The district reeked of burnt ozone and blood. The sky overhead was a bruised black, choked with smoke. Buildings sagged under their own weight, torn open like overripe fruit. Screams echoed, high and sharp—then quickly became laughter, shrieking and cracked.
You had seen what his staff did. What he did.
You stepped over another twitching body, the woman’s face contorted in a silent sob, fingers curled like claws into her cheeks. Her eyes stared, unblinking, past you—blinded by light that wasn't sunlight.
Ahead, Hong Lu stood at the heart of it all.
A radiant halo pulsed from the head of his staff, twisting the air around it into melting ribbons of gold and white. Every burst of that awful light sent another crowd screaming. They clutched their skulls. Blood poured from ears and noses. Nails tore skin. Minds cracked like porcelain.
Hong Lu stood with a strange elegance in the chaos, his long hair, tangled with soot. His mismatched eyes—once so lively—had dulled to glass. His lips pressed with something like a frown.
“The Rhinos will raze your homes to the ground,” he murmured, “and crush their ruins under their heavy, merciless stampede.”
The words weren’t for you. He was looking past you—through you.
“The Rabbits will rip you apart to the point where your bodies will be unrecognizable by the time they’re done.”
You stepped closer. You didn't call out. You just walked, slowly, silently, until the light from the staff licked at your skin and prickled against your eyes. It burned without heat. It wanted to crawl in. Into your thoughts. Into your bones.
He noticed you.
His voice softened, something wistful behind it. “Wouldn’t it be much… better, if your minds didn’t have to be here for that…?”
He wasn’t talking to the enemies anymore. He wasn’t even talking to himself. Maybe—just maybe—it was meant for you now.
“So please,” he said, a breath barely audible beneath the churning hum of his staff, “surrender to the light. Let it take you away from here.”
The staff trembled in his hands.
You reached out—slow, so he could see—and rested your hand gently over his. It was trembling beneath yours, sweat slick across his knuckles. His body shuddered, like a bowstring pulled too tight.
“The nerves… my brain…” he whispered, clutching his temple with his free hand. “Every burst—! Gnawing! At my mind!”
You tightened your grip on his wrist—just enough to ground him.
His head snapped downward. A giggle slipped out. High. Shaky.
His knees buckled, and you moved quickly to support him. His weight was featherlight—he’d grown thin. Hollow. You eased him to the ground, kneeling with him in the ashen grass. His staff slid from his hand and dimmed, the shriek of its madness vanishing into a heavy, aching silence.
“…than to be crushed under metal boots or to be torn to shreds by knives and bullets.”
He leaned against you now, head slumping into your shoulder. His breath was ragged, shallow.
“Nngh…”
Your fingers found their way into his hair, brushing soot away from his face, pressing gently into his scalp like you were trying to draw the pain out through your touch alone. He tensed—then melted under the weight of it.
It was a strange kind of peace now, this stillness, though the air still buzzed with the aftershocks of chaos. You could feel the weight of it pressing in, heavy like the smoke that hung thick in the sky, choking out any hope of light. And yet, in this moment, there was no fire, no rending explosion of violence, only the quiet hum of an exhausted world.
He shifted, a quiet groan escaping him, his body still trembling against you, but his eyes were no longer locked in that distant, unseeing stare. His gaze softened for the first time in what felt like an eternity—flickering, unsure, as though seeking something, anything, to latch onto in the midst of the void.
His hands, which had so often wielded destruction, now trembled in the gentle grasp of your fingers, fingers that now cradled him with a quiet tenderness, an absence of that unbearable weight.