"Begging already?" he sneered. "The mighty Yan Rou, reduced to tears over an old man who should've died years ago. How poetic."
My chest heaved. Every breath I took was sharp, jagged with pain. I reached out, blood staining my fingertips, dragging myself forward inch by inch. My knees scraped the gravel, tearing through cloth and flesh, but I didn't care.
"You said you wanted revenge!" I shouted. "Then take me! Kill me! Torture me—whatever pleases you. Just let him go."
He tilted his head, amused. "So dramatic. So heroic. As if you're still that righteous little princess from before." He slowly stepped toward me, boot heels crunching over the stones.
"And what if I don't want to kill you, Yan Rou? What if I want you alive—long enough to watch everything you ever loved turn to ash?"
"You wouldn't dare!" I spat, struggling upright. "You think you're a god now? That demon inside you is rotting your soul—"
Before I could finish, he lifted his hand and my body slammed to the ground, as if the air itself had turned against me. I gasped, unable to move, the pressure unbearable.
He crouched beside me again, whispering like a snake in my ear.
"I was dead, remember? You made sure of that. But the moment you killed me, you opened a gate that even your gods couldn't close. The Devil's Bone didn't just bring me back—it gave me life, everything I ever wanted. I was never looked down on. When you killed me, I roamed the spirit world as a lost soul, no one willing to take me to the other life but then---- the devil bone gave me a promise."
Whispering into my ears the second time. "It gave me the power to rule, to become mightier than a mere servant cursed and deposited to live a lonely life. I'm just here to take back what belongs to me, the heart of flame!"
Coldly, he grabbed Yan Rou's neck, making a small incision on the left and down to her collarbone. The searing flesh made Yan Rou to cry out in pain. "I will take that." He smiled, plunging his hands into her flesh and pulling out a starred artifact from inside her.
I gasped, my body convulsing as he dug deeper. The artifact—my heart of flame—was pulled from within me, the very core of my existence, the thing that had kept me alive and powerful for all these years. It was as if my soul was being ripped from my chest.
The pain was unimaginable.
"How much I missed you." He chuckled lifting the heart of flame above his head and then slashed it into two. Yan Rou screamed, her body burning hot while panting heavily.
What sort of cruel death was this!
"Yan Rou, you could have run away with me when I asked you. The day I stood on this place, every Royal's voice demanding for my death and then you with the sword, I knew you had chosen them over me. You are alive because of me! My darkness was what healed you and this is how you repay me!"
He chuckled, raging outwards. Soon, his head fell to the ground, his lifelessly body hanging in the air. I lost the last love of my life as my throat went sore with his body falling to the ground.
Everyone was dead because of this maniac!
"You have taken them all away from me. Weilan, dad, mom, everyone. What else is stopping you from killing me? The Yan Empire is burnt to ashes also. Just kill me already."
I had never dreamt this day that I would prefer death than suffering.
"Not so fast. I want to make sure that killing you means that you can never reincarnate. I want to terminally erase you from the surface of the earth. No Yan Rou equates me merging with the last arc of the devil bone."
He didn't have a smirking face while saying that. His left hand dug into his robes, lifting out the Soul-Annihilator Seal.
A cursed relic, forged in the flames of the Nether Furnace and inscribed with the forbidden glyphs of the Void god. The cultivation of soul annihilator seal meant Li Zhenyu had unlocked the last stage of cultivation of the devil bone.
My blood chilled.
"You…you'll destroy the cycle itself," I rasped, trying to crawl back, my fingers clawing weakly at the gravel. "No soul can return if struck by that. Even demons would weep at such a fate—"
"That's the point," he said stoically "You don't get to be reborn. You don't get another chance. There is no afterlife for you. Only death."
He began to spin it backwards delicately, each lightened star attached to the stones of eternity began fading off until everything had completely died down. "See you when we meet again or probably never, Yan Rou."
Yan Rou's body changed to pure white,her hair first to wither away, accompanied by her skin which tore away bit after bit as it flaked off in thin sheets. Her legs gave out thirdly, dissolving into shimmering dust. Then her arms, curling upward like burnt parchment, scattered like ash in a phantom breeze.
Her chest collapsed inward as her soul trembled, pulled between worlds. Her heartbeat stuttered once—twice—then stopped.
Her head, the last to remain, lolled forward and gently touched the ground with a quiet thud.
Then everything went still.
For a brief, haunting second… fragments came like rushing wind—echoes of what once was.
"Rou'er, come here! Look what I made you!"
Weilan's bright eyes, her laughing voice.
"Stay strong, my daughter. Never kneel to injustice. I am proud and will always be produ to have you as my daughter" Her father's firm hand on her shoulder, prepping her for the war ahead of her
"I love you, Yan Rou. Run away with me, just this once."
Li Zhenyu… before the corruption. Before everything burned.
And finally..... "Mommy, look what I made for the baby. Am I going to be a big sister soon? Is the baby a girl?"
The memories collided, layering over each other in a desperate, bittersweet flood.
But then—blackness.
A slow, yawning dark that swallowed everything. The laughter. The love. The pain. All of it… gone.
And in the void, her fading soul whispered:
"Is this what death felt like? Getting to lose everything you once loved?"
**********
18th January, 1025…
There was a soft buzzing, then—voices which was muted at first and increased every minute.
"She has been like that for two and a half months. Is she finally waking up?"
"She doesn't appear to be one of us. I think she was drowned and her body lightly floated on the water till it arrived at our shore."
"What if she is an alien or a spy?"
A sharp poke jabbed at her shoulder.
And just like that, reflex surged through her muscles.
Snap.
Her hand shot up, grabbing the finger mid-air firmly. It was a human's hand. It felt so real...why did it feel so real?
Didn't she just die?
Gasps rose around her.
Yan Rou's eyes blinked open weakly, blurry at first. She slowly raised her head, strands of hair cascading down her face.
"I can't breathe." Mumbling, Yan Rou clutched to her chest, heaving heavily until she was able to cough out the last drop of water from her mouth. "I'm… alive?"