Myriad Rivers to the Sea

Old Du remained on his knees before the two weathered graves. Xyphyra stood behind him and stared at the unmarked grey stones. For a long moment, the Great Sinner was completely still. She looked at the stubborn pale flowers growing in the dirt.

Suddenly, her demeanor shifted. The quiet shadow in her eyes ignited into a blazing inferno of unadulterated rage.

Xyphyra let out a guttural snarl and raised her hands toward the graves. The chaotic Qi of the wasteland responded to her call. It rushed toward her palms to form a condensed sphere of destructive energy. She intended to obliterate the two stones and erase the final physical memory of her parents from the broken realm.

Li Yu tensed and prepared to intervene. He did not need to.

Before the sphere of destructive Qi could even fully form, the Fisherman’s seals activated. Invisible ethereal lines snapped taut around Xyphyra’s spiritual vessel. The authority of Li Yu’s inner world crashed down upon her meridians. The chaotic energy in her hands instantly dissipated into harmless sparks of light. She stumbled backward and clutched her chest as the suppression forced her to her knees.

"Enough!"

The shout echoed across the ruined courtyard like a crack of thunder. Li Yu blinked in surprise. It was not his voice. It was Old Du.

The ancient ferryman was standing up and his hands were clenched into tight fists at his sides. The weary and subservient posture of the old guide was completely gone. He radiated the dense and terrifying aura of a man who had survived the end of the world. He glared down at his sister with a look of absolute fury. It was the very first time Li Yu had ever seen Old Du genuinely angry.

"We are here to pay our respects!" Old Du roared over the howling wind. "We are here to remember them! You have already taken everything else from this world, Xyphyra. I will not let you take this too!"

Xyphyra gasped for air against the weight of the Fisherman's seal. She looked up at her brother. Her crimson eyes burned with a mixture of defiance and a strange, twisted agony.

"You do not understand!" Xyphyra spat back at him. Her voice was harsh and trembling. "You sit here and weep over rocks! You understand nothing, Du!"

Old Du stared at her. The intense fury in his eyes slowly melted away. It was replaced by an exhausting sorrow.

"Perhaps I do not understand," Old Du said quietly. He let out a heavy sigh that seemed to age him another thousand years. "But I still know how to honor the people who gave us life."

He turned his back on her and faced the graves once more. He closed his eyes and bowed deeply three times. He murmured a quiet, ancient prayer of the ethereal race. It was a beautiful and mournful sound that briefly overpowered the howling wind of the canyon.

Li Yu kept his focus on Xyphyra. He expected her to curse at her brother or try to fight the seals again. However, Xyphyra did not fight.

She stayed on her knees in the dirt. She watched Old Du perform the traditional rites of mourning. Her hands slowly relaxed and fell to her sides. The blazing crimson light in her eyes flickered and died down once more. She lowered her head and closed her eyes.

In a quiet and entirely unexpected turn of events, Xyphyra bowed her head toward the two grey stones.

It was a small and fleeting gesture. It lacked the formal grace of Old Du’s prayer. But the intent behind it was undeniable. Beneath the layers of cosmic betrayal and chaotic malice, a tiny sliver of care still remained. She was a monster to the rest of the myriad realms but in this isolated courtyard, she was still a daughter grieving her parents.

Old Du caught the movement out of the corner of his eye. He paused his prayer and looked at her. A faint but tragic smile crossed his weathered face for a fraction of a second. It was the smile of a brother seeing a ghost of his past. But the smile quickly faded and the heavy sadness returned to his shoulders. The small gesture of respect could not undo the apocalyptic damage she had caused.

Old Du finished his prayer and stood up. He picked up his wooden paddle from the dirt and turned to Li Yu.

"It is time to go," Old Du said softly.

Li Yu nodded. He did not say a word. He focused his intent and pulled on the ethereal lines. Xyphyra did not resist the pull this time. She dissolved into a surge of chaotic energy and was instantly drawn back into the depths of Li Yu’s inner world.

The heavy atmosphere of the ruined courtyard lifted slightly. Li Yu and Old Du turned their backs on the two graves and walked away from the jagged canyon.

The journey back to the protective barrier of Kyokai City was quiet. They navigated the petrified spiritual woods and the shattered grey rocks without encountering any void beasts. Old Du steered his levitating wooden skiff across the dark waters while Li Yu stood near the bow. The ferryman seemed lost in his own ancient memories.

They finally passed through the shimmering translucent barrier and returned to the pristine but artificial twilight of the city. The scent of cherry blossoms rushed back to greet them.

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Old Du steered the skiff toward a quiet pier near Li Yu's pavilion. The ferryman lowered his paddle as the boat gently bumped against the white stone. Li Yu vaulted over the side and landed lightly on the dock.

"Thank you, Li Yu," Old Du said while looking at the young man. "You took a great risk bringing her out today. You allowed me to fulfill a duty I thought I would never be able to perform again. I am entirely in your debt."

"There is no debt between us for this," Li Yu replied with a respectful bow. "Family is important. I am glad you had the chance to see them."

Old Du nodded deeply. He did not offer any further explanations or excuses for his sister's behavior. He simply turned the skiff around and drifted away into the silver canals. He had his own mourning to process and his duties to the realm to fulfill.

