The silence after Li Zhan's departure was absolute. It was not the quiet of peace, but the hollow, ringing stillness that follows a cataclysm. The only sounds were Gen's choked, ragged breaths and the faint, ethereal sigh of the luminous mist drifting past their island of dark rock.
Lorel held him until his shaking subsided, until the silent sobs were just tremors in his shoulders. She didn't speak. Words were useless here. She simply held on, an anchor in the formless purple void.
Finally, Gen pulled back, his face a ruin of dried blood, tears, and exhaustion. His amber eyes, usually so bright, were dull, their light turned inward on a private hell. He looked past her, to the other still form on the cracked altar stone.
Duo Yi lay where she had fallen, one hand still curled loosely near the terrible grey-edged wound in her abdomen. Her face was pale, peaceful, the sharp intelligence behind her glasses gone, replaced by an empty stillness.
Gen stood, his movements stiff, each one speaking of deep pain. Lorel rose with him, her own body protesting. Together, they moved to Duo Yi's side.
"We can't…" Gen's voice was a rough scrape. "We can't leave her here."
Lorel nodded. She looked around the barren altar island. In the distance, a petrified forest hung upside down, and a waterfall of sand flowed sideways into nothing. There was no soft earth, no sacred grove.
They found a corner of the altar, slightly sheltered by a natural, wind-smoothed rise in the dark rock. With careful, solemn movements, they cleared away smaller fragments of stone and debris from their battle. Gen used his hands, his reinforced fingers moving with a gentle precision that belied their power, to sweep the area clean. They laid Duo Yi there, arranging her as respectfully as they could, folding her hands over her stomach. It was a bleak resting place amidst the surreal wreckage of a dead realm.
"It's the least we can do for now," Gen said, his voice flat.
"Until we heal fully," Lorel added, her own tone quiet but steady, "and have the strength to break the formation sealing this place… we're trapped here."
Gen's gaze then shifted to the other corpse. Nix lay sprawled nearby, a broken monument to hatred and dead worlds. Even lifeless, his presence was a stain on the stone, a reminder of everything that had been lost.
Gen stared at it for a long moment. A cold, clean anger, simpler than his grief, rose in his chest. He couldn't let it remain. Not here.
He didn't summon a grand technique. He simply raised his right hand, index finger extended. The tip glowed with a pinprick of absolute darkness—not the flashy corona of the **End of the World Finger** used in battle, but its essence, refined to a single, annihilating point. He pointed at Nix's body.
A thread of silent, profound negation lanced out. It touched the Divine General's remains.
There was no explosion, no dramatic dissolution. The body simply ceased to be, unraveling from the point of contact outward into motes of grey light that flickered and vanished, consumed by the principle of absolute end. In two heartbeats, there was nothing left but a faint scorch mark on the altar.
Gen lowered his hand, the tiny point of darkness winking out. He sighed, a long, weary sound that seemed to carry the weight of the void itself, and turned back to Lorel.
"Gen," she called softly. He looked at her.
"Could you… look in another direction for some time?"
He was clueless for a second, about to ask why. Then his eyes took in her figure fully. Her grey outer robe was slashed and soaked with blood, both Nix's and her own, clinging to her skin. Beneath the torn fabric, he could guess at the wound the null-blade had left. His face flushed with a sudden, awkward understanding. In this place, there were no rooms, no privacy, just open rock under a nonsensical sky.
"Right," he muttered, the word gruff. He saw the faint pinkness on the tips of her ears and quickly turned his head away. He walked a few paces, then sank into a lotus position on the cold stone, his back to her.
He heard the soft rustle of fabric behind him. The sound of her belt being undone. A sharp, pained intake of breath. He kept his eyes fixed on a floating chunk of temple wall in the distance.
Lorel removed her outer robe, then the inner tunic beneath. The wound was revealed—a clean, vicious line from just below her ribs down across her stomach. It had been cauterized by the null-energy, the edges black and angry against her pale skin. If Nix hadn't been already on the brink of death, his power spent, that single strike would have bisected her as it had nearly done to Duo Yi. The reality of how close she had come tightened her throat.
She had nothing but the torn clothes in her hands. There was no water in this dead place for cleaning. All she could do was not let the stiff, blood-crusted fabric continue to chafe against the injury. Using a relatively clean section of her inner tunic, she wiped at the drying blood on her arms, her neck, the unmarred skin around the wound. It was a futile, messy process, smearing more than cleansing, but the simple act of removing the immediate, sticky grime brought a small measure of relief.
After a while, her voice came, quieter now. "You can turn around."
