The Estate burned in silence.
And somewhere beneath the soil, time cracked open.
Sanlang fell.
Not with grace—
—but like a monument collapsing under the weight of its own worship.
Eyes wide, mouth slack, blood a prayer slipping from his lips.
Zeyla's saber hovered above his skull, blade pointed to the heavens as if daring the storm to speak.
And then—
She struck.
The steel didn't cut him.
It shattered the earth beside his head, the ground breaking open like a mouth too tired to scream.
Stone cracked. Mud hissed. Thunder reeled back, afraid of her.
A voice. Behind her.
"Zeyla."
Yilan.
Breathless. Soaked. Shaking from a fear that had nothing to do with the cold.
She stepped between them, boots sinking into the blood-slick grass.
"Stop," she whispered.
"Please."
Zeyla did not move.
Her eyes—storm-gray—glowed with the lightning's borrowed fire.
"Leave."
The words fell like iron. No lift. No question.
Yilan stepped forward again, defiance crackling in her spine.
"He's not your enemy. He—"
"Is still alive," Zeyla hissed, "because he is still hers."
A pause.
The thunder held its breath.
"Had he not been," Zeyla continued, blade trembling now, "his head—and yours—would be feeding the dark. And I would salt the ground so not even memory could grow where you fell."
Behind her, the air tore.
And he appeared.
White robes whispering across the wind.
Eyes red—no, older than red—like grief incarnated into gem.
Hair like snowfall in a dream.
He stepped through the veil of rain without touching it.
And the storm bowed to him.
Zeyla did not blink.
Not even when he stepped from the veil of stormlight.
White robes, rainless. Ruby eyes—haunted.
He was beautiful the way graves are beautiful: permanent, clean, sacred.
But Zeyla smelled him before she saw him.
That faint trace—so faint it could be dismissed as memory.
Jasmine.
Wilted. Damp.
And exactly like the one Noor used to press between the pages of forbidden books.
Zeyla's fingers twitched.
Her jaw locked.
"You've been near her."
She didn't ask. She knew.
"You wore her scent," she said, voice cracking like bone in winter.
"The one that clung to her wrists when she prayed."
He didn't flinch.
But something shifted behind his eyes. Grief—or guilt—she could no longer tell them apart.
"You watched her," Zeyla said.
"Touched her."
"I never do," he whispered.
"I only wait. And hope the fire lets me near her before I become ash."
Zeyla stepped forward, each movement sharper than a blade.
--------------
The fire writhed around her.
Noor—crowned in rage. Her body a ruin of grace, her back bleeding, black feathers curling from split bone as if torn from heaven too violently.
The man stood in the doorway.
Soft. Reverent.
Like a monk watching the return of a god he thought he'd buried.
"You're awake," he breathed.
His voice cracked. His smile—a boy's. A lover's.
She did not smile back.
She looked at him—
And the room shrank.
Because in her eyes, he saw not Noor.
Not even a woman.
But the abyss, sentient and speaking.
And it knew his name.
Noor's mouth opened.
Black blood spilled from her lips.
The fire flared.
And in a voice not hers, but older, colder—cut from judgment itself—
She said:
"Go."
He froze.
She didn't raise her hand.
Her will was scripture.
His heart cracked in reverence and terror, and for a moment he almost dropped to his knees.
But instead—he bowed his head.
"I heard you," he said.
And vanished.
-------------
Back at the Estate
Zeyla's saber was still embedded in the earth.
Her knuckles pale around the hilt.
"You smelled like her," she whispered.
He raised his head.
"She...."
"She commanded you to leave."
He paused.
"She remembered herself more."
And suddenly—Zeyla's fury softened.
She would become what the stars once feared,
before the stars had names.
Zeyla looked past him now.
At the sky.
And she said:
"If she burns… the heavens will never recover."
He didn't deny it.
Instead, he whispered:
"And I will burn beside her. Again.
And again.
Until even fire forgets how to hurt."
One word. Spoken like a wound reopening.
His gaze met hers. Soft. Steady.
He did not speak.
Yilan pulled Sanlang's limp body onto her shoulder, staggering.
"Go," Zeyla growled without turning back.
"And pray she still wants him. Because if she doesn't… not even bone will be left for the crows."
Yilan did not argue.
She dragged Sanlang to the car.
The engine screamed to life.
Zeyla faced him fully now.
"What have you done?"
He tilted his head. The rain hissed where it touched his skin.
"She called me."
"She bled, you mean."
"No," he said. "She remembered."
Zeyla's lips curled. Not quite a smile. More like a scar trying to speak.
"Then where is she?"
His eyes flickered—not fear. But longing.
"Burning."
---
Elsewhere.
The hut groaned under the pressure of divinity breaking its spine.
Flames licked the air—blue, unnatural, rising like hands trying to escape the afterlife.
And Noor—
She screamed.
Not from pain.
But from fury.
"KANG—!"
Her voice split the dark in two.
Her eyes—blacker than god's first forgetting.
Her skin—a luminous parchment, veins alight with stories too old to be written.
Her back bled freely, but the blood was thick, dark, the color of the void when it forgets how to reflect stars.
Blue fire surrounded her. It did not burn her.
It crowned her.
---
Back at the estate.
Zeyla stared at the man with ruby eyes.
"You watched her burn," she said.
