I Was the White Lotus Stand-In

Table of Contents
"The Whole Aetheria Are My Senior’s Sycophants" — Completed — Turns out I was only a stand-in for the pure white moonlight that all the Aether Lords adored.

But they only knew I could be a substitute; they didn’t know I could be cold-blooded too.

1. "Claire, it’s your good fortune that your heart can be given to Hazel."

When the Silencer Blade slid into my chest, everything at last clicked into place.

I didn’t even realize when my tears started falling. I didn’t want to cry, really—I just couldn’t help it. The Silencer Blade hurt like hell. I wanted so badly to lift my hand and pull it out, but I knew that was a delusion—before me stood a handsome Divine Lord with his eyes lowered, expressionless.

His black hair was swept high, eyes like rolling waves, lips the color of cherries. He wore a blaze of red, and the whole man was so clear it felt like morning dew.

Clean face, clean red robe—only his hands were stained with blood. My blood.

The ground was cold. The Silencer Blade sank a few more inches into my heart.

Beside him stood two other Aether Lords, equally noble.

Both in white; one wore a cool, detached expression, the other looked pained. Both were striking.

The pained one looked at me, then at the man in red, hesitated, and said, “Dominic, we should finish this quickly…”

The cool-faced Aether Lord frowned slightly at that, glancing at the other. “Evan, you’re being soft.”

Evan sighed helplessly. “Marcus, she has been our little junior apprentice for three hundred years.”

“If not for Hazel, would she even deserve it?”

Marcus looked at me; something flickered in his eyes as he said coldly, “We finally found a heart that suits Hazel perfectly. We can’t afford even the smallest mistake. Dominic, be careful when you take it.”

Hazel, Hazel… the name had floated past my ears before, but not often.

Still, in Aetheria I’d overheard attendants whispering about this Aether Lord’s romantic exploits.

Once, by accident, I’d wandered into a forbidden glade. In a pool thick with precious spirit essences, a Moonlit Lotus had been sleeping quietly.

The one time I intruded, Master Rowan—who had always been gentle with me—had exploded in anger for the first time.

I should have realized then: that lotus, so strikingly like my original self, would someday push me back into the abyss.

I’m not an innocent Aether Lord. From the moment I grew conscious, I crawled through the deadliest places of the Three Realms—Ravenmoor Marsh—to strengthen myself.

I’ve killed monsters. My hands have been stained. I’m not the delicate, poised “Hazel” the attendants gossiped about.

Even so, when Adrian descended from the sky—

White like moonlight, a face that outshone mountains and rivers, one thought of his and the great beast who meant to kill me turned to ash—my heart, for the first time in my life, had burned.

He used divine power to soothe my wounds, his long fingers wiped blood from my face, and with a voice I’d never heard—gentle and lovely—he said, “From now on, I will protect you. Do not be afraid.”

“From now on, just call me Master.”

That sentence echoed through my dreams and nightmares so many times afterward; it was a sound that kept me breathing.

Later I became Master Rowan’s favored little disciple—Claire Bennett—envied and fussed over by the two powerful senior brothers, Marcus and Evan.

Later still, when I descended to the mortal realm, I found an abandoned infant and named him Oliver. I raised him with my own hands.

He didn’t disappoint me. By two hundred years old he had ascended into an Aether Lord—born with divine bones and remarkable presence.

But it turned out Oliver truly was long-lived; he wasn’t a discarded mortal infant at all. From birth he could have held the rank of Divine Lord—he was Dominic Reed.

Claire, Claire.

Not only did my original self resemble Hazel, my face matched seven-tenths of hers. Perhaps when Master Rowan chose my cultivation name, he thought it a blessing—something to be envied.

So today, as Hazel prepared to take human form and reclaim her Aether seat, they decided this substitute—me—must be sacrificed for her perfection.

My most trusted Master sealed the path to the lower realms. My two senior brothers personally hunted me. The boy I raised, the one I called Oliver, drove the Silencer Blade into my chest with his own hands.

For Hazel.

My heart finally slipped free of this body.

Immortals don’t truly die, but when the heart leaves, all my Aether strength and every emotion will vanish into nothing.

Those powers and feelings will be given to Hazel, so that upon forming a body she’ll grow stronger and, under the surge of these intense emotions, recall her past.

So they thought: losing four hundred years’ worth of cultivation and normal feelings yet still surviving—that should be a mercy to me.

But when the heart left, my pain did not lessen at all.

I had worked my whole life for four centuries to build my cultivation. I had seen every love and hatred this world produces. Why—why, for Hazel’s flawless rebirth, should I give up everything?

So I used every last bit of Aether power, every secret weapon I’d hidden away.

My feelings remained.

It was the final thing I had left.

In that heart, besides four hundred years’ cultivation, there was nothing else.

I lay on the ground, feeling the empty hollow where my heart had been, and forced a smile.

They’d be delighted when they saw Hazel reborn with no memory of the past, just as I imagined.

Fortunately, the man in red didn’t inspect the living heart I’d given them. The surprise I’d planted wouldn’t be revealed now—though I didn’t know why—perhaps that was for the best.

He handed the heart to my eldest senior, Marcus. Marcus glanced down at me and, rare as it was, showed a small smile. Cradling the heart, he said, “Claire, it’s your fortune that your heart can go to Hazel.”

Evan’s face, which had been soft with reluctance, brightened at the sight of the heart. Thinking of Hazel’s impending return, he gave a radiant smile. “Claire, Hazel will be back. She’s gentle and kind—don’t blame us. From now on, let’s get along. You were rebellious today, and Master Rowan is upset, but if you behave, I’ll have Hazel put in a good word for you. Master will calm down.”

With that he left without looking back, walking away with Marcus who cradled the heart anxiously.

Only one Divine Lord remained.

Through my blurred vision, the man in red slowly bent down. He seemed to be looking at me. I felt sick; I forced my eyes open so the burning, intense disgust in them would be unmistakable.

Dominic saw it clearly.

On his impassive face he lowered his gaze, and when he raised it again, there was a deep, heavy color in his eyes. He reached out his finger as if to touch my eye. I did not turn away; I watched him quietly.

His fingertip brushed my eye—it was cold.

Like a sigh, he said softly, “Sister, why are you trying to run?”

I couldn’t speak. Without a heart or Aether power, I was as weak as a newborn sprig of some lowly spirit.

“Sister, don’t look at me like that. I don’t like it.”

When I stayed silent, Dominic was quiet for a moment before covering my eyes with his palm.

New, excruciating pain flared—but I had no heart.

—My eyes were gone.

2. “Sister, can I take your memory away? Will you let me?”

The day I perfected divine bones and descended to the mortal realm, I found the abandoned Oliver.

He was Dominic Reed in disguise—Divine Lord by nature.

I didn’t know then.

Compassion rose in me anyway. I wasn’t as kind as people thought, but perhaps a guard I’d kept for centuries had finally grown thin. When I poked the infant’s cheek and he didn’t cry—just softly grasped my finger—his skin warm and pliant—I decided to bring him to Aetheria.

Only after we returned did I discover the abandoned infant had divine bones.

When I mentioned it to Evan, his eyes flickered. He looked at the child in my arms and laughed, “Of course it’s you, Claire—this one you pick up is gifted with divine bones.”

It wasn’t until they chased me, blood dripping down my cheek, staining my white robe, that I understood.

There was no “picking up at random,” no accidental discovery of “divine bones.” To get close to me—the supposed Hazel stand-in—the highborn little Divine Lord had pretended to be an abandoned infant.

So all those coincidences and shared moments were fake. They were contrived by that high lord to reach me—the supposed Hazel substitute.

Marcus had never liked Oliver—even then. He often competed with Evan for my favor and showed no fondness when Oliver grew day by day. But he never treated Oliver cruelly like he sometimes teased Evan—perhaps because he already suspected Oliver’s true identity.

I remember Oliver’s first time standing, his first steps.

He spoke early—his first word was “Sister.”

Thinking back, how delighted I had been.

My early memories were of the fathomless, deadly Ravenmoor Marsh.

So when I found Oliver, I only wished him a clean, safe upbringing. I named him Oliver with careful hands, every stitch of attention soaked in the self-mockery and pain of my own gouged-out heart.

Master Rowan—the one who found me, raised me to divine bones and guided me into Aetheria—was distinctly displeased with Oliver.

Now I think he disliked not Oliver’s closeness to Claire, but Dominic’s insistence on Hazel.

Adrian.

I had loved him.

A god like light in the dark pulled me out and sheltered me with tenderness and care.

How could I not have loved him?

Days after my eyes were gouged out—countless days—I was perhaps taken somewhere by Dominic. He shackled me with chains that even Aether Lords couldn’t break. He would come several times a day but never spoke. He would only stand quietly in front of me.

Finally, he seemed unable to contain himself. His breath swept around me like a breeze. His voice was low: “Sister, why won’t you speak?”

My hands were bound by chains. Surrounded by endless dark, I said nothing.

In truth, I didn’t know what to say.

My heart and my eyes had been taken. I didn’t know what good imprisoning me would do for him—or for Hazel.

“Sister, even if your heart left, you still did something bad.”

Dominic didn’t wait for a reply. In that soft voice there was a thread of anger, as if he wanted to laugh. “Did you make it so Hazel doesn’t regain her memories?”

I smiled a little. For the current me, this was the easiest thing in the world.

"No memory… that’s a good thing."

It was the first thing I’d said in days.

Darkness pressed in, then a long silence followed.

If not for the familiar scent of Dominic Reed, knowing he was still standing in front of me, that silence would have felt like I was completely alone again.

How long passed before a sound came, I couldn’t say. When a cold fingertip brushed my cheek, I shuddered backward.

But the owner of those hands wouldn’t let me. His voice sounded near my ear again, breath warm and close against my earlobe, and I felt a wave of nausea.

"Sis, what if I take your memories away? Would that be okay?"

He didn’t give me a chance to answer. Something appeared in his hand, and then he pried my mouth open, trying to shove it in.

When the pill touched my lips I knew what it was—the Lethe Draught from the underworld mixed with Wraithroot from Ravenmoor Marsh.

Those two did indeed make people forget their pasts.

I didn’t resist. I obediently swallowed the pill.

Dominic paused, stunned by my compliance. His fingers rested on my lips and his voice wavered, "How—how could you swallow it?"

I let out a small, bitter laugh. "As you wished, Divine Lord."

"Sis, how can you swallow it?"

Dominic’s fingers dug into my throat as he shouted, "Sis, spit it out—sis—"

"Sis, how could you want to forget me? Sis?"

"Longshan will be terrified, sis, please spit it out?"

"Sis—"

He even used Aetheric power.

It didn’t help.

Faintly, I thought I heard a familiar voice—gentle, but icy—"Dominic, what did you give Claire?"

But under the drug’s influence, the voices faded. In the haze I was back at the first time Dominic stood and fell; he struggled up, tearful, crashing into my arms and whispering, "Sis, Longshan is scared."

Or it was the first time I saw Adrian Hale—white robes spotless—offering his hand to the darkened me, saying, "From now on, I’ll protect you. You don’t need to be afraid anymore."

3. "He seemed to flee in panic."

I woke under the push of a powerful Aetheric force.

It was a pleasant power—gentle and steady.

Supported by it, I opened my eyes a little, but darkness still hid everything. I moved a finger and realized I was bound by chains.

They were cold, and I could feel these chains were extraordinarily strong—far beyond my ability to break.

Then the warmth in my body stopped.

And there was a flutter of uncertainty.

"…Who?"

My voice came out hoarse and strained as I tried to speak.

No reply.

Still, I could clearly sense someone in front of me—an aura like the power that had warmed me: calm as water but aloof.

I tilted my head to get a better view and croaked, "Who are you?"

The moment the words left my throat, that presence vanished.

—As if running away in a panic.

Adrian had no idea why he’d fled, and he looked a little embarrassed about it.

After walking away from Dominic’s sanctuary, he noticed his fingers trembled slightly.

He stood quietly outside Dominic’s temple. From a distance, white-robed figures drifted like clouds, shrouding the handsome Divine Lord in mist.

No one or nothing seemed to pierce those smoke-light eyes. To everyone in Aetheria, Adrian Hale—one of the three Divine Lords—was forever lofty and unapproachable.

Yet in the raven-black of his hair, thin threads of crimson were tangled—eight small red filaments wound among his dark locks like sudden red stars across the night.

He just stood there, silent.

Passing immortals dared not look directly at him; they offered distant bows and hurried on.

That frozen atmosphere held until a melodious voice called, "Adrian Hale."

Her brows were like distant hills, her eyes soft as if the world around her were gentle. Her moonlit-white gown was as pristine as the purest blossom, and as she walked, cloud-like patterns seemed to swirl subtly.

Everything about her was undeniably beautiful, but more than beauty was the profoundly soothing aura that radiated from her.

Seeing her, Adrian’s furrowed brow eased and a faint smile opened on his face. "Hazel, what brings you here?"

Hazel Everett smiled back, lips pressed gently together. "Lord Marcus and Lord Evan were fighting… I thought a walk might help."

