5:17 Of the Blind and the Demonic

Even during such a time of chaotic upheaval in the Physical Realm, not all changes were bad. While the power-hungry or the battle-lusted fought over their scraps of land to make their kingdoms, there was a backwater planet hidden away, tucked into the Hidden Realm, still circling the sun that had been stolen alongside it in a little chamber separated from reality.

For eons now it had been a place for these people to develop on their own, without the influence of the Celestial Empire, without overmuch touching from the gods. Not even the Shadow, Morgan, paid it much mind, content as it was that they saw the universe the way it did; with the Heavens being the greatest authority. Their entire world consisted only of one planet, and the solar system it resided in.

Het Masteen walked through the long hallways of his palace, footsteps echoing in the wooden corridor. Tapestries and paintings and weapons from past members of the Masteen Clan, a record of their history, hung from the walls, a permanent reminder of what his people had worked so hard to forge in this world. Each window he passed by showed the great city of Yggdrasil laid out beneath the branches of the World Tree, the great spiritual life form within which the Masteen Clan had carved their home and made their lives.

His dark black hair was slicked back in the traditional fashion, touches of grey at the temples. As a cultivator on the cusp of immortality, one of the strongest this planet had ever seen, the coloring of his hair was much more a statement of what he wanted and admired than a natural choice. The black was the mark of a pureblooded Masteen, the grey distinguished. His features were fierce, with big bushy eyebrows, a goatee hanging from his chin, and a mustache on his lip. His hands were folded behind his back, purple robes with silver embroidery swishing about him. His large, glorious horns polished and inlaid with gold and silver.

All leaders who came to control the World Tree and Yggdrasil mimicked this appearance. After all, they were Fae. And Fae were the blessed of Heaven.

Servants flinched as he swept by them. The lesser Fae, those with the varying hair colors, or skin tones, or eyes, bowing to him as he stormed past. The other races, the winged Avians, the Karae, those beings who were lesser and impure versions - no, that was cruel. It was no fault of theirs that they lacked the balance of the Fae. To call them lesser was incorrect, and he needed to remind him of that. They were merely incomplete, compared to the Fae, but still had their uses. He shook his head at himself, even as the impure servants flinched as he swept his eyes over them.

He knew what they saw when they looked upon him. Forget his rank and his power. Those were minor compared to what truly set the Masteen clan apart from all the rest. It was the eyes that set him and his people, his bloodline, his family apart from all the rest. He had the sharp emerald green color of the all-seeing eyes, that rare bloodline allowing his people to see deeper, clearer, to observe Qi and people and things with such clarity that regular sight might as well be considered blind. But he did not have time to deal with their fear, and swept past them.

"Have you seen Yann?" he asked the first of his family he could find. He was a member of the main family, a noble young man in fine robes, covered in jewelry, stinking of wine despite the early hour. His eyes were a dark color, for he had not activated his bloodline yet. Weaker cultivators could not keep it running all the time, not like Het Masteen could.

"Yann?" the boy asked, pulling up short. His servants stopped with him, the lesser members of their family, tattooed seals snaking down their arms, keeping them obedient. Their entire purpose was to protect the sovereignty, security, and purity of the main line, each with some sort of physical flaw—a differing hair color, or perhaps just the bad luck of being born to two branch family members, and still having the ability to awaken the Eyes.

"I apologize, Patriarch," the boy said, clasping both hands and bowing respectfully. "I have not seen the shame of our family."

"I have need of him," Het Masteen said through his teeth, just admitting it galling him. His gaze flicked once to the servants behind the young man, one with a horn that was a touch too short, the other with brown hair. The branch family always seemed to know more of where Yann was hiding himself, moreso than any others. Another infuriating fact.

His non-verbal request was clear, and the girl bowed her head even further, bending ninety degrees at the waist. "I apologize, Lord Patriarch, Our Father. I believe the Mother drove him out of the music room, and he retreated to the gardens."

Het Masteen scowled, but he didn't have time to correct the wench. Drove him out of the music room? How dare she assume such a thing? Yann was the shame of the family. He did not belong to the music room. His cultivation wrapped around himself, and he used a technique. A movement technique that, once he ascended to immortality, would only become closer to the truth of their divine parentage.

