonely nights. Wanting someone to serve you. Worship you. Let you fuck them the way no one else would dare to.”

Bi-Han clenched his jaw. He tried to stay quiet, but it hit something inside him. That dark, buried part. His thrusts became sharper.

“Yes—that’s it,” Shang moaned, head thrown back. “Use me. I can take it. I want you to fuck me like I’m yours. I know you’re starving for it.”

Bi-Han growled low in his throat, eyes wild.

When he came again, it ripped out of him with a force he didn’t know he had — a growl torn from deep in his chest, mouth at Tomas’s throat. Tomas moaned, shaking apart underneath him, his own climax wet and hot between their bodies.

Bi-Han couldn’t look at him at first.
His body was heavy, loose in a way he’d never known. His limbs barely obeyed him, resting against warm skin—his skin. Tomas’s. Or the echo of it.
Bi-Han wasn’t thinking clearly. He couldn’t. His muscles trembled with the aftershocks of something that had crashed through him like a storm and left nothing standing. Even his breath came slow and strange, as if it belonged to someone else.
A soft hand stroked down his spine, gentle and slow. Another brushed his damp hair away from his forehead.
“You’re so quiet now,” the voice murmured, low and thick with satisfaction. Tomas’s voice. Bi-Han’s brow furrowed faintly, but he didn’t lift his head.
Shang—Tomas—didn’t push him. He curled up behind him instead, a long line of warmth against his back. Arms around his middle. A palm pressed lightly over his heart.
Bi-Han’s hand twitched. He didn’t pull away.
“I never thought I’d see you like that,” Tomas continued, fingers tracing small, aimless patterns over his chest. “Let alone feel you.”

Bi-Han blinked hard. His throat ached. Something knotted inside him—guilt, heat, shame, sadness. He had no words for it all.
“You were perfect,” Tomas whispered. “You always are.”
Bi-Han breathed, shallow and rough.
“You don’t have to say things like that.”
“I want to,” Tomas said simply. “You should be told. You should be adored.”
He kissed the nape of Bi-Han’s neck. So soft. Bi-Han’s eyes stung at the contact.
“How long,” Tomas whispered, “have you wanted this?”
Bi-Han didn’t answer. His lips stayed pressed together, his face turned toward the wall. But his body gave him away. Tomas nuzzled behind his ear.
Still, no reply. But the silence was loud enough.
“You never told him, did you?” Shang murmured. “He never knew what he meant to you.”
Bi-Han’s jaw clenched. It was unbearable. The gentleness. Knowing it has been all real. And not.
Tomas’s lips kissed down his spine. “He may have stayed, you know. If you had asked.”
“You don’t know that,” Bi-Han rasped.
“I do,” Tomas whispered. “Because I would’ve.”
Bi-Han turned then, slowly, and looked at him.
That wasn’t Tomas’s gaze. It was cleverer. Older. Sharper behind the softness. But the eyes… the face…
Shang’s illusion was flawless.
“Why?” Bi-Han whispered.
Tomas only smiled faintly and leaned into his hand, as though touched by the question. “Because you deserve to be loved the way you crave. Even if it’s only once.”
Bi-Han swallowed thickly. His hand drifted down, a little clumsy, uncertain, brushing the line of Tomas’s abdomen. He traced it gently. Still slick, still flushed in places, from where Bi-Han had pressed him, fingers and hips digging into muscle and bone. He moved lower, across Tomas’s thigh, and watched the shine left behind by his own seed. The proof of what he’d done to him. What Tomas had let him do.
He dipped his fingers in it, slow and reverent. Then swept it aside. He wanted to make him clean. Needed to. He wanted to bathe this beautiful, impossible body the same way he had when they were children – times when this body was this scarless. Bi-Han imagines himself, the way it was, sneaking into Tomas’s room after training, wiping away blood from scraped knees or dirty bruises he never explained. Only now…
Now it was different. Entirely different. Tainted.
And still—
“You’re warm,” Tomas murmured.
“So are you,” Bi-Han replied, so softly it hurt.
Silence.
The kind of silence where you feel utterly known. Utterly vulnerable.
Utterly safe.
Bi-Han tucked them both under the covers. Tomas curled against his side. One hand on his chest, one wrapped around his wrist.
Then Tomas pressed a final kiss to his collarbone.
And Bi-Han, exhausted both body and mind, finally let himself fall asleep.

Notes:

I apologize to everyone who wasn't really up for Tomas smut here! But Shang likes shit like this. And we both wanted to give Bi-Han his dream first time 😈

Chapter 3: He wanted it to burn.

Summary:

Well, it's finally done!
Ended up a bit of surprise to myself tbh

The dawn hadn’t broken yet. The room was still cloaked in that deep, violet-blue that comes just before first light—soft shadows, muted lines.
Bi-Han opened his eyes.
For a moment, there was warmth.
A breath against his chest. A weight curled near his ribs.
Then—
Memory.
It hit like a sudden plunge through ice.
Everything.
The hands on his body. The tremble. The pleasure that had left him writhing like an animal above the illusion of someone he—
No.
He jerked upright, heart pounding.
And there he was.
Still beside him.
Still in Tomas’s skin.
Still sleeping.
Peacefully.
Bi-Han’s mouth went dry. He stared—frozen. Not at Tomas. Not really.
At Shang Tsung.
Because he saw him perfectly clear now ever under Tomas’s pale skin.
His mind had just refused to hold it last night.
But now it did. Now it screamed.
That voice whispering and moaning – that was Shang.
Those hands guiding him — Shang.
Those grey eyes watching him tremble, fall apart, confess — all Shang.
He had given himself over. All of him. To a lie.
To the most dangerous lie of all.
And he had loved it.
Bi-Han swung his legs over the edge of the bed, his skin flushed, hot. There was still the faint scent he never knew before, but had no problem recognising now. In the room, on his skin, on the linens. A sweetness turned to rot in his nose. He felt the bile rising before he could stop it.
He staggered toward the small washbasin. Clutched its edge.
But he didn’t throw up.
He breathed in through his nose, fast and sharp. His chest heaved. His hands trembled.
He looked back.
Tomas—Shang—still slept.
A picture-perfect dream.
His. Probably all he ever really wanted.
Bi-Han made a strangled sound—half fury, half grief.
He got dressed.
And then he ran. The cold air hit his skin like knives. His breath came in short bursts.
He just had to get away.
From that bed. From that illusion. From himself. From Shang Tsung.
From a fucking fantasy.
The moment Bi-Han reached his quarters, the door slammed shut behind him with a violence that echoed in the vast, silent space. He didn’t stop. He didn’t breathe. He tore the clothes he knew he would burn later, let it fall to the floor, and stumbled into his private shower.
The water scalded as soon as it hit his skin—but he didn’t flinch.
He wanted it to burn.
Hot. Relentless. Stripping. Punishing.
He slammed his palm against the control panel until the pressure surged, until the jets blasted him from all angles. His long hair flattened against his face, water pouring down in torrents that hissed against the tiles.
Still not enough.
He grabbed the black soap bar—the one with sand and volcanic ash, meant to exfoliate—rough, raw. He scraped it down his arms, over his chest, between his thighs, again and again and again, until the skin went red and angry, and even then—he didn’t stop.
He couldn’t.
He had to get it off.
The memory of Tomas. The feel of Shang.
The sound of his own moans, like a stranger's voice in his mouth.
Bi-Han gritted his teeth and bit back a broken sound, forcing the bar against his chest so hard it left marks.
He hated it.
He hated himself.
His breath was ragged now, hiccupping against the steam.
He dropped the soap with a clatter, both hands bracing against the tile as the water pounded his back like fists.
Then—without meaning to—his legs folded under him. He sank down onto the wet stone floor. He pressed his forehead to the ground. And finally—
broke.
The sob rose from deep in his chest. Then another. He choked on it, tried to silence it with his hand, but it kept coming. Searing. Animal. Unstoppable. Tears mixed with the water already running down his face, and for once he didn’t care about appearances, didn’t care if someone heard, didn’t care that he looked pathetic.
All he could feel was the shame—the wretched, burning shame.
And that no matter how hard he scrubbed, how long he let the water batter him—none of it would come off. Ever.
He stayed like that. Soaked. Naked. Shaking. Curled on the floor of a shower too grand for any one man.
Until his body gave up.
Until he could cry no more.
Until only the hollow was left.
He dressed up again mechanically. Robes over skin still raw. His jaw was tight, movements sharp and clumsy like a man wearing armor too heavy for his own body. When he passed by the mirror, he didn’t look. He couldn’t. But his thoughts refused him the same mercy.
They churned.
What if Shang tells someone?
What if someone saw him going in or out?
What if Tomas ever finds out somehow?
Panic clawed again at his ribs. No amount of discipline or breath control could hold it down for long.
He slammed the flat of his hand on the doorframe—once, twice.
The noise cracked like thunder.
First solution came almost without thinking.
“Lock him up. No one speaks to him. No one goes near him. If he resists—”
No. That was stupid. Reckless.
What if Shang talks to the guards? Gets inside their heads?
“No, no. Too risky.”
Bi-Han paced the room like a storm, breathing through clenched teeth, turning sharply at every corner.
"Call Sektor," he thought. "Tell her to observe him. Discreetly. Report anything."
Then another surge of dread. Sektor could be trusted but wasn’t always discreet. And too curious. Too interested. Shang might notice. Might even enjoy it.
“Fuck.”
He changed his mind again.
And then he was out. Walking fast. Boots like thunder on stone. Eyes scanning every corner of the compound. He didn’t even know why he needed to see Shang yet. Only that he had to.
To confirm he hadn’t left.
Hadn’t shifted again.
Hadn’t opened his mouth.
To control the situation.
To see the face that wore Tomas like a skin, and remind himself it was a lie.

He reached the guest wing again. His steps slowed.
The door.
Bi-Han stared at the wood for a long moment, hands clenched. His throat tightened. Rage and dread surged hot in his stomach, and something else curled in beneath them. Something softer. That sick longing again.
He opened the door.
Shang was seated by the window.
Dressed already, pale robes of soft, expensive fabric, loose at the collar like sleep had only just left him.
He turned slowly at the sound. Not startled. Expectant.
“Grandmaster,” he said. Low. Calm. “I hoped you might stay.”
Bi-Han stepped in and shut the door behind him. Too quickly.
Shang remained where he was—serene, obviously amused, but there was a sharpness to it. A predator playing delicate.
He folded his hands. “At least you didn’t send your assassins. I’m flattered.”
Bi-Han stared.
“You will never speak of what happened last night.”
Shang tilted his head, slowly. “Of course not.”
The words came too quickly. Too easily for Bi-Han to really believe.
“You think I would cheapen it?” Shang asked softly, rising from the chair. “Let someone else touch what you gave me?”
Bi-Han’s eyes narrowed.
Shang took a step closer.
“I gave you what you asked for,” he said, voice lowering, “And it was even better than I imagined it would be like. You… was so lost in me. And now I know—” he gave Bi-Han a sweet smile, “—you’ll never forget how this felt.”
“Don’t,” Bi-Han growled.
“You’re magnificent when you let go. Terrifying, even.” Shang stopped. Studied him. “Now you think it was only illusion,” he murmured. “But tell me—what really did you feel? When you touched him?”
Bi-Han’s breath caught. His body knew the answers before his mind could stop them: “Home”.
He hated it.
And Shang saw it.
“I can give you even more,” Shang said, a touch of something dangerous returning now. “I can be more. Not just illusion. I can learn him, become what your heart remembers. And you will never be denied again.”
Bi-Han took a step back like struck.
"That will never happen again," he spat.
“Last night you came inside me begging,” Shang said softly.
Silence. Trembling silence.
Bi-Han wanted to kill him. Or kiss him again. Or scream. Or disappear.
“I should have you executed,” he whispered.
Shang smiled—quietly, sincerely this time.
“You won’t,” he said.
And damn it, he was right.
Bi-Han’s voice was hoarse, low, barely audible over the pounding in his skull.
“What do you want now?”
The question fell from his lips like rusted metal—jagged, reluctant, corroded by shame.
Shang, still standing a few paces away, did not smile this time. He simply regarded him.
“What do you think I want?” Shang asked at last, evenly. He walked a slow, deliberate circle around him—not looking menacing, not flirtatious either. Just observant. Curiously still.
Then he said, “I want you to see me some day. Not as a tool,” he went on. “Not as an enemy you half-trust because the circumstances demand it. Not as some dangerous calculating thing you need to control. I want you to look at me the way you did last night.”
Shang stepped closer. Just close enough that Bi-Han could smell him—clean now, sharp like spices and cool stone.
“I’ve played a thousand parts for many people,” Shang said quietly. “But I never had them take me like you did.”
He was close now. Just a breath away.
“I want it again,” Shang whispered.
Bi-Han’s breath trembled.
“I want to be yours again,” he said—and that was the truth.
But not the whole truth of course.
Because beneath the charm, beneath the practiced vulnerability and soft-voiced longing, Shang did want something more.
He wanted a safeguard.
He wanted asylum—a place to run if his other alliances collapsed, if Liu Kang turned his eye on him again, if the multiverse tilted wrong. He wanted protection. The kind someone like Bi-Han—deadly and unloved—could provide perfectly.
So Shang never mentioned the word “sanctuary.” Never said, “Shield me when I’m in danger.”
He just whispered, “You didn’t want it to end either… did you?”
He watched Bi-Han stagger under the weight of it all—guilt, lust, confusion. The kind of confusion Shang could mold into anything he wanted, if he was patient. And Shang Tsung had always been patient. Waiting, watching men rise and fall under their own delusions, have taught him to move quietly, speak gently, and smile as he sharpened the blade.
Bi-Han was no different, of course. A weapon with a heart he pretended not to have. A tyrant trying to convince himself he was not lonely.
Shang saw it all. And he wanted it.
Not just for the game—though the game was sweet. Not just for the power—though Bi-Han’s protection would be his safety net. There was something in the way Bi-Han trembled under his touch, the way his body obeyed and defied all at once.
So when Bi-Han turned away in shame, stammered and froze, Shang didn't press. He touched his shoulder just enough. He let silence do the rest.
He didn’t say banal things like “I love you.” He said, “I want to take care of you.
And he said true things – not “I’ll use you.”, but “You deserve to be wanted.”
Shang Tsung knew it worked better that way. Bi-Han would never surrender to a demand. But he would give things away—grudgingly, messily—if he thought they would not be taken. That was the real magic here.
Shang watched him, memorizing every flicker of indecision, every hungry glance, every violent refusal that barely hid longing.
“He wanted to be seen as strong.
He wanted to be made to feel weak.
He wanted his Tomas—but wouldn’t ever make that boy his.”
So when Bi-Han asked, “What do you want from me?” Shang celebrated victory inside.
It was already happening.
Bi-Han was already his.