Attendants carrying divine flowers and fruits drifted by and kept dropping glances at the pair, whispering among themselves—"Is that Hazel Everett?"

"Of course. When have you ever seen Adrian smile like that for anyone else?"

"That Claire—"

An attendant hurriedly cut herself off. "How dare you speak of her? Have you forgotten that scene?"

They whispered as they hurried away.

New attendants perhaps, unaware that Adrian and Hazel had heard every word.

Hazel’s expression clouded slightly. This wasn’t the first time she’d heard the name Claire.

She’d overheard it during Marcus and Evan’s fight. And sometimes Dominic, who lingered around her, would unconsciously mutter the name.

Claire… who was she?

A flutter in Hazel’s chest made her want to ask Adrian. At that moment, she realized Adrian knew this person too—because when she looked up, she found Adrian staring not at her, but through her, toward someone else.

"Adrian?"

Hazel frowned, panic rising.

Adrian blinked and offered an apologetic smile. "Sorry, I was thinking… about some affairs of Aetheria. You’re newly ascended—your cultivation is still unstable. Let’s head back."

He reached out and, in a practiced gesture, ruffled Hazel’s hair. The smile froze on his face as if he’d suddenly realized what he’d done, and he hastily withdrew his hand. "Sorry, Hazel."

Hazel smiled gently. "It’s nothing. You used to do that a lot, didn’t you?"

Adrian was quiet for a moment, then moved his fingers and murmured, "…Yes."

Hazel wasn’t Claire. She was kinder, gentler, more considerate… and she didn’t have those deceptively mild eyes that hid a fierce streak.

After more darkness and silence, footsteps approached.

Unlike the warm power that woke me before, this presence burned—hot and fierce, like fire, like the sun.

The heat wrapped around me all at once.

Its owner hugged me tight, crushing me as if trying to fold me into his chest; I could barely breathe.

In the tense quiet I heard a young voice whisper, "Sis, was he here? Was he?"

4. "Which brother would do this to his sister?"

I hadn’t even answered when the voice murmured in my ear, "Sis, you smell like him. I don’t like it."

The stream of words poured into my ear as if pent up for a long time, now finally unleashed.

"Sis, you fainted that day. You frightened Longshan."

"And that Adrian—how dare he come here."

The tone dropped, thick with displeasure and restraint.

Adrian?

I turned my head slightly. His breath hot against my ear made me restless. I repeated the name, "Adrian?"

He froze.

I felt like I’d said something forbidden. My brow knit.

Then a surge of Aetheric force swept the area. Heat rose, like an oven, and the pressure slammed me back against the wall.

It was an ice-like wall that chilled my spine as I was pinned. The man in front of me held me so tight my chained hands were forced against the stone; his fingers locked my wrists. Heat radiated close enough to scorch.

I frowned. "Let go."

The fingers on my wrist traced slowly back and forth. I could feel his burning gaze travel over me. I turned my head a little and suddenly he clamped a hand on my throat. His voice, both soft and forceful, grew: "Sis—"

A ripping sound—

I hadn’t expected it.

Just as he tightened and nearly stole my breath, he suddenly released me. But at the same time my clothes were torn open.

His cool fingers grazed the revealed skin, touching again and again.

The nearer his searing heat came, the more sweat pricked at my neck.

Soft black hair brushed my cheek as he almost buried himself against me; his hot lips skimmed my neck and shoulder.

Anger and disgust shook me to the core. I couldn’t hold back. I blurted, "Who are you? Why are you doing this to me?"

His lips paused on my shoulder.

Coldly, he answered, "What are you talking about, sis?"

"You call me sis and yet do these vile things."

I felt his movements stop, followed by a dry laugh. "And I’m alone—what family could I have? Who are you?"

Silence hung.

When he spoke again, his voice trembled, "Sis… you’re lying to me, aren’t you?"

I heard him pacing. His aura was unsteady; his words came in fits. "What? Adrian and I both used Aetheric power—how could you forget? Lethe Draught and Wraithroot—how could—"

He rushed over, trembling as he buried me in his arms. "Sister, you’re lying to me, aren’t you? How could you forget Longsheng?"

I said coldly, "The Lethe Draught and Wraithroot? I grew up in Ravenmoor Marsh—how could those things possibly work on me? I really didn’t think—I’d merely dozed, and when I woke…"

I paused, gave a bitter little smile. "My heart was gone, my eyes were blind, and this… this body now has immortal bones I don’t recognize. Who are you, exactly? What are you scheming, locking me up here?"

"Ravenmoor Marsh…" He didn’t let go of me. "Could it be… could it be that you only forgot the last three hundred years?"

His voice brightened with relief. "You forgot—forgot—"

But then, for reasons I couldn’t tell, he started to sob painfully. "Why… why was the first person you saw when you woke him? Why could you just forget everything like that? What about me? Sister, what am I supposed to do? How can you forget Longsheng?"

I was quiet for a moment. "I don’t know you."

The one calling himself Longsheng—acting like some lofty Divine Lord—held me tight and said softly, "It’s okay, it’s okay, sister. Longsheng will stay with you. Sister, I raised you with my own hands. We’re the closest people in the world."

I pursed my lips and couldn’t help smiling. "You raised me with your own hands? Judging by your tone, you must be a Divine Lord, someone from Aetheria. I’m only the most ordinary lotus spirit in the Lower Realm—how could I have raised you myself? Besides…" I glanced down.

My torn clothing mocked me with its ridiculousness. "What brother would do something like this to his sister?"

"Marcus, you are nothing." The words had barely fallen when I noticed the Divine Lord’s body go stiff.

He rose slowly, as if nothing had happened, and said softly, "Sister, I’m sorry. It was all Longsheng’s fault."

"Longsheng was too hasty. Longsheng feared that you would be harmed by that person." He murmured, "Sister, I cherish you so much."

I frowned. "What are you saying?"

"Sister, you don’t know. Your heart was taken by Adrian, your eyes were taken by Adrian. He imprisoned you here and bound your hands and feet with chains that lock away immortality." The young Divine Lord’s voice carried a trace of sorrow, echoing in the tiny room like a devil’s whisper in the black. "Sister, I searched so hard to find you. You don’t know how terrified I was—terrified you’d leave me. But I never expected Adrian to give you the Lethe Draught and Wraithroot. Even though I used divine power, I failed… you still forgot everything from these years."

"Are you saying the one who gave me immortal power was Adrian?" I was silent a moment. "Why should I believe any of this?"

"I know you’ll doubt me." The young Divine Lord gently took my hand and smiled. "But don’t worry, sister. Before long I’ll get your heart and eyes back."

He coughed suddenly, and something wet hit the back of my hand—probably blood. Feeling the sticky warmth, I couldn’t help frowning. "What’s wrong with you?"

He forced a lively tone. "I’m fine, sister. Just a little blood. I was injured protecting you when Adrian chased you that day, but it’s nothing—just minor wounds."

I drew my hand back. "Then tell me—what’s your relationship with Adrian? Why would he rip out my heart and steal my eyes and lock me here?"

The Divine Lord in red lowered his gaze. He looked at the disheveled white-dressed woman leaning against the wall and let a faint smile lift his mouth, though his tone turned heavy with sorrow. "Sister, Adrian is your master. But he did you no kindness. At first he taught you seriously, but after you advanced to an Aether Lord, not only Adrian but your two former senior disciples believed that you were merely a flower spirit by birth—yet you had such outstanding talent. So they all conspired and did this to you."

He bent down and touched the torn clothing; the rips mended as if by magic. He straightened the collar and said slowly, "But don’t worry, sister. Longsheng will always protect you."

At that moment a soft voice floated in, like it came through some kind of transmitter—"Divine Lord, are you busy?" A gentle, mild female voice.

The Divine Lord glanced instinctively toward the sound. I heard it too and reminded him quietly, "Someone seems to be calling for you."

"Sorry, sister, I have something I must handle. But don’t worry, I’ll sneak back to see you." There was no panic in the young Divine Lord at all. He removed his hand from my collar and smiled lightly.

The warm breath that had filled the space slowly faded away. The room grew cold again. I closed my eyes and moved the wrist that was held by the chain, and found myself smiling a little.

—In the serene Willowbrook Garden, leaves and blossoms swayed in the breeze. A still pond in the center rippled gently.

The woman standing in the pavilion at the heart of the pond with two handsome Aether Lords should have been a pleasant sight. Instead, two different colors of light flashed through the space, and within them two figures darted, crossed, and collided—each clash flinging petals to the ground and even shifting the color of the sky.

"Marcus, why must you cling to Hazel? Don’t you think you’re being too possessive?"

"…Evan, I’ve told you—don’t meet Hazel in secret. How dare you disobey our senior’s orders?"

"This is nonsense!"

This wasn’t the first time Marcus and Evan had fought. Since Hazel had awakened, quarrels and skirmishes like this happened nearly every day.

Hazel, dressed in white, stood below with helpless furrowed brows. "Marcus, Evan, stop fighting."

At that moment a streak of fiery red light shot between the two sparring Aether Lords. "If you’re done, stop." A figure approached—black hair standing slightly up, robes like burning embers, moving with unmistakable charisma. His eyes were cool and sharp like bamboo; although young-looking, he carried an unspoken authority.

Evan immediately backed off, glancing at the red-clad figure. "Marcus, Dominic is here. How can you still strike?"

Marcus lowered his hands and sneered coldly at the red-clad newcomer, a look of hatred crossing his face. Then he said, "Since Dominic’s arrived, how could a lowly Aether Lord like me still act up?"

He paused, staring at Hazel as she hurried closer, then, loud enough for her to hear, added meaningfully, "Dominic seems in a hurry—did he come from that direction?"

He knew where Claire had gone after that day. Hazel had just reached them and frowned when she heard Marcus’s words, about to speak, when—

Smack—

Marcus was struck hard and sent tumbling into the pond nearby.

Silence fell. Water splashed and ripples spread; Marcus, drenched, slowly rose.

He looked up at the Divine Lord, hands behind his back. Dominic watched him expressionless, then smiled thinly. "Marcus, you are nothing."

"He has… innate immortal bones." Over two hundred years ago, Adrian’s young disciple Claire became an Aether Lord after only a hundred years. On the day she ascended, Claire stood pale and radiant in a simple moonlit white gown, surrounded by dazzling light and the sound of immortal beasts. For a moment, Marcus thought the woman he’d pined for for centuries had appeared before him.

But soon Marcus realized the truth. Claire’s eyes always had a hint of wariness toward others. Her features, seventy percent like Hazel’s, should have been soft and gentle—but they carried the chill of ice. Unlike Hazel, Claire rarely smiled. One thing was similar—Marcus saw a small, involuntary smile bloom on the moonlit-gowned woman when she saw Adrian approaching, and he thought, "That smile when facing Adrian."

Marcus’s expression darkened. He closed his eyes and looked at the brilliant scene again, then toward the forbidden direction of Aetheria, and allowed a small smile. "No matter. Since Claire has become an Aether Lord, Hazel’s return can’t be far."

The moonlit-gowned Claire walked toward Marcus and Evan and inclined her head. "Marcus senior, Evan senior."

Evan’s excitement showed openly; he practically danced around her. "Claire, I told you you’d succeed, didn’t I?"

"Thank you for your guidance, senior." Claire offered a faint smile.

Marcus swallowed his rage and softened his voice. "Claire, now that you’ve become an Aether Lord, what would you like to do next? If there’s anything you like or want, tell me—your senior will get it for you."

Claire frowned slightly, considered, and said, "I’ll keep cultivating. Maybe I’ll visit the Lower Realm. Aetheria’s a bit stifling." She shook her head. "You’ve already given me so much, senior. I don’t deserve it."

"How could that be? You’re my most cherished junior." Marcus smiled and ruffled Claire’s hair. "Then how about I accompany you to the Lower Realm?"

Evan, annoyed, slapped Marcus’s hand away from Claire and grinned. "Marcus has been assigned to handle matters in the Eastern Sea and is very busy. Junior, let me go with you. I go to the Lower Realm often; I know lots of fun places and good food."

As a descendant of the Eastern Sea dragon clan and a disciple under Adrian, Marcus had a bright future. The Heavenly Emperor had recently put him in charge of Eastern Sea affairs.

Marcus glanced at his hand. Claire had politely refused. "There’s no need, senior. I can go alone."

As they were speaking, a figure slowly came to a stop beside her. He tilted his head toward her and his voice was smooth as polished jade. "Claire, you’ve only recently reached Aether Lord. Your divine power is still unstable. I’ll help you stabilize your base—we’ll ensure it’s safe before you return to the mortal realm."

The speaker was none other than their Master Rowan.

He patted Claire’s head on instinct. Claire lifted her face at his words and, as if surprised at herself, bloomed into a naive, joyful smile. "I understand, Master."

Marcus watched the warm scene with a cold smile.

—Claire had returned to Aetheria, bringing a baby with her. Marcus hadn’t expected that.