[All Beneath Heaven is One.]

The tree warped around him. And then the gardens were splayed out before him, built at the base of the tree, growing in one of the few sunbeams that could pierce through the canopy.

The gardens were a masterpiece. Flora and fauna from all over the world had been brought here. Even, the rarest treasure of all: a thousand-year fire ginseng and a ten-thousand-year earthen peach tree, both collected by his great-grandfather on the last foray beyond the spaces outside of the sun and earth and moon. It took strength unseen since his great-grandfather to traverse outside the Realms themselves, into the dark halls beyond, but Het Masteen would do it. He would go even further, once he was immortal.

The first immortal this world had ever seen. There was just a few more minor obstacles in his way.

There, far below, sitting beneath the shade of a frostborn willow, its leaves as white as snow, was Yann. His robes were snow white, denoting his cultivation rank, second only to Het Masteen himself. Because despite him being what he was, one could not deny his cultivation. It was a miracle he'd even gotten that far, considering how he had mutilated himself.

Het Masteen stepped forward and appeared before Yann. The Fae did not flinch, not even a little, continuing to slowly bring his bow across the strings of the violin he played.

One might have considered Yann beautiful. He had the horns for it, large and polished, gleaming with oil. His hair was brilliant black, dark as the night sky, and trimmed closer to his head, face clean-shaven, a thin jawline, and a fit body with lithe, dexterous fingers. Yes, one might consider him beautiful, were it not for the mutilation he had done to his own form. The scar across his eyes, hidden by a strip of white cloth like a blindfold, and the strikes that had severed the optical nerve and the qi pathways that fueled them, preventing even the most advanced cultivation techniques from healing him.

As a member of one of the branch families, he had been destined for the seals, his life bound to honorable servitude, to the protection of their family. And yet, with the removal of his eyes, that became irrelevant. With him blind, there was no need to seal him away, create a sacrificial pawn whose eyes could be targeted, but never stolen by their enemies. And so his skin remained unmarked until it was too late, and his cultivation became too strong. The coward rejected his destined duty.

"Yann," he rumbled, and a note went sour on the violin, Yann frowning.

"Het," he greeted formally, and bowed his head respectfully. "How can I help you this fine morning?"

Het scowled at him, mentally lamenting, for a brief moment, this boy he had known growing up. The skill, the pride, the dignity, the purpose. He had been everything the main branch would have wanted in a servant. And for an heir like himself, Yann would have been a powerful ally. Het Masteen's own right hand had been what he was destined to become, until he'd chosen the coward's way.

"You are needed," Het Masteen said through gritted teeth, and Yann very slowly put his instrument to the side to fold his hands in his lap, head not turning to face him. But all the same, Het Masteen knew he was looking at him. Even blind, crippled, the shame of the family, he was far too useful, and that only burned Het Masteen more.

"Oh," Yann said. "I am needed. And what task would you set this blind man upon?" There was no derision in Yann's voice. No chip, no I-am-holier-than-you crap one might expect from someone so defiant. Just a simple statement of fact, and a question.

"The mines in the southern continent," Het Masteen said through gritted teeth. "We need you to go there. There has been a delay in shipments of spirit stones. Violet spirit stones." Het Masteen paused, expecting a flinch of some kind from Yann. The most valuable cultivation material in the world, name-dropped like that, should have elicited something. A reaction. But as usual, Yann did not so much as flinch. That was what everything about him was built upon. That demeanor that said, there's nothing you can punish me on. There was never a breach in decorum, as was expected of one of his standing, even blind.

"What delay? What use would I be in such matters?" he asked honestly, brows only slightly furrowing.

Het Masteen clenched his fists, because this next part galled him. "Our kinsmen cannot find the ones who did it," he snarled. "And I need those for when I attempt my ascent to immortality."

"You cannot find them?" Yann asked. "Truly? Apologies, but you did send someone with the all-seeing eyes, did you not? Why would you send one such as I down there, then?"

