Chapter [B5] 1 — The End

Chapter [B5] 1 — The End

Like everything before that had happened, and perhaps all that would come ahead still, I found myself in all too familiar darkness.

It took me a moment to realize this was not a dream, as my mind began to piece together the events that had gone down. From the moment I had touched upon that Divinity, it was as if I’d lost some part of myself, like something had taken over me. It was similar to the feeling I’d felt when Xuanwu had wrestled control of my body from me to try and fix the broken cycle forcefully, but while that had been submission, this had been… assimilation. I had still retained myself… but my definition of I had changed. And it was only now, that all the events were starting to come back to me.

I waited in the dark and let the fragments settle. I did not try to force them. Forcing thoughts in here only made them slip away. So I breathed slow, even breaths that anchored my spirit sea and I watched scenes arrange themselves in order.

The emperor’s fall. The tearing of heaven’s canopy. The way Qi thinned at the edges of the world like water leaking from a cracked gourd. The four Divine Beasts answering, but only two truly joining me. The Heaven’s Will, the final clash where the sky lost its color and Domain pressed against Domain until the earth groaned.

I felt phantom pain as the end replayed itself in my mind. All of that… had happened. It wasn’t just a dream. I’d fought, I’d fought while using the power of the people across the empire, using the very Will of the Heavens, and two of the four Divine Beasts, while touching upon Divinity myself. I’d fought, till I’d reached the pinnacle of power imaginable.

And I’d lost.

The word lingered in the dark of my mind, inescapable. I lost. I failed.

In these cultivation stories, that should have been the point where the hidden card flips the board. Some transcendent insight, some hidden reserve of Qi, some ancestor wakes and holds your hand across the gap.

That wasn’t what happened. I’d reached with borrowed strength and paid in lives and faith and hope, scaled the peak and found a cliff on the other side.

The journey, the sacrifices, all the stakes built up for this final confrontation. The Divinities had lost their lives. No, that wasn’t true. Not lost, they’d been abandoned. Abandoned by Heaven. By the Heaven’s Will that had resided inside of me.

I understood it now, the power of how fate worked its paths. I had seen it in those moments.

And I had influenced those outcomes. It is why the Shie matriarch had survived when none of the others had. Perhaps I had found it too difficult, even subconsciously, to do that to someone connected to Liuxiang, and so I’d taken a path that would’ve given me the outcomes I’d needed to reach the powers I’d required while still keeping her alive.

Threads like a million branching roads and each fork carried a cost. When one shifted, ten more twisted in its wake. Every gain had burned something else behind me, even if it all still moved toward.

A horrible sense of guilt washed over me at the realization, and yet there was nothing to be done about it now. I’d done all of that, and more, and I’d still lost.

I tried to shake off the thoughts, but there was not much else to do. Unlike before, my form was… unstable. Only half there, like a… well, like a ghost really. I could see through my form, even though there wasn’t anything to see beyond it. I was translucent and wispy, as if trying to hold on to the memory of who I was meant to be, but slowly losing sight on the idea of it as time passed. My spiritual sense drifted when I didn’t hold it tight; even my core felt far away, like a sun seen through fog.

Yet there had to be something going on here, right? I had never been a big believer in god or the afterlife back on Earth, but things were different here. I had met creatures who were veritable gods. I myself had become something very close to one, and the evil demon I’d left behind was the completion of that, a true god to be born unto this world. So the thought of an afterlife didn’t bother me all that much. The important question was, what now? Was there something I was meant to do here? Or was this simply going to be my personal purgatory?

I’d been in long, unending darkness before. I was familiar with it. But this darkness was different from the usual one.

This was not my world, not a realm I controlled or was inherently a part of. This place was foreign to me. I was a visitor here, and that gave me pause. The texture of it was not the quiet of my memory palace or the pressure of my domain’s edge. It was a road. A passage. It felt like the space the soul used when it left and when it returned. 𝐑ÅNÓᛒЕ𝓢

Thankfully, with my frequent experience with unending spaces of darkness, I’d developed an understanding on how to deal with them. I sought within myself, something to guide me. This was not my space, but it had to be someone’s, and there was something about it that felt… intimate. Like I knew this place. Not like my own self, but like someone I’d known for very long and very deeply, well enough to understand their soul itself.

I began to walk, stepping through the darkness all around me as I followed this unseen thread of connection. It was frayed and weak and flickering, as if it would snap out of existence at any moment, but it remained for now, and I continued to follow it.