 

From that time on, Shang moved through the Lin Kuei compound like a man at home.
No one had given him that right of course, not officially—he hadn’t been named an ally, or even a guest with standing—but he took it anyway. He passed through the halls with his hands behind his back, robes trailing, eyes sharp and slow and searching. He asked questions with the politeness of one who expected answers. He smiled with the serenity of someone who knew he would not be denied for long.
He lingered too long before the honor scrolls in halls. Read names. Observed the training grounds. Spoke to Sektor as if they were equals.
Sektor gave clipped answers. Let him know he was monitored. But not openly challenged.
It didn’t matter. Shang wasn’t looking for trust. He was listening for weakness. And so started to linger near the laboratories, offering Sektor quiet, pointed advice. Most of it was met with mechanical indifference or open annoyance, but sometimes the smallest flicker of calculation passed through Sektor’s gaze—a sign that Shang had planted something worth keeping. It bloomed into him being allowed inside the labs when he promised expert advice on neural system alterations when the first four tries went wrong in one of the final stage segments.
Frost did not like him though. And she never pretended otherwise. But when she cut at him with her cold wit, it only made him smile sharper. He admired her for it—the blunt edge, the lack of fear. They were somehow similar to her Grandmaster’s, or would have been, if Bi-Han wasn't broken by someone long ago, deep in his past.
Shang Tsung watched everything—the way initiates moved when they saw him, the stiffness in the air after he passed, the shadowed hush when they thought he was gone. This place had discipline, but also unrest. Silence, but not stillness.
He took it all in with the eyes of a man marking the territory before it was his.
Meanwhile, Bi-Han unraveled deeper.
They never spoke again of the night in the guest chamber. But sometimes—when the halls were empty, when a door clicked shut—Bi-Han would seize him. A rough pull into a darkened corner. A kiss like he was trying to silence himself. Fingers mowing with the violence of a man doing something he already regretted.
Shang always let him lead, even though he could have turned the tide with a single touch. Always let Bi-Han decide how far they’d go – a hurried blowjob, the sound of Bi-Han’s breath breaking above him; or handwork stolen between the clan councils; or just a heated devouring kiss that left marks on Shang's neck. Always in haste. Always with Bi-Han’s body straining forward and his mind snapping back like a tether—unwilling, but unable to stop.

 