"Do not play coy," Masteen snapped. "You know why. You have a knack for feeling things others miss. And I am far too busy to go down there myself, preparing for the next stage." The lie burned as he spit out the words. He himself had gone down there, to the mines, searched for the perpetrator, and found nothing of import. Only dust from consumed Violet Spirit Stones, and the stench of the unpure, those who worked the mines for them.

"I see," Yann said, and paused, cocking an eyebrow, a little smile planting on his lips at the pun. Het Masteen resisted the urge to slap him. "Okay. I will do this for you."

He stood, dusting off his robes, and bowed, one fist placed into the palm of the other, perfectly facing him. "Will you give me a ride, for I am blind and do not know the way? Though I do not know how much help this one could be, I will do my utmost to find your stones."

Het Masteen scowled deeper. "I will prepare proper conveyance for you. Just get it done."

And he disappeared, mind already turning from that matter, annoyed as he was. For a moment, he wondered if sending Yann was a good idea, perceptive as he was, due to what had been going on in the caverns below the southern ridge, but quickly pushed that thought aside. The wards there were strong enough even he couldn't see through them easily, and he had the Eyes; Yann had very little chance of sensing anything through them. And even if he did, Het knew the man may object, but would eventually fall in line. He had his sister, after all, and despite his flaws, Yann was loyal to family and the Clan.

Who even cared about the fates of a few incomplete lives? They served a better purpose this way.

Besides, even if Yann turned up dead or missed the deadline, the Violet Spirit Stones needed for a ritual on the full moon, when Sun and Moon were aligned in a complete eclipse, there would be nothing lost to the family. Het Masteen was certain he was ready to ascend now, but a little bit more time waiting for the next important celestial event wouldn't kill him.

And Het Masteen returned his attention to more important matters. His wife, the Mother, was probably off somewhere enjoying herself. But he didn't want to go there; she was probably going to chide him. He needed to go work out his aggression.

To the beast pits it was. He wanted to get his hands bloody.

*

For a blind man, Yann of the Masteen clan knew that he saw quite a bit more than people realized. In fact, he dared say that blinding himself had been the smartest thing he'd ever done, forcing himself to adapt and change and not overly rely upon those eyes his family—if they could be called that—were so proud of. Which is why he knew that it burned Het Masteen to send him on an errand he himself could not complete, even if he would never show it.

Het not being able to see was no surprise, though. The man’s cultivation was high, but his qi was weightless.

Yann put all thoughts of his cousin out of his mind as he walked slowly through the center of the mining town, though to call it a town was in and of itself misleading. It was a camp made for those the Masteen clan, and those “noble” clans that pledged themselves to them, viewed as less fortunate but really just saw as lesser. As such, they lived in squalor. He could smell it in the air, feel it in the mud that soaked into his thin cloth shoes, hear it in the whispers and voices of those he passed by, walking stick tapping the road in front of him more out of habit than any actual need.

Behind him walked two guards, one from the main branch and one from a branch family, more to make sure he was kept in line than to protect him. As arguably the second most powerful cultivator in the known world, he did not need protection. Not of the sort the patriarch believed he needed. No, they were here to keep an eye on him, to try and figure out how he could sense and understand things they so blindly missed. But his answer would always be the same. A riddle of sorts he liked to give them.

There's nothing new to see, if you can already see all.

"Would you two do me a favor?" he asked mildly, directing the comment over his shoulder. "They said the shipments from the mines was going missing, correct? Would you head to the—what was it? Is there a southern ridgeline? I believe it should be just a few miles away. And tell me if there are any trees turning yellow too early, or the like. I would greatly appreciate it."

The mainline brat scoffed and muttered something about being ordered around, but still vanished in a movement step alongside his servant, leaving Yann standing alone in the street, leaning against his cane, listening.

He heard more than he'd ever seen, especially with those two, loud as they’d been, gone. Grief and pain. The sound of people eking out an existence. The crack and whistle of henchmen keeping labor going in the mines to the south. But through it all, something else. Two things. The piercing silence of a grieving father, loud in its absence, and the keening wail of a grieving mother. They were all over the place. Hundreds, thousands. Echoing and shifting spirits, mirroring them, weeping and praying and begging, building up into a torrent of pain.

