Lu Yuan walked alone.
Blood covered half his body. Some of it was his. The rest had dried darker across his sleeve and chest where Fei Ming's blade had cut him earlier.
The front of his clothing hung open where he had torn it apart.
Beneath the torn fabric, the center of his chest was still split. Flesh parted around the gap between his ribs, and inside it the newly inserted heart pulsed steadily. Each beat pushed fresh blood along the exposed muscle before it slid down his abdomen in thin lines.
The night sky above the Gray Zone was dark and scattered with distant stars. Lu Yuan tilted his head back and looked up at them, breathing slowly as the heart inside the open cavity continued to beat.
Then he laughed.
The sound rose from deep in his chest and rolled out into the empty street. "That bastard RiaKai," he said, wiping a smear of blood from his jaw with the side of his hand. "Going after the family's dejected… have you no shame?"
A star twinkled.