Shang waited for Bi-Han to come to him willingly, fully, with the slow, savoring calculation of a predator certain of the moment his prey would walk into his mouth.
But his patience began to wear thin the moment Quan Chi came out of the portal and leaned in with that whisper of a new scheme.
It was reckless—brilliant in theory, but brittle. They had lost too much already. Rain and Havik were gone, pulled from the board by their own indignation once they realized how deftly they had been used. Fools. Shang had almost admired their instinct for self-preservation, even as it gutted the strength of their ranks. Shao and Reiko still chased their dragon legends – it would only be too foolish to harvest that seed without waiting for the ripe fruit.
He could not afford another loss.
And Bi-Han— Bi-Han was proving infuriatingly slow. Still closed off in the way of one who could be pushed only so far before he retreated and sealed the door behind him. Shang knew the signs.
So he changed the game. It was time he began his research in earnest.
Not the kind that announced itself, surely, not the clumsy prying that would trigger Bi-Han’s suspicion. This was a quiet excavation. He walked the Lin Kuei halls like a man half-distracted by his own work, but behind every polite nod and offhand question was a precise intent.
He started with the honor scrolls again, reading names and ranks, noting which years bore Tomas’s presence and which did not. But the written record told him where Tomas had been, but not who he was. For that, Shang needed voices.
Shang knew where true history lived, and it was not scrolls or open chronicles. The old servants were the real archivists, keepers of memories too small or too embarrassing to be written down. They carried the weight of private stories of the Lin Kuei’s years in their bones, and if you spoke to them with enough admiration—especially for their Grandmaster—they would speak.
And admiration was an easy mask for him to wear. And it wasn’t entirely false. Shang let his fascination show, allowed his eyes to brighten and his voice to soften whenever he mentioned the man. He became the picture of a guest so inspired by his host that he could not help but want to know everything about him.
The old women in the laundry were first. Such a polite foreign gentleman. A scholar amongst warriors. Perfect for a rare pleasant chat. To his careful probes of questions about clan’s only typhomanser, they remembered a boy who was quieter than most, but with a temper that burned through his stillness when provoked. Tomas was different from the start. A foundling, brought to the Lin Kuei under mysterious circumstances, a child whose origins no one would speak of plainly. Some said it was the young Grandmaster who had been the one to bring him, bloodied, in his arms, another added, or at least the one who had stood by his side when his father questioned the boy. There was a wildness in him, a restlessness that often landed him in the medics’ care. Women shook heads and spread their hands.
And indeed medics remembered patching Tomas up more often than anyone else. He was “special,” they said—not like the others, not really meant for this life, yet somehow thriving in it through sheer stubbornness. And Bi-Han, for all his severity, always seemed to know where Tomas was, as though keeping an invisible tether on him.
“But of course, Master Kuai Liang”, they said, quickly correcting themselves, not to sound too fond of traitors, “was the one Grandmaster guarded most fiercely.” If his brother was threatened, Bi-Han was already there, a wall no one dared cross.
But as the years passed and Bi-Han rose to his current title, apparently the balance shifted.
Shang listened to all of it, collecting fragments the way a jeweler sorts gemstones—turning them over, testing their weight, imagining how they could be cut. He began to picture not just the man Bi-Han was now, but the shape of his life with those brothers who have left—the old protectiveness, the rifts, the stubborn bonds that would not break fully.
And, most importantly, he began to imagine exactly how to press them.
But one day, before he could have acted upon it, Bi-Han was simply gone.
No morning briefing, no presence in the training yards, no silent watch from the gallery as the initiates sparred. Hours passed without a sight of him. It was unheard of for the Grandmaster to vanish without a word. Even the most private of matters never kept him from his rounds.
By midday, Sektor had taken it upon herself to start looking. Frost moved with her, sharp eyes scanning the halls and courtyards. She had grown bolder in her manners—more than a lieutenant now, but something closer to a favorite. She moved with the poise of someone who knew she had her superior’s approval, the kind of approval that could make a person untouchable.
Sektor had called Frost her “firstborn” once, and the word had stayed. She was her project, her masterpiece, the first Cyber Lin Kuei real prototype now. The bond between them was clearly more than professional—Sektor had shaped her, rebuilt her, sharpened, until Frost was the weapon she had dreamed of making. And in turn, she trusted her with the kind of absolute certainty machines were built for.
It was fascinating for Shang to watch. Even if mostly useless for now. One engineer of flesh recognising the other with measured respect and admiration, ready to steal any idea that proves valuable.
They searched the whole compound in near silence – every chamber, every hallway, until it became clear that Bi-Han was nowhere within reach. Even though Grandmaster’s private wing was out of question for in person searching, Sektor’s sensors swept through it, heat and movement signatures showing nothing.
When questioned, Shang Tsung had told the truth – he had no idea where Bi-Han was either. What he kept secret, of course, was that he knew what had happened the night before disappearing.
He has found the small tray of bottles on the low table in the guest chamber not as he had left it. Shang had frowned at the single missing bottle. He had brought the collection with him—a tight row of spirits arranged like a line of trophies—and one gone from its place looked like a careless insult.
Though when he saw Bi-Han later in private study he had been granted the key from, he did not accuse, of course. He never would with the Grandmaster, not when the best effect still was gentleness. He just smoothed his robes, and moved to the desk where Bi-Han had flung himself at, a shadow from recent lack of sleep and excess. The scent of alcohol clung to the man—sharp, bitter, a thing Shang inhaled with a measuring interest. It was such a dissonance – always sharp and fresh frosty feeling of Bi-Han’s presence, almost non-existing scent of him and this sticky sweetness hitting the nostrils in his proximity now.
“There is one bottle missing from my set,” Shang said softly, as if stating the weather. “Now I think I may know why.” He waited for the rebuke, the denial that always followed making confession easier.
But Bi-Han’s eyes stayed distant; he blinked like a man surfacing from the cold water. Shang reached out then, not brusque, just to tuck a thin lock back from Bi-Han’s forehead. Then he let his fingers trail down his jaw.
Bi-Han flinched at the touch, and still Shang’s hand moved lower—tentative, coaxing—and the sorcerer’s voice was low and easy: “It is enjoyed best in company, don’t you think?”
The invitation was soft, but the intent. Shang moved to undo the knot at Bi-Han’s throat as he had before, moved to peel the layer away with the casual familiarity of one who believed he had been granted intimacy. Bi-Han stopped breathing the way a man who had been drowned before learned not to fight this time. He just swallowed. Once, then again. And again. His breathing became faster and Shang’s hands became bolder. Bi-Han moaned helplessly.
“That’s it,” Shang thought. “Now you are mine”.
Then suddenly, as if to punish what he had allowed himself, Bi-Han did something that seemed not thought out so much as reflex—a cruel, immediate act of reclamation. He formed a shard of ice from his palm and dragged it across his own left forearm. The movement was jagged; the line of cold on flesh instantly flared with red wetness. It was not an elegant thing. It was not even theatrical. It was a raw, private method to snap a mind back into its own governance.
Shang didn’t hold a short swearing. He watched the flash of pain bring color back to Bi-Han’s face, watched the sudden clarity that pain afforded. Grandmaster’s breath calmed. Then, as if obeying some law, Bi-Han stepped back, gathered what remained of his composure with ragged perfection, and fled—bare feet striking cold stone, a quiet storm gone mad in the corridors.
Shang rose slowly, dumbstroke. He folded his robe around himself .
“Well, go then” he whispered to the air Bi-Han had left behind.
When the echoes from the door he slammed closed died, Shang wiped the faint wet smear on Bi-Han’s blood from his wrist. With quiet surprise he noted that some part of him wanted to call after him. To order the guards, to let at least someone know.
But he only rose calmly and went back to his room that he quite honestly learned to like. The absence in place of a missing bottle looked back at him – an accusation and an explanation at once. He set his palm over the empty space where it had sat, then simply put the elegant glass lid over his remaining bottles and listened to the compound settle, calculating.
“I do not need a ruin,” He told himself. And when in less than an hour the bottles under the lid became one less, he repeated it once again. Two less – and he kept repeating it, unsure who of them he had meant exactly.