He ran, then, letting the wind carry him, guiding him left, right, up over a small stone wall, then down to what had to have been a small hut. Probably one story, built of stone, smoke pouring from a chimney and burning his nose, murmuring voices echoing inside, of stillness, fear, and sickness.

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He knocked on the door. The one who answered was a young Karae girl, maybe eight years old, skinny and dressed in rags. Or so his qi senses told him.

"Hello there," he said pleasantly. "Are your parents home?" The little girl stood in silence and shook her head. Yann could tell by the rustling of her hair.

"What illness has stricken this place?" he asked, still smiling pleasantly.

"It's my brother," she said, with all the innocence of a child. "Are you here to take him away? Are you a doctor?"

"I will take a look, if you wouldn't mind," Yann said, possessing not the greatest healing arts, but enough skill for nearly any illnesses of her cultivation level. Yann followed the little girl into the one-roomed house, where a fire was burning low in the center. Food rotted along the walls, not because no one cared to clean it out, but simply, he would guess, because they had no preservation techniques and food was a commodity. And a boy, Yann would guess perhaps fifteen or so, laying on a bed that was little more than a pile of blankets.

Yann furrowed his brows and knelt beside the boy, laying a hand on his head, letting his soul search his insides, mapping out his meridians and dantian. "Where did you say your parents were?" he asked carefully, after a moment, a sickness twisting his stomach.

"Dada died in the mines," the little girl said matter-of-fact. "Mama works overtime. Brother was helping, but then he got sick when he took a new job, just like my sister. Is he gonna be okay?"

And Yann hid the grimace in his soul, the revulsion in his heart nearly setting his hands to trembling as he touched this poor boy's cultivation base. There was something wrong with it. It felt twisted and impure. Like someone else was trying to force it to be something it was not. The meridians were receding in on themselves, curling up like the legs of a dead spider.

Yann spent precious minutes kneeling next to this boy, slowly coaxing his meridians back into their usual pattern, long enough that the other two, his keepers, found him not where they had left him.

"Your brother," he asked the little girl, feeling the other two land outside and covering their conversation with the soft silence of Qi. "Is he the only boy to get sick?"

"Mm, no," she said sadly. "Big Sister died last year. Other kids too. My friend Arnie down the street got sick a few weeks ago an’ never woke up."

"Just kids? Not the adults?" he asked.

"No. I don't know," the little girl said, and Yann's lips formed a thin line.

The other two burst in through the door, but Yann was already standing, sweeping past them, predicting what they said next, ignoring their complaints about him not being in place. He heard the boy’s comment about the ridgeline – it wasn’t just one or two trees. It was many. The entire ridgeline was yellow. He did not wait for them to speak or follow him or lead the way, using his Qi to feel it out, taking one step forward and

[All Beneath Heaven is One]

appearing exactly where he needed to go. Not off by inches, feet, or a mile. In the air, above the ridgeline, where he’d been sensing evil radiating since before they’d even gotten close to the mines. He cast his senses about and searched and searched and searched and dug, feeling out the mines, each shaft, each individual hole where bodies had been lost beneath rubble. The girl's father, dead almost two years now, and still buried and trapped. Hundreds of others, thousands, mining the Violet Spirit Stones a dangerous task thanks to the dangerous spirit beasts that lived in the caves. And then he found it there, right beneath where the trees were turning yellow and the ground was cracking. A cavern, hidden by wards and talismans and stones.

He took one more step and was in the cave.

He hated it. Every instinct in his body bid him run, flee this place, the foulness of it all. Violet Spirit Stones had been crushed into dust here, the energy within them expended. But more importantly, there was death. Skeletons and bodies and blood of children, their cultivations ripped out, torn from their stomachs like pills from a furnace.

And then there was the wailing. Floating above it all, the screaming sobbing cry of the mothers of these lost children, the stricken silences of the fathers. Haunting cries that reached out to him. Seeing his robes, what he was, the blood he carried. Hating.

