Seraphina looked at me.

Scared now, aren't you?

You've always been terrified of these cold, wet creatures.

All you have to do is grab my sleeve and beg me to save you, and I'll pull you out.

She stood at the edge of the cliff, waiting for me to throw myself at her.

I wiped the blood off, braced myself against a rock, and straightened up. Then I walked to the edge.

"Thank you, Master."

I jumped.

The wind shrieked past my ears. In that brief fall, I heard her breathing stutter out of rhythm.

Countdown: 4 days.

The Serpent Abyss was pitch black.

Snakes crawled over my body. Fangs sank into flesh. The stench of venom and rot filled everything.

I dragged myself through the mire.

Five years ago, I'd stayed down here for half a month to protect Seraphina, slaughtering wave after wave of serpents until the swarm finally retreated.

Now it was just me.

Three days and three nights, and I didn't make a sound. Whenever I couldn't bear it anymore, I stared at the panel.

Almost over.

I clawed my way to the top of the cliff at dawn.

Dried blood crusted every inch of me. The rags of my clothes hung in strips, and the wounds had turned black at the edges.

Seraphina and Gabriel were standing at the rim.

Gabriel shrieked and scrambled behind her.

Seraphina went rigid. She took half a step forward, her hand rising before it fell back to her side.

She raised a Spirit Barrier and drifted further away, as though avoiding something filthy.

"You've dirtied the ground."

Her voice was raw. "Hand the serpent gall to Gabriel for his cultivation, then get yourself cleaned up."

I opened my hand. The serpent king's gallbladder sat in my palm.

Gabriel approached with a silk handkerchief, using it as a barrier between his fingers and mine as he reached for the gall.

The instant he took it, his foot slipped. The thick sole of his brocade boot came down on my right hand.

My index finger had already been half-bitten off in the Abyss. Now it separated completely.

Cold sweat soaked through my back.

I pressed my lips together, pulled my hand back, and didn't make a sound.

Seraphina stared at the severed finger. Her own fingers trembled, just once.

She turned and walked away.

Her thoughts spilled over each other in a tangle:

Why didn't he cry out?

He used to come running to me over a paper cut, begging me to blow on it for ages.

Does he... not care about me anymore?

No. He's just being stubborn. Trying to punish me.

I watched her retreating figure.

Who cares.

Countdown: 2 days.

The Servants' Quarters held nothing but straw.

I leaned against the corner and pulled out a tarnished silver locket.

It was the only thing my parents had left behind.

The year the plague swept through, they'd sent me up the mountain and hung this locket around my neck.

I rubbed the face of it with my sleeve.

Two more days.

I thought about home. Warm milk, flowers on the balcony, Mom and Dad nagging me about nothing.

The light dimmed.

Seraphina stood a few paces away.

Her hand flicked out. The heirloom locket ripped free and landed in her palm.

"Give it back!"

I lunged for it.

Seraphina raised her arm high, turning the locket over between her fingers as she examined it.

"So this is why your cultivation has been regressing." Her voice was dangerously low. "The Path of the Unfeeling forbids mortal attachments, and you've been clinging to this thing."

I grabbed her sleeve, stretching for it.

"Please. Don't touch it."

The moment that word left my mouth, her grip tightened.

That familiar voice slithered into my ears:

He's finally begging.

Destroy what he cares about, and he'll break.

Mortal garbage. Why keep it? From now on, your world will have only me.

Seraphina looked at me. Spiritual energy pulsed at her fingertips.

"Too late."

A sharp crack.

The silver locket shattered in her palm, crumbling to fine powder.

She opened her hand. Ash-grey dust drifted down over my face.

Cold. Bone-deep cold.

I didn't move. My arm stayed outstretched, reaching for something that no longer existed. The powder settled into my eyes. It stung.

I lowered my hand, sat back down in the straw, and closed my eyes.

Seraphina stared at me.

A disciple's voice came shouting from beyond the door.

"Sovereign! Gabriel has suffered Demonic Deviation. He keeps coughing blood. The healers say he won't last!"

Seraphina seized my wrist, her grip so fierce it nearly ground the bones together.

"Come with me."

The great hall of Sovereign Peak.

Gabriel lay on a jade divan, blood smeared across his lips.

A cluster of healers knelt on the floor before him.

"Reporting to the Immortal Sovereign: Gabriel's heart meridian has ruptured. He requires heart blood from a fellow cultivator of the same lineage as a catalyst."

In all the Verdant Blade Sect, only two of us walked the Path of the Unfeeling. Seraphina and me.

Seraphina flipped her hand and produced a dagger.

It was the one I'd given her three years ago for her birthday. The Ward of Safekeeping was still etched into the blade.

She held it out to me.

"Save him."

I looked at the edge of the blade.

I was leaving soon anyway. It didn't matter if this body was ruined.

"Fine."

I loosened my collar and bared my chest.

Old scars crisscrossed the skin there, layered one on top of another. Every last one from shielding her during Tribulation Crossings.

Seraphina's gaze fell on those scars. The hand holding the dagger went still.

Gabriel let out a groan from the divan.

Her hand drove forward.

The dagger punched through skin and muscle, sinking into my chest above the heart.

The pain was blinding.

I clenched my teeth and made no sound.

Seraphina twisted her wrist, drawing out three drops of blood the color of molten gold and crimson.

The moment the heart blood left my body, my legs gave out. I collapsed to the floor.

My vision went black.

Through the haze, I felt Seraphina's hand reach over and press against my chest.