 

Miles away, Bi-Han found the Shirai Ryu compound without much effort. The air was different here—warmer, carrying the smell of woodsmoke and grilled food instead of the cold steel tang of the Lin Kuei halls. The voices that drifted over the outer wall were easy, unarmored, carrying laughter that did not need to be stifled.
Like them were not even thinking someone would come for them.
Fools.
For one long, coiled second Bi-Han stood just beyond the threshold, imagining the rush forward—the icy bloom in his hands, the shock on their faces, the chaos he could birth before any of them understood what was happening. Alone, he could cut through them. Alone, he could erase this place, burn the oblivious peace out of it. The thought pulsed hot in his chest like a second heartbeat.
He knew that it would be a grave mistake to underestimate Lin Kuei, even if they decided they are not ones anymore. Even if his foolish brother imagined his parody of a clan is off limits because they were family.
He knew he would be met like an enemy if he came like one. He knew that despite letting their men fool around, his brothers won’t be so easy to ambush. He knew that if he was to hurt one the other would bleed him out. Still he didn’t care.
He moved on the roof, silent as a shadow, following the sound of voices until the inner courtyard opened before him. No one of interest for him. Several silent leaps and he found himself across the window of a smaller house, spilling the light, as if the inside was overflowing with golden precious warmth. With home.
Of course, he saw them there. Kuai Liang was leaning over a low table, explaining something on a parchment spread between them. Tomas—his Tomas, though the claim felt like blasphemy even in his own head—was close enough that their shoulders brushed. And Kuai touched him without hesitation, a hand at the small of his back.
Bi-Han stood frozen as if rooted to the lacquered tiles of the roof. He could not remember the last time he had seen his younger brother smile like that. Tomas smiled back, leaning in to say something impossible for Bi-Han to hear. Then Kuai Liang kissed him, brief and certain, the kind of kiss born not of hunger but of confidence in possession and promise.
It struck him. It really did.
Rage rose first—bright, blinding, burning through every thought. “That can not be true.”
Then pain came crashing in, slower, heavier, wrapping around his ribs like cold iron. They looked…happy. Tomas’s shoulders had lost that wary tension he used to constantly carry in Lin Kuei halls. Kuai Liang’s hand lingered as if it belonged there by right.
And there was something else threaded through it, some old and stubborn tenderness Bi-Han could not kill in himself. After all this was his brother, the boy he had once shielded from blows and cold nights, who now guarded someone else with that same fierce devotion. And this someone was the man Bi-Han wanted.
It was too much. Too much to stand there and watch, too much to move, too much to stay. The sight before him was a perfection that should not have existed—a harmony built without him, without his permission, without his presence. It felt obscene in its beauty. The feel of betrayal seared through him—sharp, raw. They both had been his—in one way or another—and now they existed like this, openly, comfortably, without him.
Hurt bled into fury still, his mind twisted with violent imaginings. He wanted to set the whole place ablaze, to watch the wood crack and fall to ash. He wanted to summon an endless storm of ice until every beam split under the weight of it, every fire guttered out, every warm breath turned to frost in their lungs. He wanted to shatter the happiness he saw before it could take a firmer root.
But he did none of it. His cheek was between his teeth before he even realized it, the pressure building until skin tore. Salt and copper flooded his mouth, thick and metallic, pooling under his tongue. He bit harder, letting the pain keep him upright, letting the taste of blood drown the rising tide inside his chest.
Behind the closed window they kissed again—quick, almost thoughtless—and the smallest, most poisonous thought coiled inside Bi-Han: “Tomas never looked at me like that.” It was enough to make his fingers twitch, to make the air around him shiver faintly with cold.
When he finally turned away, it was not because the ache lessened but because he could not bear to feel it grow any further. Bi-Han slipped back into the trees, his steps silent but heavy. By the time he reached the road, the blood in his mouth had cooled, and he swallowed it without flinching. The image of the busy courtyard left behind stayed with him all the way back, vivid and merciless, a wound he carried home like a trophy and a curse.
He thought—torturously, obsessively—how could it be that all three of them had become so depraved? All of them, without exception, had chosen to indulge in forbidden love, to fall into the shameful pull of their own sex. It twisted his mind into knots he could not undo. With the upbringing they had, with the discipline carved into them from childhood, with the example of strength and propriety drilled into their bones—how had it come to this?
The thoughts came sharp and unrelenting, each one steeped in bitterness and bile. His mind reached for the most hurtful words it could find, the ones that had been hammered into him long before he was old enough to question them. Words that stank of scorn, of dirt, of sin. He spat them silently at Kuai Liang, at Tomas, at himself. “Perverse. Weak. Filthy.” The syllables echoed inside his head, each one a lash. Again and again as he run.
He could almost convince himself they were beneath him, that their closeness was a corruption he had been spared. But the lie tasted bitter in his mouth. Because even as he condemned them, he could not stop remembering the warmth of another man’s skin under his hands, the press of lips against his own, the heat that bloomed in his chest and between his ribs when he was touched like that.

It made him furious—at them, at himself, at whatever flaw in the world had set them all on this path. He thought of his father’s cold eyes, the rigid expectations of his beloved mother, the way weakness had never been tolerated. But this was not mere weakness, he told himself—it was rot. It was a spreading sickness that had somehow claimed them all.

 

When Bi-Han returned, the corridors of the compound seemed to part for him. The air clung cold to his skin, his fury radiating in a way that made even passing servants lower their gaze and step aside. He went straight to his chambers, the door sliding open to reveal Shang Tsung seated casually at the low table, as though he had been waiting there for some time. A cup of wine rested in his hand.
He barely had the chance to speak before Bi-Han was on him. The force of it was sudden, brutal—hands grabbing, shoving, tearing him up from where he sat. There were no words, no explanation, only the rough weight of a man who suddenly had decided to take what he wanted. With or without permission. Shang’s breath caught sharply, a startled sound escaping his lips as his back met the cold wall. “Bi-Han—” he began, but the syllables died when fingers dug into his jaw, tilting his head back with unyielding force.
Shang tried to steady his breath, to reclaim that measured, mocking composure he so often wore, but the sheer ferocity in Bi-Han’s eyes rattled something deep in him. His protest was brief, a half-formed “wait—” before it was swallowed under the press of Bi-Han’s body. The Grandmaster was unrelenting, his grip bringing pain, his movements claiming. The cold of his skin seeped into Shang’s, a contrast that made every drag of touch and breath more jarring.
Shang’s pulse pounded fast.
He hadn’t expected this—hadn’t thought Bi-Han capable of letting go so fully, of giving in to something so violent in its urgency. Bi-Han did not care. He did not pause to measure Shang’s reactions, did not soften or slow.
Shang’s hands came up between them, palms braced against Bi-Han’s chest, not with true strength—Bi-Han’s weight was too much for that—but with the intent to slow him, to force even a moment’s pause. “Enough,” Shang said, his tone pitched low, deliberate, the same voice he used when he wished to pull the strings of men who thought themselves untouchable. He tilted his chin, trying to meet Bi-Han’s eyes in challenge, to remind him that power did not only come from force of arm. But the hard press of his body still advancing, the cold-firm grip of his hands on his arms, on his hip, pulling him back against the wall with a weight that brooked no refusal. For the first time here, Shang felt the ground shift beneath his feet—not the metaphorical battlefield of words and influence, but the physical reality that no matter how quick his tongue, Bi-Han could simply choose not to listen.

