Gen stood over the lifeless body of Nix. A sudden, profound calm settled over him, deeper than exhaustion, beyond the fading rush of adrenaline. It was a quiet emptiness. A stone, carried for a year in the pit of his soul, had finally been lifted.
*I did it, Father.*
He looked up into the starless void of the Forgotten Realm, tears mingling with the blood on his face. *I did it.*
Wiping his face with a trembling, filthy sleeve, he turned. His eyes found Lorel first. Without a thought, he rushed to her side, sliding on his knees across the cracked stone. He gathered her up, holding her tight against his chest, heedless of her wounds or his own. His breath hitched.
"Are you okay? I thought you were… I…" The words tumbled out, raw and unguarded. He was genuinely, desperately worried for *her*. In this singular moment of strange peace, with the enemy dead, she was the only anchor he had. The only proof that something good could still exist. He held her as if clinging to life itself.
Lorel's heart melted. Looking up at his bleeding face, feeling his tears and blood drip onto her skin—down her cheek to her lower lip—her own pulse raced. Her body grew warm, a flush that had nothing to do with injury. For the first time since they had met, she felt a shared, fragile peace. Nix was gone. One of the Divine Generals had died, and she, Lorel Feng, had stood in the storm. And Gen… Gen had run to *her*.
Forcing herself to focus past the dizzying warmth, she pushed gently against his chest. "Duo Yi," she said, her voice hoarse but clear. "She was wounded. Where is she?"
Her state was not as grave. Only then did Gen's mind flash back to the other fallen figure. He stood, pulling Lorel up with him, an arm still around her waist for support as much as hers, and they moved to Duo Yi's side.
She lay on her back, hands pressed to her abdomen, her fingers and the fine fabric of her robes dark and slick with her own blood. Her face was pale as moonlight, her breathing shallow. Life seemed to be seeping silently out of her with every slow exhale.
Both knelt beside her. Lorel placed her hands over Duo Yi's, her own Qi—a soft, pink-tinged light—flaring as she pulled on **Shidow**. She wasn't just pushing energy; she was trying to *manipulate* the torn flesh, to coax the edges of the terrible null-wound to knit. It was a basic, frantic mending spell.
Seeing this, Gen's eyes widened in surprise. "When did you learn this?"
"After the Tower," Lorel murmured, her brow furrowed in absolute concentration. "My comprehension… it grew. This spell was in a scroll I could finally read."
Gen nodded, a genuine respect in his battered voice. "You're a real genius." He wasn't saying it to flatter her. Learning a healing spell was among the highest and hardest forms of **Shidow**. In their group, only Madame Su had ever demonstrated such skill. Even Duo Yi, Baili, or Ning could not. It took years of study and profound understanding of the body's energy map. Only the rare prodigy, like Juxian, was an odd exception.
While they worked, Li Zhan, who had been silently binding the stump of his severed arm with strips of cloth and a focused application of his own energy, moved to stand over Nix's corpse.
He activated the Wheels. Not just **Shidow**, but **Fendow**—Separation.
A ghastly, shimmering thread of energy was pulled from the corpse of the Divine General. It was not a soul as mortals understood it, but a condensation of his celestial mandate, his potent will, the raw essence of his power. Many did not know, but in the Li Family, Li Zhan was among those rare, insane prodigies who could touch **Fendow** at such a young age. It was a Wheel for veterans, for ancients, for those who had studied division for centuries.
After collecting the strange, potent essence into a small, crystalline vial, Li Zhan smiled. "It was well worth it," he said to himself. "Losing an arm for such a puppet is more than fair." Then he looked at Gen, Lorel, and the dying Duo Yi, his smile serene and utterly chilling.
Gen frowned slightly, seeing what had just happened. He didn't understand the specifics, but he had seen **Fendow** and the theft of that ghostly energy. However, he was still grateful for Li Zhan's help in the fight. He asked no questions. He didn't try to understand.
It was at that moment that Duo Yi's eyes fluttered open. They moved slowly, focusing on the faces above her.
"Duo Yi! You're alive! The Wheels have heard our prayers!" Gen's smile was so genuine it cracked the blood on his face. He was crying.
Duo Yi observed them. She could feel the warm, stubborn glow of Lorel's energy in her abdomen, the heat of Gen's tears falling on her collar, the fierce worry in Lorel's eyes. These were her friends. In the Doom College, she had never known anything like this. All she knew was cultivation, strength, being the best of her generation. This strange feeling of being… loved… was foreign. A novel equation with no clear solution.
"Are we friends now?" Duo Yi asked, her voice a weak, breathless thread of sound.
Gen and Lorel broke into genuine, choked laughs. "Yes," Gen said, squeezing her cold hand. "We are friends now."
