It's right… I am soft.
The moment I hesitated to devour Mei Mei wasn't sincerity. I had planned to infuse her spirit fragments with fear—enough to lure in any demon beast that could sense her.
Qiren knew that.
But when he looked at her, it felt wrong to use her that way.
They were knocked too far underground.
She would've had to leave the crash site, risking her life just to return. Best case, she brought back a couple of birds, and he could kill them with his hair—
Worst case, they'd capture her. Torture her for days.
He couldn't bring himself to imagine that.
So when she told him he could eat her, he felt relief. At least then, he could give her a quick death.
I got attached…
Now I'm going to die here.
Frustration churned in him. What-ifs flooded his mind—missed opportunities, wasted time, his own indecisiveness.
Hahahaha.
The sound cracked out of him.
It was time to laugh.
"Fine…"
His ego tilted its head.
Qiren's grin turned manic.
"Let's try transferring my memories~"
The figure before him smiled.
"Oh."
Its eyes lit up, sensing the change in his voice—planned, calculated, stubborn. The opposite of a man about to give up.
"Yeah."
He paused.
"Though I won't be giving them to you."
His talons tore into his chest.
"I think you were right. I've been wasteful. If I'd found a way to kill all those hatchlings above, I might never have ended up like this."
Slosh… Slosh…
His fingers burrowed deeper.
"So I'll learn from that."
"This time, I'll start by pushing my Shamanic Dao."
His hand closed around a hidden sphere inside him. White mist poured from the wound as he pulled it free.
"I'll be seeing you around~," he cooed, soul in hand, as his consciousness began to slip.
The leaking spirit mist twisted into a rope, binding the ectoplasmic sphere in his palm back to his body.
He expelled his Qi and negative karma all at once, forcing them into the sphere—trying to fill it with his memories.
His ego smirked from the sidelines, its face cracking. Its eyes drifted to his shadow.
You already have someone replacing me, it thought serenely.
It said nothing about what it saw and stepped closer.
Its wings lifted.
It's right arm stretched forward—then shattered along the long fissures running through it. Piece by piece, like clods of earthy texture breaking apart, it collapsed into dark fragments, falling away as the soul dimmed.
"You're still doing it wrong," it murmured. "You'll end up unraveling from your body like this."
The threading began to change—no longer simple spun strands, but square-linked segments.
A spiritual chain formed, binding the soul to the body—but it didn't stop there.
The sphere darkened into something deeper than shadow, blacker than the night sky itself.
The chain beneath it vanished… yet somehow remained.
Qiren's awareness thinned. His arm dropped. His body went limp.
His spirit shifted—unconsciously following the last trace of its master's negative karma, drifting with fragmented consciousness.
It arrived at the black tree statue.
The spirit slammed into the charm embedded in its back—
Shearing it to dust…
—
Bellmori City — Central Park
3:00 A.M., April 5th, 1987
"The fuck did I tell you about Tonny?" an Italian man in his late twenties muttered, huffing on a cigarette. "That bastard always loved stickin' his big toe in sauce."
His flashlight sliced through the fog blanketing the park, briefly illuminating twisted trees and dew-soaked grass before vanishing back into the haze.
"Come on, Falco," the man beside him said. "There's gotta be more to it. Tony wouldn't rat on the gang and then call us out here. Something must've happened."
Falco shot him a look.
Earlier that night, word had spread that Tony had been caught collecting evidence against the family—enough to send the Red Flags hunting him through the city until midnight.
Then, out of nowhere, Tony had contacted them.
Meet me in Central Park.
Falco swept his flashlight up a small hill. He was about to move on when something beneath a tree caught the beam—an unnatural shape along the walking path.
A blur.
"Hold up," Falco said.
They moved closer.
The blur resolved into a body sprawled on the wet ground.
"Jesus…" Mix breathed.
As they rushed forward, Falco recognized the clothes.
Tony's jacket.
One of them knelt, reaching down to check for a pulse—but the moment he stepped beneath the tree, a sudden chill crawled around his neck, cold enough to steal his breath.
He froze.
Slowly, he turned.
Nearby stood a burnt tree stump, split and blackened as if struck by lightning. Rain slid down its charred surface.
And beside it—
A man.
Naked.
Standing motionless in the rain.
Lightning flashed, and for an instant, their eyes met.
Something was wrong.
A pressure rolled off the stranger—heavy, suffocating, wrong in a way Falco had no words for. His instincts screamed.
He didn't think.
Falco hoisted Tony's limp body over his shoulder and ran.
The stranger's eyes ignited—bright blue. The moment Falco realized something was wrong, the world lurched.
They stopped short.
Rain still fell.
The man was still there.
Mix and Falco staggered back, a black mist clinging to their legs as they found themselves standing once more before the naked stranger.
"What the hell…?" Falco muttered, panic flooding his chest. We ran the other way.
Mix didn't hesitate.
He slipped brass knuckles over his fingers and lunged. Fight-or-flight had kicked in hard. He didn't know how they'd blacked out or why they were back here—but he knew one thing.
If he didn't fight, whatever happened to Tony would happen to them.
His right hook connected.
The impact echoed wetly.
"Falco—run!" Mix shouted, snapping back into a boxing stance as he hurled another punch toward the man by the stump.
Falco tried to flee again with Tony's body—
—but after a single step, a fist slammed into his face.
!!!
Mix's left hook tore through a gust of darkness.
Too late, he realized his fist wasn't meeting resistance.
It passed through the mist—and into Falco's jaw.
The momentum carried through.
Falco hit the ground hard.
"Falco!!" Mix screamed.
Tony slipped from his grasp, his cigarette spinning uselessly into the wet grass.
Rage surged.
Mix rounded on the long-haired man he thought responsible.
SWISH—THUD.
The stranger weaved effortlessly.
Mix pressed forward, jabbing again and again as the man retreated, slipping past each blow.
One punch landed square in the man's chest.
Instantly, Mix's stomach knotted.
The same cold chill wrapped around him.
He threw another punch—
—and darkness swallowed him whole.
Thunder rumbled.
When the black cloud dispersed, Mix was no longer facing the lightning-struck stump.
Or rather—
His head wasn't.
Falco, sprawled on the ground, looked up—and gagged.
Mix's neck was twisted completely backward.
So were his arms.
His legs bent in directions they were never meant to.
The body collapsed in a tangled heap.
"T-Tony…" Falco hyperventilated, crawling back. "What did you get us into…?"
His eyes locked onto the naked man.
"Y-you killed him," Falco whispered, then screamed, "Monster! You're a monster!"
He scrambled to his feet, fumbling at his waist, and drew the revolver he carried for protection.
Bang!
Bang!
One shot tore harmlessly through the rain.
The second—
—entered Falco's skull from behind.
Brain matter erupted from the front of his head in a way his mind never had time to comprehend.
His expression froze.
Then he collapsed.
The naked man stood still, Falco's fingers twitching along the revolver clenched in his hand, its barrel steaming faintly. A thin miasma clung to the metal—and to the bullet that had reconstituted behind Falco's head.