The realization coiled like ice in his gut. He had not prepared for this—had not imagined the Grandmaster would take without negotiation, without the smallest check for consent. This was not the measured game he knew how to win. Pain, unpleasantness, loss of control—he could see them coming now, the inevitability of them, and the thought made his skin prickle.
He tried again, urgent and scared, “Bi-Han—stop.” But the words hit the air like fragile glass, shattering uselessly against the wall of the other man’s intent. Bi-Han’s grip only tightened, his focus unshaken. And Shang, for all his cunning and pride, felt that rare, unwelcome sensation flood him—powerlessness, sudden and absolute.
Bi-Han’s hands were tearing at the layered silk and brocade as if they were nothing but obstacles. Shang’s breath caught, instinct drove him to twist away, to slide out from under the weight that pinned him. But Bi-Han’s arm came down hard, a strike across the cheek that cracked the attempt before it could form into escape.
The sound was sharp in the room, he sting blooming hot against Shang’s face. His eyes widened—not only from the pain, but from the sheer audacity of it. And then there was no space to breathe, no space to speak, because Bi-Han’s mouth was on his again, crushing, punishing, tasting of blood where teeth had caught lips.
When Bi-Han pulled back, his breath came ragged, his eyes dark with something that was not desire alone. His voice was a low, hard thing, the words ground out like an order, not a request.
“Shift,” he growled. “Into him.”
Shang’s body went still beneath him, the hit on his cheek still throbbing, the meaning behind the demand settling like a blade against his throat.
For a heartbeat, the room was still—cold tension hanging heavy in the air. Then Bi-Han’s expression hardened into something merciless. The next strike came swift and brutal, snapping Shang’s head to the side. His breath caught with the impact, the heat of the blow blooming across his skin even as a numbness began to seep in beneath it. His shock was visceral—not because he had not expected violence from Bi-Han, but because it was so absolute, so stripped of the strange, unspoken boundaries they had once circled around.
For a moment he couldn’t move, couldn’t decide if he should fight or yield. Then, something in him shifted—an instinct not for survival in the physical sense, but for survival of the self. His mind recoiled, retreating from the immediacy of the moment. He thought of the one person Bi-Han truly wanted, the ghost of a longing that had brought this violence to life.
He closed his eyes and let the magic curl through him, bones and skin reweaving until Tomas’s face looked back from where his own had been. It wasn’t only surrender—it was an escape. The thought of not being himself, of letting this happen to a body and face that were not his, felt like a sliver of distance from his terrible reality. It was a small, bitter salvation—one that came with its own sting, because even in this borrowed skin, the memory of this would still be his.
Shang couldn’t believe it had come to this. The realization burned hotter than the sting on his cheek, settling into his chest like a weight too heavy to lift. His throat tightened, and he swallowed hard, the bitterness of bile rising as his mind fought for clarity. Instinct told him to resist, to claw and bite, to summon the magic that always saved him—but now it felt like nothing. He tried anyway. His nails raked against cold skin, desperate, frantic, but Bi-Han hardly flinched.
And yet—beneath the horror, a thought wormed its way forward, vile but solid. If he endured this, if he survived it, Bi-Han would carry the guilt like chains for the rest of his life. That guilt could be sharpened, bent into something useful. A leverage. His mind worked feverishly in the cracks between panic, whispering: perhaps it was worth it, if it meant control later. Perhaps he could twist this into power.
His mind raced, fractured into past and present, his body reacting not to Bi-Han alone but to the ghost of every hand that had ever held him down. He hated himself for it, for being dragged into that weakness again, for the tremor in his breath and the panic threatening to swallow him whole. He let his body go lump, surrendering.
At that – Bi-Han suddenly went rigid. Like the movement was provoked only by resistance. Grandmaster's breath stuttered as though a blade had pierced through the haze of fury and hunger that had consumed him. His hands, still gripping Shang’s arms, shook violently before letting go. For a heartbeat he remained there, hovering above him, his face twisted in recognition and horror breaking through the storm. Then, without warning, he tore himself away, stumbling back as though burned.
He doubled over, clutching his stomach, and vomited onto the floor. The stench filled the room, bitter and acidic, but more overwhelming was the sight of Bi-Han—the great Sub-Zero—reduced to this convulsing, broken figure.
His disgust was palpable, even if aimed inward. Bi-Han pressed his hand against the wall for balance, shaking his head. He whispered something too faint to hear, then louder, harsher—words cracked in his throat, curses hurled at himself.
Shang sat up where he had been thrown onto the bed. His wrists throbbed from the grip, his chest rose and fell in shallow, quick breaths, but his mind could not keep up with the sudden shift. A moment ago he had been bracing for the inevitable, surrendering to a horror he had no way to prevent. Now the man who had pinned him, who had struck him, who had demanded his submission—was falling apart before his eyes.
And still, fear held him captive. He didn’t move. He couldn’t – body was locked in that posture of defense,every muscle tense as though Bi-Han might lunge back at him any second.
He could not understand what had just happened. The uncertainty twisted in him almost as violently as the fear. He watched Bi-Han’s shaking frame, the heaving of his chest, his eyes broken open by the weight of his own monstrosity. Wide and unfocused as they searched the face in front of him.
Still Tomas’s face.
The face Bi-Han had loved, the face he had hurt, the face that had haunted him every night since his betrayal. His voice cracked as it spilled from him, a torrent of broken apologies tumbling one over the other.
“I didn’t mean—no, I did mean—but I didn’t want… gods, Tomas, I’m so sorry… for this, for all of it, for who I am, for the things I did to you. I was cruel, I was blind, I was everything you should have been spared. Please… I can’t—” His words collapsed into sobs, his forehead pressing against the floor as though groveling at Tomas’s feet might undo years of pain lodged inside him.
“I… I was—gods, I was about to hurt you again, like I always—always did—” His voice cracked into a strangled cry. “All those years… all those years I made you—feel like nothing, like you were nothing—and I wanted you, I wanted you but I—” He pressed his forehead to the stone, teeth gritted so hard it hurt, his words scraping out of him raw.
His face twisted, tears streaking through the filth on his skin as he shook his head violently, as though trying to fling the memories away. “I hurt you, Tomas, again and again, and I never explained, never told you why I changed, why I… why I became this. I just—” his voice collapsed into a whisper, hoarse and trembling, “I just destroyed you, when all I ever—” His throat closed around the words, leaving him gasping, clutching at his own chest like the weight of it might crush him.
Shang, still wearing Tomas’s face, felt the air squeeze out of his lungs. He had been overtaken by disbelief, but now a sharp clarity cut through the fog. This man was lost in delusion, begging forgiveness from a ghost. Begging it from him, as though Shang Tsung could really be Tomas.
“I would never forgive you.”
Shang’s heart still pounded from what nearly transpired, but his mind sharpened with bitter fury. He pushed himself up from the bed, every muscle tense with rage, his voice cutting through Bi-Han’s sobbing like a blade.
Bi-Han reached out, desperate, shaking his head. “Tomas—please—”
But Shang’s eyes burned with cold fire. “Not him, not me. There is no forgiveness for you. Ever.” With that, he tore himself away from the bed, from the trembling man on the floor, his steps harsh and decisive. The illusion broke as he stormed from the room, Tomas’s form dissolving into his own.
He didn’t look back. Couldn’t. Every instinct screamed at him to flee—not just from the Lin Kuei compound, but from the suffocating madness that lived in that man’s shadow. His robes whipped against his legs as he ran through the cold halls, his mind filled with the image of Bi-Han.