She didn't stanch the bleeding. Instead, she pinched her fingers together, plucked a scrap of blood-soaked fabric from my robe, and slipped it into her sleeve.

That voice surfaced again:

So much blood...

Still warm.

This is his heart blood. Hide it away. For my eyes only.

The hall's entrance was packed with disciples.

They watched me lying on the ground. Not one stepped forward.

"Everyone could see the senior disciple resented Gabriel. I just never thought he'd push him this far."

"Having a little blood drawn is getting off easy."

"Exactly. He deserved it."

I lay on the cold stone, staring at the translucent panel hovering before my eyes.

Countdown: 1 day.

I closed my eyes.

Almost there.

Countdown: three hours remaining.

The Verdant Blade Sect was alive with noise today.

Red silk draped every gate, and drums and horns rang through the peaks.

It was Gabriel's Core Formation Ceremony.

Never mind that my heart blood was the only reason his cultivation had stabilized. Nothing could stop him from being the star everyone orbited.

They dragged me out of the dungeon.

Plain white prisoner's robes, still stiff with dried blood.

Shackles on my wrists and ankles.

The iron scraped against the long white jade staircase as they hauled me upward, the sound shrill enough to set teeth on edge.

Seraphina sat enthroned at the very top, upon a seat of white jade.

Beside her stood Gabriel, resplendent in ceremonial robes, color blooming in his cheeks.

What a perfect pair they made.

I was dragged onto the high platform.

Two enforcement disciples pressed down on my shoulders, forcing me to kneel.

I didn't kneel.

Even though the frost damage had eaten into my kneecaps until every nerve screamed, I kept my spine straight.

Seraphina looked down at me from above.

Her voice, amplified by spiritual energy, carried to every corner of the sect.

"You harbored jealousy toward a fellow disciple. Your heart was corrupt."

"Gabriel has now achieved Core Formation, yet he still lacks a supreme Sword Bone to anchor his foundation."

"As his senior, this shall be your final act of atonement."

Carving out the bone.

So this was the grand finale all along.

My Sword Bone was innate, the kind every cultivator in the world coveted. A supreme-grade treasure, one in ten thousand years.

It was also what Seraphina had once been proudest of. Her greatest asset.

Now she was going to cut it out of me with her own hands and put it inside another man.

Below the platform, ten thousand disciples chanted in unison.

"We beseech the senior disciple to offer his bone in atonement!"

The roar crashed over me like a tide, deafening.

I looked at Seraphina.

Her expression remained cold and imperious, but the voice inside her mind was howling:

Beg me!

All you have to do is kneel. Crawl to me and kiss the hem of my robe!

Admit in front of everyone that you can't live without me, and I'll let you go!

Do it now! Stop being so stubborn!

If that Sword Bone is truly gone, you'll be nothing but a cripple. And then the only place you'll have left is by my side!

She had already woven her net, every thread accounted for.

She believed that as long as I drew breath, I would forever be a thing she held in the palm of her hand.

Too bad.

She miscalculated one thing.

I didn't intend to live.

I straightened slowly, shrugging free of the Hall of Judgment disciples pinning me down.

I didn't look at the Sword Sovereign on her throne.

Instead, I let my gaze sweep across the place I had called home for twenty years.

Every blade of grass, every tree. I had bled to protect all of it.

Now, looking again.

Filthy.

"You won't need to do it yourselves."

My voice was quiet, but the wind carried it to every ear in the square.

The next second.

I raised my right hand.

Two fingers pressed together like a blade, the last flicker of spiritual energy I'd burned my life force to gather condensing at their tips.

Squelch.

The wet sound of a blade entering flesh.

My hand drove backward, plunging into my own spine.

Blood erupted in a torrent.

It soaked through the white prisoner's robes, pooled across the jade-white stone beneath my feet.

"You've lost your mind!"

Seraphina shot to her feet, every shred of composure ripped from her face in an instant.

Under the stupefied, horror-stricken stares of every soul present,

I clenched my teeth and hooked my fingers around the vertebrae.

And wrenched.

"Ngh!"

The pain tore through me like my soul was being split in two, and a strangled groan escaped my throat.

But I didn't stop.

Inch by inch, I dragged the Sword Bone out of my own body, crystalline and gleaming with cold light.

Flesh came with it. Meridians snapped and trailed behind.

The wet, grinding sound of tearing sinew turned the entire square deathly silent.

I stood drenched in my own blood, the still-dripping Sword Bone clutched in my fist.

My body swayed, barely upright.

"The Sword Bone you wanted."

I looked at Seraphina. Looked at her face, white as a corpse.

Her inner voice was nothing but shrieking panic now: No! Stop! Stop it! I won't go through with it! I don't want it anymore!

I smiled.

Smiled until tears ran down my face.

"Master, this cultivation, this bone and blood. Today I return every last bit of it to you."

My fingers closed like a vice.

Crack.

The supreme Sword Bone shattered in my bare hand, reduced to a cloud of glittering dust.

Crystalline powder mingled with a mist of blood, drifting down over the entire sect like a rain of crimson snow.

I owe you nothing.

"I wish you both a lifetime of happiness. In life or death... may we never meet again."

The system countdown hit zero.

[Host extraction successful.]

My body grew weightless.

In the suffocating silence, my flesh began to break apart.

Like the last embers of a dying fire, I dissolved into motes of light.

Seraphina let out a scream so raw it cracked her voice:

"NO!!"

She lunged from the dais like a woman possessed, but her hands closed on nothing but drifting sparks.

I scattered on the wind.

Not a wisp of my soul remained.