Not until the moment Wei was hurled violently out of the dark body did he realize—
he still could not be sure
whether he had truly escaped death.
The white light thrashed wildly, unstable, flickering like a flame ripped by force from the depths of an abyss. Torn from its anchor, it wavered in the shattered air, struggling to maintain form.
The darkness did not chase him.
It did not rush.
It only turned its gaze.
That gaze was slow and heavy, saturated with hunger, like a serpent lifting its head not to strike, but to confirm—calmly, patiently—that a new piece of prey had revealed itself.
A low, unwilling hiss rolled out from the abyssal mouth of the darkness. It was thick and deep, weighted with frustration, and it echoed across the suspension bridge.
On the far side, a silver-armored warrior turned his head.
More bronze warriors paused in mid-motion.
They did not understand what had just occurred.
They only saw—
the dark assassin beginning to lose control.
Gray fire burst across its body, crawling and writhing like filthy tongues, licking hungrily at the wound where the white light had torn through its form.
The flames clung to the rupture, pressing into it, as if trying to taste what had been taken.
The fire carried fury.
And beneath it, unmistakable hunger.
In the next instant—
the assassin clutched its own head.
Its entire body slammed hard against the wooden planks.
It rolled.
Convulsed.
Smashed itself again and again against the bridge.
"Bang—"
"Bang—"
"Bang—"
Each impact sounded final.
Like nails being driven into a coffin.
At last, the movement stopped.
The assassin lay still for a breath.
Then, slowly, it raised its head.
Those eyes no longer belonged to something merely dead.
The familiar pale pupils were gone.
In their place, thick, viscous blackness flooded the sockets.
No reflection.
No glimmer of light.
They were like two deep wells, lightless and bottomless, swallowing whatever dared to look back.
In the next moment—
it smelled something.
Its head jerked sharply from side to side.
Fast.
Erratic.
Every motion sharp with urgency, with frantic searching, as if some invisible scent had suddenly cut through the fog.
Wei's back went cold in an instant.
He wanted to step back.
To put distance between himself and that thing.
But his body would not respond.
It felt as though he had been nailed in place.
The air around him thickened, almost solid, pressing against his skin.
Every hair on his body stood on end.
Then—
the assassin moved.
It did not run.
It did not leap.
It crawled.
Hands and knees struck the planks as its body folded into an unnatural arc, bent at angles no living creature should sustain. It looked like an insect assembled by force, joints misaligned, proportions wrong.
With every movement, its joints made sharp, snapping sounds—
"Crack."
"Crack."
The sound slid along the surface of the bridge, low and intimate, crawling straight into the ear canals, setting teeth on edge.
Its direction was unmistakable.
Straight ahead.
At the front of the suspension bridge.
Someone lay there.
A body.
An unconscious boy.
Face down against the wooden planks.
His skin was deathly pale, drained of color, as if all blood had already left it.
Beside him lay a blunt-headed arrow.
The shaft was damp with mist and streaked faintly with blood.
It lay quietly, abandoned.
Wei froze.
That side profile.
The curve of the brow.
The posture near the broken vine rope—
He recognized it.
That was his body.
His breath stopped completely.
Cold flooded his fingers.
It felt as though even his consciousness had been seized by an invisible hand, gripped tightly and dragged downward, toward something deeper and darker.
If that was his body—
then what was the"self" standing here now?
Fog churned violently around him.
The world lost its weight.
He could no longer feel the ground beneath his feet.
It was as if he might slip out of reality at any moment, sliding through a crack no one else could see.
A thought surfaced—
and the instant it did, his entire body chilled.
He did not dare follow it to its end.
As if acknowledging it would sever the fragile thread still binding awareness to flesh, snapping it beyond repair.
The twisted monster before him suddenly no longer felt like just an enemy.
It felt like—
a future.
A destination he was already sliding toward.
The fog rolled harder.
The sense of gravity thinned.
Wei could no longer tell whether he was standing, floating, or simply being held in place by habit alone.
His voice emerged barely louder than breath, faint and distant, like a sound reflected from the bottom of a deep well.
"What… am I?"
There was no answer.
Between life and death, it turned out, there existed a line so thin it could not be seen—only crossed.
And the dark assassin—
had already crawled up to the body.
It extended a withered hand.
The fingers were rough.
Calloused.
Not delicate claws, but the hardened hands of something that had used its body again and again.
It stared at the body on the planks.
Greedy.
Certain.
As though consuming that last spark of life-fire would repair everything that had gone wrong.
As though it could make itself whole again.
And he—
would be erased entirely.
There was no escape.
The realization flashed through Wei's mind.
In the next instant, cold detonated up his spine.
—He saw it.
Across the surface of the lifeless body, dark currents of light moved slowly beneath the skin, like sluggish rivers flowing in reverse.
Gray fire gathered at several distinct points, swelling, thickening, growing stronger with every breath the body no longer took.
Wei's pupils contracted sharply.
So that was it.
These undead creatures—
they had channels too.
Pathways.
Structures.
Only their flow ran opposite to life.
Dark fire streamed inward.
Toward the heart.
Toward the organs.
Toward the deepest places where something vital could be consumed.
Wei locked his focus onto the narrowest point in that flow.
The most fragile bottleneck.
The place where everything converged.
He tried to gather white light.
Tried to draw it together as he had before.
But inside him, there was almost nothing left.
Only a vague, fading shadow.
Not enough to form even a single arrow.
Then—
deep within his body, something stirred.
A dull yellow flame.
Slow.
Heavy.
Emerging from the depths of his spleen.
Understanding struck him with sudden clarity.
There was no time to hesitate.
No space left for doubt.
Every fragment of earth-fire was forced upward, driven violently into his lungs.
The white light began to gather.
Slowly.
With effort.
As if pulled together against resistance.
Each moment felt strained, unstable.
And that filthy hand—
had already touched his body.
The contact sent a wave of numbness through him, cold and invasive, as if something were trying to overwrite his existence.
In that instant—
the white light surged.
It expanded abruptly, stretching under pressure, compressing inward even as it pushed outward.
Shaped by necessity rather than control.
Condensed into an arrow that was not perfect.
Its edges were thin.
Its structure unstable.
Fragile.
But it pointed forward.
Unhesitating.
Unstoppable.
And it flew.