And his sword was drawn, the cane splitting to reveal a fine white blade, his Dao manifesting around him to protect him from all that approached. This was the thing the patriarch was truly missing: the understanding of the self that gave Yann power Het coveted, and did not know where to find. He stomped his foot and slashed down, cutting through the spiritual claws that came shooting at him, frost crawling up his robes and blade. Physical blows ricocheted off of his blade, and he reassessed everything, swirling his Qi around him as he took the blows in two, three strikes, then slipped past, and the thing was gone, shooting up out of the cavern with a keening, shrieking wail.

Yann swallowed thickly, sweat running down his brow as he waited for it to return. One minute. Two. Only when he was certain it was gone did he sheathe his blade, allow himself to kneel over the body the shrieking demon had been weeping over. A girl, no more than twelve. Dead a few weeks—no, months—preserved by the foulness of this place and the lament of the mother.

He swallowed thickly. This was the sister. Not dead last year as the little girl had said, but only a few months. What kind of torment had she endured in this place?

"Oh, Het," he said softly, pulling up his fingers, which came away bloody. "What have you done?"

*

Yann returned to the World Tree, the seat of power of the Masteen hegemony, spread so far across the world, contested only in the far north and the far south where other great families resided.

He had given them all a proper burial, those children, one by one. Never again did he see the banshee, while there. Never again was a shipment late. And while he was there, never again did a child fall ill.

But it would not be enough. He knew for a fact it would not be enough. He could feel it in the wind, on the breeze, in the wailing of the spirits and the hatred in the air. The worst was, he couldn’t even disagree with it. It was time, for change.

He would personally see to it, if he had to.

*

They had suffered enough. Enough, enough, enough! Pain and hatred and anger and blood and loss and grief, and it hurt so much, and she would make them hurt the same way and more more more!

She clawed her way forward, sobbing and weeping through the trees, to that damnable place. Towards the source of it all. And she feasted and she ate and she gorged, going from one mind to the other, joining her wails with the wails of so many others, so many, washing forward across the land like a wave. The garments of their grief draped about her and followed her through the night, ghosts, white mists, and haunting melodies.

People on the outskirts of the cities screamed as she rolled over them, worry and fear at her visage echoing out in darkened waves.

Yes, let them feel the fear, so she could consume it, absorb the qi it radiated and use it to fuel her own power. It was not a sweet emotion to swallow, it was bitter. And she hated it, but she consumed it anyway, even as she crawled into the souls of the men with swords and ripped their hearts out like they had done to Bedelia, Rhone, Asher. So many names, echoing in her head. She wanted to scream and tear her head open, rip her own heart out so that she may join them…save, she couldn’t, for her own children, the two still living. She froze midair as she thought of those two left behind, the blind man tending to them, but -

But no. Forward, her heart urged. Forward, forward, forward. For her husband. So her children could be safe. So she could avenge them all and make them feel the same pain.

She roared over the rooftops of the vast city, waking families to screams, reaching down, so eager, stopping herself only once, to the little boy looking up at her from his crib. For a moment she felt it all drain away. Her hair falling about her, the wind ceasing, the chill abating, at that face just beyond a pane of glass. She reached forward as if to touch it, only for an arrow to streak by her.

She hissed and bared her teeth, shrieking as she hurled herself forward, punching her fist down the archer's throat to grab the lungs and rip them free in a spray of blood. The boy screamed behind her, terrified, terrified, other bits of her lashing out—but no, she contained it in soft hands. The children. Must protect the children, not create more orphans. It was the only control her old self had left. It was the only control she allowed her twitching fingers and burning heart.

She spread her arms and the mist rolled through the city before her. A sweeping wave. They were weak. They were all weak. Her target was not just the guards, not just the men. The women. All of them. The profane. The cruel. She ran through the streets, slitting throats, relishing in their blood and drinking it all in. For months she had been feasting upon them, upon the purple stones they so valued, leeching off of the pain they’d caused all so she could bring it back upon them twentyfold. Her veins hummed with power.

She ran straight towards the Tree. There would be no saving them, no protecting, no nothing. The wards that had kept her out before were torn asunder by her rage, frozen and shattered by the coldness in her heart. The voice of the fathers finally rang out, a loud bellowing of rage and war and promised bloodshed; no more! The wailing of the mothers, tearing even over the sound of alarm bells, mingled with them, lifting it higher, driving the bloodlusted rage further.