He was already closing in on the baby, gathering divine force to act, when he felt a familiar power—a scalding, searing heat—pressing down.

From not far off came the rumble of a dragon carriage, a warning of sorts.

It was Dominic Reed.

Marcus stopped himself and exchanged a look with Evan Carter, who clearly had noticed as well.

Claire’s voice carried a thread of delight. "Senior, I met him in the mortal realm and felt a connection, so I brought him along. He’s still so small… I named him Oliver. What do you all think?"

Marcus’ face was composed. He sized up the infant sleeping in Claire’s arms, and then forced a matching expression of delight. "Little junior sister, haven’t you seen his innate talent? He is… born with an immortal essence."

Evan laughed softly at the side, eyes layered with meaning. "As expected of Claire. She just picks someone up and it’s a promising child with immortal essence."

Claire paused at their words. She lowered her head, lightly touching the baby’s cheek, and said slowly, "I didn’t take notice of that. If he rises to become an Aether Lord someday, that would be good. If not, it’s fine too. The world has so many shapes—may he cherish them all, and take them lightly."

And so, over the next two hundred years, Marcus watched that infant grow.

Maybe because Dominic forced himself back to his true, austere nature, the divine power hidden in that small body—the immense force of a Divine Lord—meant Oliver suffered illness and calamity as a child.

Many nights Marcus saw Claire cradling Oliver as she went between the Healing Hall and other places, or standing on the lake pavilion in Willowbrook Garden, conjuring little firefly lights to amuse the ailing child.

Dominic’s memories only returned after he ascended to Aether Lord.

By then Claire was gently holding him. "Oliver, congratulations."

Marcus saw with his own eyes the bright, bamboo-straight youth shift; the light curl of his lips fell away, while the hands that held the figure before him tightened.

"Thank you… sister."

Marcus watched coldly.

Not long after that day, a tremor ran through the forbidden grounds of Aetheria. He rushed over in elation and saw the Moonlit Lotus in the pool quietly bloom—Hazel was returning too.

—In the hush that followed, Marcus and the Divine Lord with folded arms exchanged a look from across the way.

Soaked and disheveled, Marcus suddenly smiled and gave a deep bow. His voice was even. "Dominic, forgive me—Marcus misspoke."

The young Divine Lord in red watched Marcus without expression. Tension spiked.

Evan stood like an onlooker, silent, taking it all in.

Hazel glanced at the dripping Marcus and then at Dominic, worry creasing her features. "Dominic, I don’t think Marcus meant to offend you. Please don’t take it to heart."

At Hazel’s words Dominic’s face softened and his features grew gentler. He gave Hazel a smile. "If Hazel sister speaks, I won’t be angry. But…"

He smiled on and continued, "Some people still need to recognize their place, Marcus. Don’t you agree?"

As one of the three Divine Lords, Dominic had both the standing and the right to say that.

Marcus smiled faintly. He didn’t bother using his power to dry his clothes; still wet, he stepped out of the water and said, "What the Divine Lord says is correct."

Hazel’s worry didn’t ease. Before she could say more, dizziness swept over her. Her mouth opened, then closed; her eyes fluttered shut as she fainted.

Dominic caught her. Marcus had just rushed forward, but seeing Dominic holding Hazel, his outstretched hand fell back.

Evan cried out anxiously, "What’s wrong with Hazel? Why did she suddenly collapse?"

Dominic held Hazel, brows knit. "I’ll take Hazel back to the Luminous Hall. Evan, you go to the Healing Hall."

The Luminous Hall was Master Rowan’s residence; Hazel had been recuperating there. Before Evan could reply Dominic’s figure vanished.

Marcus followed without another word. Evan sighed and hurried to the Healing Hall.

—Inside the Luminous Hall.

The summoned healer from the Healing Hall stroked a nonexistent beard and looked slowly at the pained Hazel lying in bed. "This… the power inside Hazel probably isn’t hers. Though the form is similar, it’s not actually her own."

Dominic watched Hazel in silence.

Marcus spoke coldly. "So?"

The healer continued at an unhurried pace. "Hazel’s true form is a lotus. One crucial seed—her lotus heart—becomes her heart when she transforms. Two other seeds form her eyes; the rest become other organs, and the remaining lotus platform becomes her life artifact. Four hundred years ago Hazel destroyed her original body; she should have died. Yet, aided by the Divine Lords and others, someone found a lotus heart similar to hers and inserted it, allowing Hazel to take form again."

The healer was unfazed by Marcus’ harshness, and when he said, "someone found…" he couldn’t help smiling. "But that lotus heart isn’t Hazel’s. It’s inside her, but it’s rejected by the other seeds. That’s why Hazel fainted."

At that moment Master Rowan entered. He’d been handling affairs and felt the change in the connection he’d placed on Hazel; he hurried over. Hearing the healer’s words, the worry that had creased his brow stiffened into something more fixed.

"Master Rowan."

The three Aether Lords bowed.

He looked at Hazel’s pained face and asked the healer, "If what you say is true, what can be done?"

"I’m no lotus; how could I reconcile seeds?" The healer waved his hand and rose, shrugging. He shook his head and said, "I don’t know why, but the moment I stepped into this hall I felt nauseous—couldn’t stay. Master Rowan, Dominic, I’m off." He glanced at Dominic with a smile. "I’ll go read my stories. There’s a line—’an ungrateful white-eyed wolf’—so pathetic and amusing."

Before anyone could respond, the healer bowed, picked up his box, and vanished in a cloud.

Dominic’s expression darkened further—he knew the healer was speaking obliquely. He’d been sick so often as a child that Hazel took him to the Healing Hall; they were old acquaintances.

Master Rowan knew too. For some reason, he felt a peculiar relief at the healer’s words.

Marcus clenched his fists, thinking only of Hazel. He turned to Dominic. "You heard that. If Hazel lacks a seed…"

Evan’s eyes widened at his implication. He frowned. "You mean you want one from Claire…?"

"Claire is already as she is. How could we remove her seed now?" Master Rowan interrupted sharply.

He seemed to realize what he’d said and attempted to bury the awkwardness. "Marcus, Claire is also your junior."

Marcus sneered inwardly at their master and turned back to the silent Dominic. "Dominic, I know you took Claire’s eyes. Two lotus seeds. Hazel will be fine."

Evan had not known about this until Marcus spoke. A chill ran through him recalling the healer’s departing remark. Dominic had taken Claire’s eyes not to give them away—he couldn’t stand seeing the disdain in those eyes. He had never intended to hand them to anyone.

Dominic looked down at Hazel, her face drawn in pain, sweat beading on her brow.

It was as if he were looking back at his sister from that day.

He closed his eyes. In that instant, memories of Hazel throwing herself before him during his tribulation returned. Claire’s face overlapped with Hazel’s again and again. Dominic’s emotions churned; he felt bile at his throat and suddenly spat blood.

"Divine Lord…"

Evan rushed forward to support him.

Master Rowan’s brow tightened, but Marcus continued. "Dominic, be honest. Hazel risked everything to shield you. Have you forgotten?"

His voice was icy, cutting.

Master Rowan finally spoke. "Marcus, enough."

Marcus fell silent—Master Rowan was his teacher. He couldn’t argue. He watched Hazel with an aching discontent.

Dominic straightened slowly and wiped the blood from his lips. On his palm, two jet-black, lustrous beads rose like ink-pearls, radiating a gentle, opalescent light.

Marcus’ eyes lit. "You intend to—"

Before he could finish, an overwhelming divine force slammed him to the ground.

Dust hung in the air. Silence swallowed the hall.

Master Rowan wanted to speak, but his gaze on those two beads drifted to that pair of beautiful, defiant eyes—Claire’s eyes—the small junior who always smiled softly at him. A sudden pain bloomed in his chest, a pain he’d carried for over two hundred years. He didn’t know why it still hurt.

He, one of the three high Aether Lords, who should be beyond harm—felt it anyway.

"This is the last time."

Silence filled the hall, broken only by the faint voice of the young Divine Lord.

Darkness I had already learned to live with.

But for some reason—whether from my body or from the depths of my soul—pain and a tearing ache began to spread through me.

I tried to press my hand to where it hurt, but chains bound my wrists tight.

In that stillness sweat poured down my face. I must have looked a mess, but I didn’t care. I hurt so badly I wanted to stand. The last traces of spirit-sense within me flared and skittered, then were gone.

What had vanished?

I tried to open my eyes; only blackness met me.

And the cold clink of the iron chains.

8. “Oliver, you won’t let your sister down, will you?”

In the midst of that sharp, spreading pain, I knew I might never see again.

A bead of sweat from my temple fell onto my lips.

It tasted bitter.

When the warm air brushed my face, the Divine Lord who called himself “Oliver” was quiet for a long moment.

Then I felt his hand reach toward me.

I turned my head on instinct—just that tiny motion stole my breath in several ragged gasps.

“Sis, I just wanted to wipe your sweat.”

His voice was soft.

I was silent a long while before I said, “You said you’d help me take back my heart and my eyes.”

He didn’t answer.

He seemed to stoop, taking a corner of a cloth to gently dab the sweat from my face.

He murmured, “Sister, will you leave me?”

It sounded less like a question to me and more like he was asking himself.

“How could I ever leave you like this?”

I managed a bitter little laugh. “You said I raised you, remember?”

Oliver’s voice floated in that small space. “Yes. Sister—two hundred years.”

I smiled faintly. The chained hand swung toward him a little. “Come here.”

After a long moment, footsteps drew closer.

I reached out and found the cool plane of his face.

His lips trembled; his voice did, too.

“Sis….”

Oliver’s murmured syllables were vague.

A drop of something landed on the back of my hand.

Tear.

I leaned in closer and tugged at the corner of my mouth, trying to force a smile and failing.

So close to his lips I whispered, “Oliver, how could you fall for the sister who raised you?”

“Oliver, you wouldn’t betray the woman who raised you for two hundred years, would you?”

“…”

He shuddered violently at that and nearly stumbled back a step.

Where I could not see, Dominic touched the blood at the corner of his mouth with a fingertip. He looked down at his long finger, at the mark there, then glanced at his palm.

He remembered the day he had gouged Claire’s heart—her blood had stained his fingers like this too.

He trembled and covered his eyes to hold the tears back.

Something inside him, like a thunderstorm, shook and beat at his throat, leaving it raw.

But he couldn’t let her go. He absolutely could not lose her.

He wouldn’t allow her to love anyone else.

But he also didn’t want her to hate him.

In the long silence of that space I rattled my chains. “You say it was Adrian who imprisoned me here. Now I have no heart and no eyes—”

I chuckled softly. “My eyes have likely been taken too. If that’s the case, I’m nothing but a cripple. What more can I cling to? Tell him to let me out for a walk. I don’t like being alone in here.”

Oliver didn’t answer at first, but he stepped closer and touched the icy chain and the hand it bound.

My fingers twitched and then, almost of their own accord, closed around his trembling fingertip.

Feeling the tremor in his hand, I softened my voice. “Oliver, will you?”

“I’ve cared for you two hundred years. Oliver—you won’t let me down, will you?”

Through the heat at my face I heard the boy’s hoarse reply: “I won’t.”

9. “Claire… that name suits you.”

After that day—maybe because Oliver had spoken to Adrian—my hands and feet were no longer shackled.

I seemed to have been moved to another room, like a sleeping chamber, with a tolerable temperature and soft bedding.

Still, the floor beneath my feet was cold.

My body was weak. Losing my heart and my eyes, those three vital lotus seeds, had left me like a dry leaf about to fall.

At night when I closed my eyes to rest a burning presence sat close by. Someone’s gaze would trace my face over and over with greedy attention.

I knew it was Oliver.

In truth, since the day I woke, besides Adrian—who claimed to have been my old Master—and Oliver, I hadn’t sensed anyone else.

Oliver hated letting me go. He clung to me tighter and tighter.

Sometimes, at my request, he would accompany me when I left. I never knew where we went, but being anywhere but that cell loosened some of the ache in my weary body.

One afternoon I leaned against a railing. Oliver stood beside me, handing over something that looked like bait.

“Sis, do you remember? When I was little I loved using these to feed the fish in the pond. Down below they call it fish bait.”

He held my hand and placed the bait in my palm.

I pulled my hand back and pinched a bit of it between my fingers, feeling the rough texture. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember.”

“…”

He was silent for a bit, then let out something like a laugh. “It’s okay, Sis. Oliver remembers. I’ll tell you everything.”

I nodded half-heartedly and turned to toss the bait into the pond, one piece at a time.

Ripples whispered out. Oliver stood quietly, his burning eyes tracing the lines of my face as if sketching them stroke by stroke.

Then a voice—like the last time—came from him, heard at a distance. “Divine Lord, it’s me—Hazel. If you hear this, could you come meet me?”

Hazel.

I raised an eyebrow.

Before Oliver could answer the voice spoke again. “Senior says I woke up thanks to what the Divine Lord brought—”

Oliver cut it off sharply.

“That voice sounds familiar,” I said, tossing another bit of bait. “Hazel. Nice name.”

