The sky was gray.
Not the soft gray of early morning, but the kind that came after everything was already over. Ash drifted like snow, carried on a quiet wind that no longer smelled of life.
Mo Tian lay beneath a broken roof.
He didn't move at first. His body wasn't ready. Bones ached. Muscles stiffened. The air burned his throat when he breathed.
But he was breathing.
That, more than anything, told him the curse was still working.
He opened his eyes. The light hurt. It always did when he came back.
Above him, what remained of a once-beautiful pavilion creaked in the wind. Half the roof had collapsed. The support beams were scorched black. Jade tiles, once carved with sacred words, were shattered and buried beneath dust and blood.
He knew this place.
This was home.
Or it used to be.
The Crimson Lotus Sect, now reduced to nothing more than ruins and corpses.
Mo Tian moved his fingers. They were cracked and dry. One nail was missing. Blood had dried up along his wrist like old paint. His arm didn't want to move, but he made it.
He sat up slowly.
Pain followed.
His ribs felt like they were grinding against each other. Something sharp was still stuck in his leg — the remains of a blade. He left it there. He didn't care. The pain reminded him he was still real.
Around him, bodies.
Familiar ones.
His brothers. His elders. His master. All dead.
And him?
Still here.
He looked down at his chest, where a black mark pulsed under his skin — a faint glow just below the heart. It had no shape, no meaning in any scripture. But he knew what it was.
The curse.
"You who defy the natural order..."
"Let eternity be your punishment."
Those weren't just words. They were truth. Burned into his spirit.
Mo Tian couldn't die. Not truly. Not by sword. Not by poison. Not even if his soul shattered. He had tried them all.
And still… he came back.
He stood, barely. His legs shook. The wind pulled at the edges of his robe, now torn and stained with smoke. The crimson threads were soaked in old blood and grief.
He stepped down the cracked stairs, dragging his bad leg behind him. He passed bodies he knew by name. Faces he had laughed with. Faces now twisted in terror.
None of them had escaped.
But she had.
Bai Xueyin.
Her name came to him like a thorn in the throat. He couldn't speak it aloud. Not yet.
She had done this. Led the attack. Struck down his master with a calm expression and a clean blade. She believed it was necessary. She always did.
She followed the Thousand Purities Doctrine. A belief that emotion was weakness. That love and hate only led to ruin. His sect had believed the opposite — that emotion was power. That it could guide the Dao, not corrupt it.
They were wrong.
Or maybe… they just lost.
The courtyard was still. The once-beautiful lotus pond was now dry. The sacred spirit trees, once blooming with red blossoms, were nothing more than ash-covered stumps.
And yet… the altar still stood.
It was cracked down the middle, half-buried in debris, but it was there.
Mo Tian reached it and collapsed beside it. His body gave out. His hands dug into the stone. His breath came in short gasps.
He didn't cry.
He screamed.
Not loud. Not wild. Just a sound full of everything he hadn't been able to say — not then, not now.
No god answered. No justice came. Only silence. The silence that remains when even grief has no voice left to speak.
He was alone. Again.
He would survive this. He always did.
And he would remember.
Time passed.
Mo Tian didn't know how long he stayed there, on his knees, pressed against stone that no longer held any meaning. The altar used to be the heart of the sect—where vows were made, names carved, lives honored.
Now, it was cold and empty.
Like everything else.
He forced himself to rise. The blade in his thigh scraped against bone as he stood, but he didn't flinch. He barely felt it anymore.
Pain had long since stopped meaning anything.
He looked out at what remained of the mountain. The outer walls were gone. The training platforms had collapsed. The spirit well at the center of the valley, once glowing with soft red light, had dried up into a black pit. Even the air seemed thinner here, like the world had taken one look at this place and decided it didn't want to breathe anymore.
Mo Tian limped toward the pit.
He stopped at its edge.
Ash crumbled beneath his boots. The wind shifted, sending loose dirt into the empty well. It made no sound as it fell. There was no echo.
He stared down into it, thinking maybe—just maybe—this time it would end. That if he jumped, if he let himself fall far enough, the curse might forget to catch him.
But he already knew the truth.
The pit was just a hole. Nothing more. Not deep enough. Not strong enough. Not final enough.
He turned away.
His eyes caught on a patch of white at the edge of the courtyard. Something out of place in the sea of gray and red.
A flower.
A single lotus bloom, untouched by fire. Small. Fragile. Blooming through the cracked stone like it had no idea what had happened here.
He stared at it for a long time.
It should not have survived.
He hated that it had.
He knelt beside it, fingers hovering above the petals. But he didn't touch it. He couldn't. His hands were not clean. They hadn't been for a long time.
He whispered one name.
Bai Xueyin.
It didn't sound like a curse. Not this time. It sounded tired.
They had been strangers once. Then allies. Then something else. Then enemies.
But never nothing.
And now? He didn't know what they were. She had led the ones who destroyed this place. She had watched his master fall without blinking. And yet…
There had been hesitation. A flicker. Just before she turned away. Just before she left him broken and buried beneath the wreckage.
Maybe it was pity. Maybe it was guilt. Or maybe it was nothing at all, and he had imagined it because it was easier than accepting the truth.
He looked up at the ruined sky. It wasn't just clouds. Something hung above the clouds, just barely visible—like a crack in the heavens.
He had seen it before.
The sign of divine judgment. A tear left by a powerful curse.
His curse.
Every time he returned, it reappeared. Faint. Distant. Watching.
He wondered if she had seen it too. If, when she stood over him for the last time, sword in hand, she had looked up and realized what she had done.
Probably not.
Bai Xueyin didn't care for signs. She believed only in purity. In clean breaks. In final endings.
He envied her for that.
Because for him, there was no end. No purity. Just a long, slow spiral into something worse than death.
He stood again.
The wind shifted. Something moved through it. Not a sound. A feeling.
Pressure.
His hand dropped to his side, brushing the broken sword tied to his sash. The blade was chipped. Useless, maybe. But it still felt right in his hand.
He wasn't alone.
Not anymore.
Something—or someone—was watching.
And that meant the world hadn't finished with him yet.
Fine.
He would walk again. Crawl, if he had to. He would find her. Not to beg. Not to forgive.
But to remember.
Because if he was cursed to walk this world forever, he would not forget the one who made it hell.