The world narrowed to pain and breath.
Li Yao ran until his legs no longer remembered how to stop. The forest blurred into streaks of green and grey, pines flashing past like ghosts in mourning. He didn't think. Didn't feel. The heat of the village fires still baked the back of his neck. The screams still rang in his skull. His blade trembled faintly at his side.
When he finally collapsed, it was on a bed of moss near a dried-up stream, half-buried in pine needles. His chest rose and fell like a forge bellows. The stars overhead seemed too bright—too distant. His fingers curled into the earth like roots seeking steadier ground.
He did not dream that night.
But he did not sleep well either.
By dawn, he was moving again.
Not toward anything. Just away.
Away from Green Pine Village, from the cracked barricades and broken walls. Away from the creature whose eyes had stripped the marrow from his courage. Away from the weight of the blade, which now pulsed only when he thought of blood.
But the further he walked, the more the silence began to change.
Not quiet. Not peace. Just empty.
No birds. No rustle of squirrel or fox. The forest felt drained, as if something had passed through and taken all life with it. Even the wind was slow to return.
He climbed a low ridge by midmorning, then descended into a steep ravine that ran parallel to the road to Redleaf. Here the trees were younger, the stones covered in slow-bleeding moss. He drank from a shallow pool fed by snowmelt. Chewed on bitter root. Rested his legs.
That was when he heard it.
A cough.
Faint. Wet. Human.
Li Yao froze, every muscle tightening. The sound came again—closer this time, hidden behind a knot of brush near the base of a leaning cypress. He moved carefully, silently, until he found the source.
A man.
One of the villagers. Li Yao couldn't remember his name—he'd seen him once helping Jin stack hay bales, a quiet youth with quick hands and sun-dark skin. But now that face was waxy, pale, and streaked with dried blood.
The man's chest rose in shallow, rattling bursts. One leg was bent the wrong way. The wound across his stomach had begun to fester, black rot curling from the edges like ink in water. His eyes fluttered open as Li Yao approached.
He recognized him. There was a flicker of something behind the pain. Shame, perhaps. Or desperation.
"You ran," Li Yao said softly.
The man tried to nod, but choked instead. His voice, when it came, was barely audible.
"First night. Thought... forest safer than the walls."
A pause. Then, bitter laughter, turned to coughing.
"Didn't get far. Something... something tore my horse in half. I crawled. Gods, I crawled..."
He trailed off.
Li Yao knelt beside him. Looked into his eyes.
There was no light there. Just agony.
"Please," the man whispered. "Don't leave me."
Li Yao didn't answer.
He didn't need to. The man's eyes begged for what his mouth could not finish.
Mercy.
An end.
Li Yao's fingers brushed the cloth-wrapped hilt of his blade. The fabric felt warm, as it always did now. As if the blade was alive. Watching. Waiting.
He thought of the blacksmith—the flickering forge, the voice that had rasped like iron dragged across stone, the words he didn't fully understand. A price. A blade with memory. With weight.
"I don't even know your name," he murmured.
The man coughed once more, blood flecking his lips. His jaw slackened.
He was too far gone to speak again.
Li Yao stood.
For a long time, he simply watched the man suffer. Not out of cruelty. But out of something colder. A recognition of the weight. The line he was about to cross.
This would not be like killing a beast.
This was something else.
He drew the blade.
No hum. No resistance.
Only silence.
The cut was quick.
The man didn't flinch. He was already gone.
Li Yao stood over the body, the blade still in hand. The wind stirred the pine needles. His breath came slowly, deliberately. The metal in his hand shimmered.
Then it sang.
Not loudly. Not joyfully. A low, single tone—clear as struck glass, fading almost as soon as it came. The forest seemed to shudder.
And then the vision came.
He blinked—
—and was back in the shrine.
But not as it had been.
The fire blazed high. Sparks leapt to the beams. The shadows flickered along the stone walls. But everything felt… wrong. Not memory. Not dream. Something deeper.
The forge pulsed like a beating heart.
The blacksmith stood at its center, hammer in hand, grinning.
But this time, he said nothing.
Just raised one eyebrow, like a teacher watching a pupil finally make the first stroke correctly.
Li Yao didn't speak. He couldn't. His throat felt tight, like he'd swallowed coals. The air shimmered around him. The shrine began to fade—not like mist or fog, but like old paint peeling from stone.
The blacksmith gave him one last look, and then he was gone.
The forge was dark.
The anvil cold.
Only the blade remained in Li Yao's hand—its edge glowing faintly, its weight real.
And when he opened his eyes again, he was back in the forest, the ravine silent, the body still at his feet.
The blade no longer hummed.
But it felt heavier.
He wiped it clean, wrapped it once more, and stood.
Then turned south—toward Redleaf Town.
Whatever he had become, there was no going back now.