Some truths are sharp. Others... cut where no blade can reach.
Scene opens in the quiet of the healing wing.
Xie Luan sits alone. Wrapped in bandages, shadow sigils glowing faintly beneath them.
Jin stands outside the door, staring at the handle, thinking. Yooha leans beside him, arms crossed.
> Yooha: "You're going in?"
Jin: "He fought with us. Almost died. That means something, right?"
Yooha: "Or maybe it means he didn't want to be alone when the curse got him."
Jin pushes the door open anyway.
Inside
> Jin: "So... you wanna talk? Or should I guess again that you're half spider-demon prince of the Underworld?"
Xie smirks. A little.
> "Close. My father was the King of the Umbra Vault—ruler of shadows, exile of the divine realms."
> "He wanted to use me. Shape me. But I ran. Hid. Changed my name. Burned my true sigil."
Jin steps closer.
> "So what are you now?"
> "Still figuring that out," Xie says, "but I chose friends. And that's not something my father understands."
Flashback: Age 12, Midnight Escape
Xie running through a forest of whispering shadows. His own cousins chasing him, eyes black as the abyss. He carries only one thing: a music box his human mother left behind.
> "Be more than blood," she told him. "Be your own flame."
Back to present
Yooha enters. Tosses a water flask on his lap.
> "You should've told us."
> "You would've left."
> "I'm still here."
A silence passes.
Bo Lang bursts in like a storm.
> "Guys! So I may have accidentally sold our names to a shady map trader who wants Jin's blade—but also gave us a lead on the Laughing Shrine!?"
Everyone stares.
> Jin: "...You what?"
Bo: "He gave me a coupon too! Look!"
End of Episode 19( continue)