Shang left the Lin Kuei compound with his fury burning cold and sharp inside him. The taste of what had happened lingered in his mouth, together with the stench of vomit and shame, that pathetic, hysterical sobbing of a man too broken to even control his own violence. Bi-Han’s hands on him left bruises.
Shang had thought himself prepared for anything, but this faliure gnawed at him in ways he hated to admit. He wanted revenge—something that would carve that rabid beast open.
For some time he let his mind linger in darker fantasies that stirred something in him—a perverse thrill, a mingling of loathing and frustrated lust. He needed his revenge. It had to be precise—as painful to break Bi-Han further, yet subtle enough not to destroy the potential value of his strength. Even after what he had done, that man’s power was too rare, too useful to waste. He planned to destroy Bi-Han not with blades, but to leave scars deeper than any wound of flesh.
Before anything else, Shang Tsung was a scientist, and he took his revenge as a delightful experiment. That required a proper research of course. So he went for a field trip.

 

The moon was hung thin, a pale sickle half-hidden in drifting clouds, the kind of sky Shang favored when he did not want to be seen. He lingered in the shadows longer than he intended, for what he saw unsettled him in ways that both delighted and disturbed. The Shirai Ryu compound, location of which he had memorized on Bi-Han’s maps, hidden in his private study, breathed with a kind of life that reminded him of the villages he had passed through in his youth, before ambition and hunger for power devoured his innocence. The yards here were lined with banners of fire, filled with the sound of training, the clang of steel on steel mingling with laughter between brothers-in-arms.
Their order was smaller than the Lin Kuei, poorer in resources, but richer in something else—something Shang almost scoffed at yet could not ignore: it was not an army forged by fear and punishment, but still a dangerous kind of strength. Belonging.
Shang studied the clan with a hunter’s eye. He noted when guards rotated, how long the night patrols lingered at the eastern walls before their path curved back. He memorized the cadence of Kuai Liang’s voice, commanding yet tempered with care.
Weak points surfaced like cracks beneath his gaze, mostly just doors too often left unbarred by the young initiates, but still this small absences of vigilance might, with the right pressure, open into catastrophe.
He kept taking notes in his mind— who stood guard the most, when the young were left alone. He measured Kuai Liang’s presence, how often the Grandmaster trained with his men, and how often he withdrew to his “brother’s” side.
That discovery intrigued him most.
When he stepped among them, disguised, the reaction nearly startled him. Eyes lit, voices softened with fondness, shoulders eased. “Master Tōmasu,” they called, greeting him. Initiates rushed to him with questions, sparring partners deferred with an affection rare in warriors.
Shang walked in their midst, outwardly calm, inwardly unsettled. He had expected Tomas to hold some place beside Kuai Liang, sure, a position of trust perhaps, but not this. All of them looked at Tomas not as an outsider, not as a liability, described to him in Lin Kuei, but as though he was the heart of their home, as though his presence meant safety. A foreign sting needled beneath Shang’s composure. He was used to admiration, but not this type, not the one that asked nothing in return. Not loyalty given freely rather than bartered for power.
Hidden in Tomas’s skin, Shang reflected bitterly: so this was what it meant to be truly loved. This was what Bi-Han had never received, what Shang himself had never sought. For a fleeting moment, he felt the danger of slipping too deep into the role, of letting Tomas’s warmth bleed into him. But then he remembered his purpose—Kuai Liang’s heart must be torn open, his clan scattered to ash.
The sorcerer hid his smirk behind Tomas’s gentle smile, thinking to himself, “What a tool this could be. To take the most beloved, the most trusted, and turn that image into betrayal.”
But then there was Kuai Liang. Scorpion. Shang shadowed him closely, measuring every step of his command, every moment he allowed himself to ease. And he saw, again and again, through different eyes on different faces, that wherever Kuai was, Tomas was not far. They ate together, trained together, shared glances that were wordless but heavy with meaning.
Shang had thought it would all be simple: wear Tomas’s face, speak his voice, and draw Grandmaster into some snare. But watching them together, he began to realize the danger in his plan. Kuai Liang did not just trust Tomas—he leaned on him, depended on him. To separate the two, to pull Kuai away under false pretenses, would take more than mimicry. It would take a perfect performance, and even then… Shang wondered, not without a flicker of unease, whether he could truly fool someone who looked at Tomas with such open devotion.
But then the other plan appeared in Shang’s imagination as it dawned on him slowly, and then all at once: Tomas was not simply Kuai Liang’s trusted second, not merely the balancing hand to the Grandmaster’s flame. They were bound together more deeply than that. The way they always sat side by side at the long tables, the unguarded warmth with which Kuai’s hand sometimes brushed Tomas’s arm. And finally Shang saw what proved all his guesses– men shared the room and entered it together for the night. Openly. Later he discovered that the clan had no doubt about it. They accepted what they saw between them as something natural. Just the way it was.
Shang withdrew into the night with the image burned into his mind: Kuai Liang’s hand resting possessively at Tomas’s back, Tomas leaning into the touch with a smile that spoke of devotion—and the perfect seed for destruction.

