The sky above the golden cornfield cracked loudly as shards of light scattered like a rain of tiny meteors. Ye Lin felt the ground trembling beneath his feet. Every corn kernel around him shriveled and turned to dust before his eyes.
"Lin'er..."
The voice came from every direction—from the whispering wind between corn stalks, from the ground under his feet, even from within himself. Ye Lin looked ahead. The figure of the Collector now stood maskless. His face was a terrifying collage of all lost memories:
His left eye was Ye Lin's own from when he was seven, still full of fear.
His right cheek bore the scar from his first battle with the Venom Leaf Sect.
His mouth moved with the voice of his long-dead mother.
"You think destroying the womb of the world is enough?"
Ye Lin's legs suddenly felt heavy. He looked down. His calves were turning transparent, cracking like splintered glass. The memory of sword training with his father tore away from his mind, leaving an aching void.
The Collector raised his hand. From beneath his robe woven from strands of human hair dozens, no, hundreds of shadows began to crawl out. All of them were him. The version of himself who fell into a well at age five. The fifteen-year-old who made his first kill. The twenty-year-old who died at the edge of a cliff.
"We are the parts of you that were lost," they said in unison, their voices echoing inside Ye Lin's bones and ears.
From the crowd of shadows, a small child stepped forward. His face was still untainted, unmarked by bloodshed."Why did you leave me in that well?" he asked, his clear voice breaking the heart. "I screamed for three days and nights..."
Ye Lin felt something wet on his cheek. Tears? No. Blood. Blood flowing from his eyes.
With a swift motion, he clawed at his chest, tearing skin and flesh to pull out the last three things he had left:
A single warm corn kernel
His mother's dull bone knife
A peeling iron butterfly tattoo on his arm
"Choose one," hissed the Collector, his mouth stretching to his ears. "Destroy one, and the other two are mine."
Suddenly
A cold stab in his back.
Ye Lin coughed, seeing the tip of the bone knife jutting out from his chest. Behind him stood his brother, eyes filled with tears.
"Forgive me," he whispered, embracing Ye Lin from behind—tight, like when they were children. But the embrace felt wrong. Too cold."He promised he'd bring our mother back..."
From his brother's eyes, golden worms began to crawl out.
The Collector laughed. The sound buzzed like a thousand bees."The eightieth fragment!"
The cornfield spun. Stalks snapped and flew into a vortex. Ye Lin watched his own body unravel into particles of light, drawn toward the Collector—who was now transforming.
Becoming their mother.
But her mouth was too wide, her teeth too sharp, and her eyes as empty as an old well.
"My child..." her voice echoed as her too-long arms reached toward Ye Lin.
In that final moment, the corn kernel in Ye Lin's hand suddenly opened. A tiny sprout emerged, embedding golden roots into his palm.
And from the wound in his chest, a small shadow leapt out.
"We do not die today," it whispered in a voice suddenly grown wise.
The world exploded in white light.
When Ye Lin's vision returned, he stood in the middle of a newly sprouting cornfield. In his hand, the bone knife still dripped with fresh blood.
And in the distance, beyond the morning fog, someone was watching him.
Someone with iron wings who looked very much like him.