Green eyes, she knew. That was who she needed to go for first. Those precious green eyes of theirs. Rip them out of their skulls one by one and pop them like fruits, let the juices run down her arms. But the children. Not the children. Leave the children.

But she had to be smart. Lure the one out who even from here reeked of the blood of the innocent. Cause a distraction. Lure, his pride would be his downfall, at the top of the tree as he was, always looking up, never looking down. She’d seen him, in the dark of the cavern, in the memories of the children, turning cultivation into pills for his planned rise.

She would make him fall, drag him down to the depths where he belonged.

She tore through guards that appeared, chasing the chaos she caused, but unable to see her, for she stood in a place they refused to look. Down. They thought themselves better. Why would they look down upon anyone in their desperate clawing to the top?

She rose up from the floor and from servant corners and dark places they thought themselves too good to look at, the living tree cracking around her and bark yellowing as she grabbed one of the tattooed ones and sinking her claws into the ribs and dragging them into a crushing pool of gore on the floor. And the untattooed ones, she cut them down too. One by bloody one, save for the children.

There were quickly becoming too many. People were pouring out. Strong as she was, she could not take on the entirety of the clan. Already pieces of her, other wraiths, were being blasted away by powerful techniques and qi. She knew her purpose. She just had to lure him out, and kill him. She spread her arms, and other wraiths poured from her robes, dusting along the corridors to go wreak their own havoc, content to die if they took others with them.

And she faded, sinking down once more, to climb slowly, rapidly, sobbing, silently, to the top, where he was, hidden in a room of bright light. So powerful the wards, she could not pierce them herself, but she could hear through.

There were only two within.

"This is your fault, Het," the blind one said. Cold. As cold as she felt he could feel, without experiencing her grief, their losses. "What you have done is heretical. Profane. Against all the teachings of Heaven."

"They should feel grateful, because through me they will finally know the touch of Heaven!" the bloodied man snarled. "They're going to help me ascend to immortality. They were not using their cultivations anyways, not in any way that mattered. I don't need to hear lectures on morality from you."

The woman snarled, but waited, pressing her claws against the walls, seeking a way in.

“That is insanity, Het. When did you become so blind?!” the blind one hissed.

“Do not speak to me in such a manner! Or do you want your sister to be tattooed, like she was born to be?!”

The silence that followed was deafening. As deafening as the fathers', as the brothers who had watched their sisters be eaten.

"Threatening me now, Het?" the blind one said, voice so calm, as calm as a still pond. But she could feel it, like she had felt it in that cave. His Qi was sharp like a drawn blade. She had fled him wisely, before he could decide to swing at her in truth and soul, and so long as he was there and they were in that room she could not reach the bloodied man either. She hissed and bared her teeth. That would not do. That would not do. The guards were closing in.

Not enough time. Not enough time!

"You will stay here," the man said, "with the violet spirit stones. That is clearly what they are after. Seeking to stop my ascension, steal what is rightfully ours! I will go deal with this personally," he snapped.

"If you leave my side," the blind one said, "you will die." It was said bitterly, and the woman froze, because she could feel his eyes upon her, looking at her. He knew she was there.

The one named Het, the cause of it all, scoffed and left the room. "Who do you think I am?" he said.

And she was upon him before the door could fully close. His eyes were wide, so bright and green, and then red when she ripped her claws into them. Screaming her pain down his throat, his Qi rising, trying to combat her, but it was nothing compared to her focus and will. For as much qi as there was, it tasted like ash and blood. Of a mediocre soul propped up by excess and the deaths of others who were better. The cultivations of her daughters and sons, propping up a straw man, and he fell to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.

And she sobbed over his dead body. Dead before he could hit the floor. Dead before he knew what had been happening.

No. He hadn't felt enough. He had died too quickly. He had not shared the pain. His soul – his soul! It was already gone, though. Too soon!

She snapped up and around. There were others here still. She could—

The voice that cut through was calm and soft. And she turned and saw a blind man walk toward her, without a sword in hand or in heart.

"Oh dear. You are their mother, aren't you? I am so, so sorry," he said softly.

