Yanwei continued combing the pile, each movement precise. Deliberate. Almost slow.
But this wasn't a real search.
Not for the Tideglass.
He hadn't expected to find it here.
That was never the point.
He was applying pressure—not through blades or bruises, but through intrusion.
Through desecration.
He was going through her things—not for answers, but for reaction.
He knew people like her. The detached ones. The thinkers. The ones who didn't break when you beat them, but unraveled when you unfolded them.
So he touched what she didn't want touched. Pulled apart what she kept private.
That bag was more than tools and tokens. It was hers—her identity, her secrets, her shame.
She wouldn't speak to protect herself.
But she might speak to protect what was inside.
That was the pressure.
He wasn't trying to find the Tideglass.
He was trying to make her stop him.
But she didn't.
She stayed silent. Let it happen. Let him strip her inventory bare.
And then—
He paused.
Fingers brushed something different.
Cool. Smooth. Still.
No glow. No sound. No force behind it.
But he felt it immediately.
He lifted it slowly from the dirt.
And there it was.
The Tideglass.
He stared at it in silence, turning it in his fingers.
For a moment, the air seemed thinner. Tighter.
He hadn't expected this.
Not here.
Not on her.
Not like this.
And suddenly—everything connected.
Tideglass.
Tide.
Water.
Ice.
Velurya.
His gaze snapped back to her.
Still slumped. Still quiet.
But her eyes—her silence—meant something else now.
Not resistance.
Realization.
"You didn't even know," he murmured.
Not a question.
A conclusion.
He looked down at the glass again, then back to her.
"You let me in because you thought you had nothing to hide."
"But this was always yours."
He stood slowly, the Tideglass slipping into his robes like a secret swallowed whole.
Velurya's head barely lifted, but her eyes found him.
No fire. No fight.
Just a fragile, empty surrender—the eyes of someone who's been broken but can't fully admit it.
Yanwei's gaze landed on her.
Not a glance.
Not an assessment.
It devoured her.
Slow.
Intentional.
Like a predator tracing every inch, every flaw, every wound.
His eyes roamed her form—not with lust, but with cold possession.
They lingered far too long on places meant to be hidden: the curve of her neck, the sharp line of her collarbone stained with blood, the faint rise and fall of her chest under torn fabric.
His look said more than words ever could:
You are stripped bare.
You are exposed.
You belong to this moment.
She tried to shrink away, to fold in on herself.
But his eyes held her still, unblinking.
Not hungry.
Not angry.
Just inhumanly calm.
Like a surgeon studying a patient too broken to fight back.
And in that gaze—there was a weight, crushing and intimate.
A quiet promise:
You will never be safe again.
You will carry this look inside you.
This is the look that shatters.
Her breath caught, trembling.
Her body stiffened.
Not from fear.
From the raw, suffocating violation of being seen so completely—so completely owned—without a single touch.
Yanwei crouched slowly, face inches from hers.
"You'll remember how I looked at you," he said quietly.
The words barely mattered.
Because his eyes said everything.
Yanwei turned his back to her.
There was nothing left to say. No threat left to give. The silence behind him had all the answers he needed.
The moment was over.
Or so he thought.
From the edges of the bloodstained clearing, a flicker of motion.
Wuyan.
The black cat moved with eerie calm, her small frame silent against the dirt. She had been hidden the entire time—watching, waiting. Her survival instincts were sharper than most humans. She knew when to disappear. She knew when to act.
And now, without a word or warning, she padded forward.
Not toward Velurya as a threat.
Just passing through, like a shadow that had always belonged here.
But then—she paused.
She looked at Velurya.
And smiled.
Just a little tilt of the head, a curl at the corner of her feline mouth.
Then—claws.
They slashed forward in a blur.
Velurya barely registered the movement before pain exploded across her face.
Her scream tore through the air—sharper than anything before.
Her hands flew to her eyes, blood already flooding beneath her fingers.
She hadn't expected it.
Not after everything.
Not now.
Not like this.
Her vision—gone in an instant. Her world, red and blinding.
And Wuyan?
She didn't linger.
She acted like it was nothing.
Like it was a tease. A game.
She turned with a flick of her tail and trotted toward Yanwei without a second glance.
A soft leap.
Then another.
She climbed his robes like it was home—crawling up his side until she reached his shoulder.
There, she perched.
Settled.
Like a familiar returning to its rightful place.
Yanwei glanced at her briefly—not with anger. Not even surprise.
Just a quiet acknowledgment.
As if to say, "So… you too."
And then he kept walking.
Behind him, Velurya's sobs twisted through the blood and dust.
But neither of them looked back.
Not the man.
Not the cat.
Because for them—the game truly was over.
Blood gushed from her eyes.
Hot. Thick. Blinding.
It smeared across her face, soaked into her hair, poured into her mouth as she gasped for air that refused to come clean.
She couldn't see.
She couldn't scream anymore.
Her body was mangled—ribs shattered, skin split, aura cracked and bleeding. She was pulp. Meat. Ruined.
But she was awake.
And she heard him.
The soft tread of footsteps turning away.
Calm. Measured. Finished.
He wasn't even looking back.
That thing—that monster in a man's skin—had ended her and walked away like she was never worth remembering.
Her hands trembled over her face, twitching. Clawing.
She didn't even feel her fingers digging into her own skin anymore.
All she felt was him.
That bald head. That cold voice. That gaze that violated her without touching.
The cat's claws were nothing compared to his eyes.
Those eyes had stared through her, stripped her, defiled every last shred of self she thought she had.
She should've broken.
She did break.
But then—something inside the shattered pieces twitched.
Not healing.
Mutating.
Something inside her began to laugh.
Silent. Ugly. Broken.
Her chest shook—not from sobs, but from something far darker. A convulsion of rage so intense it felt like birth.
She was reborn in that moment.
Not as Velurya.
Not as a cultivator.
Not as a person.
But as a curse.
Her heart slammed against her ribs like it wanted out. Her tongue pressed against her teeth like it wanted to bite through.
Her blood boiled with only one word. Not a name—she didn't even know his name.
But his face.
That calm.
That stillness.
That casual ownership of her ruin.
She would find him.
She would rip that stillness from his bones.
She would make him understand what it means to suffer.
Ten times wasn't enough.
Twenty wouldn't come close.
She would invent new forms of pain for him.
She would spend years perfecting them.
She would crawl through the darkest holes of the world, beg demons for secrets, rip through corpses for forbidden power.
She would become something he couldn't ignore.
Because he ignored her.
He looked at her like she was furniture.
Like she was an object.
Like she had no soul.
So now?
She would sell her soul for revenge.
And when that day came—
She wouldn't give him a monologue.
She wouldn't scream.
She would smile.
And erase him.
Not quickly.
Not cleanly.
But the way he did to her—
Forever.