Lue's hands felt unbearably heavy.
So did his heart.
But his mind...
His mind was empty.
Not the kind of emptiness that brings peace, nor the quiet that follows exhaustion. This was something deeper, a hollow space where thoughts seemed to disappear before they could even form, leaving nothing behind for him to hold onto. It was too vacant to remember, too distant to even ache properly.
And yet, somewhere beneath all of that emptiness, something remained.
Something waiting.
Lue walked without knowing where he was going, each step carrying him farther through the crowded streets. He had no destination in mind and no particular reason to keep moving, but his body seemed to know better than he did, following some invisible path that his mind refused to acknowledge.
The world continued around him.
People filled the streets, brushing past one another as they went about their lives. Merchants called out from their stalls, children ran through the narrow paths between them, and countless conversations blended together until the whole city became one restless, living sound.
It should have been overwhelming.
For Lue, it was nothing.
The noise reached his ears, but it never truly reached him.
No one looked at him.
Or perhaps they did, but only for a fleeting second before their eyes moved away again, uninterested and unaffected.
As always.
As if nothing had happened.
As if nothing had changed.
As if the world hadn't burned.
Lue moved through the crowd like a shadow, slipping between people without ever becoming part of them. There was something almost unnatural about the way he walked, so quiet and detached that it seemed as though he had already placed himself somewhere outside the world he was moving through.
His fingers slowly tightened around the hilt of his sword.
That familiar weight was the only thing that still felt real.
The cool metal beneath his grasp, the shape of the hilt against his palm, the slight pressure in his fingers- those small sensations were enough to remind him that he was still here.
That he still existed.
Barely.
The laughter around him didn't warm him anymore.
Once, perhaps, it might have.
Once, he might have stopped to watch people laughing together, or listened to the children running through the streets, or simply wondered what it would feel like to belong among them.
Now, the longer he looked, the more something inside him seemed to change.
The emptiness didn't disappear.
It twisted.
Something began filling the space where his thoughts had once been, but it wasn't warmth or life or anything that could make him feel whole.
It was sharp.
Cold.
And strangely alive.
They're laughing at you.
The voice came quietly.
So quietly that Lue almost mistook it for one of his own thoughts.
"Kill..."
His steps continued at the same pace.
"Kill them..."
The whisper slipped deeper into his mind, finding the empty spaces inside him and settling there as though it had always belonged.
"Kill them all..."
This time, it was clearer.
The voice didn't fade.
It remained, repeating itself until the words stopped sounding like a suggestion and began to feel like something inevitable.
His hollow mind started to fill with a single thought.
More.
More.
More.
And somehow, that terrible clarity was easier to understand than everything else.
Lue still didn't draw his sword.
He didn't turn toward the people around him.
He didn't question where the voice came from or why it had suddenly become so loud.
He simply kept walking.
There was no purpose in the movement that he could explain, yet his feet continued carrying him through the streets, away from the noise and toward somewhere only he seemed to know.
Or perhaps he didn't know either.
Perhaps something buried much deeper within him did.
Eventually, his steps slowed.
Then stopped.
Lue lifted his eyes.
A battlefield stretched before him.
Again.
The sight should have brought something back.
Fear.
Anger.
Memories.
Anything.
Instead, he simply stared.
This time, no one had dragged him here. No one had forced him into the chaos or placed a weapon in his hand and told him that survival depended on how many people he could kill.
He had come here himself.
A slow breath escaped his lips.
"Haa..."
The sound was soft, almost peaceful.
Almost relieved.
At last.
His gaze drifted across the battlefield.
Men fought everywhere, their blades colliding with harsh metallic cries as they pushed against one another with everything they had left. Some fought desperately, others out of fear, and some simply because stopping meant dying.
Bodies moved through the chaos with one purpose.
Survive.
Just a little longer.
Life and death unfolded in front of him, constantly changing places, yet to Lue there was no meaning in either of them.
It was all the same.
Then something shifted behind him.
A man lunged forward.
His sword was raised high, his body driven by instinct, desperation, or perhaps both.
Foolish.
Lue didn't turn.
He didn't flinch.
He didn't even bother acknowledging that someone had decided to attack him.
His sword moved almost lazily.
One effortless motion.
The blade barely seemed to touch the man.
And then the man's body stopped being a body.
There was no dramatic cry, no chance to stumble backward or even understand what had happened. His form simply ruptured apart in an instant, bursting with such violence that it looked almost fragile- as though whatever had been holding him together had never truly been strong enough to begin with.
Blood filled the air.
It scattered across the battlefield, splashing onto the ground and staining everything it touched.
The earth.
The bodies.
Lue's white clothing.
For a brief moment, the world seemed to go quiet.
Not around him.
Inside him.
"Haa...!"
A strange sound escaped his throat.
He almost didn't recognize it.
A laugh.
Low and unsteady, carrying none of the warmth laughter was supposed to have.
Lue slowly lifted his hand and watched the blood slide from his fingers.
He studied it with distant curiosity, as though it were nothing more than an ordinary thing that had happened exactly as expected.
"His entire existence..."
His voice was quiet enough that it almost disappeared beneath the sounds of the battlefield.
"...was just blood."
He looked at the remains before him.
There was no disgust on his face.
No sorrow.
Nothing.
His eyes remained empty, stripped of anything that could have made the scene feel human.
But his mind was no longer silent.
More.
More.
More.
The whisper had multiplied.
What had once been a single voice now felt like a chorus buried inside his skull, endless and hungry, pressing against the last remaining pieces of silence.
Lue stood in the middle of the battlefield as the white fabric of his hanfu slowly darkened beneath the blood.
Red spread across the cloth, like a memory he can never forget.
It soaked into him.
For a moment, it almost looked like a version returning to the surface- something that had been buried deep within him, waiting patiently for the right moment to emerge again.
Around him, the battlefield began to change.
The fighting slowed.
People stopped.
Those who had witnessed what happened stared at him from a distance, their weapons still in their hands but suddenly forgotten.
Confusion appeared first.
Then came the realization that whatever they were looking at was not something they understood.
And finally, fear.
"What... was that?"
"Did you see- ?"
"What is he...?"
Their voices trembled.
Some stepped backward without even realizing they were doing it.
Lue looked toward them.
This time, he really looked.
For the first time since arriving on the battlefield, something moved behind his eyes.
Not anger.
Not hatred.
Disappointment.
"Pathetic."
The word left his lips softly, almost without emotion, yet somehow it carried farther than a scream could have.
He stepped forward.
Slowly.
There was no hurry in him anymore.
The sound of his sword sliding completely free from its sheath cut through the battlefield, clean and unmistakable. The blade caught the light as he held it at his side, and the people standing before him finally seemed to understand what was about to happen.
They had started it.
After all.
Perhaps this was only fair.
If they had brought the bloodshed to him, then he would simply finish what they had begun.
Lue took another step.
Somewhere far beneath the surface of his being, beyond the thoughts he could hear and the memories he could no longer reach, something ancient stirred.
It had been there all along.
Watching.
Waiting.
And now...
Smiling.
"...yòu..."