She hiccuped, face in her hands, peering between the gaps in her fingers, half ready to charge, half ready to bolt.

"You must have been a powerful cultivator, in that town, once. No. A powerful soul, before this. And you manifested a heart demon when you found out what had been done to your girl, your son, to all those children." He knelt in front of her, pushing the devil's body away with one hand, carelessly, like flicking away garbage. "He is dead now. What are you going to do? You have children at home who still need their mother," he said softly.

Her lips trembled, vision blurring. "I," she started. "My children—"

But then it came back. The grief. Still too fresh, still too raw. He was trying to stop her. There were so many more that needed to die. He didn't have the green eyes, the scars across his face proving it. Still he was still here, still complicit. His sister—no, it didn't matter. They would all—

"I'm so sorry. Had I seen sooner," he said sadly, bitterly, and she wondered if, had he eyes, he would be crying.

She lunged at him, claws bared, teeth wide, shrieking. He did not draw his sword as she neared, yet still brought one hand up, parrying her claws once, rising into a standing position, clapping his hands together and bringing them down again, still no sword, parrying her claws a second time. And then she lunged forward, and he thrust and pierced her chest, straight into her heart. Out the back.

She lurched, the wailing, the grief, the pain, all of it condensing down, falling, falling, falling, as her cultivation was shattered by a million tiny cuts.

The blind man had never actually raised his sword.

He caught her as she fell, laying her gently on the ground as she coughed up blood, life force ebbing, and grasped her hand with his own. "I am sorry," he said. "I am so, so sorry."

She felt it fade. The grief and anger all fleeing death, clinging to the mortal coil. And beneath it, that part that was still herself slowly came forward as the rest was cut away.

"I," she said. "My children—" She couldn't even finish the sentence, coughing up blood, cold crawling up her arms.

"I will ensure no harm comes to them, as I have until now." The blind man said. And she believed him.

"I can't. I—" she started, fear and pain and grief still coming back. She clutched onto it, as the only thing keeping her alive. The rest was gone, the pain of the others leaving her dying form, but what had been hers still there. Still tangible.

"I hope the Heavens grant you leniency and a new life far away from what this had been," the blind man said softly.

And she would have laughed if she were able. The Heavens. The green eyes, the Masteen, had been the Heavens, had worshipped it. They were the chosen of the Heavens, were they not? What kind of a Heavens was that, to allow this?

"Please," the blind man said as she started to fade. "Let it go. Just for a moment. So I can show you. She's standing there. She's right here waiting for you. She's okay now," he said softly.

She. The woman thought. Who is waiting?

She could feel the light coming. And the gentle hand of the swordsman urged her to open. She dared not. She had to. She dared. She couldn't. She—

And there she was. Her daughter. The one whose body she had found in that cave, whose death had torn open her heart and let the demon out. She could still see her little body on the ground, cultivation torn out after suffering months of fever and plague.

She was beautiful, and uninjured. There were ribbons in her hair, beautiful things she had not been able to give her child in life. Her daughter’s Avian wings were spread wide, so she could fly as freely as she had always wanted. Without fear of the city guards knocking her down. Her smile was wide and her eyes were sad as she took the woman's hand, took her mother's hand, and walked her into the soft light, away from where her body lay, where she could leave her grief behind and she could feel the warmth of a loving parent embrace her.

"It's okay, Mommy," she said. "We can go. Yann told me he'll take care of the others."

She turned back once at the swordsman, who watched her go. For a brief moment she could see what he was. Not just who. A sword. But it wasn't pointed at her. It never had been. It was pointed at the things that had made her.

And she wept, and embraced the soul of her child, and the soul of her husband and her people, and left for the lands of the true Heavens.

*

And the worlds changed.

For as there was just as much chaos, there was some good in the bad. Some progress in the collapse of the old, so the new could rise. Opportunities for that which was festering and rotting to be discovered and cut away.

And I welcomed all those souls who sought me, and even those who didn't. And tried to show those who were willing to see the way to a better Heavens, and those who turned to the demonic, the cost of what they'd done. And welcomed all my children into my arms, when it was their time to find me.