The humming of Nightfall Crescent in her hand was a siren song, calling for blood. Before her, Wei Chen stood, his face a mask of confusion, his posture that of a hero waiting to be thanked. All around them, the world burned.
A white hot rage, purer and more potent than any spiritual energy she had ever wielded, surged through Lan Yue. It screamed at her to act. To raise her sword and carve through the man she once called brother. To make him see the faces of the children he had "purged." To force him to account for the massacre he called "cleansing."
But even as her knuckles turned white on the hilt of her sword, another, colder thought pierced through the fury. This wasn't a battle. It was an extermination. This village was just one small piece of a much larger, horrific plan. To fight Wei Chen here, to indulge in her personal vengeance now, would be a strategically foolish act. She was one person. Her duty was no longer to her own sense of justice. It was to the woman waiting for her. It was to the dynasty that had become her home.
She had to warn them.
With a final, searing look at Wei Chen a look that promised a future reckoning Lan Yue channeled her restored power not into an attack, but into a concealment art. Her form wavered, blurring like a heat haze, before vanishing completely into the thick, choking smoke.
"Yue!" Wei Chen's panicked shout was the last sound she heard from her old life.
She leaped into the sky, Nightfall Crescent a silver streak beneath her feet, and fled. The journey back was a desperate, silent scream. The images were burned behind her eyelids: the gentle Golem farmer, whose produce she had eaten at the festival, now a broken heap of rock and soil. The laughing, furry demons from the farms, now silent and still. General Kairo, the man who had found a home between two worlds, dead in defense of the innocent.
The righteous path was a lie. The noble cultivators she had spent her life admiring were no better than the mindless, bloodthirsty demons of their own propaganda. They were monsters cloaked in white robes, their swords dripping with the blood of children, their hearts utterly blind to the horror they wrought. Her grief was a physical weight, a cold, hard stone in her chest.
As she crossed the border back into the Netherworld, the very air felt different. The vibrant, hopeful energy that had begun to permeate Xue Lian's Luminous Dynasty was gone, replaced by a heavy, oppressive pall of sorrow. The magical lights of the capital, usually a brilliant beacon in the gloom, were dimmed to a somber glow. The bustling sounds of the city were gone. An eerie, grieving silence had fallen over the empire.
She didn't slow down, flying directly to the Silent Palace and landing in the center of the grand courtyard.
The sight that met her stole the breath from her lungs.
The courtyard, once a place of drills and ceremony, had become a morgue. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of demonic bodies were laid out in neat, heartbreaking rows, each covered by a simple black cloth. The air was thick with the smell of blood and grief.
A wounded Commander Kael stood before a figure in the center of the courtyard. The mighty Oni's arm was in a sling, his craggy face etched with a pain that was more than physical. He was reporting, his booming voice reduced to a gravelly, broken rasp.
"Your Majesty… the outposts at the Crimson Peaks and the Whispering Canyons were also hit. Coordinated diversionary tactics… just as she warned. They were slaughtered before they could even sound a proper alarm. These… these are the only bodies we could retrieve."
Lan Yue's gaze followed his, and her heart shattered.
Xue Lian stood there, not in her magnificent imperial robes, but in a simple, dark tunic, her white hair pulled back without ceremony. Her face was pale, streaked with dirt and what looked like dried tears. The brilliant, joyful light that had danced in her amber eyes since the festival was gone, extinguished. In its place was a hollow, desolate sorrow that seemed to swallow the world.
As Kael fell silent, Xue Lian seemed to sense a new presence. She turned her head, and their eyes met across the courtyard of the dead.
For a moment, neither of them moved. Lan Yue saw the devastating consequence of her failed mission reflected in the utter devastation on Xue Lian's face. And Xue Lian saw the horror of the world outside her borders in the soot and blood that stained her lover's skin.
There were no words. No questions of what had happened. The truth was laid bare in the silence, in the bodies, and in the shared, bottomless grief that passed between them. The war had begun, not with a clash of armies, but with a massacre of the innocent and the breaking of two hearts.