"Tell me—when you look at her, do you see a girl…
or a something crawling back through a body not meant to hold her?"
He did not answer.
"She'll tear through that flesh. Again. Like she always does," Zeyla said.
"And you'll try to catch her with hands that weren't made for holding salvation."
The wind fell silent.
Zeyla stepped forward.
"Tell me now. What first sin did you resurrect?"
Still, he said nothing.
Only closed his eyes.
And whispered—
"So many names she had. But only one she wept for."
Zeyla's voice turned to gravel and ghost.
"Then pray she doesn't become what she was when she wore it."
Lightning struck behind them.
The storm wept.
And somewhere far away—
Noor's scream echoed again.
________________
The glass doors burst open, rain still clinging to Sanlang's coat.
His eyes fluttered, unfocused.
A smear of blood trailed from his mouth to his throat.
Yilan ran beside the stretcher.
"Stay with me...stay with me."
Her voice cracked like something ancient beneath the weight of grief.
"You FOOL ,,you don't get to ....not like this… not after everything."
Doctors flooded in. Machines screamed. The world turned white and sterile and fast.
"BP dropping—he's hemorrhaging internally—get me a line—move!"
A nurse reached for her, but Yilan shoved past, one hand pressing down over the torn side of his coat, already soaked through.
"You're not allowed to leave me,Sanlang..
Not before I get to hate you properly."
Her hand trembled now.
---
Then, the whisper of shoes.
"Ms. Yilan…"
Lia stood at the edge of the chaos.
Her voice was threadbare.
"How is this—how is this even possible?"
Yilan turned.
Her eyes were distant—half in this world, half standing before the estate again, watching gods pretend to be human.
And then, softly—without looking at her:
"This… is what happens when a man picks a fight
with the one thing that remembers death before it had a name."
Lia stepped back.
Yilan didn't follow.
She only watched as Sanlang convulsed, a monitor shrieking once, then again.
The doctors pressed down.
The machines worked.
And Yilan whispered—barely audible over the noise:
"He said truth… or blood.
He never asked… whose it would be."
----------
Noor's body buckled.
One breath—
Then silence.
Her eyes, which moments ago burned black with fury, fell shut .
Blue fire hissed, curling off her skin in serpentine wisps.
Her blood—dark as plum wine—streaked down her back.
The air around her pulsed, warped.
The man in white was at her side before the flame knew it had died.
"No—" he choked, kneeling beside her. "No—don't you —not now, not again…"
His voice cracked like old marble beneath rain.
He cupped her face—luminous, even in unconsciousness.
"You were fire—do not turn to ash…"
Behind him, the EN stepped forward—her steps inaudible, her gaze older than judgment.
The spider lily in her hand was wilting now.
Only one petal remained.
She looked down at the girl, then at the man whose knuckles were bloodless with fear.
And she spoke.
"There is one way left," the EN whispered.
"But know this—before you choose: To enter there is to shed your name. You will feel not as yourself, but as her. Her pain will become your body. Her memories will sear through your spine. You will beg for death, and she will not grant it."
The man shook—yet not with hesitation.
He bowed his head.
And said,
"Then let death break me. Let agony unmake me. Let her pain be carved into my bones until I weep blood and call it worship."
He lay beside her—shoulder to shoulder, heart to heart.
He unsheathed his wrist with a blade of lightless silver.
"I am not afraid," he murmured.
"Then you are a fool," the EN replied.
He did not argue.
He let his blood spill—thick, ruby, holy.
It dripped upon her veins like ancient ink returning to lost parchment.
Their blood touched.
And the world changed.
----------
Inside It was not a dream.
It was not a place.
The man fell through her silence, and it crushed him.
No sky. No ground. No horizon. Only screams without sound.
Fire dripped from the air like mourning.
And then—
She appeared.
As the source of all the suffering that had ever dared take shape.
A child with gold in her eyes and nails torn from climbing out of graves.
A woman made of glass shards and lullabies.
A goddess with cracked wings dragging behind her like shackles forged from stars.
She stood before him.
Silent.
And the man fell to his knees.
"How… how do you survive this?"
"You live inside a wail that never ends…"
"No… this is not a soul—this is a battlefield the divine abandoned…"
His skin began to split.
Every regret.
Every betrayal.
Every time someone whispered love and meant control.
Every time someone said stay strong when she wanted to die.
His body convulsed.
He clawed at his face.
He could no longer scream—his mouth was full of sorrow that wasn't his.
"I cannot—" he gasped. "I cannot—another second—!"
And then—the EN pulled him out.
------
His back arched.
He coughed blood.
The floor cracked beneath him from the force of his return.
His eyes flew open—bloodshot, glowing faintly red.
He stared at the ceiling.
Then at her.
Still lying there.
And he whispered—
"She does not live…
Every second.
Her soul is a furnace where memories go to die screaming.
And yet she______
Tell me then—what greater existence yet curse than, her existence?"
The EN, standing at his side, finally spoke.
"Now you understand."
"Now you remember why even the heaven do not speak her name without trembling."
He stared at his own shaking hands.
"I only stayed a moment," he whispered.
"But she's been there… always."
A beat.
Then he said, as if in prayer:
"I would have died to save her.Take me back there."
The EN sighed "She has closed the portal."
And from the silence of her unconscious form…
A single tear rolled from Noor's eye.