Oliver’s smile looked strained. “She’s an old acquaintance, Sis. Let’s go back.”

I picked at the bait lazily. “You go on. I’ll stay a while.”

“But Sister—”

Panic threaded his voice.

“If you’re worried, make a ward.”

Oliver hesitated, then: “Sis, that’s not how I feel.”

When I didn’t respond he only said softly, “Then I’ll go first. Stay here… don’t wander off.”

In the moment he vanished I felt a ward fall into place.

I smiled faintly and tossed the rest of the bait into the pond.

Splash.

Quiet folded back over the garden.

Some unseen breeze brushed across my face. I felt something fall and tremble on my eyelids. Light as a breath.

I moved my eyes and the thing fluttered down to the tip of my nose.

I reached up and touched it. It was a butterfly.

It didn’t fear my touch. Its wings were soft and pure; under my palm they fluttered.

A tiny life vibrating.

“It tickles.”

The butterfly seemed to understand. It fluttered then perched on my outstretched finger.

I bowed my head. Darkness still pressed behind my eyes, but I could somehow picture the butterfly—delicate, gentle.

I paused, letting myself smile. Whether the butterfly understood or not, I murmured, “Back in Ravenmoor Marsh, spirits hated approaching me, even when I took my true form. This is Aetheria—do the spirits here like me more?”

The butterfly shifted on my fingertip.

For a breath I thought I could see it—a glow of light.

Then footsteps sounded nearby. The weight on my hand was gone.

The butterfly had flown away.

The presence that arrived wasn’t Oliver’s. It reminded me of the soft, cold kindness I’d felt the day I first woke.

Perhaps for some people, gentleness and distance weren’t opposites.

“You’re Adrian?”

I pulled my hand back and flicked my sleeve, turning to look toward the sound.

He stopped several paces away. His voice, pale and like mountain stream water, drifted to me. “Dominic said you lost your memory.”

The voice was familiar and pleasant, but it didn’t appeal to me.

“Dominic?” I said thoughtfully. “You mean Oliver? Isn’t that his name?”

“Oliver is the name you gave him.”

He said slowly, “Claire—have you truly lost your memory?”

I turned back to the pond, unruffled. “I haven’t lost everything.”

He took a step closer as if to press me, but I added, levelly: “Maybe I only forgot what I wanted to forget. Maybe those memories aren’t good for me. You—Oliver—Dominic? I don’t need them.”

“I am your Master,” Adrian said. His voice had a strange note I couldn’t place.

I rested a hand on the hollow where my missing heart had been. “Claire… I had no name back when I was in Ravenmoor Marsh. Did you give me this name too?”

I said the name slowly and smiled. “It suits me well.”

He didn’t step forward. He studied me from a distance. “How have you been lately?”

Adrian thought, without regret, of the decision he’d made.

Hazel had been the first apprentice who came to him willingly.

Back then the frail girl had bowed before him and pleaded in a sweet voice: “I submit to you as my Master, Divine Lord. Please grant me a name.”

He saw her true form at a glance — she was a moonlit lotus.

The girl was prettily composed and gentle; her eyes were pure. To look at her was to think she had never known suffering.

He looked at the girl and said softly, "Hazel, the lotus is your true form; it nurtures spirit and grace. From now on, you shall be called Hazel."

10. "You can’t even see your own heart, can you?"

Hazel was like the moon: tender, considerate, quietly able to sink into people’s hearts.

But Claire was different.

When she looked at others there was always wariness. Even when she smiled faintly, she made people feel distant.

Rescuing Claire from Ravenmoor Marsh wasn’t the first time Adrian had met her.

He brought the unnamed girl to Aetheria and gave her the name "Claire."

Claire had thought about it, then offered a small smile. "Claire, Claire — it suits me."

Which part of it suited her so perfectly?

Adrian didn’t ask, and Claire didn’t say.

Until the day Hazel would wake, Adrian was jolted awake from nightmares; his chest ached.

Hazel might wake, but most likely she’d be disoriented. Without a similar power to anchor her, she couldn’t safely take human form again and return to the Aether Lord’s seat.

So Marcus said beside him, "Master Rowan, didn’t you save Claire back then for precisely this day?"

Adrian thought: yes. He had saved Claire from Ravenmoor Marsh for Hazel, so that a hundred years later Hazel could return flawlessly as an Aether Lord.

A voice in his head said, "Claire is also your disciple."

But another voice retorted, "And what about Hazel? What about Hazel? Don’t forget — you rescued Claire for Hazel. Now that the time is right, Claire should repay over three hundred years of master-disciple debt."

Adrian slowly lifted his head from the couch. He looked at Marcus, who seemed impatient, and at Evan, whose expression held concern. He pressed his aching temple and said, "I’ll seal the way to the lower realm. Claire may well have reservations about you two. Go find Dominic and pluck out his heart yourself."

His hand trembled, then he added slowly, "Just the heart."

Without a heart, you can still live.

Hazel could awaken, and Claire could live.

His two little disciples… the voice that had first risen in his mind now sounded cold, a sarcastic edge: "Adrian, you haven’t seen your own heart."

I turned my head slightly. "Are you asking about my body?"

Even saying it felt absurd. The wind that met my face was cold, and my smile faded.

"Adrian, you pried my heart out, you stole my eyes—do you think I’ll be all right?"

Those words detonated like thunder by Adrian’s ear.

He frowned. The gentle expression he usually wore was gone. Adrian moved forward quickly and grabbed my arm, like an accusation. "Pried out your heart? Stole your eyes?"

His grip was tight.

I looked at him, at the one who might, in the dark, actually see — but unsurprisingly, I saw nothing.

I let out a soft hum and smiled. "Isn’t that what the one you call Dominic said?"

Before Adrian could answer, a flare of fire rose between us — Dominic was back.

Dominic.

The name conjured an Aether Lord of spring and flame, famed and dazzling.

What of him now?

I tried to pull my arm free from Adrian, but Adrian waved his sleeve and the fire vanished.

The next second Dominic had already seized my other arm. He gripped harder than Adrian; his fingers seemed to bite into my flesh.

I frowned and said, "Let go. Both of you."

Dominic held on tighter, voice laced with obvious tension, "Sister, did he say anything to you? Don’t you believe him."

"You mean about you calling yourself Dominic?"

I said lightly. "Aren’t you Dominic?"

Dominic’s fingers trembled. He was silent a long beat, then said, "I’m Oliver."

"Sister, I’m Oliver."

He murmured the name again as if to himself.

Adrian looked at him with cool disdain.

This Divine Lord, usually composed and unassailable, now wore a mocking smile. "Dominic, have you forgotten what you did with your own hands? Or do you need me to repeat it?"

"Shut up!"

Dominic’s hand grew hot, like it was devouring my skin with flame, and he yelled in something close to delirium.

The sky rumbled with the roar of a dragon chariot — Dominic’s mount.

Dominic’s eyes were slowly reddening. He stared at Adrian, who seemed untouched by worldly dust, and laughed—once, twice. "Adrian, what about you? Whose orders were those? Don’t you know in your own heart?"

He paused, as if realizing something, then drew out the words with bitter sarcasm: "Or is it, Adrian… that you can’t even see your own heart?"

11. "She looks very ill."

I could feel the dead silence thick around us.

Adrian didn’t answer Dominic, and Dominic didn’t speak further. They both held my arms as if to measure who had the upper hand.

Footsteps approached, like something chasing, and stopped not far away.

"Dominic? Adrian Lord, um—Master Rowan?"

A woman’s anxious but tender voice made Adrian’s fingers relax a little.

"Master Rowan, why are you here with Dominic…"

Her voice faltered.

It sounded like a startled fawn—tingly and soft, yet somehow comforting.

I knew that voice at once — Hazel, the woman who had carried messages for Dominic many times.

Two more footsteps came after her.

A new voice, sharp with surprise and a hint of guilty bewilderment, said, "…Claire?"

Adrian finally let go completely.

His tone was cold. "What are you two doing here?"

I’d never heard Adrian speak so coldly.

Hazel froze.

When she woke, the first person she saw was Adrian. He was gentle, strong, patient. He sometimes stared off suddenly, but when he looked at her his gaze was focused and calm.

Beside Adrian Hazel felt unprecedented security. So when Adrian told her that the past Claire had been his disciple, Hazel was delighted; some unnameable feeling swelled within her.

He had never spoken to her this coldly before.

This was the first time.

A flicker of panic rose in Hazel’s chest.

She saw the person Adrian had just grabbed — someone who looked very much like her.

But it was clear this woman, similar as she was, couldn’t see; the three parts that differed almost overwhelmed the seven parts that matched.

Her expression was faint, her face pale. In that instant, a figure flashed through Hazel’s mind, but a name quickly eclipsed it.

"Claire."

The name rose in Hazel’s heart.

"Claire Aether Lord," attendants had said; Marcus and others had called her "little junior sister Claire" when arguing. Dominic often disappeared to see someone, and Adrian would freeze when he heard the name.

Standing beside Hazel, staring blankly at Claire, was Evan.

"She looks very ill." — Only that thought crossed Evan’s mind.

He glanced at Hazel with a complicated expression, then looked at Claire and lowered his head.

"I was going to thank Dominic, but the Divine Lord seemed to have urgent business…"

Hazel looked anxiously at Dominic and turned to Adrian to explain.

What she saw next was a scene.

Adrian stared at her without answering, then turned to Dominic and said coolly, "Dominic, will you release her? Claire’s body is frail…"

Dominic cut him off with a cold laugh. "What kind of release do you mean? Whichever you mean—I won’t."

"I don’t want to be held by you. Let go."

Feeling my arm burning, I said, "Dominic, let go."

"…"

I couldn’t see Dominic’s face, but after a long silence his hand tightened once, then slowly unclenched.

"Claire, have you truly lost your memory?"

Another voice, unlike the others, spoke slowly.

I looked toward where the voice came from and couldn’t help a mocking smile. "Why don’t you ask whether I still have a heart, or whether I still have eyes?"

I Was the White Lotus Stand-In

I went on slowly, "I don't know who you are, but hearing your voice makes me a bit sick. Politeness would demand I ask your name, but I'd rather not soil my ears with it — so I won't ask."

"You—!"

The speaker was Marcus, who'd been watching the commotion. He glared at the people nearby with a flash of venom. "So a lost memory changes one's temperament."

Hazel frowned slightly. She glanced at Dominic's darkening face, then tugged at Marcus's sleeve and said softly, "Senior, let it be."

At Hazel's voice, Marcus's eyes softened instantly. He smiled at Hazel. "Hazel, I'll do as you say."

I ignored the back-and-forth and focused my blurred attention on Hazel for a while.

There was something about her that felt unbearably familiar and dear — like my heart, like my eyes. Or perhaps like both.

I turned my sight away, tired of the whole scene. No matter whose gaze was on me — Dominic's fierce stare, Adrian's quiet watchfulness, or Hazel's gentle glances — I said, "I'm going back."

Dominic immediately said, "All right, sister, let's go."

"Wait, Claire—"

Adrian opened his mouth as if to say something, but the next moment Dominic had already taken me back to the resting quarters.

Dominic had grabbed my hand again and murmured, “Sis, no matter what they say, don’t believe them.”

I didn’t answer him right away. After a moment of silence, I lifted my head — which had been hanging low — and said slowly, “I don’t want to stay here anymore.”

“Clouds, mountains, birds.”

The moment the words left my mouth, I could feel Dominic’s anger about to explode. His hand trembled around mine and his grip grew tighter.

I didn’t flinch. I kept speaking. “I want to go back to Ravenmoor Marsh.”

I paused, enunciating each word: “I don’t want to stay in Aetheria. Aetheria disgusts me.”

The storm of rage within him began to ebb.

What followed was silence.

I didn’t pull my hand away; instead I gently covered his with my other hand.

“If you’re willing… would you stop being Dominic?”

In that hush, matching my motion, I whispered one name: “Oliver.”

The hand I’d covered almost clenched into a fist.

But in that long-awaited moment, the fist slowly relaxed.

“…Sis, if it’s you, I will.”

“Sis, let’s be together forever, okay?”

His voice shook; I couldn’t tell if it was joy or something else.

“For decades, centuries, thousands, ten thousands… Sis, we must always be together. No one else, okay?”

Dominic gripped my hand again.

That look — expectant, nervous, trembling — was fixed on me.

I smiled and breathed a single word: “Okay.”

—Claire left Aetheria that day, and Adrian knew.

He stood far above on the clouds, watching the two figures silently.

He was still wearing that moonlit-white robe, standing on the cloud as if he might blend into it.

Adrian gazed at those familiar forms, then glanced down at his palm — where a thick red cord lay coiled.

Rough, vivid red.

Not something from Aetheria.

As he stared, a sudden, violent pain throbbed through his head. He tightened his hold on the coarse cord, pressed his fingers to his forehead, and closed his eyes.

His heart hammered hard enough to demand notice.

And in that moment a thought rose: to stop them.

Claire’s name—he had given it. He’d taught Claire the cultivation for three hundred years… she was, by his own admission, his disciple.

