The darkness inside the rift did not merely occupy space; it seemed to press against the world around it like a conscious presence, heavy and hungry. Damon felt the air grow denser, as if every breath had to push through an invisible layer of black ice. Even behind Xue Lian, even protected by that woman’s absurd presence, his body reacted with an instinctive tension that had nothing to do with courage. It was the oldest reaction of all: the certainty of standing before something that should not be faced.

The kneeling creature slowly raised its arms, and the crystalline plates attached to its body vibrated like broken bells. The faces imprisoned within them began moving more violently, all of them screaming in silence as the fissure behind it widened further and further. There was no light on the other side. No landscape, no depth, no comprehensible shape. Only a thick darkness crossed by pale lines that resembled bones floating beneath black water.

Xue Lian remained motionless, but Damon noticed that her breathing had changed. Before, it had trembled because of her deteriorating body; now it was too controlled, too careful, as if every inhale were measured to keep something inside her from exploding. The layer of ice on her skin had already reached part of her jaw, but her blue eyes remained steady, fixed on the opening as if she had recognized it long before any explanation became necessary.

"You know that thing," Damon said, staying a few steps behind her, exactly as she had ordered. For the first time in a long while, he did not feel like arguing against the command. There were moments when pride served to inspire people, and there were moments when pride was merely an elaborate form of suicide. This one definitely belonged to the second category.

"I know the smell," Xue Lian replied, without taking her eyes off the rift. Her voice was low, but it carried a hardness Damon had not heard from her before. "Not the creature. Not this form. But the origin, yes. Something of this kind was present when the first winter began to bleed."

Damon blinked, trying to decide which part of that sentence was the most concerning. "You realize that saying things like ’the first winter began to bleed’ requires an immediate explanation, don’t you?"

"I do."

"And?"

"This is not a good moment."

"Naturally."

The creature tilted its head toward them, and the chorus of voices inside its body became clearer. Some were male, others female, others seemed too old to belong to any living throat. All spoke in different rhythms, yet the words merged in a grotesquely coordinated way.

"The Flower waits beneath the fifth heaven. The root has drunk from the heart of the world. The one who remembers offers passage."

Xue Lian narrowed her eyes. "He never offers anything without a chain."

The creature seemed to smile, though its stitched mouth remained motionless. The black lines beneath its skin moved faster, spreading across its smooth face like cracks through porcelain.

"You still understand. Even while dying, you still understand. That is why he mourns."

The pressure around Xue Lian increased so abruptly that Damon felt his own bones vibrate. The snow beneath her feet sank in perfect circles, as if an invisible force were crushing the ground. For an instant, Damon saw something behind her: not an ordinary aura, but the impression of a crown made of frozen storms, too vast to fit inside any human body.

"Do not speak regrets on his behalf," Xue Lian said, and each word made the air crystallize. "If he still mourns anything, then he has learned to lie better than before."

The creature opened its arms even wider. The rift answered. Something gigantic moved within it, not emerging completely, only shifting enough for its existence to be felt. Damon did not see a body, but he saw impossible contours pressing against the darkness. The sensation was that of standing before a creature too large to pass through a doorway too small, and the reality around it seemed to suffer with each attempt.

Damon felt his Qi react again. Not like before, not merely awakening, but pulling. That thing inside the rift was calling to some part of him, or perhaps some part of him recognized that thing. The sensation was unpleasant enough to make him grit his teeth. His chest felt as though it contained an ice bell being struck without permission, reverberating through channels he already knew were destroyed in the real world.

Xue Lian noticed without looking at him. "Control your breathing."

"I’m trying."

"You’re holding it."

"Details."

"Breathe, child."

"If you call me child one more time, I might choose to die out of irritation."

"That would be a pathetic death."

"But a memorable one."

That absurd exchange, in the middle of a fissure in reality and a creature made of imprisoned faces, almost drew a laugh from Damon. Almost. The humor vanished the next instant, when one of the voices inside the creature spoke with absolute clarity, using a tone that did not belong to the chorus. It was a deep voice, ancient and far too calm.

"He carries the fragment. He can open the path."

Damon felt his blood freeze, even in that world where cold should no longer mean anything. Xue Lian turned her head just enough to glance at him, and for the first time since they had met, there was real concern in her eyes. Not fear. Not exactly. Something worse: rapid, dark calculation, accompanied by the certainty that the pieces on the board had moved in an unexpected way.

"What fragment?" Damon asked, though he already knew the answer would probably make him unhappy. He had been collecting unhappy answers ever since waking up on that frozen plain. At this point, his life felt like an organized collection of terrible revelations, each one delivered by dangerously beautiful and emotionally unstable people.

"What remained of me," Xue Lian said, still looking at him. "Or what remained of what I tried to destroy. I still do not know which option is worse."

Damon breathed slowly, remembering his own words at the beginning of their walk. "Could you, just once, choose an explanation that doesn’t open five new problems?"

"No."

"At least that was honest."

The creature took a step forward. The ice of the crater darkened immediately, spreading black veins toward the two of them. Xue Lian moved her hand, and a wall of white ice rose from the ground, intercepting the cracks before they could reach Damon. The impact between the two forces produced no sound.

It produced absence.

For one second, Damon felt every noise in the world disappear, as if the clash had devoured even the possibility of an echo.

Then the white wall cracked.

Xue Lian did not look surprised, only annoyed. "He has grown bolder."

"Is that bad?"

"He was unbearable when he was cautious."

"Great. We’re facing someone who evolved from cautiously unbearable to boldly unbearable."

"You talk too much when you are frightened."

"It works as a survival strategy."

"It works poorly."

