"This body is too weak."
Haut sat alone in a cave, hidden from the world, inspecting the materials spread before him. They glowed, white, purple, eerie blue, pink, gray. Five colors, five lights. Not the seven he'd expected.
"The hideouts' security wasn't completely destroyed after the Elite Squadron's attack," he muttered, thinking it through. "The remaining detection arrays recognized me as an outsider. Self-detonated." He touched one of the crystals gently. It pulsed under his fingers, warm, almost alive.
During the fierce battle where both sides lost, forcing the Shadow Sect to retreat in disgrace, Cinx hadn't had time to reset the security protocols. The arrays only recognized one owner, Cinx himself. If not for the leaked information about those defenses, Haut would already be dead.
Even Selini had paid a fortune for that information on the black market.
He wasn't disappointed. Resources always diminished after war. This was the way of the world, treating everyone equally, taking from everyone in turn.
"The Shadow will be looking for me now." A thin smile. "But that's good. You wanted recognition and glory, look what it's brought you. You revealed information about your wife, so I used it. What's wrong with that? If you sacrificed her secrets, that's your choice, not my crime."
He looked up at the cave's ceiling, at the darkness beyond the glow of the materials.
Validation is nothing but sickness of the spirit. Those who need others' approval to feel worthy destroy themselves. It's not that the wise are indifferent, they've simply seen through the illusion. But most people can't afford wisdom. They choose the wild path instead, some from societal pressure, some to feed their ego, some from simple foolishness. And some choose destruction deliberately, fully aware, and that's the saddest of all. It's always their own fault. Always their own destruction.
Outside the cave, moonlight filtered through clouds. Haut's vision blurred, and for a moment he wasn't in the cave anymore.
He was in a village. A woman lay on the ground in the central square, surrounded by villagers. Some frowned. Some were indifferent. Some laughed at her, watching her agony.
But she wasn't in agony. She looked at them with something like pity.
Haut, the memory-Haut, or whoever he was in this vision, stood at the edge of the crowd, watching.
The woman's eyes found his. She spoke softly, voice carrying despite the noise:
"The roses bloom in different colors, yet eventually even the most beautiful ones die. They don't care about wind or rain, mud or sunlight. They live. They shine. They spread fragrance. And then they face nature and die."
The crowd's laughter faded. The woman's gaze held his.
Who are these villagers? Who is this girl?
Haut snapped back to the present, heart pounding.
That face. Those words. They made no sense, yet they stirred something in his chest... a feeling he couldn't name. Restlessness. Longing. Grief, maybe. He didn't know.
Slowly, his heart steadied. The feeling passed, replaced by his usual calm.
"Even if my thoughts betray me now, I'll still pursue the same goal."
This wasn't sanity.
This was madness.
But only through madness can one cross a broken bridge.
He turned back to the materials. Five crystals, each pulsing with its own light. He'd spent eight hours pouring river water over them drop by drop, cleansing them of residual impurities.
"The first step is almost complete." He flexed his bandaged arm. "But the next steps will be harder in my current state. The Sect has already announced a bounty on my head." He recited it from memory: "One thousand zenin for my head. Four hundred for a limb. Twenty for eyes or other parts."
He smiled at that. The outcome was predictable. Betraying higher powers was never safe. But why should he wag his tail and obey? Why should anyone?
"If not for the Shadow Lady's knife, I couldn't have completed this process." He pulled out the blade, the one that had barely grazed the celestial girl, collecting her blood. "She's truly a worthy opponent."
The second step required soaking the materials in blood. His blood.
He picked up a dagger and sliced open his right arm. Blood flowed freely. He collected it in a hollow stone near the cave's entrance, then dropped the materials in one by one. They hissed and steamed, drinking the blood.
After the last crystal was submerged, he finally bandaged the wound, tearing his shirt, wrapping it tight. His skin had gone pale. His head throbbed. His legs felt weak.
He ignored it all and began the third step.
Three grams of dried blood from a celestial servant's lineage.
He scraped the celestial girl's blood from the knife's surface, the traces left when it barely cut her skin. Not enough to reach her organs, but enough to draw blood.
"This blood… it smells strange." He sniffed it. "Almost like fragrance."
Amused, he added it to the mixture.
Bam.
Two of the five crystals exploded.
The blast threw him backward. He hit the cave wall hard, vision swimming.
"No…" He crawled toward the remaining crystals. "Did I mess up the recipe for Analytical Muscle Vien? Impossible. I remember it perfectly."
He stared at the shattered remains.
"Unless the recipe was changed. But that can't be, the formula isn't widely known. Not even the celestial girl knows it. Not even Cinx."
His vision blurred. The cave spun.
He collapsed.