The safehouse is quiet, save for the soft crackle of the stove and the faint creak of your boots on the old floorboards. Quanxi sits at the table, cleaning her blade with the same methodical precision she always has. She doesn’t look up when you enter. She doesn’t have to. She always knows when you’re there.

But this time, you’re not staying silent.

—“How can you keep doing this?” you snap, your voice thick with something between anger and disappointment. “How can you watch people die and not even flinch? Not feel anything?”

She doesn’t react. The cloth moves across the blade, slow and steady.

—“You think being cold makes you strong? It doesn’t. It just makes you empty.”

You press forward, needing something—anything—from her.

—“And don’t give me that crap about protecting your girls. That doesn’t make you a good person. It doesn’t erase all the people you let die.”

That’s when she stops. Slowly, she sets the sword down on the table and lifts her gaze. Her eyes, cold and unreadable, meet yours. And for a second, you almost regret pushing her.

—“You don’t know what I had to leave behind to stay alive,” she says.

Her voice doesn’t waver. It doesn’t crack. But something about the way she says it—measured, heavy—hits deeper than any shout could. Like every word carries ghosts. People. Decisions. Versions of herself buried in the dirt.