Li Yu walked back to his pavilion and closed the sliding white doors behind him. He walked over to his jade meditation bed and sat down. The events at the graveyard played over and over in his mind.

He was incredibly curious. He had seen the absolute hatred Astramentis held for the Great Sinner. He had seen the desolate wasteland she had created. But he had also seen her bow to the graves of her parents. She was not a creature of mindless chaos like the void beasts. She possessed reasoning and deep emotional attachments. So why did she betray everything she loved?

Li Yu closed his eyes and pushed his consciousness inward.

He materialized his avatar on the tranquil central island of his inner world. The Koi swam lazily through the clouds. Muddy rested near the shoreline while happily chewing on a patch of rich spiritual grass. The Fisherman sat on his usual rock and cast his line into the deep ocean.

And then there was Xyphyra. She was currently holding a rough broom made of twigs and was diligently sweeping the dirt path near the Fisherman’s rock. It was a mundane and quiet existence for a being that had once shattered a cosmic realm.

Li Yu walked over and sat down on a smooth boulder near the path. He watched her sweep for a moment. She did not look up or acknowledge his presence. She simply continued her forced labor.

"You bowed to them," Li Yu spoke quietly, breaking the serene silence of the island.

The old woman stopped sweeping. She leaned heavily on the wooden broom handle and kept her eyes fixed on the dirt.

"I saw you," Li Yu continued. "You still care for your parents. You still feel the loss. If you loved them and you loved your home, why did you do it? Why did you slaughter your own people and break the sacred artifacts?"

Xyphyra slowly lifted her head. Her face was lined with deep wrinkles but her eyes still held a faint glimmer of that intensity. She looked at Li Yu with a mixture of pity and exhaustion.

"You would not understand, boy," Xyphyra rasped. Her voice lacked the booming terror it held in the outside world. It sounded like dry leaves scraping across stone.

"Try me," Li Yu challenged her softly. "I understand more than you think. Make me understand why you struck the blow."

Xyphyra let out a dry, rattling cough. She turned her gaze away from him and looked out over the vast and tranquil ocean.

"You look at the Great Devastation and you see a betrayal," Xyphyra said slowly. "You see a monster who murdered her own kind. But you do not see what I saw. You did not look into the void and see the doom that is coming for us all."

Li Yu frowned. "What doom?"

"A true end," she answered cryptically. "Something so massive and so ancient that our entire ethereal race, with all our mastery of the soul, was nothing more than dust in its path. When you see a doom like that and you realize you are entirely powerless to stop it, the rules change."

She gripped the broom handle tighter. Her knuckles turned white.

"You do what you have to do in order to get stronger," Xyphyra continued. Her voice gained a fraction of its old terrifying conviction. "You cannot fight a cosmic hurricane with gentle breezes. I realized our people were too weak. Our artifacts were too passive. If we waited for the doom to arrive, we would be erased from existence. So, I took the power. I shattered the passive artifacts to absorb their strength. I harvested the weak to forge a single and unbreakable weapon capable of facing the storm."

Li Yu listened to her twisted logic. He felt a cold chill run down his spine. She had not acted out of malice or a desire to rule. She had acted out of panic. She had committed genocide against her own people because she believed it was the only way to survive an even greater threat.

"But you failed," Li Yu pointed out coldly. "You didn't forge an unbreakable weapon. You just broke your home. You killed your family and weakened your entire race. How is what you did helpful in any way?"

Xyphyra looked back at him. The faint crimson light in her eyes vanished entirely. She suddenly looked incredibly old and broken.

"I know," she whispered.

She did not offer any further defenses or excuses. She simply turned away from him and resumed sweeping the dirt path. The rhythmic, scratching sound of the twigs against the ground filled the quiet air. She had said all she was going to say.

Li Yu sat on the boulder for a few more minutes but she did not speak another word. He realized she was trapped in her own tragic paradox. She had sacrificed her humanity to save her world, but in doing so, she had destroyed the very thing she was trying to protect.

He stood up and let his consciousness fade from the inner world.

Li Yu opened his eyes in his physical pavilion. He stood up from the jade bed and walked over to the small wooden table. He poured himself a cup of warm tea. He took a slow sip and stared out the open sliding doors toward the artificial sky of Kyokai City.

His mind was racing as he processed her words. Xyphyra had seen something far more powerful than herself. She had seen a threat so absolute that it drove her to madness and mass murder just to prepare for it.

If Astramentis and the elders had managed to stop her, it meant the doom she had foreseen was still out there somewhere. He took another sip of his tea. The warm liquid did little to chase away the cold realization settling in his chest.

He had come to The Veil to build his foundation and secure his own peace. He had thought The Great Devastation war was a conflict between a villain and a broken realm. But the truth was far more complicated and far more terrifying. The Great Sinner was just a terrified person who made a horrific choice because she saw no other options.

Li Yu looked down at his dark purple jade badge resting on the table. The trials were going to get harder. He needed to get stronger. Because whatever doom Xyphyra had seen in the, he had a feeling it was eventually going to arrive.

He did not know exactly what the threat was and maybe he never would. Or perhaps he would find out sooner than he wanted.