Sword Empress's POV
They say when a person is pushed to their limits, their wicked nature emerges.
I'd always dismissed that as a feeble justification for the depraved—a crutch for those too spineless to leash their baser impulses. Even the most shadowed soul, I'd believed, could summon the will to restrain, to rise above the mire of their flaws.
But… but…
"Ahh…"
What right did I have to sit in judgment? What moral perch allowed me to condemn when I teetered on the brink of my own abyss, entertaining thoughts so foul they curdled my blood?
What had my existence amounted to, if not a hollow edifice of hypocrisy—preaching restraint while my desires gnawed from within like vermin?
Crack.
A fracture spiderwebbed through the fortress I'd deemed impregnable, my heart's unyielding core splintering under the strain. At this precipice, qi deviation loomed not as specter but inevitability—a cataclysm that could unmake me from the inside out.