Each step steadied my form. The more I moved with purpose, the less I bled into the dark. The thread smelled faintly of rain after drought, of green sap, of the first rise of Qi at dawn.

Life, in its purest form. The tenacity that lets seeds push through stone.

It did not take me long to find the source. A single, ethereal tree awaited me at the end of my path, lighting the darkness all around me. I looked at the tree, and for the first time I found it to be… small. Its presence flickered like a candle in the wind, barely holding onto life. Its leaves were thin as paper talismans, pale light flowing through them in breaths. Roots hung loose into nothing, seeking soil that wasn’t here.

My heart ached at the sight, as I pressed a palm against the tree’s bark and leaned in, pressing my forehead, and feeling the pulse of Chi flowing within it. The beat was unsteady, like a cultivator who has bled too much and keeps moving through will alone. The bark felt faintly warm and very old. It remembered more than I did. It remembered the first time Qi took form.

“I’m sorry. I failed you. I failed… everyone,” I said, as if asking for forgiveness.

A voice returned from within, surprising me. “It is not your fault,” it whispered, and I looked up in shock. A presence I hadn’t felt in a long time appeared from the tree.

“Ki…?” I whispered, not believing myself. “But… how…? I thought you had…”

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I didn’t know what to say. Died? I knew Divine Beasts didn’t truly die, but from all that had happened, I’d understood that she had changed, become the tree itself, the unifying segment of life and death. The Qilin, the fifth divine beast as the world had once known her, no longer existed. The Qilin that bound the edge of the cycle had returned to its root.

The tree rustled and the voice echoed out into me and a spectral figure appeared. A spirit, much like me, ethereal and barely there, but present distinctly nonetheless. Instead of a Kirin… It was a woman, one with gentle eyes and a sad expression on her face, and yet I knew it was the same Ki I had once known. She wore no crown, no armor, no light beyond the soft glow that came from her spirit. There was a calm around her that felt like spring returning after heavy snow, not as a promise, but as a duty fulfilled each year.

“We… are sorry, child,” she said, her hand gently on my shoulder. “We failed to protect you. The burden had always been so great, and yet we asked you to bear it nonetheless. You do not have to resent yourself this way.”

“I’m… sorry too, Ki. You gave me a duty, a way to protect my loved ones and this world, and I… I failed it. Failed everyone, everything.” The words scratched my throat. Saying them in here made them settle deeper. There was no room to pretend.

“It is not your fault,” she whispered and I felt something terrible inside of me collapsing.

The darkness was all consuming around me in the silence, and for once I wish it’d just take me away for good. I hated how she understood, even beyond this facade of things being alright. For who I put on such an act for, I did not know, perhaps for myself, to lie myself into believing things were okay. But the facade was weak, and I’d already given all that I’d left to give, and so I crumbled, and all that had been held back came forth at once.

The divine beast’s motherly figure wrapped her arms around me in a hug and I let myself cry. I cried for my failures, for the frustration. I cried in the pain and anger of loss, and in the certainty that I’d given my all and it had not been enough. That I had not been enough. No sounds beyond the ragged but muffled cries could convey the depths of pain that coursed through my body. I’d let them all down. Everybody I loved in this life, everybody I cared for. I’d failed.

I’d failed. I’d failed. I’d failed. And there was no reality that existed which could rid me of this haunting realization.

Ki did not interrupt while I emptied myself of all my pain and shame and regret. She did not tell me to be strong, did not tell me that heroes don’t cry, did not speak of destiny. She only held me close and secure. Her Qi was cool and clean. It erased none of the blood, but it washed the blade.

“Let those cries settle down child, let them pass.” Ki spoke gently, and her voice reminded me of my mother. Not the mother from my past life, she and I had shared blood but almost nothing beyond that. Even her memories were vague and distant. No, it was the mother I’d lost in this life, the mother who’d raised me in this world. In this moment, I could almost feel her there, in the warmth of Ki’s touch, in the gentleness of her voice.

I let myself soak in that feeling till my tears no longer flowed and my heart found itself settling once more.

When I could stand straight again, I wiped my face with the heel of my hand. My palm passed through faintly, reminding me I didn’t even have tears to wipe. “How… are you here?” I asked again. “I felt you become the tree. The cycle. I thought—”

“We are not… not truly. This… is the last remnant of what remains of us. We are here, because of the seed we’d left inside of your little spirit, Twilight. Her form was suitable to ours, and thus she’d retained a part of what had us the Qilin. Or, as you call us, Ki.”

