Wei didn't know how long it had been.
He woke in a darkness so complete it had no sound at all.
There was no ground beneath his feet, yet something seemed to hold him up, gentle and steady.
He took a cautious step forward. Then another.
Nothing felt dangerous.
The only strange thing was that he couldn't see the ground.
He lifted his head and looked around.
Darkness in every direction.
Within it, shadows seemed to slide without a sound—neither hostile nor kind.
They felt like an invitation. Or a patient wait.
No sky.
No earth.
The emptiness made Wei tense.
Then, ahead of him, a faint light appeared—thin and narrow, like a door cracked open just enough to breathe.
Without thinking, Wei walked toward it.
With every step, the darkness at his feet shattered into cold, damp fragments, as if he were breaking through wet glass.
He wanted to stop.
But his body no longer obeyed him.
Something was pulling him forward, dragging him toward the growing brightness.
The light came closer.
Brighter.
Sharper.
It yanked at his awareness, hauling it back toward reality.
As he reached for the light,
a heavy pulse moved in the dark behind him,
slow and deep,
like something giving up when it did not want to.
Wei's eyelids trembled, but he couldn't open them.
He heard wind, muffled and distorted, as if it were trapped behind thick layers of cotton.
Something cold pressed against his cheek.
Wet like dew.
Or like blood.
He tried to breathe,
but his chest didn't rise.
Only his throat twitched.
Where… am I?
Am I dreaming?
The thought formed clearly—
Yet he couldn't hear his own voice.
A strange buzzing rose beside his ears,
like dozens of insects crawling at once inside his skull.
The world slowly brightened before his eyes, but not in any natural way.
The light wavered, as if seen through water.
Every outline bent and swayed into unreal curves.
He tried to lift his hand and felt a jolt of fear.
His arm was light, almost not there,
like fog that would break apart if he touched it.
As his vision slowly came into focus, he couldn't tell where he was.
Then something struck him.
Chun.
He searched for her in a panic.
And then he saw it.
The dark assassin was standing there.
He saw blood.
He saw death.
He saw everything—
Yet he couldn't take a single step.
His feet felt nailed to the ground.
He opened his mouth to scream,
but the air took the sound away.
Even he could not hear it.
Chun lay there, face down and terribly still.
Her hair had fallen loose, covering most of her face,
but he could still see her pale skin
and her empty, unfocused eyes.
One of her arms, once clean and pale, was soaked in blood,
reaching weakly toward Little Butterfly,
as if she had been trying to make sure the child was safe.
But Little Butterfly lay there too.
Motionless.
Not breathing.
In Chun's back,
where her heart should have been,
there was a gaping, blood-soaked hole.
Nothing inside.
The dark assassin stood nearby, staring with satisfaction at his open hands.
Blood dripped from between his fingers.
Red.
Thick.
It fell onto the gray ground—
Tap.
Like molten iron dropped into cold water.
But the most terrifying thing of all—
Resting in the warrior's palm
was an organ that still twitched, faintly beating.
It beat slowly,
but stubbornly.
As if it didn't yet understand
that it had been torn from its body.
Wei's breathing felt blocked, like something was lodged in his throat.
His chest tightened,
as if it had been torn open too,
as if something inside him had been taken and left empty.
He remembered the first time that organ had ever come up.
It was on the road, the first time they had gone hunting together.
Chun had laughed and patted her chest.
"You're way too timid," she'd said.
"If something dangerous happens, touch this—your heart.
If it's beating fast, that means you're still alive!
Hey—where are you touching? Your own, idiot!"
She'd laughed, bright and careless.
But now—
That heart
trembled lightly in the enemy's palm.
Like a girl's final breath.
Like her standing in the sunset, waving at him, saying goodbye.
Wei's throat tightened.
He tried to call her name.
No sound came out.
For the first time, he understood what he had truly lost.
Lost forever.
Chun lay on the cold ground, her face drained of color.
Her hand was still clenched around the hunting knife she had once placed into his palm.
Her warmth lingered faintly on the handle.
The dark assassin took the still-beating heart, almost with satisfaction,
as if pleased by the"life" contained within it.
Only a hunger for death remained.
And a gaze—
fixed by instinct—
on the next prey.
Wei's soul.
In Wei's eyes, a red flame throbbed and flickered.
It shouldn't have been exposed to the open air.
It shouldn't have been cradled in the ugly, cold hands of an undead thing.
And yet there it was.
Beating.
Trembling.
Like a flame shaken by the wind.
With every second that passed, the fire grew weaker.
It seemed to reach for the air,
for time,
for the body it once belonged to—
And yet, it could grasp nothing at all.
The undead assassin even lifted the flame toward its mouth.
The beast's jaws split open, slowly,
like a dark doorway opening into a void.
Wei's pupils shrank.
The next instant, he lunged forward without thinking.
Or rather,
a burst of fire tore free from his chest,
Carrying with it the full force of his rage.