The silence after battle was heavier than any blow Zhen Hu had taken.
It pressed into his skin, into his ribs, into the marrow of his being—like cold fingers wrapping around a barely beating heart.
He lay sprawled across the fractured stone, limbs twisted, muscles locked. The blood beneath him had dried into a black crust, fused to the earth. His breath came in wet rasps, each inhale a ragged claw across raw lungs.
The moon hung overhead.
But it felt a world away.
His fingers twitched.
He didn't know if he was alive... or something close enough to it that it still hurt.
Aelira stirred within him. She no longer spoke. She wept.
And her tears were flames licking his veins.
Nytherion was still there—but barely. Not flowing. Not alive. It had turned brittle. Cracked. Starved.
Backlash.
He had reached too far. Drawn too much. And now, the power he'd tasted was folding in on him, breaking him down—soul first.
Somewhere far off, footsteps approached. Gentle. Hesitant.
Mie Xian.
She crouched beside him, hands shaking. "Zhen…?"
No answer.
Her fingers brushed his cheek—and recoiled. His skin was cold. Too cold.
His face was ashen. His lips purpled. And something in his scent had changed—not just blood or sweat… but decay.
"I told you not to push so hard…" she whispered. Her voice cracked halfway through the sentence. "Why… why didn't you trust me?"
Zhen Hu stirred slightly. His eyes flicked open—but only barely.
One word, broken by pain: "Xian…"
And then—he convulsed.
His body arched. A scream tore from his throat, raw and animal, not human. Not anymore.
Mie Xian stumbled back as black smoke poured from his mouth and eyes. His veins lit up—not with light, but with flickering death-runes, crawling across his skin like locusts.
She didn't know what was happening.
Only that her friend—maybe more than a friend—was dying.
Inside his soulscape—
There was only fire.
And her.
Aelira stood tall, her form fraying at the edges, hair whipping in invisible wind, eyes molten with grief and fury.
"You fool," she hissed. "You opened the door before the seal was ready. You took in a power meant for gods."
Zhen Hu, drifting in the void, his essence like a cracked crystal, managed to speak.
"I had no choice."
"There is always a choice."
Silence.
Then Aelira knelt, eyes softening. Her hand brushed his cheek. "You fight like one who has nothing left. But you do. You have her. You have the world. Don't waste it trying to become a monster faster than your soul can keep up."
Zhen Hu's body trembled.
Tears—of pain, of shame—streamed down his hollow face.
"I'm scared," he whispered.
And for the first time—Aelira pulled him close.
"So am I."
Back in the physical world, Zhen Hu's body began to stabilize.
But it came with a price.
He would not fight again for some time. His soul would need to mend. And the marks of what he had touched—the power above realms—had begun to stain him.
His heartbeat returned.
But slower. Measured.
Changed.
Mie Xian stayed at his side until dawn, brushing hair from his brow, wiping blood from his mouth, not saying a word.
Just watching.
And wondering.
What had he become?
Far above, in the floating palaces of the Transcendent Realm, the envoy Veyrith's shredded cloak billowed weakly as he knelt before a throne of light.
"My mission failed," he rasped, blood trailing from his lips. "But the boy… he is not bound to your expectations. He is not bound to anything."
A low voice echoed from the throne. Calm. Absolute.
"Then we will bind him ourselves."
Back beneath the mortal sky, as the first rays of dawn cut through the mist, Zhen Hu opened his eyes again.
And for the first time in his life—
He truly feared what he might become.