How could she leave?

Divine power answered desire; a flash of crimson flared in the high Divine Lord Adrian’s eyes.

But a timid voice behind him shattered that impulse: “Master Rowan.”

Adrian turned slightly and saw Hazel—her brow gentle, a smile in her eyes.

Hazel stepped closer and smiled at the turned figure. “Master Rowan, why are you standing here all alone?”

Her gaze slid past him to the place he’d been staring at—there was nothing there.

Lonely clouds. Lonely mountains. Layer upon layer.

Adrian didn’t reply so much as keep looking at her face.

A face being watched by a warm, jade-like Master Rowan.

Hazel blushed and bowed her head.

In the silence between them, Adrian couldn’t help it: he reached out and lightly brushed the woman’s face.

Hazel, still shy and unsure what to do, felt her face burn. She raised her head slightly. The usually unapproachable, powerful Divine Lord’s eyes softened; with his fingertip he stroked the woman’s cheek, and after a beat, bent and kissed her.

—Ravenmoor Marsh sits between the human world and Aetheria like a rent between two planes; countless sins and darkness fester there.

No mortals, and no immortals, belong there.

Long ago, tens of thousands of years back, Ravenmoor Marsh was the first realm of the Great Wastes — the supreme Heaven — where three Divine Lords had been nurtured, and from it all other realms were gifted into being.

But as millennia passed and immortals and demons rose, war became inevitable.

Ravenmoor Marsh gave way as the first battlefield of gods and demons.

After that, it fell and became darker, stranger than even the Demon Realm.

And it was where I grew up.

At the marsh’s center yawned a bone-deep frozen pool, and beside it a sheer cliff. Across that cliff lay the distant colors of the human world.

In my memory, those human hues were my comfort in the Marsh.

There were mist-draped mountains and smoke rising far in the distance. Demon, immortal, and human—there were differences—but where a mortal might see only an endless sea of cloud, I could make out half-open blossoms on the hills and drooping vine branches.

Only now, I could not see them.

I knew the spot I stood on was the same one I’d stood on a hundred years before. Opposite me was the human world I had longed at for, and behind me the marsh soaked in as much corrupted blood as I could count.

Now there was only darkness.

I stood and watched for a long moment, then asked Dominic, who stood beside me, “What do you see?”

He blinked; he’d been watching me. He turned his head and said after a beat, “Clouds, mountains, birds.”

“And do you know what I see?”

I smiled, tilted my head a fraction, and answered slowly: “…a complete darkness.”

Ravenmoor Marsh is the bane of those who live in light.

So without hesitation, after saying that, I used the last of my accumulated strength and shoved Dominic into the frozen pool behind him.

I knew that being a Divine Lord, Dominic would react quickly.

But it wouldn’t help—this was my territory.

The seemingly innocuous pool behind him was ancient, and beneath its calm surface lay the extreme cold water and millennial vines that haunted Dominic’s fears.

Those writhing vines digging out from the ice were creatures I had spent a century taming — a demon I had bound long ago. The Divine Lord’s seat is rarely held by the same soul forever; through wars or other causes, Dominic had been reborn before.

The Dominic before me now had only a thousand-some years of cultivation; he couldn’t withstand the icy water and the vines.

So I heard the sound of his weapon breaking through the ice.

And I heard Dominic’s raw, pained cry: “Sis.”

“…Sis, Oliver hurts.”

I had to have heard Dominic calling me.

I paused, then turned and walked toward him.

The vines parted for me; the ice refroze under my feet.

Divine power, hot and restrained, hovered before me.

“…Sis.”

Dominic’s voice was hoarse.

I could hear confusion, anger, disappointment, grief—all of it.

His eyes were fixed on me. Despite the fury, he grew calm. “Sis, you’re joking with Oliver, aren’t you?”

As he spoke, he suddenly spat blood uncontrollably; it splattered on my chin. I reached up and wiped it away, smiling. “You think I’m joking?”

Silence swallowed us. Demon birds circled above, shrieking with terrible, high-pitched cries.

Dominic was submerged in the freezing water; as it turned to ice around him he couldn’t move. Vines coiled and bit; the millennial thorns tore into him.

His divine blood spilling—who knew how many monsters it would draw.

“Sis, I don’t understand.”

He looked at me. He no longer tried to stop the blood from his lips or the wounds puncturing him. Over the birds’ awful cries, his lips trembled in a smile that was both a question for me and for himself.

The vines tightened.

Pain wracked him so that even Dominic couldn’t hold back a sound.

I knew the vines’ cruelty well.

I crouched slowly to his level and watched.

The handsome young Divine Lord, likely very humiliated, whispered: “Dominic, does it hurt?”

At that, he tried to reach for me — I felt a sudden surge of strength, then it faltered. A hand freed from the vines, stained with noble divine blood, reached up and brushed my skirt.

He tugged once, wanting to pull higher, but the vines yanked him the other way and dragged him down.

“…Sis, Oliver hurts,” Dominic mumbled, slurred.

So I reached out.

He leaned his face in, like a thin, needy mutt grasping for warmth.

I touched his face.

I stroked that blood-smeared cheek lightly and, cold as ice, said: “You are not Oliver anymore.”

“You’re Dominic, and that’s all.”

“My Oliver would never betray me.”

“He was mischievous, he was naughty, but he always thought of me. Even when he was a little boy and sick, Oliver would pull funny faces to cheer me up and say, ‘Sis, Oliver’s fine, it doesn’t hurt at all.’”

“My Oliver would never gouge out his sister’s heart, nor pluck out his sister’s eyes.”

As he breathed quickly, I leaned to his ear and whispered soft as if singing the Oliver of his childhood a lullaby: “Dominic, I didn’t lose my memory.”

—Maybe being a Divine Lord would be pretty great?

I’d spent so many years in Ravenmoor Marsh that the wraithroot there no longer affected me.

Still, I had doubts about Dominic.

How could I not?

I’d raised Oliver for over two hundred years; I couldn’t help hesitating.

I thought maybe he just hadn’t come to terms yet.

So I intended to give him a chance.

But clearly, I was wrong.

I smiled.

Out of my sight, Dominic’s face suddenly went ghost-white. His trembling lips fixed on me, and though he tried to force a smile, tears had already fallen.

He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again, holding onto a sliver of hope: “Sis, you’re lying to me, aren’t you? Sis, you must be lying.”

He murmured, voice swelling louder and louder until he truly laughed aloud: “Sis, you’re lying to me, right?”

“We were supposed to spend our lives here together—decades, centuries, millennia…”

His laughter was slowly choked off by sobs.

This once-clear, bamboo-slim Divine Lord now seemed to lose his mind. He wept and laughed at the same time, yet never stopped staring at the person before him. “Sister, you promised me!

You said you’d always stay with me!

Sister!”

“You said you would!”

He shouted hoarsely; his divine power roiled like a wildfire about to burst from millennia of ice.

I listened without much expression, then said softly, “I never taught my Longsheng to repay kindness with someone else’s things.

When you gouged out a heart, you were no longer Longsheng.

To be honest, even saying that name still hurts me, but…”

“Mostly it makes me sick.”

I paused, smiled, and went on.

My face remained calm, the thin ironic curl at my mouth fading quickly.

Dominic’s voice cut off abruptly.

His divine power retreated.

What a familiar face.

Every glance, every smile, even the way his mouth curved—I knew them all so well.

So why couldn’t it belong only to him?

He was silent a moment before he spoke quietly, “Sister, why can’t you just love me?”

Before he recovered his memories as Dominic, as Longsheng he’d never dared voice feelings like that. He feared she’d stop liking him, grow distant, leave him. He knew she liked Adrian—so as Longsheng he was content to quietly accompany her.

But when his memories returned, he snapped awake: how could Adrian deserve her affection?

He knew how Adrian had schemed to get close to her—how could Adrian deserve her love?

Longsheng wouldn’t dare, Dominic felt unworthy—could Adrian be worthy?

Why couldn’t she see through him?

Why couldn’t she see this hypocrite?

Then she lost her memories.

He was at once glad and heartbroken, and a small voice told him that now she’d never like Adrian again…so maybe Dominic would have a chance?

He didn’t want a throne, he didn’t care about that Hazel girl—he just wanted to spend his life with his sister…maybe she could love him.

“Sis, how could you trick me into losing my memories?

Sister?”

Dominic smiled again, even as blood trickled from his mouth. His divine power frayed; his chest hurt so much he nearly fainted.

But how could a Divine Lord faint like a mortal?

He only ached with unbearable pain.

His words were starting to make less and less sense. I kept my face still and asked softly, “Divine Lord, how could you spend two hundred years deceiving me?”

“Divine Lord, were my eyes easy for you to gouge out?”

“I have been a demon and I have been an Aether Lord, but I never understood what it felt like to be a Divine Lord.

Maybe being a Divine Lord is wonderful?

The hearts of the closest people can be gouged out at will; the eyes of the one who cared for you for two hundred years can be pulled out…”

I smiled faintly in the darkness, speaking slowly, almost leisurely. “So, Divine Lord, I’d like to borrow your eyes for a bit.

Let’s see if your vision is clearer than mine.

I also want to take your heart and see—how different is your heart from mine?”

Thousand-year vines had wrapped around my hand.

I lifted my hand and, slowly, covered Dominic’s eyes.

“But you were once Longsheng.”

Beneath my palm over Dominic’s eyes, I felt his tears.

And unintentionally, I remembered he’d once been Longsheng.

When Longsheng was little, he wasn’t so strong—he’d cry when he fell, cry when he woke and couldn’t find me… my fingers trembled slightly.

The vine tightened around my finger—“Sister—”

Dominic’s low, pained cry echoed across the silent land.

Then I took out the Divine Lord’s eyes.

Those eyes, like his office, were full of scorching, overwhelming power—ill-suited for my weakened form. But I never cared about what was “suitable.”

As that fierce power poured through me, a brutal, rejecting force slammed into my chest; the power that spilled from me flared like a brief spark and vanished.

I felt as if I were burning alive.

That unavoidable rejection and agony—this must be why Adrian and the others chose to gouge my heart to save Hazel.

I thought of that coldly.

I bit down hard, a moan escaping my lips. The vines at my back and arms kept me upright.

Perhaps hearing me struggle, Dominic fumbled forward, rubbing my arm and calling, “Sister, what’s wrong? Sister… does it hurt?”

I didn’t answer him. Instead I commanded the vines to bring forth frigid water.

When the ice-cold water poured over me, the searing heat finally ebbed.

“Sis…”

Amid Dominic’s panicked voice, I opened my eyes slowly. “Divine Lord, your eyes are really something.”

I raised my palm; a small blaze leapt up, and the firelight revealed Dominic’s familiar face.

The flame died down. I watched sweat trickle down his brow and asked in a flat voice, “Divine Lord, how do you feel now?”

“…”

He lifted his head slowly and forced a smile. “Sister, will you forgive me?”

I looked at him and smiled, then answered in two words: “No.”

The moment the words fell, power I’d already assimilated gathered in my hand, and in the next instant it shot into Dominic’s chest—

“Ah—”

The world trembled; it was the Divine Lord’s power.

The heart, wrapped in flame, appeared before my eyes.

Above us, his dragon-carriage quivered in rage, thunder rolling, lightning and sparks cutting across the sky.

But I knew they could not enter this place.

This was Ravenmoor Marsh.

Dominic’s face had long since drained of color. He clenched his eyes shut and, voice shaking and in obvious pain, tried to laugh as he asked, “Sis… may I call you Claire… Sister, will you forgive me…?”

He didn’t finish; he spat blood.

Coughing and choking, Dominic heaved.

I watched quietly as that heart beat—so hot and red and yet capable of such things.

I lowered my gaze and deliberately looked away. The heart returned to Dominic’s chest.

“I thought a Divine Lord’s heart might be different.”

After a moment of silence, I looked at Dominic, who was barely holding himself up, and said, “If you were only Dominic, taking your eyes and digging out your heart might have been enough.”

“But you were once Longsheng.”

“So it’s not over yet.”

From the ice pool sprang my sealed true weapon—the thing that had slain countless monsters in the past. It landed lightly in my palm: an unremarkable obsidian long whip.

“Only you know.”

After Adrian rescued me over three hundred years ago, I sealed this weapon beneath the ice pool.

At the time I probably cared about Adrian’s opinion.

So I wore the white robes he favored and sealed away the whip’s killing aura… but Claire was never Hazel.

As if in reply, the dark whip twitched in my hand. I stroked it and whispered an apology.

The true weapon was formed from my lotus pedestal; it resonated with my heart.

It gave off a gentle power and curled close to my palm.

I smiled and looked at Dominic on the ground.

Dominic’s divine power, after being assimilated into my immortal bones, slowly became mine.

I planted my feet, gripped the whip, and said in a measured voice, “Longsheng, take the next three lashes.”

Surprised I called him Longsheng, he fluttered his lashes. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then forced a thin smile. “Sister, you finally call me Longsheng.”