Gen stood and turned. He nodded, his eyes meeting hers briefly before dropping, a habitual gesture of respect. Then he paused. A subtle change.
Without her outer layers, clad only in her thin, high-collared undershirt and loose trousers, she seemed… smaller. More real. The severe disciple was gone, replaced by a young woman with her dark hair falling loose around her shoulders, tendrils clinging to the sweat on her neck. Even battered, exhausted, and streaked with grime, the simple vulnerability of it was, against the backdrop of cosmic ruin, strangely dazzling.
His gaze lingered a moment too long, unguarded.
Lorel felt the heat flood her cheeks. She looked down, then back up, a hand instinctively brushing at her face. "Is there… something on my face?" she asked, her voice shy, searching.
Gen shook his head, a faint, almost forgotten ghost of his old smile touching his lips. "No. You look good."
The words hung in the strange, silent air.
Lorel stared at him, utterly stunned. Her mind stuttered. Was that real? Had he just said that? The Gen she knew—boastful, competitive, perpetually looking past her—would have never openly admitted such a thing. Not like this. Not here. A tiny, impossible bubble of warmth bloomed in the cold hollow of her chest. She swallowed, looking away to hide the sudden brightness in her eyes.
"What… what do we do now?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper, steering them back to practicalities.
Gen was silent for a long time, staring at the non-sky. He shrugged, the movement speaking of utter emptiness. "We survive."
He then reached for the fastenings of his own ruined outer robe. Without ceremony or any care for her presence, he pulled it off, letting the blood-stiffened cloth fall to the stone with a wet *thump*. Next came his inner tunic. He peeled it over his head, wincing as the motion pulled at the deep bruises and the half-healed gash on his side from Nix's blade.
Lorel's eyes, which had flicked away in instinctive modesty, were drawn back. Not to the lean muscles of his bare torso, but to the scars. They were not the old marks of a veteran, but the fresh, livid evidence of the last year—a web of thin, pale lines from a hundred near-misses, the darker, angry mark from the null-blade, the remnant of a burn on his forearm. The shiny, perfect skin of the wound Varja had healed months ago. A map of relentless pressure. The bright, untouchable Jiang heir she had known was slowly eroding, leaving behind this harder, careworn figure.
"Doesn't it feel bad," Gen said, his back to her as he balled up his filthy tunic, "to still keep those robes on with all that blood? You could take it off. I wouldn't look." He said it as a simple statement of fact, devoid of any implication.
Lorel's eyes widened in shock, and she almost swallowed wrong. She shook her head vehemently. "I-I'm perfectly fine. Although… the stickiness is really disturbing." It was the truth, but her face was burning.
Gen just shrugged again. He had no other thoughts in his mind. He had taken his off because he couldn't bear the feel of it, and since they would be blocked here for an unknown amount of time, he saw no point in burdening himself with discomfort. He lay down on the cool, smooth rock, staring up at the sourceless light. Slowly, he closed his eyes.
"Try to rest and regain your Qi," he said, his voice already drifting toward sleep. "The most important thing now is for you to heal fully. We can tend to my wounds later." Then his breathing deepened, evening out.
From her spot a few feet away, Lorel looked at him. At his charred, bruised hands resting on his stomach. At the way, amidst his closed eyes and feigned calm, his body would occasionally twitch—a faint flinch along his ribs, a subtle tightening of his jaw. He made no sound. He was still trying to act strong.
Thinking of what he'd said, she looked down at herself, at Gen, then at the desolate, empty scenery around them. *There's really no one here. Right?*
She was hesitant. For several long minutes, Gen didn't move, his breath a steady rhythm in the silent void.
Finally, she let out a soft sigh. The feeling of the stiff, blood-crusted undershirt against her skin, especially near the wound, *was* simply too disturbing. It was a physical irritant in a place with nothing but irritants.
Moving carefully, she pulled the thin, stained undershirt over her head. The cool, still air of the void brushed against her skin, raising goosebumps. She was left in only the band of white cloth wrapped securely around her chest and her loose, grey disciple trousers. Her smooth shoulders and back were fully exposed, her hair tumbling free down her spine. In the eerie, directionless light, the scene held a stark, breathtaking intimacy—a young woman tending to her wounds in a world of broken stones and purple nothingness.
But Gen was already lost to an exhausted, pain-filled sleep, and saw none of it.
Time, in a place without sun or stars, ticked by in the slow measure of breathing and the gradual knitting of flesh. About a day passed in a flash, spent only on healing and the silent circulation of Qi. All the while, Gen slept, or at least kept his eyes firmly closed, by choice or by necessity.
And slowly, minute by minute, in the hollow quiet of the Forgotten Realm, their strength began to return.