Pov Author
The sky above the forgotten citadel had darkened into a bruised, unnatural purple, as if the heavens themselves remembered what had happened here and refused to forget. Twilight clung to the ruins like a curse. The ancient stones of the courtyard were cracked and blackened, scars left behind by power far beyond human war.
The air did not move.
It pressed down, heavy and suffocating, thick with the scent of dust, old magic, and something long destroyed. Even sound seemed afraid to exist.
At the center of the courtyard, General Shoto Kano knelt.
His once-proud battle robes hung from him in tatters, stained dark with dirt and dried blood. A cut above his brow bled freely, streaking down his face and blinding one eye. One arm lay useless at his side, trembling when he tried to shift his weight. Every breath scraped painfully through his chest.
Still, he did not bow his head.
Before him stood Shou Feng.
He did not move. He did not need to.
His long black hair fell straight down his back, untouched by wind or dust, as if the world itself knew better than to disturb him. His eyes—once dark and unreadable—now burned red, glowing steadily like embers that had never cooled. Around him drifted an aura of red and black, slow and alive, curling through the air like smoke fed by fire. The light around him bent and dimmed, retreating as if in fear.
"You spoke of her," Shou Feng said at last.
His voice was low, calm, almost quiet—but it vibrated through the stone beneath them.
"That alone condemns you."
Shoto spat blood onto the courtyard floor. "She failed her duty," he rasped. "She was sent here as a healer, and she turned her back on Tsukigawa."
The moment the kingdom's name left his mouth, the pressure in the air shifted.
The stones beneath Shoto cracked as an unseen force drove him back, forcing him down until his knees dug painfully into the ground. His breath caught, torn from his lungs.
"She healed your soldiers," Shou Feng replied, taking one slow step forward.
"She stitched together the bodies your wars shattered."
His red gaze never left Shoto's face.
"She touched the wounded without hesitation. She bled for strangers. Even your father still draws breath because her hands refused to tremble."
Shoto's jaw tightened.
"And still," Shou Feng continued, his aura deepening, red threading thicker through black, "you looked at her kindness and decided it was something that needed correction."
"She was too soft," Shoto snapped, forcing the words out. "This land destroys people like her."
"Yes," Shou Feng said coldly.
"And you helped it try."
A dark energy gathered above his palm—not wild, not raging, but restrained, humming quietly with terrible intent.
"She did not free me to destroy your kingdom," he said. "She did not know what slept beneath your chains. She saw a prisoner. Nothing more."
His voice lowered, dangerous in its calm.
"That mercy was never her sin."
The energy pulsed once.
"Tsukigawa bound me," Shou Feng went on. "Sealed me. Feared me. Called it peace."
His eyes burned brighter.
"So when I rose, I answered them in destruction."
He leaned closer, his shadow swallowing Shoto whole.
"This ruin is mine," he said.
"Not hers."
Shoto's breathing faltered. His voice cracked. "I loved her."
The confession fell into the silence, weak and desperate.
Shou Feng did not react at once.
When he spoke, his voice was quiet—but absolute.
"You wanted her to survive your world," he said.
"I wanted your world to never touch her again."
The pressure around Shoto intensified, pinning him in place.
"She was human," Shou Feng continued. "Pure in a land that rewards cruelty. You stood beside a system that would have crushed that, and you called it loyalty."
Shoto whispered, barely audible, "She will never choose you."
For the first time, something shifted in Shou Feng's expression.
Not anger.
Possession.
"She does not belong to you," he said.
"She does not belong to anyone."
His eyes burned with certainty.
"That is why she is mine to protect."
He closed his hand.
The power surged once—silent, overwhelming.
When pressure fell on Sho to, his body contacted with the cold stone floor , with a thud Shoto's body collided with the stone floor With a bone crushing pressure .
Shou Feng looked down once again , Seeing shoto move a bit .
"She walked into your world to heal it," he said quietly.
"And you answered her with cruelty."
He looked down , his dark charcoal eyes were more tense and dark .
Tsukigawa had already fallen.Shou feng has taken his revenge.
And the one thing innocent it had ever touched now stood forever beyond its reach.
The confession hung in the dead air—"I loved her"—and Shou Feng's stillness became something more terrible than motion.
"No," he said, the word final as a tomb seal. "You loved the version of her that fit your world. The moment she outgrew it, your love became a cage."
He did not raise his voice. He did not need to. The red and black aura around him condensed, thickening until it was less like smoke and more like liquid shadow, threaded with pulsing veins of crimson. It began to spiral slowly toward Shoto, who tried to push back, to scramble away, but found his limbs locked in place by an invisible, grinding weight.
The first tendril touched Shoto's shattered arm. It did not burn or cut. It dissolved. The fabric of his sleeve vanished, then the skin beneath withered, greyed, and flaked away like ash, revealing the splintered white bone of his forearm. Shoto screamed, the sound tearing from his throat, but it was muffled, swallowed by the oppressive silence Shou Feng commanded.
"You offered her a place in your decaying kingdom," Shou Feng said, watching as a second tendril wrapped around Shoto's good leg. The muscle there seized, then atrophied in seconds, the leg collapsing uselessly beneath him. "I offer her freedom from all kingdoms."
Shou Feng took a single step forward. The stone where his foot fell didn't crack; it simply turned to fine, black dust. He loomed over Shoto, his red eyes the only light in the deepening gloom. "Your love was a transaction. Hers was a gift. You are not being punished for failing her. You are being unmade for misunderstanding what she was."
He extended a hand, palm down, over Shoto's chest. The aura converged there, a swirling vortex of destruction poised directly over his heart.
Shoto, broken and bleeding, found Shoto's eyes. "She will… hate you… for this."
For the first time, something flickered in Shou Feng's gaze—not doubt, but a profound, weary certainty. "Her hatred is a price I will bear. Your disrespect is a debt I will collect."
He closed his outstretched hand into a fist.
There was no brilliant explosion. Instead, the swirling vortex over Shoto's chest imploded. It did not strike from the outside; it erupted from within. Shoto's body arched violently, every muscle locking in a spasm of ultimate agony. A sound emerged, not a scream, but the visceral, wet crackle of a ribcage collapsing inward, of a spine twisting against its own structure. His eyes, wide with a terror beyond pain, clouded over, the light in them snuffing out like a candle in a vacuum.
The implosion ceased. Shou Feng opened his hand.
Shoto Kano's body did not fall. It crumbled. It folded in on itself, robes emptying, collapsing into a small, dark pile of dust and fine ash on the blackened stone. The only sound was the soft hiss of settling particles.
The red light faded from Shou Feng's eyes, leaving them dark and endless once more. The whispering aura retreated back into him. The unnatural stillness in the courtyard began to lift, as if the world could finally breathe again.
He looked down at the ashes, at the empty tatters of sea-foam cloth.
"Tsukigawa has fallen," he said, to no one. "And the one innocent thing it ever touched now stands forever beyond its reach."
He turned. The gathering wind, finally allowed to enter, swept through the citadel, scattering the ashes of Shoto Kano across the scarred stones, erasing the last physical proof he had ever been there.
Shou Feng did not look back.