The silent communion across the courtyard of the dead was shattered when Lan Yue took a single, stumbling step forward, her hand outstretched, her voice a broken whisper. "Lian…"
Instantly, two members of the elite Demonic Royal Guard moved as one, the obsidian hafts of their pikes crossing before her, barring her path. The metallic scrape of their armor was a jarring, alien sound in the midst of her grief. She looked at them, stunned, then past them to where the entirety of Xue Lian's Imperial Court had assembled, their faces grim and hostile, like vultures gathering for a feast.
At their head stood Archduke Jin, his handsome features twisted into a mask of grim, vindicated satisfaction.
"As we warned you, Your Majesty," he said, his voice ringing out with false sympathy in the grieving silence. "A foolish gambit. Placing your trust in a righteous cultivator has brought nothing but death to our gates."
Another lord, whose lands bordered the now decimated Oakhaven village, stepped forward, his voice shaking with rage. "My people are dead! Farmers! Children! Her arrival was the omen of our destruction! She did nothing to stop the attack!"
"Did nothing?" Archduke Jin scoffed, twisting the knife with practiced ease. "Or did she, perhaps, lead them there? A perfect signal to her 'rescuers,' wouldn't you say? A beacon to guide their swords to the throats of our people."
A venomous wave of whispers rippled through the assembled demons. "Traitor…" "Human spy…" "She was never one of us…" "The Empress was bewitched by a pretty face…"
The accusations were a dizzying assault, but Lan Yue barely heard them. Her entire world, her entire focus, was on the still, silent figure of the Empress. She pushed against the unmoving pikes, her eyes pleading only with Xue Lian.
"My love, it's not what you think!" she cried out, the intimate endearment causing a shocked murmur to run through the court. "They used a celestial relic on me, I was unconscious! I swear it, Lian! I swear on my soul, I did not do this! Believe me. Please, you have to believe me."
Xue Lian, who had been staring at the shrouded bodies at her feet, slowly lifted her head. The profound, heartbreaking sorrow in her eyes was gone, buried under a terrifying, glacial sheet of ice. Her face was an unreadable mask of cold, absolute fury. She raised a hand, and the simple gesture silenced Lan Yue's desperate pleas.
When she spoke, her voice was not the voice of the woman who had whispered confessions in the dawn. It was a voice Lan Yue hadn't heard since the first day, a voice of chilling, imperious authority, now a hundred times colder.
"Believe you?" A short, brutal laugh, devoid of all humor, escaped her lips. It made Lan Yue flinch. "Believe the woman whose arrival heralded the slaughter of my subjects? Whose 'former family' is now burning my villages and murdering my people?"
She took a step forward, her amber eyes burning with a cold fire that seemed to scorch Lan Yue's very soul.
"You are banished, Lan Yue," she declared, each word a perfectly enunciated shard of ice. "Get out of my sight before I forget what little mercy I have left and have you skinned alive for the traitor you are."
The cruelty of the words was so absolute, so complete, that Lan Yue felt the world tilt on its axis. This couldn't be happening. This was a nightmare.
"Your Majesty!" Archduke Jin stepped forward, emboldened. "Banishment is too merciful for such treachery! She knows our defenses, our strategies! She is too dangerous to be allowed to live!"
"ENOUGH!"
The single word was a physical blow, a sonic boom of pure, unadulterated power that sent a tremor through the courtyard stones and forced every demon, including Jin, to their knees. Xue Lian's fury, now directed at her own court, was a terrifying sight to behold.
She stood tall, the grieving woman gone, replaced entirely by the Demon Empress in her full, terrifying might. "From this day forward, the Luminous Dynasty is sealed. I will raise the ancient barriers that have slumbered for a thousand years. We will sever all contact with the outside realms. We will mourn our dead, we will tend to our wounded, and we will build our strength in the solitude of our grief!"
Her gaze, burning with scorn, snapped back to the heartbroken, trembling form of Lan Yue.
"And you," she spat, her voice dripping with contempt. "Go back. Crawl back to your righteous murderers. Tell them their prize has been returned. Tell them the Demon Empress has no more use for a broken, treacherous tool." The words were a coded message, a final, desperate strategic move hidden within the poison. Go back. Your return is their objective. Fulfilling it may stop this war.
"Tell them," Xue Lian's voice dropped to a deadly whisper, "that if they, or any other outsider, ever sets foot near my borders again, I will personally lead an army that will turn their entire realm to ash. Now, GO!"
The guards' pikes retracted. A path was cleared. Lan Yue stood alone, utterly exposed, the target of every hateful glare in the courtyard. She looked at Xue Lian one last time, desperately searching the cold, beautiful face for any flicker of the Lian she knew, the lover who had held her, the partner who had kneeled to her. She found nothing but the unyielding mask of an unforgiving queen.
A sob, thick and ragged, tore from her throat. With tears of betrayal and utter confusion streaming down her face, she summoned Nightfall Crescent, leaped onto its silver light, and fled the home she had found, the love she had believed in, cast out and utterly alone.
Xue Lian stood unmoving, a statue of ice and fury, and watched until the last speck of silver vanished from the dark sky. The court waited, silent and expectant. For a long, breathless moment, she did not move.
Then, as soon as the last eye was no longer upon the sky, a single, perfect tear escaped from her frozen facade, tracing a clean path through the grime and soot on her cheek. It was a silent testament to the devastating truth of her sacrifice, a tear for the woman she had just saved by breaking both their hearts.