It was at that moment Duo Yi's faint smile slowly faded. Her eyes lost focus, looking past them at the strange void. "Gen… I…"
Her eyes dimmed. The light in them simply went out.
Gen's heart seized. His hand moved to her face, shaking her gently. "Duo Yi? What are you doing?" He turned to Lorel, panic edging his voice. "What's wrong? I thought you were healing her!"
Lorel herself had her hands covered in fresh, warm blood. They were trembling. "There was… another energy. Clashing with mine inside the wound. I couldn't… I couldn't heal her in time before the damage took her heart. I am sorry."
Gen's face darkened as the thought settled, cold and final, in his mind.
*Duo Yi was dead.*
*How?*
With trembling hands, his sun-gold eyes, now dull with shock, turned dangerously towards Li Zhan, who had taken a careful distance.
"Looks like you can still use your Eternal Body," Li Zhan noted, his voice conversational. "That will be problematic. I thought of collecting you, too."
Gen's eyes seemed to have lost all their color. He stood up, pointing a shaking, bloody finger at Li Zhan. "Why? Why did you have to do that? We could have saved her!"
Li Zhan shook his head slowly. "You don't understand, Gen. Her fate was sealed the moment she entered here. Even if I hadn't… expedited matters, Lorel would never have been able to heal her. The null-energy was in her core."
"Lies!" Lorel cried, though the terrible, clinical part of her mind, the part trained by the Tower, knew he spoke a brutal truth. "Even if… we could have gotten her out of here!"
Li Zhan sighed, as if explaining to children. "I intended to kill all of you and collect the spoils. But I don't mind letting you grow a little more before I come to collect." He eyed Gen's flickering, furious aura. "How you get out of this place is none of my business. However, since you might die here, I can let you know this." He paused, letting the silence tighten. "You were all aware of the poison. None of you is free of guilt. Not even your friend lying there."
At that, Gen stopped instantly, taking a step forward, then freezing. He looked at Lorel, and both wore identical expressions of confusion and dawning horror.
"What do you mean?" Gen's voice was a rasp.
"I have no idea who did the poisoning," Li Zhan said, shrugging his good shoulder. "But I know for sure some people in my family, the Kang, and even some in the Doom College probably knew of it. As to why no one acted… they all have their own reasons."
"Varja was not a fool," Gen argued, desperation rising. "Even if he didn't know the scheme, he wouldn't have drunk poison just for the sake of decorum! So what happened?"
Li Zhan started laughing, a soft, ugly sound. "Are you sure you want to know the truth?"
Seeing Gen and Lorel stand silent, he continued. "The God Asylum scroll you had… was the first part of the poison. The only way to get it to Varja was through you. The jar at the arena was just the activating condition. Knowing the poison was already in him, Varja drank it because the game had already been set the moment you entered his pavilion, training with the God Asylum."
Gen's legs turned to water. He crumbled to his knees.
*I poisoned Varja?*
The pieces slammed together with the force of a falling Damocles. Li Chen had vanished after their deal. Gen had direct access to Varja's pavilion for days. Varja would have never suspected *him*. And when Lia Kai brought the jar… how could Varja refuse, knowing refusal might put his daughter in danger? In his weakened, trusting state, he could only play along. Hence the look with Juo Si—it wasn't acknowledgment of a pact. It was the look of a man seeing the final, confirming piece of his own betrayal.
"We shall meet again, Gen Jiang. Definitely."
Li Zhan's body turned into a beam of silver-grey light as the treasure pendant around his neck activated, tearing a temporary hole in the fabric of the Forgotten Realm and pulling him out.
Before Gen or Lorel could shout or move, he was gone.
Gen sat there, feeling utterly empty. Lorel sat by his side, her hand on his arm. "He is not the real culprit," she whispered. "It was all those cultivators. Juo Si and his ambitions. He probably thinks the cultivators of this world still have a chance against the Divine Generals, so he wants to consolidate power. If we were to escape this ordeal…"
Gen didn't hear the end of her sentence. He fell into her arms, his body shaking with silent, wrenching sobs that held no sound, only the terrible shudder of a breaking dam. The only words he could choke out were fragments of guilt. "I killed Varja… I killed Duo Yi… They're all dead… and it's because of me. Why is everyone I love dying? One after the other…"
He pulled back slightly, looking at her through a veil of tears and blood, his expression one of raw, childish terror. "Will you die and leave me, too?"
Lorel's heart broke. A sharp pang of pain shot through her as she shook her head vehemently. She pulled him back into her arms, holding him as tightly as her own wounded body would allow. She leaned close, her lips brushing his ear, and said in a voice so soft it was almost a thought, a vow woven into the very air between them:
"I will never leave your side. Never."