And then came the boy. Shang had not expected him. In Tomas’s guise, always shortly, no more than a minute or two, he had walked the training grounds, letting the eyes of the clan weigh him, testing how easily they accepted his impersonation. The child approached without hesitation, fearless, tugging at his sleeve as though it were the most natural thing in the world. “Tomu,” the boy had called him, with a voice full of affection, “will you watch my form today?” There was no formality, no stiff bow—only the disarming familiarity of someone who saw Tomas not as a distant figure, but as something his.
Shang had faltered for a fraction of a second, a hesitation he quickly masked. He nodded and let the boy chatter, let him speak of practice and lessons, and how Kuai himself had praised him the other day and promised to take them both to town for the fireworks over the weekend!
The words dug at Shang’s mind. So this boy thought of himself as something like their son. They were a family. Something this soft and foolishly human, growing at the heart of a warrior clan.
And in that moment, the plan crystallized in him. To strike at Tomas was no longer just to wound Kuai Liang’s command structure, to tear apart the fabric of what gave the Shirai Ryu its strength. It was to pierce directly into the Grandmaster’s heart. To use Tomas’s face, his voice, and lure Kuai Liang away while the clan was slaughtered would be simplest strategy, the most elegant design. And to finish it all, to kill Tomas last, before Grandmaster’s eyes.
Shang lingered longer than he intended that last evening he planned to stay at the Shirai Ryu, hidden behind borrowed faces—sometimes a servant replenishing the lamps, sometimes a faceless initiate slipping bowls from the tables—always with his eyes fixed on the center where Kuai Liang and Tomas moved together. They were bound the way that was truly maddening to watch. It would be damn hard to pull his trick with distraction. It probably would take to use the boy too then.
But what amused Shang Tsung the most was not the Grandmaster's connection with his second in command itself, but what it revealed about the whole tangle of that cursed family. He thought of Bi-Han, his shadowed longing, his self-denial stretched into rage, and how laughably futile it all had been. If that man had spent his life gnashing his teeth over desires he could not admit, then what torment it must have been to realize that the thing he wanted most had never really been unthinkable—it had simply never been his. Tomas was not in secret waiting for him, nor caught in his orbit; he had just gave himself wholly to another brother.
Shang saw now why Bi-Han carried himself with such frigid bitterness: how unbearable it must have been to stand at the edge of that light, watching what should have been his slip into the hands of the younger brother he swore to protect. And that boy himself had nothing so special about him – an outsider, a foundling folded into their home.
He found it tragic, yes. But Shang was no stranger to tragedy, and in the hollow between cruelty and pity, he always found only opportunity. If Bi-Han could not bear his own guilt and failure before, what would become of him when Kuai Liang’s clan lay in ruins, when the man he adored was slaughtered? What then, when even the faintest hope of redemption was ripped from him?

 

Shang sought out Quan Chi, slinking into the necromancer’s domain with thoughts and words ready to land with perfect indifference and persuasion.
Together they schemed, their minds like two serpents coiling tighter around the shared prey. Shang Tsung told Quan Chi only what he wanted him to know: that destroying the clan, The Keeper Of Time put his trust and hopes onto, would weaken his influence in the Earthrealm for future and that lethal confrontation between his favorite Scorpion and Lin Kuei’s Grandmaster would grab God's attention while other important moves were executed.
The Shirai Ryu would be destroyed—by Quan Chi’s hand, by his forces of hell, but under disguise, which Shang provided. Sorcerer wanted Kuai Liang left alive, drowning in his loss. When Grandmaster would see his home as frozen hell–there was no doubt Scorpion would seek Bi-Han for revenge. He would simply have to kill Kuai Liang to keep his life.
Quan Chi listened, lips curling. He saw more than Shang Tsung admitted. This petty revenge, to Liu Kang or to Sub-Zero himself, for whatever reasons, aligned perfectly with his own project. Necromancer had never missed the opportunity to wave his own threads into the plan, and so in his pale eyes another design has started to glimmer. For him, either of brothers could be more than a mere tool of Fire God's plans disruption—but a perfect vessel. A soul ripe for corruption, a warrior whose guilt, sorrow and rage might chain him willingly to the Netherrealm once the final blow was struck. If Scorpion would die by his brother's hand still grieving the clan he failed, or if the tables would turn and Scorpion killed Bi-Han in vengeance-both ways Quan Chi would seize the spirit, bind it in darkness, and forge a new type of servant—an eternal shadow, a wraith at his service.
Shang, of course, even after they parted in agreement, thought only of his own revenge. Perhaps he would go further. Perhaps he would take Tomas’s face again, step into that deceiving fragility and turn it into torment. He would come to Bi-Han, make him believe Tomas regretted ever leaving, and finally gave himself over to his rightfull Grandmaster – only to laugh into his face later, staging the spying mission and plan to find out if Bi-Han really watched him with depraved eyes. Exactly as he had guessed all his youth and laughed about with Kuai Liang.
What better punishment than to twist Bi-Han’s most secret desire into the very worst fear? To make him dare to reach out for tenderness again, in sincere, and find only mockery? Yes, that was exactly what Bi-Han deserved for how he treated people. Treated Shang Tsung.
And when it would be over, when the Shirai Ryu would be ash and Bi-Han really had no love, no brother, no dignity—only then would Shang decide if the cryomancer was still worth using.
Given he would survive Scorpion’s revenge.

Notes:

It writes itself super slow, also because I have started several fics at once and so I decided to break it into chapters. Next one will have some smut I promise!