The words carried no self-pity. No attempt at justification. Only acceptance.
"Tell him those things often felt cruel and necessary at the same time." His eyes returned to hers.
"Tell Lang I love him. But love doesn't make me a good person nor a just one."
His voice grew softer. "It doesn't erase anything."
"It simply means there are people I would sacrifice everything to protect." His gaze remained steady. "Tell him morality is more complicated than stories pretend." He added.
"The world likes simple heroes and simple villains because they are easy to understand." Luo He added grimly. His expression hardened slightly. "But reality is rarely that kind."
He paused.
"Sometimes terrible people accomplish good things. Sometimes good people do terrible things. And sometimes the same person becomes both." He said philosophically.
The tent fell silent again. Then Luo He finished. "Tell him his father made choices. Some noble. Some unforgivable." He said.
"And that every one of those choices carried a cost." A faint smile returned.
"Then let him decide for himself what kind of man I was." He said firmly.
Su Kim stared at him for several moments. Then she settled back against his chest. A warmth touched her expression.
"I think," she said softly. "You might actually be a very good father." She added proudly. "You are both wise and handsome." I am lucky to have you.
Luo He snorted. The sound was almost amused. "I am an indeed and excellent father." He added proudly pointing to him self. The confidence returned instantly.
Su Kim laughed quietly.
Luo He closed his eyes. "I am also a terrible human being." His smile widened. "But both things are true." He said proudly.
And somehow, coming from him, neither statement sounded like a joke.
This conversation was never meant for Lang. It was always about Su Kim. Illegitimate she may be in title, yet she was blessed with a sharp mind.
The questions she asked weren't curiosity, they were a test. A quiet reckoning of the man she had chosen. And when Luo He answered, she didn't just hear him, she understood him.
That he wasn't a man who killed for pleasure, or simply because he could. He weighed lives carefully before tipping the scale.
For a woman as sharp as Su Kim, that was everything. She had chosen this man, and his answer reassured that she was right.
Their initial stagnance didn't mean their night was boring, how ever Luo He remained still for much of it. Simply letting her take what she needed.
Letting her move over him with increasing intensity, letting her explore the edges of pleasure and sensation, understanding that this night was not about his satisfaction.
But all about hers. About what she would need to survive his absence for the next few months or maybe even years to come. It lasted for hours.
The physical act giving way eventually to simple closeness. Su Kim falling asleep draped across him, her body fitting perfectly against his.
Her breathing slowly becoming deep and even as exhaustion finally claimed her.
Luo He did not sleep immediately. Instead, he held her and thought about the massacre they had left behind.
Thought about ten thousand bodies burning in pits. Thought about children with filed teeth. Thought about the priestess hanging upside down.
Her blood draining in a grotesque mockery of her own rituals. And he felt nothing. Not satisfaction. Not regret.
Simply the acknowledgment that he had done what he needed.
When he finally allowed himself to drift toward sleep. Su Kim stirred slightly and her arm tightened around him. Even asleep, she sought to hold him in place.
As if to prevent him from departing, even knowing departure was inevitable.
The dream came in the deepest part of the night. Luo He found himself standing in a space that was not quite real.
A landscape of blood-red mist and shadows that seemed to move with independent purpose. The air was thick, almost liquid and was difficult to breathe.
Then the shape approached. It was not humanoid. It was not even remotely close to any shape that biological matter would naturally form.
Instead, it was a smudge. A thing made entirely of thick viscous blood, that thing somehow maintained consciousness and intention despite its lack of solid form.
The red mass moved with fluid grace, leaving trails of itself in the mist as it approached. "Child of violence!" It spoke, though it had no mouth.
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. "You have done well." It said. Luo He tried to step backward but found his feet would not obey.
He was frozen in place, forced to face the entity. "I did what I chose." He said, his voice steady despite the wrongness of the situation.
"Indeed." The blood-thing circled him slowly. "The priestess was my servant. And yet you destroyed her. This pleased me greatly." It said.
"The priestess had it coming," Luo He replied coldly. "I am also a monster," the thing responded. "As are you, child. You have killed with my blessing." It said.
"You have taken innocent lives under the guise of necessity. You have looked into the abyss and found it beautiful." It paused. Its form seeming to pulse with something like satisfaction.
"Ten thousand three hundred and forty seven souls. I have counted every one. And they have all been offered to me, either through volentury or involentury sacrifice." It said.
Luo He's mind raced through the implications. He had not killed innocents by anger, but the cannibal tribe's system meant that nearly every inhabitant had been complicit in predation.
Even the children. Still the children had been innocent. "I killed children too." He said, forcing himself to acknowledge it.
"Yes," the blood-thing said with what might have been joy. "How marvelous. Innocent children, their blood untainted by adult compromise." It said.
"Do you even fully understand what you have managed to accomplish?" The blood being asked. "You have given me more pure sacrifice than any mortal has managed in centuries." It said proudly.
The blood-mass moved closer. Luo He could see shapes within it. Faces, bodies, the suggestion of countless lives absorbed and integrated into the thing's form.
"For this gift," the creature continued. "I will offer you a reward." Something emerged from the blood mass. A small thing, no larger than a beetle.
With an exoskeleton that seemed to shift through colors, red to black to deep purple. A blood bug. "This is a parasitic creature." The thing explained. "It will live in your blood."
"It will enhance you blood in every way. And in exchange, it will feed on your life force gradually over decades. When it had consumed enough, it will be yours forever." The blood god explained.
The creature extended the insect toward him. "Will you accept this gift?" It asked.
Luo He wanted to refuse. Every instinct told him to refuse. But he could see the power contained in the small creature.
Could sense the enhancement it would provide. Could understand that accepting it meant accepting service to something far larger than himself. "I accept," he said.
The blood bug crawled toward him, moving with deliberate intent. It found his wrist and began to burrow into his skin. The sensation was like nothing he had ever experienced.
Pain mixed with pleasure, violation mixed with enhancement, his body simultaneously accepting and rejecting the intrusion.
"You are mine now." The blood-thing said, and its voice held something that might have been affection or might have been hunger.
"My instrument. My champion. Go and conquer. Go and kill. Go and build your empire. And know that you do it all for me." It said proudly.
The blood mass began to dissolve. Pulling away, retreating into the mist. Luo He tried to call after it, tried to understand what he had just agreed to.
Tried to comprehend the depth of what he had just committed himself into.
Luo He's eyes snapped open. For a moment he simply lay there, his heart racing, his breathing rapid, his mind trying to reconcile dream and reality.
He looked down at his wrist expecting to see the blood bug crawling beneath his skin. Nothing. Just unmarked flesh. Just his normal body unchanged. Just a dream, nothing more.
Su Kim stirred beside him, her arm still draped across his chest, her face still peaceful in sleep. Lang slept nearby in his small cradle, safe and oblivious to the nightmare his father had just seen.
The tent was exactly as it had been. The oil lamps providing steady light, the furs warm and comfortable, everything solid, real and utterly mundane.
Yet the dream had felt so vivid. So real. So absolutely true in a way that waking reality rarely was.