I tightened my grip, then raised my arm and struck him hard with the whip—“Crack—”

The lash wasn’t merely physical.

As my true weapon, empowered by my immortal strength, it didn’t just injure the body; it scourged a person’s soul.

Dominic gritted his teeth and said nothing.

His dragon-carriage thundered above; lightning and the marsh’s power barred it from entry.

When the first lash fell, I shifted my immortal power and said, watching Dominic sweat and tremble, “This first lash punishes you for filial impiety toward Longsheng—”

“I raised Longsheng for over two hundred years. Whether he was demon, monster, immortal, or god, I didn’t care.

When I found you, I only wished for you to grow up healthy and safe.

I never demanded you treat me as a blood sister, but after more than two centuries of care, I thought I’d made no mistakes—only to have you gouge out my heart and tear out my eyes.

I was full of hatred, yet I wondered if you’d merely erred once… I raised you for two hundred years, taught you for two hundred years, but I never taught you to treat the one who raised you like this.”

“For disrespecting your elders when young.”

“This is the first lash—for the sin of filial ungratefulness.”

As each word landed, Dominic trembled more. He kept his eyes closed, silent, blood still bright at the corners of his mouth.

I raised my arm again and brought down the second lash—“Crack—”

He spat another mouthful of blood.

I looked at him coldly, then continued: “This second lash—your punishment for being unjust in your immortality.”

“I don’t know the full history between you and Hazel, but none of that gives you the right to lay hands on me.”

“From what little you’ve let slip, I suspect as Dawn Lord you owe Hazel something. But the wrongs you’ve committed, the consequences you must bear—those are yours alone.

You have no right to treat another life so cheaply, nor to pry into what isn’t yours.

Or do you think because you gave my things to Hazel—raising the sister you loved for over two centuries—she wouldn’t hold you to account?”

I paused and couldn’t help smiling. “Oliver, you’ve followed me for more than two hundred years—do you really not know me?”

“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

I can care for you, I can tend to you, but I will not take on the karma that belongs to you.”

“For a friend, you betrayed your duty.”

“This is the second lash—punishment for Oliver’s unfilial crime.”

I could see the damage these two lashes had already done. The Dawn Lord’s condition was dire; even the dragon chariot above his head seemed to want to plunge into Ravenmoor Marsh to protect its dying master.

I glanced down at the long whip, scanned the area, letting my gaze rest for a moment on that sliver of the human realm, then slowly turned and brought the third lash down hard on the Dawn Lord.
—Smack—

The whip retracted. I bent slightly, though I knew he couldn’t see, and pointed toward the dragon chariot above and the distant human world, speaking softly: “This third lash—punishment for being unfaithful as both Oliver and Dawn Lord.”

“For Hazel’s sake, you became Oliver and abandoned your responsibilities as Dawn Lord.

The Dawn Lord oversees fire and spring… Do you know how many calamities this mortal world suffered over these two hundred years because of that neglect?

If not for your dragon chariot’s diligence, how many more years of suffering would those mortals have to endure?”

“I once said… my Oliver, for all the world’s myriad states, I wished him to cherish them, to regard them with calm.

But while you howl at the heavens over trivial grievances, how many families lose their loved ones to disaster?

How many landscapes and landmarks vanish because of cataclysm?”

“You were born an Aether Lord, enjoying all the privileges of that station.

But you forgot the duties that come with it.

You can desire to be Oliver, but you are also the Dawn Lord.”

“As a god, you were derelict in duty.”

“This is the third lash—punishment for the unfaithfulness of both Oliver and the Dawn Lord.”

I stopped and looked not at him but up toward the sky. Where he couldn’t see, I let a single tear fall.

Perhaps only I would know why.

“Bridge to bridge, road to road—our debts and grievances are settled, Dawn Lord. We need not meet again in this life.”

“Little Lotus. You’re back?”

“Sister, Oliver was wrong—please forgive Oliver…”

“Sister—”

The Dawn Lord behind me cried that title as if his heart were being torn out.

I didn’t look back. I left.

It had been more than three hundred years since I’d been back to Ravenmoor Marsh.

Dark and dangerous, yes—but it was where I had grown up.

Truthfully, the farther past stretches blurred in my memory. As far back as I could remember, I had been in the marsh.

Before my lotus platform had fully formed, I barely kept my human shape and died multiple times at the hands of monsters.

After the platform matured and my power grew, few beasts in Ravenmoor could harm me.

And the great demon from over three centuries ago—powerful, with hints of Aether Lord strength—came to mind. Thinking of that old event made me pause: perhaps that demon’s power was even greater than an Aether Lord’s… Ravenmoor hides many dangers, but those ancient beasts seldom reveal themselves. Though mighty, age drives them to hide away in dark corners to recuperate.

So what could that ancient demon have been?

As I pondered, a hum rose from a nearby pool.

With a thought, the long whip appeared in my hand.

I stood and asked lightly, “Who’s there?”

Water splashed, the ground trembled, and a huge, dark turtle hauled itself from the pool, moving slowly.

I raised an eyebrow and called its name: “Gideon?”

The turtle dragged itself onto the bank, then spoke with an old, hoarse voice: “Little Lotus. You’re back?”

“…Yes.”

Gideon had lived a very long time; he was my friend in the marsh.

Gentle and averse to strife, he’d nonetheless amassed considerable strength across his ages.

When I was forming my lotus platform, it was Gideon who guided me—without him I might not have succeeded.

To me he was mentor and friend; though elder, he was closer than kin.

Gideon had the power to take human form but preferred not to.

Now he lowered his head and seemed to sigh. “I saw what you did.”

He meant my actions toward the Dawn Lord.

“You’ve lost many lotus seeds,” he said slowly. “Looks like you’ve been through a lot.”

I smiled without explanation. “And you—how have you been?”

“Oh, nothing much. I can’t remember how many years have gone by. You just haven’t come to see me in ages.”

“You took that Aether Lord’s eyes just now; your cultivation must be unstable… though your immortal bones are finely honed.”

I sheathed the whip. “Two hundred years’ worth of cultivation—surely I haven’t brought you shame?”

He chuckled softly. “Not in the least.”

I walked the marsh’s edge, looking around as I went. “I used to want to leave this place.”

“It’s dark and dangerous; one misstep and I’d be dead. I always wondered how I could get away.

If I had truly wanted to, I could have walked out. But where in this vast world would I belong?”

I stopped and nearly laughed at myself. “I don’t regret going out with Adrian.

Adrian… Gideon, you know him, right?

Before I left I should’ve said goodbye. He taught me for over three hundred years, then sent people to hunt me, tore out my heart to save a former disciple.”

“Despite how I fell, I don’t regret leaving. At least for those years I was truly happy. Light—having light is a wonderful thing.”

“Little Lotus…” Gideon called.

I looked up and smiled. “He even gave me a name: Claire Bennett—Claire, long lasting; Bennett, envious? It’s a good name, isn’t it?”

Gideon was silent for a beat, then crawled back into the pool. “…Claire Bennett. It is a good name.”

These days, to absorb the Dawn Lord’s divine power, I had been resting beside the pool where Gideon lived.

Life in Ravenmoor Marsh was always quiet. The long-absent sunlight left the place brooding. Sometimes Gideon would lounge on the shore and talk with me, but most often he stayed beneath the water, as he had for centuries.

When I had nearly finished absorbing the power, I wandered to the ice-cold spring to stroll.

The Dawn Lord’s presence was gone—likely returned to Aetheria.

I let my gaze drift across the cliffside.

A small bright light suddenly appeared before me.

It looked like a tiny shard of the human realm dropped into the marsh—brighter than the distant blue mountains. It fluttered lightly and floated to me.

“A little butterfly?”

The white, delicate, snow-like butterfly—if I was not mistaken—was the one I had seen once in Aetheria.

Light, beautiful, gentle.

Seeing it always stirs a hundred similar feelings.

But… I had no heart anymore.

I extended a finger. The butterfly landed on my fingertip, drifting lightly as if a breeze might carry it away.

I frowned. So fragile—how did such a creature find its way to Ravenmoor?

It seemed to sense my thoughts and bobbed up to rest over my head.

Before I could react, a turquoise beam shot through the marsh.

“Gideon—”

The beam vanished—Gideon had left Ravenmoor Marsh.

My face stilled as the light disappeared. A rush of thoughts surged through me.

—Aetheria.

Aetheria was not peaceful. The reason: Adrian Hale’s chief disciple, Marcus Whitaker—the dragon-blooded descendant of the East Sea—had fallen into darkness.

Dressed in white, Marcus stared icily at the man before him; the red rim at his eyes was obvious.

Rubble littered the place—a battle had just taken place between Marcus, now a fallen Aether Lord, and his junior, Evan Carter.

Evan, clearly outmatched, was bloodied and gripped his sword in disbelief. “Marcus! You’re dragon-blooded, Adrian’s top disciple—why would you fall to demonhood?”

Marcus seemed to hear a joke and laughed coldly. “Evan, weren’t you the ones who pushed me?”

“At first I was the one who loved Hazel, who devoted myself to her. And you?”

“Evan, you buzzed around Hazel like a fly, never leaving her alone. The Dawn Lord from centuries ago was the same—only now he’s blind.”

Marcus laughed louder. “An Aether Lord! Lost his eyes? He used his status to press me before, but is his lordship truly secure?”

“As for Adrian—beast-faced in human skin! You think I can’t see?”

Adrian appeared in a rush, standing opposite Marcus.

Adrian’s usually gentle features had gone cold. Divine power swirled around him as he stared at his fallen chief disciple.

“Marcus, you’ve erred so far—why won’t you repent?”

Marcus only smiled. “Master Rowan, what crime have I committed? Did I speak some truth you can’t face?”

He stared fixedly at Adrian, who drifted there in white, and spoke each word slowly, "Adrian Hale, who do you truly love—Hazel Everett, or Claire Bennett?

Can you not see your own heart?

Do you think I didn't notice?

On the day Claire and the East Lord went to the mortal realm, what exactly did you do to Hazel?"

"Hazel, what do you think you are to him?"

Hazel, who had just arrived, stood directly behind Adrian. The memory of that absurd day flashed through her, and hearing those words now drained the refined grace from her face until it went deathly pale.

The other Aether Lords gathered around whispered among themselves.

Hazel's eyes reddened. She looked at her senior—now a fallen soul—and bit her lip, calling out, "Senior… why?

Why would you fall to darkness?"

Why speak like that to Master Rowan?

She glanced up furtively at Master Rowan but saw only his cold, stern face.

The patience and gentleness he'd always shown were gone.

A thought struck him; divine power flared, and in an instant Marcus Whitaker collapsed to the ground.

"Traitor, hold your tongue."

Seeing Marcus like that, Adrian's face hardened and murderous intent flared.

Marcus forced himself up slowly from the floor. He glanced at Hazel, then at Adrian, wiped the blood from his mouth, and his eyes had turned bloodshot.

Seeing Marcus's crimson eyes, Evan Carter—standing nearest—immediately understood what Marcus intended. He turned his head to shout loudly, "Master Rowan, stop—"

Before he could finish, Marcus struck. Though he was only an Aether Lord, far weaker than Adrian, as a descendant of the East Sea Dragon clan he possessed deadly moves of his own.

His true form manifested, dragon blood spilling, and the sharp dragon claws lunged toward Adrian's chest.

At that critical moment, Hazel flew forward and landed between them.

Marcus froze in shock—but the claws were already there, and they sank deep into Hazel's spine.

Divine power scattered in an instant. Hazel, facing away from Marcus, spat blood. She seemed to want to say something to Adrian, but in the next second she collapsed—her immortal bones shattered.

"19. No medicine can heal this."

That day Marcus fled, and Hazel, who had taken the lethal blow meant for Master Rowan, lay unconscious with her immortal bones destroyed.

In the Hall of Tranquil Splendor, many Aether Lords stood in silence, speaking to one another only with glances.

In that hush, Adrian—his face ashen—sat at the edge of the couch. On the couch lay his disciple Hazel, unconscious, her divine power steadily seeping away.

The Aether Lord Qingru, who had been dragged in just before, only cast a casual glance and murmured, "No medicine can heal this," then slipped away while no one was watching.

In Aetheria, Qingru was the finest healer. If Qingru had no remedy, the other Lords of the Medical Hall were helpless.

Even though Adrian was a Divine Lord, he had no solution.

A single idea flickered through his mind, but the thought made his heart ache.

Evan, standing nearby, dared not speak. He watched Adrian's rare, dark expression, then glanced down at Hazel, lying worse than before, and swallowed several thoughts.

Immortal bones are the most crucial emblem for immortals.

Becoming an immortal hinges on developing immortal bones.

Hazel's bones were destroyed; unless they could find another immortal's bones—and those bones needed to be compatible with her—there was no cure. Thinking of that, Evan looked up sharply at Adrian.

Adrian's face was indifferent, his features stripped of warmth. He asked the assembled Aether Lords in a cold voice, "Where is Marcus?"

"Master Rowan, Aether Lord Marcus… escaped."