I remembered the seed Ki had mentioned all that time ago, the same one that had allowed Twilight to command spirit beasts at one point as her powers had grown. The little spirit’s soul had always felt gentle and stubborn in equal measure.

“You expected this?” I asked, fearing that I’d never truly been trusted in the first place. But also, perhaps, relieved. If the world wouldn’t crumble on my shoulders, then it meant there would be some other way.

“Not expected this. No one could’ve, not even the purveyors of fate, or the primordials from beyond this realm. The ability to see comes with limits, no matter how powerful you become. No, we had simply created a contingency.” Ki shook her head, sadness reflecting in her voice. “We had known you must end up here one day, but we had not hoped it would be in this manner.”

“Do you mean… that I would die?”

“All things die. To do so is the way of nature. Nothing is truly eternal, not even nature. One day, everything will have an end, even the stars that shine brightly in the skies and the endless expanse of worlds that are strewn across reality. But no, what we had known was that you would come here specifically. This place is the resting ground, the place in between life and death, it is the path souls must travel before they can be reborn.”

I looked at Ki, unsure of what she meant. “Then I’m… between?” I asked. “If I move forward, I leave it all, and if I move back…” I glanced at the tree. Its light shook at the edges. “I don’t know if there is a back.”

“The answer is not something we can give to you just yet.” Her eyes held me and did not flinch. Soft, not human, but gentle. “To get there, first, you must understand the beginning. That is what these souls ask of you, to see where it all began, and how we got here,” Ki said, and the world shifted around me.

“Souls?” I asked, suddenly aware of it: the air in this place wasn’t air. It was intent. It pressed without malice. It watched without eyes. Rivers without water flowed past the tree, lines of spirit that led onward. I heard whispers, not words, more yearnings. Some were light, some were heavy. They weren’t focused on me. They flowed because this is where they had to flow.

“The ones who have passed through you,” Ki said. “The ones your tree has held, and the ones we have watched at the edge. They want to move. The cycle is broken. To mend it, you must see how it cracked. To see the crack, you must walk back to where the first pressure came from.”

“What if I don’t like what I see?” The question slipped out before I could weigh it. I already knew the answer.

Ki tilted her head. “Then you will carry it, as you have carried everything so far. But you will carry it with both hands, and you will know why it is heavy.”

I nodded and steeled myself. Cultivators who feared truth stagnated. I had spent years tearing at the walls in front of me. I didn’t like the truth that I had led lives to their end for power. I didn’t like the truth that Heaven abandons pawns it no longer needs. Liking had nothing to do with it. I would do what I must.

The darkness gathered in ripples. The tree swayed once in a wind that wasn’t a wind. The root-tips curled, seeking, and then loosened, as if they let go. I felt the thread I had followed tug tight around my wrist. It did not hurt, only reminded me of a promise I had given before I knew what it would cost.

“Before I go,” I said. The words pressed at my throat. There were things to ask that I never got to ask. “Ki, the Shie matriarch lived. Was that my will, or Heaven’s will using me?”

Ki took a long time to answer. In the dark between us, motes of light rose and fell with her breath. “Both. That was always the case with you. You walked a path where you believed in your answer enough that Heaven could use it. That was why Heaven chose you. That is also why it would discard you when your answer no longer matched its need.”

“That sounds like a nice way to say I was convenient.”

“It is a true way to say you were necessary,” she said. “And still are.”

My jaw tightened. “Necessary and convenient feel the same from where I’m standing.”

“Then stand somewhere else.” She smiled faintly, not harsh or mocking. Sincere advice.

I let out a breath. “Twilight… will she be okay? If this remnant fades?”

“Twilight is her own person. She has always been.” Something like pride warmed Ki’s voice. “She will lose nothing by our passing. She will gain space that was taken. The seed’s purpose will remain, but she will be its master.”

I nodded, relieved even more than I expected. “Xuanwu… the Azure Dragon… if I find the beginning, will that help me face the end?”

Ki’s lips curved, the smallest smile. “You ask that and you already know. When you name the first step, you own your path. When you own your path, even falling from the highest peak is a step. Not an end.”

“I thought we were avoiding grand sayings,” I muttered. It came out more fond than I meant.

“Then take it as a dull one.”

A small laugh left me despite everything. It cut the tension in my throat, just enough.

Wisps rose around me as the tree began to fade and Ki along with it as I felt myself being pulled somewhere by hands. Not hands with fingers—pulls of intent that knew exactly where to grip me. The last words I heard were Ki’s voice echoing into the mist filled darkness.

“Watch, the Beginning, child. That is how you will understand the End.”