The dark assassin opened its mouth, wider than any living man ever could.
Inside the shadowed body, gray fire churned and rose.
More of it poured out,
like black rats climbing from the bottom of a muddy pit.
They came in a single surge,
carrying cold, silence,
and the hunger of rot.
They closed in on Chun's red flame,
now shrunken to the size of a bead.
Completely surrounded.
Bit by bit, they dragged it deeper into the darkness.
The gray fire tore at it from both sides.
Each bite was savage, almost angry.
This was no longer gnawing.
They meant to strip the red flame bare and finish it.
That was Chun's life fire.
It was dragged apart.
Ripped.
Eaten.
The flame shook hard,
like a child forced to their knees with nowhere left to run.
It grew smaller, thread by thread.
And with every bit that vanished,
Wei felt another breath pulled out of his chest.
Something crushed down on his throat,
squeezing so hard he could not even make a sound.
Wei shut his eyes in agony.
In that moment, it was not fear.
It was a strange pain, moving the wrong way,
as if the red flame had never belonged to the girl at all,
but to his own body.
That bright red had been her smile.
Her warmth.
Her courage.
Now it broke apart like steam in a night wind.
Gone.
Nothing to hold.
The air turned cold at once.
In the eye socket Chun had pierced, gray flesh began to move.
It writhed in the hollow.
Wet growths pushed outward, slow and stubborn,
like maggots rising from rotten meat.
They crawled and spread, slick and alive,
closing the torn wound.
Wei felt his whole body freeze.
He had heard the rumors. Undead bodies could repair themselves.
But he had never imagined it would look like this.
So this was it.
This was their secret.
Wei suddenly understood.
The secret of the undead legion was clear now.
The gray fire lurking inside their bodies.
Those sickening acts of "repair."
In the end, it was nothing more than stealing the lives of the young to keep themselves alive.
Unforgivable.
Once that truth settled in his mind, everything else stopped mattering.
What mattered was this.
Something in his chest was finally, completely ignited.
Rage rose from deep in his heart,
like a volcano that had held too long and finally broke.
His blood roared in his ears,
boiling,
hammering through his veins.
In the next instant,
Light exploded.
A white light burst from his chest.
It was not a flash.
It was a release.
Like a bow drawn past its limit and let go at last.
A white arrow took shape—pure enough to feel sharp to the soul.
It screamed as it flew, carrying the force to tear things apart,
and drove straight into the dark.
The gray flames were still hauling the red fire away,
like wolves dragging prey back to the den.
They never saw it.
When the white light appeared,
the darkness split open,
as if a wound had been torn straight through it.
Puh.
The first mass of gray flame was pierced straight through.
It was as if the gray fire had been thrown into a white-hot furnace.
It shrieked, sharp and twisted, barely sounding real.
Before it could pull back,
the second strike came.
Then the third.
Then the fourth.
White light tore wildly through the darkness.
Each impact carved a blinding mark into the gray world,
like a cleaver or an axe splitting straight down.
The gray flames fell into chaos.
Screams rose one after another,
like shadow beasts dragged from their nest without warning.
They scattered in every direction,
their greed and arrogance gone.
And the red flame—
Stopped falling.
More than that, it was as if a powerful hand had caught it.
It lifted slightly upward, just a single inch.
A surge of fierce relief flooded Wei's chest, so strong it nearly burst him open from the inside.
Suddenly, he remembered something from when he was very young.
That day, his father had been wiping down his hunting knife and casually said to him that a person's heart held red power, like fire.
The lungs held white, like wind cut sharp as a blade.
The liver held green, the life force of wood.
Back then, everything felt new to him.
His eyes shone so brightly it seemed as if stars might spill out at any moment.
He had slapped his knee in excitement and said that if he could ever see those colors inside the body with his own eyes, it would be the coolest thing in the world.
And now he could truly see it.
Chun's heart was a red flame.
He wished he had never been able to see that.
He could also see the light bursting out from his own body.
His light was white.
It was a blade born in the lungs,
breath turned sharp and deadly,
cold and clean as steel.
In that moment,
he was a warrior with his weapon drawn,
charging straight into a swarm of filthy, cowardly vermin.
Let these things that hid in darkness taste the edge of a blade.
Let those shameless creatures, swollen with corrupt hunger,
feel the force of a warrior who does not retreat.
The white light pressed forward.
Inch by inch, it forced the gray of death back.
The sight of it was almost suffocating in its sheer satisfaction.
Gray flames fled.
White light pursued.
Darkness split apart.
For the first time, hope truly appeared.
Wei's heart hammered faster and faster.
For a moment, he almost believed it—
that he could charge in, seize Chun, and rip her free.
That he could overturn what should have been certain despair.
He really did feel as if he was about to win.