Upon hearing this, Adrian's fury became nearly uncontrollable; divine power trembled around him. He cast a cold glance at those in the hall and scolded, "He has fallen to darkness—how dare you still call him an Aether Lord!

He's nothing but a demon now, and you couldn't even bring him back. How are any of you fit to be Aether Lords?"

Among the three Divine Lords, the East Lord had been unreliable. Adrian oversaw many affairs and didn't truly know the strengths of the Aether Lords beneath him. The remaining Divine Lord… when a Divine Lord speaks in anger, the Aether Lords tremble.

Evan looked at Hazel's worsening color and ground his teeth, then stepped forward to report, "Master, sister's condition is deteriorating.

Perhaps we should postpone pursuing Marcus—the fallen Aether Lord—for now."

At Evan's words, Adrian turned slightly and indeed saw Hazel's terrible condition. The thought that filled him made his chest ache—Claire… only she—

There was no other choice.

She and Hazel were matched down to the lotus seed and heart; their immortal bones should be compatible.

But the thought made his heart clench; he breathed in deeply and remembered Claire, who had already returned to Ravenmoor Marsh. The scene from not long ago replayed—Claire leaving hand in hand with the East Lord.

Traitor!

A true traitor!

Adrian pressed a hand to his chest, coldly thinking.

If he took Claire's immortal bones for Hazel—no. Claire was also his disciple.

Besides, Claire's eyes and heart had already been given to Hazel; that was improper.

But if not Claire's bones, where could they find any other suitable bones for Hazel?

Could they just let Hazel fall from immortal status?

And besides, didn't Claire recently take the East Lord's eyes?

An Aether Lord's eyes could surely boost Claire's cultivation… "Pfft—"

The assembled Aether Lords looked up as the usually formidable Adrian took several steps back, his face clouded, and suddenly coughed up a mouthful of blood.

"Master—!"

Evan hurried over and steadied the swaying Adrian.

Adrian gasped for breath several times.

At that moment, a figure entered the hall.

Clad in a robe of deep blue-green—lush as leaf but carrying a weathered gravity—an elder stepped in. With each movement, water rippled and divine power flowed.

Adrian's face changed when he saw the figure and he slowly breathed out a name:

"Zhong Jing."

"Greetings, Divine Lord Zhong Jing—"

"20. I knew you far longer than you know me."

When Zhong Jing returned, I had been lazily sitting at the edge of the pool, kicking at the water. The little butterfly was nowhere to be found; I looked for a while, but couldn't find it.

Seeing this blue-robed elder, I stopped and felt surprised. "Zhong Jing? You—"

Zhong Jing rarely took human form.

His face was grave as he came slowly to my side, speaking softly, "Little Lotus, I should have known you for quite some time."

"Yes."

I smiled. "About five hundred years, perhaps."

He turned his head and looked at me. In his weathered, gentle eyes there was a meaning I couldn't read. He lowered his voice: "Little Lotus, perhaps I have known you far longer than you have known me."

I lifted my head a little. "What do you mean?"

Before he finished, a familiar voice cracked like thunder—"Claire! Move—"

At the same time, the blue-robed elder who had treated me like a friend suddenly gathered strength and launched an attack at me.

The sky darkened.

Thanks to that warning, I dodged the thunderous blow.

I leaped on the water and glared coldly at the blue-robed elder on the shore.

He stood there, face heavy, and looked past me.

A figure emerged.

He wore white, fists clenched, his voice trembling with fear and resolve. "Divine Lord Zhong Jing, why attack sister Claire like this!"

It was Evan.

I hadn't expected Evan to come, nor that Zhong Jing would strike me.

Who was Zhong Jing? In all my memories, he had been both teacher and friend.

When I was still fighting in Ravenmoor Marsh, Zhong Jing showed me a unique kindness.

After centuries, Zhong Jing was not kin, but closer than kin to me.

At first I was wary of him, but over hundreds of years he had never harmed me.

I didn't know his past or identity.

I certainly hadn't expected him to be one of the three Divine Lords, and that one of Aetheria's three Divine Lords lived in Ravenmoor Marsh.

These thoughts flashed through my mind, but I had no time for the sentimental history or to process his betrayal.

If Zhong Jing truly wanted to strike me in the Marsh, my chances of survival would be negligible.

Though I possessed the East Lord's divine eye and had absorbed much of its power, and though I kept a few tricks hidden in the Marsh, the worst part was that Zhong Jing knew all of this.

He knew the divine power I was digesting, the freezing waters of Ravenmoor Marsh, the thousand-year vines—he knew everything… he'd been in the Marsh far longer than I had. My chances of defeating him were slim.

Evan's arrival forced me to raise my guard further.

Evan and Marcus had once been true senior brothers to me, but after learning the truth, I had no longer expected that brotherhood.

In an instant I was overwhelmed with exhaustion.

I couldn't help but recall the century of experiences behind me.

It seemed everyone I knew had betrayed me… and Zhong Jing's lethal strike had ignited countless voices in my head, all pointing to "Hazel."

Hazel, Hazel.

Zhong Jing's voice sounded again, full of relentless certainty: "I'm sorry, Little Lotus. I must take your immortal bones."

My nails dug into my palms. Sweat and surging emotion nearly overwhelmed me.

My signature weapon formed at will. I gripped it and managed a faint smile: "My immortal bones? Zhong Jing, why?"

"You don't know," Zhong Jing said softly, his gaze tinged with sorrow.

"For Hazel!"

Evan's voice trembled as he stepped forward, disbelief written across his face as he stared at Zhong Jing. "I don't understand, Divine Lord Zhong Jing. Why do you keep taking things from Claire?

First her heart and eyes, now her immortal bones—what are you trying to do?"

His gaze shifted from Zhong Jing to another place.

Evan looked there and continued, "Master Rowan, can you tell your disciple why this is necessary?"

I followed the sound.

Where there had been no one, a Divine Lord in white appeared, drifting into view.

His hair was like spilled ink, his features gentle—except now, his brows and eyes were sharp with severity.

"The heart and eyes I once had," he said, "I thought might save both of you junior sisters. So why now must even Claire's celestial bone be taken?"

A storm of feelings surged through Evan Carter. Without pausing to think, he blurted, "All this, just for Hazel? It's absurd… Whether it's Claire now, or Dominic, or Master Rowan, even Marcus gone mad—"

"Is becoming an Aether Lord or Divine Lord really like this?"

"No. Absolutely not."

"How dare you—!"

A cold voice from Silencer Blade cut through, and a powerful divine force lashed toward Evan.

Evan called on his immortal power and managed to block the blow, but he couldn't stand against the Divine Lord's strength. He staggered back several steps, blood at the corner of his mouth.

"What I do now is not only for Hazel, but for all the world's living beings."

Silencer Blade swept his sleeve and spoke icily.

His gaze slowly dropped to me. "Little Lotus, I know you wouldn't give up your celestial bone even if I asked for it."

I gripped my long whip tight and smiled. "You've spent nearly five hundred years here in Ravenmoor Marsh, Silencer Blade. You do know me well.

But—"

My smile faded. "My celestial bone can influence all living things in the world?

Well, what an honor."

There was a warmth and charity in his eyes, as always, but his voice carried a deep chill. "Little Lotus, your survival until now is a kindness from Heaven."

I couldn't help laughing. "Silencer, we've known each other for nearly five centuries. We can skip the empty flattery, can't we?"

I paused, glanced at Silencer not far away, then at Adrian Hale standing there, and a trace of mockery colored my words. "Honestly, I'm not even sure what charm I have. A lotus that grew in Ravenmoor Marsh—how could I compare to those immortal lotuses nurtured by a thousand celestial treasures of Aetheria?

What exactly have you all made of my lotus heart and seed?

For the sake of the world's living beings?

I think it's just selfishness, plain and simple."

Adrian, who'd been silent, lifted his head slightly to look at me. "Traitor. Giving your celestial bone to your senior sister—what makes you think the Hall of Spirit lacks heavenly relics?

Why are you still clinging to this madness?

If you cultivate a celestial bone, with your talent it's only a matter of a hundred years.

But do you know? If Hazel loses her celestial bone now, she will return to being a mere lotus!"

His face, his robes—unchanged, the same as three centuries ago.

I watched the Divine Lord I once admired, my eyes cool. "My dear Master, do you remember what you said when you saved me three hundred years ago?"

I mimicked Adrian's tone from memory and let out a light laugh. "From now on, I'll protect you. You won't ever have to be afraid again."

"Adrian," I said, "now that you hear it again, doesn't it sound ridiculous to you too?"

"Claire."

Adrian spat my name coldly.

I ignored him and turned my head. Evan stood there, pale; he looked like he wanted to say something but couldn't.

"Evan Carter, this doesn't concern you. You may go," I told him quietly.

He opened his mouth, face drained of color, and looked at me slowly. "Claire, I'm your senior, after all."

When he saw Claire's eye had been taken, it hadn't struck him deeply—losing a heart didn't kill an Aether Lord. But when he learned her eyes had been removed by Dominic, he felt only a bone-deep chill.

Unlike Marcus, Dominic, or even Hazel, Evan had been an ordinary mortal before ascending. So when he found out Claire would even give up her celestial bone for Hazel… Evan knew he hadn't been the best senior. Still, in the three hundred years they'd shared, he had truly cared for his junior sister "Claire."

I was startled by his words.

Then, at once, an attack surged toward me—so murderous it raised countless demons from Ravenmoor Marsh.

A Divine Lord's power alone was tremendous, and with Adrian here as well, the outcome looked bleak.

I lashed my whip; immortal power flowed through me.

The green that once signified boundless life now robbed every step of breath; it allowed no trace of vitality.

Compared to Adrian and Dominic, Silencer Blade's power was clearly stronger. I resisted, but only for a moment; I bit my lip and sweat poured down.

"Little Lotus, give it up," Silencer's voice said by my ear.

I planted my whip against the divine force and smiled coldly. "Never."

Immortal power and divine power tangled, but Silencer held something back. As if done with arguing, he flicked a finger, sending a strike toward where I stood.

I marshaled my power to defend, when Adrian suddenly moved—at the same moment, Evan's figure appeared in front of me.

I couldn't see his face; he turned his back to me.

His voice wasn't the usual lightness—it was filled with sorrow and resignation. "As a man, I was mediocre and alone; as an immortal, I hesitated and betrayed the bonds of my fellows."

"Little junior sister, for all the past, I'm sorry."

"How many winds and moons have passed."

Before I knew I was supposed to be a 'stand-in,' both Evan and Marcus had been decent seniors to me.

Marcus was brash—maybe because of his East Sea lineage—and acted recklessly. Evan was different. I never fully knew his mortal past, but I knew he had been a mortal before ascending. So when making choices he often listened to Marcus, and in that time Evan's smooth nature had helped shape things.

When I first arrived in Aetheria I remembered Evan looking at me with a rueful smile: "This must be the junior sister? Has Master named you?"

When he learned my name was Claire, his pity deepened: "Claire—may your days be long."

So when Evan vanished before me like this, I hadn't expected it.

I didn't have a chance to call "senior" again before his figure drifted away on the wind.

What he was in life, he had been before death; and after death he could only go to the Yellow Springs and be reborn as a mortal.

He didn't look back. He left only those two words, light as air, still echoing in my ears.

Adrian's face remained expressionless; he drew in his sleeve and attacked Silencer again.

I watched both figures, my heart gone cold. The marsh rose in layers of chill wind; my sleeve moved, my immortal power dispersing.

I had never sought death before.

I had struggled in Ravenmoor for a hundred years. I had forged my celestial bone in sleepless years in Aetheria. Later, even if I lost my lotus heart and seed, I never wanted to die. I never craved the word "death."

I longed for the colors of the mortal world, I longed for the life I once had in Aetheria—all for the sake of living.

Now, I didn't know which way to go.

Above, the sky stayed dim—the sun dulled.

Below, wails spread—the demons rampaged.

I stood between yin and yang, with no place in heaven or earth.

A faint power hinted at my true form—my real body revealed itself: a layered ink lotus.

"Adrian, she's going to self-destruct—"

"Claire—"

Who was calling me?

Silencer couldn't stop Claire's self-detonation.

He stood not far off, face icy. Adrian, suddenly like a madman, charged toward the place where Claire would explode.

"Claire, come back—"

"Adrian!"

Silencer's divine power swept at Adrian. "In the old days when the wastelands were born and realms were bestowed, I foresaw this…" Silencer intoned.

Adrian heard none of it; he only murmured "Claire" over and over. The self-detonation's force had been so great that even a Divine Lord's white robe now hung in tatters, his black hair loose, red braided cords streaming into the depths.

This Divine Lord, once untouched by dust, now looked like a beggar; his voice broke. He flung himself toward those red cords, not knowing if he sought to clutch them or the one who had sent them. "Master, on this descent to the lower realms, I brought this."

A girl, eyes cast down, held out her palm. In her hand lay a red braided cord. As she unfurled her fingers, the white-robed girl lifted her face. Her eyes, usually cold and distant, reflected the image of a white-robed Divine Lord.