The creature advanced again, this time far too fast for something so tall and awkward. Its body slid over the ice like a broken shadow, crystalline plates opening and closing while the imprisoned faces screamed soundlessly. Damon drew his blade by instinct, but Xue Lian was already in front of him. She raised two fingers, and a horizontal line crossed the air.

The cut did not seem like a strike.

It seemed like a decision.

The space between her and the creature simply split into a white, clean, absurd band. The creature was cut in half from shoulder to hip, its crystalline plates separating with horrible elegance. For an instant, Damon believed it was over. Then the two halves stopped falling, suspended in the air, and began sewing themselves back together with threads of black ice.

"That wasn’t enough," Damon said.

"I noticed."

"Do you have a plan?"

"I have several."

"Any good ones?"

"No."

"Wonderful."

Xue Lian advanced before the creature could finish reassembling itself. Her speed was still impossible, but now Damon could perceive small limits where before there had only been perfection. Every movement she made was absolute, but costly. The ice on her body advanced whenever she used too much energy. The skin of her right wrist cracked in crystalline lines when she materialized another sword, this one longer, its edge tinted deep blue.

The blade met the creature the next instant. The impact sent waves of ice across the terrain, transforming the crater into a field of crystalline spears. Damon had to jump back when one of them erupted too close to his leg, and he nearly fell flat on his back in the snow.

"Great," he muttered. "Now even the ground is trying to kill me."

"Stop complaining and observe," Xue Lian said, blocking one of the creature’s blows with her sword. "You need to learn the difference between cold and void."

Damon widened his eyes. "Now? You want to teach a lesson now?"

"Would you prefer after you die?"

"That question is offensively practical."

The creature opened its chest, revealing dozens of faces compressed inside a dark cavity. They all spoke at once, and the sound passed through Damon like a mental blade.

"He can open. He can remember. He can carry the flower to the dead body."

The pressure over Damon’s heart increased. For one second, he saw another place superimposed over the plain: a dark room, ancient stone, chains of ice, blood on snow. The vision vanished before he could understand it, but it left a sharp pain behind in his chest. He staggered, bracing one hand on his knee, while the Qi inside him pulsed irregularly.

Xue Lian noticed, and her expression hardened. She struck her palm against the air, and a circle of white runes appeared around Damon. The cold inside him stabilized just enough for him to breathe again.

"Do not listen to the voices. They search for cracks. Guilt, fear, memory, desire. Anything will do."

Damon lifted his face, panting. "That would have been useful information before the whispers started calling me by name."

"You survived."

"Your standard for success is depressing."

"It is efficient."

The creature retreated for the first time. Not out of fear, but as though it had received exactly what it wanted. The rift behind it widened once more, and Damon saw something shining in the depths: five points of blue light, arranged like petals around a white center. The image lasted less than a second, but Xue Lian saw it too.

Her entire body went still.

The reaction was minimal, yet devastating.

Damon understood even before she spoke.

"The flower."

Xue Lian did not answer, but her silence was confirmation enough. The creature tilted its head, and the chorus became almost gentle.

"The root still lives. The fifth heaven still guards. But the path requires the fragment, and the fragment walks beside you."

Damon looked at Xue Lian, then at the rift. "I don’t like being mentioned as a spiritual key in monster conversations."

"You have better instincts than you appear to."

"I’ll take that as a compliment."

"You shouldn’t."

The creature began to sink slowly back into the rift, but its voice remained in the air.

"Come, Heavenly Demon. Bring the child. Bring the impossible heart. Bring the final lie of winter."

Xue Lian raised her sword, but did not attack. Damon understood why. The rift was already closing, and any direct strike might hit something beyond it, something watching them from the other side. When the opening finally vanished, the crater remained marked by black ice, and the snowflakes resumed their normal fall, as if nothing had happened.

For several seconds, neither of them spoke.

Damon waited for Xue Lian to make some sarcastic comment, some irritating observation, anything that would restore the strange rhythm of their earlier conversation. But she did not. She continued staring at the empty crater, sword still in hand, ice slowly crawling over her fingers.

Then she said, very quietly, "He found the flower before I did."

Damon studied her face and, for the first time, saw something that did not match her invincible posture. It was not despair. Xue Lian seemed incapable of anything that simple. It was worse: the expression of someone who had fought for far too long only to discover that victory might already have been placed inside a trap.

"Who is he?" Damon asked.

Xue Lian closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, there was an ancient shadow in them, a memory that clearly did not belong to a light conversation.

"A mistake the world should have left forgotten."

"You realize that could also describe me lately?"

This time, she almost smiled.

Almost.

"Do not compare yourself to him. You are reckless, ignorant, and probably doomed, but you are still only a lost child with too much power in the wrong place."

"That was one of the most specific and offensive evaluations I have ever received."

"You survived it."

"I’m still processing."

Xue Lian finally sheathed the sword, which dissolved into snow before vanishing. She looked again toward the black mountain in the distance, then at Damon, and the snow around them began to swirl slowly in small circles, as if the world were waiting for her decision.

"We continue," she said.

Damon stared at the dark crater. "Toward the obvious trap?"

"Yes."

"With the ancient monster waiting for me to serve as a key?"

"Yes."

"And you dying along the way?"

"Also."

He drew a deep breath and ran a hand through his white hair, far too long and irritatingly dramatic. "Just for the record, my life before this was complicated, but at least it made a little more sense."

Xue Lian began walking again. "Then enjoy it. Sense is a comfortable illusion. This place usually tears it away quickly."

Damon watched her figure advance through the snow, still fragile, still freezing, still absolutely dangerous. Then he looked one last time at the place where the rift had disappeared. The black ice still pulsed faintly, like a poorly closed wound in the memory of that world.

Then he followed.

Because, apparently, that was what doomed people did.

They kept walking.