The gods surrounded him like a winter council — twelve cold faces carved from light and judgment.
"Kaito, you cannot control your threads now. We, the Twelve, have sealed your karma thread. You must die before you ascend."
"You sick bastard," he spat between ragged breaths, blood dark on his lips. "After what you did to my sons and daughters — you'll finally die. They'll watch you burn in hell."
He was naked to the cosmos: torn flesh, ribs exposed, blood spilling in slow, crimson streams that stained the sky. Still he resisted. Still he laughed — a sound like broken glass. The gods looked on with the pity of magistrates who had already signed the sentence.
"Such a waste," one sighed. "He might have been divine, but he defied our law and sought to surpass us."
Memories that had slept for millennia rose inside him like drowned cities: victories, betrayals, the unbearable calculus of a god who loved nothing but ascent. He had known this end. He had chosen it. To be a vice-weaver was to be merciless — a maker of ruin with no place left in heaven or earth.
"If this Reverse Time Thread is effective, I shall ascend to godhood in my next life," he thought, and laughed — a raw, terrible sound. "Wicked demon, what are you laughing about?"
They moved to finish him. Light tore his sight. There was no pain when the world unraveled — only the cold, bright resolution of a thing decided.
Snow fell silently on a mid-sized tavern.
Inside, amid the scent of wood smoke and warm broth, a newborn wailed — a small, sharp sound that cut through the hush. Luo Wei held the child to her breast and smiled as if the world had begun again. Feng Huang stood close, tears in his eyes, whispering, "A son. We have a son."
They named him Kaito.
The infant's cry was not a healthy, slobbering protest but a thin, deliberate mew — as if the body and the mind did not entirely belong to one another. Though unfocused, his eyes carried an odd intensity, the slimmest trace of someone already measuring distances and outcomes.
Luo Wei handed the child to Feng Huang. He cradled the tiny weight in his arms, feeling both wonder and the sudden, uncanny impression that the room had gained a guest older than time itself. "He's perfect," Luo Wei said, and meant it.
A faint breath filtered from the newborn — a sound that might have been a sigh. Somewhere behind the flicker of candlelight, a thought thinned into life: The cycle begins anew. Time to rewrite my destiny.
Outside, the snow kept falling as if the world itself waited — not for an ending, but for a beginning that had been long overdue.