She gave a small smile. "Master, if you would accept it."

He took the cord but couldn't meet the eyes that held his image.

How many winds and moons have gone—that was wind and moon both.

When Adrian called "Claire" again, no one raised their head to smile.

He stood in the center, hair unbound, gazing into empty air as dust settled, his expression hollow.

Silencer frowned. "Adrian, you're a Divine Lord—this is no comportment for you!"

Adrian said nothing. He stared at the place Claire had vanished, then laughed suddenly. "Claire, Claire, I know you're not dead, aren't you? Why won't you come out?"

"If she detones herself, she will be gone from the world. Not even the Yellow Springs can find her."

Silencer watched him coldly. "You weren't like this before. What's happened—why do you care so much for this junior disciple?"

At those words, Adrian turned, and a surge of divine power struck Silencer. Silencer shouted and blocked it with a sleeve. "You actually struck at me!"

"I'm a Divine Lord; I oversee Aetheria's matters. How could I be moved? She's merely my disciple."

For a moment he seemed to recover, a faint smile returning.

Then, in the next instant, that smile tore away like a mask, revealing deep agony. "Claire—how could she self-destruct? It's only a celestial bone, only one bone… Two hundred years—no, with heaven's relics, a little over a hundred, and the celestial bone would return, wouldn't it?"

Silencer watched coldly, then something registered. He fixed his gaze on Adrian's frenzied face and said slowly, "Adrian, you have a heart-demon."

It was like a blow—the sound of Adrian's voice vanished in an instant.

"Adrian, you have a heart demon."

Ethan spoke slowly, repeating himself.

His old eyes carried a chill nearly bordering on eerie.

"We are Divine Lords—how could we possibly have heart demons? Adrian—?"

Adrian lifted his head slowly. For a moment his white robes fell into place and he looked every bit the composed Divine Lord, his features soft. "Ethan, you tend your mortal realm and I'll tend mine. The three Divine Lords have always stayed out of each other's affairs."

"Stayed out of each other's affairs?"

Ethan's laugh was scornful. "What about the East Lord who had his eyes taken, what about the East Sea line that fell into madness… now you say 'stay out of it'?"

"A single thought divides god and demon."

He turned and stared where Claire had self-destructed and vanished, as if dredging up memories from ten thousand years ago.

Adrian had no patience to linger. He seized those eight silken threads again and turned to leave.

— In a boundless darkness, as if sinking into a long sleep, a faint voice drifted from nowhere: "When the Wild Era came and Heaven gave the realms, I already had foreknowledge…"

Another voice rose slowly: "Little Lotus, do you wish to fall into demonhood?"

The voice was distant and thin, hard to make out, yet every syllable lodged in my ears—part celestial music, part ghostly hymn.

It warmed the blood and chilled the soul at once.

"Fall into demonhood?"

I seemed to hear my own voice—"What good would demonhood do me?"

The voice at my ear whispered like a secret: "Once you fall, the gods and immortals above and the fiends below who don't bend to your will—you may slay them all."

"Betrayers—slay them. Those who destroy you—slay them."

"Little Lotus, Aetheria cannot hold you, nor can the mortal realm make room for you."

"In this world, immortals are weaker than fiends, gods weaker than demons. Better to cut everything down cleanly."

"Unleash hell across heaven and earth."

"Why not fall—"

"Claire."

The syllable echoed in the dark, threatening to swallow me.

I couldn't open my eyes, but I couldn't help laughing. "Do you really think that if I fall, I'll beat every god and immortal? Is that what being a demon is?"

"…"

The voice seemed taken aback by my answer, fell silent a moment, then resumed more slowly: "Your demonic path was decided the moment you were born into this world."

"When Heaven set the realms in the Wild Era, I already foresaw…"

I couldn't help recalling what Ethan had said.

I didn't know what exactly I was now, but I had used all my celestial power to self-destruct.

Those few lingering words were like drifting smoke, settling into my ears.

I should have dissolved without a trace from this world.

Remembering those words and feeling that voice's lure, I said slowly, "So you think my fall is heaven's decree, inevitable—right?"

I couldn't help laughing. "So from my birth it's been decided I'd fall? Who made that rule? Ethan? You? Or—"

I paused, my tone thick with mockery. "I had my heart ripped out, my eyes gouged, even my divine bones taken—was all that done to arrange my path into demonhood?"

"…Yes."

The voice answered, flat.

I stayed silent for a moment, turning over past events like small, cold tokens, then said lightly, "Fine, I'll become a demon."

Before the voice could reply I taunted, "Is that what you expected me to say?"

"I'm not falling. Why do you assume because you say it I must? Even if you're some lofty Heaven, that doesn't give you the right."

"What I become is my choice. I'll take back my heart and my eyes by my own strength and effort. I don't believe becoming a demon makes you invincible. If that were true, everyone—men, immortals, gods—might as well fall."

I smiled faintly. "You think I don't know what falling means? Once the demon takes hold, the sun is a venomous snake. Your whole life is forced into darkness. I don't want that."

"I love all that is bright—sunlight, life. I can bear the dark, but I crave the light."

"Even after my heart is ripped out and my eyes gouged?"

The voice was neutral, simply asking.

"Where a demon walks, chaos soon follows," I said slowly. "I won't use my suffering to punish those who didn't cause it."

"If I have vengeance to take, I'll take it myself."

The darkness grew heavy again, and for a while silence ruled.

Just as I thought I might sink into forever, the voice returned: "Claire—Adrian named you that. Do you truly like it?"

"…Why wouldn't I?"

I smiled. "The name itself is no crime. It's the people who are wrong. And yes, I have been jealous of many things. Like Hazel."

"Sometimes I have to admit—I envy her. And there are many other beautiful luminous things I long for. See, my desires are large, but I won't hide them. So the name Claire fits; I like it."

"I like it because it matches my heart, not because the namer does."

"…"

"Claire."

The voice said my name softly.

My eyes cracked open. In that dark space, pinpricks of light flared where the lids lifted.

Where the light touched, the darkness receded.

My being began to brighten, slowly spreading like dawn banishing night.

The butterfly came, fluttering.

"Claire."

"I restore you to how you first were."

"Memories from ten thousand years ago as well."

The voice was at once demonic, verdant, divine—melding all things into a merciful, expansive presence: it was "Heaven."

"Your original form."

When Heaven shaped the realms in the Wild Era, the three Divine Lords were born.

Among them, Ethan—the eldest—ruled the vigorous earth; Adrian took charge of Aetheria; the last born, the East Lord, was the most unique, given the duty of cycles—spring, the fire of rebirth.

From Ethan's birth, Heaven's first will had been "the living," and Ethan, as heir to that intent, always placed "the living" above all.

Back then Ethan stood where the Ravenmoor Marsh would later be, at a pool of bitter, freezing water that existed even ten thousand years ago.

One day two lotus buds rose from the ice-cold pool—one white, one black—like yin and yang.

The ivory lotus was older; the ink-dark lotus, younger.

When such spirit beings born of the Wild Era appeared, the three Divine Lords could not help but sense them.

Heaven had already slipped into slumber.

Even then, the eldest—Ethan—felt a pull connected to these two lotuses.

The disasters and the later restoration, ten thousand years forward, were tied to this black-and-white lotus pair.

Which one would mark disaster, which would bring restoration?

Ethan's sensing was strongest. Standing before the ice, he murmured, "The division of yin and yang—just like these lotuses."

The meaning was clear enough.

But none of the three could be absolutely certain, so both lotuses were, in a sense, allowed to live.

Ethan, whose heart was full of "the living," thus set their fates.

A thousand years later, the two lotuses took human shape. The ink-lotus, who awoke second, called the white one "sister"; they were very close.

Later, with Ethan's consent, Adrian chose the white lotus—the sister—whom all three Lords felt carried the duty for the world's peace ten thousand years hence, and named her Hazel.

The younger ink-lotus stayed with Ethan in the pool—supposedly to cultivate, but really under Ethan's watch.

When the war between gods and demons broke out, the East Lord died and his soul was reborn through the Underworld to take that post again. During the East Lord's tribulation, Hazel shielded him from a thunder tribulation and was gravely wounded, her lotus seat damaged.

Ethan and Adrian consulted and decided to use the ink-lotus's seat to heal Hazel.

That battle was devastating. The ink-lotus could not match two Divine Lords and, after losing her millennia-grown lotus seat, reverted to her original form and rested in the ice pool.

Hazel improved thanks to the seat, but a hundred years later, upon learning the truth, she destroyed her own body. The three Lords intervened and barely saved her.

The ink-lotus was sleeping then and couldn't revive Hazel.

Centuries passed. Four hundred years ago, the ink-lotus took human shape again—only to have forgotten her past. Then came the sudden attacks, the descending Divine Lords—a fabricated beginning to a far larger deception.

When I reshaped into human form the second time, erasing past memories, I later reclaimed them as Claire.

At that same moment, the millennia of power that belonged to my spirit-body flowed back into me.

A gentle radiance soothed my soul.

My eyes, my heart, everything returned to their original state.

The eyes that once belonged to the East Lord became part of my power.

Behind me a mysterious, elegant lotus—inky and translucent—slowly bloomed.

In my half-open eyes, a glowing butterfly drifted off into the darkness.

The darkness seemed torn by light, and the world revealed itself again—I knew where I would go.

"Clair—"

In the Jade Hall, a white-robed Divine Lord sat cross-legged on a couch, eyes squeezed shut, pain on his face, sweat tracking down his brow.

No one walked outside; the whole Jade Hall sat within the Lord's barrier.

A shadow appeared at the window.

Draped in black, I stood quietly outside.

I looked at Adrian through the pane—saw him in pain, soaked in sweat.

So he had a heart demon for some time and hadn't told me.

Black mist curled faintly around him. I let out a small, mocking laugh.

One of the most powerful of the three Divine Lords—already harboring a heart demon.

It was almost laughable.

And this particular inner demon had already grown strong enough to disrupt Adrian’s thoughts—to the point that he didn’t even notice I had broken through the warding around the Ling Chapel.

And Adrian was dreaming.

For mortals, dreams are just dreams; they end and you wake up to reality.

But for immortals who don’t need rest, a dream can become the deadliest nightmare.

Die inside a dream and it’s all too easy.

So a Divine Lord as powerful as Adrian rarely let himself fall into sleep.

Yet here he was, sweating as if through a rainstorm, face twisted in pain—and his lips curved into a faint smile that flickered between agony and pleasure.

I reached out, palm steady, and aimed for him.

My power wrapped around him—I stepped into Adrian’s dream.

And it was almost effortless.

“Master!”

Adrian turned his head.

A girl in white walked toward him slowly.

Her hair was as dark as storm clouds; her stare was cool but with a hint of a smile.

Hazel?

Adrian’s chest tightened, but before he could think he’d already called out the girl’s name: “Claire.”

Hearing his voice, the girl’s usually cold face softened into a faint smile.

She walked with her hands clasped behind her back.

She was so close—close enough that if he reached out he could touch her.

But Adrian didn’t reach.

He stood frozen, body rigid, fingers stiff.

Claire—she was dead. He’d watched her die.

Still… “Master, are you all right?”

In a blink she was at his side, tilting her head up; the smile was gone, replaced by genuine concern.

Claire was dead.

Adrian told himself the Claire before him was only a dream.

Yes, this is a dream—he needed to get out.

He forced himself not to look down at her.

But the next second, “Claire—”

She reached out a finger and gently tugged at his sleeve.

Adrian obliged and looked down. He saw eyes that reflected nothing but him.

“I’m fine.”

Some emotion he couldn’t name loosened his tongue.

Claire smiled.

No—Claire had never smiled at Adrian like that before… but his gaze wouldn’t leave her.

He stared, greed plain in his eyes.

A voice in his head kept screaming, This is just a dream—get out—

“This is just a dream—”

Pain flared in his chest again.

Sweat streamed from his temples. Adrian gathered divine strength, ready to withdraw from the dream.

At the same instant, a hand brushed his cheek.

He shuddered—the divine power he was gathering shattered.

That face he could never forget showed nothing but mild worry.

Soft, cherry-colored lips parted to speak a tender, lingering question: “Master, you’re sweating—do you really feel unwell?”

“No escape.”

Beneath the tree, at the edge of cloud and shadow, two white-clad figures met.

The Divine Lord bowed his head; the girl’s fingers hovered on his cheek, their hair tangling together, breath mingling.

Those usually cool eyes were now entirely shrouded in desire.

“Master?”

Her voice was a whisper under the tree.

Adrian stared at her without answering, and lifted his arm slowly.

His fingers paused an inch from the girl’s cheek.

Because Adrian saw that Claire held something in her other hand—a braided red cord.

Noticing his look, Claire lowered her gaze and displayed the braided red cord in her palm.

She spread her fingers, revealing it fully.

Her smile deepened. “Master, I brought this down from the lower realm.”

Familiar words.

Adrian’s fingers froze in midair.

His lashes trembled.

That hand edged ever so slightly toward him. “Master, if you don’t mind, please accept it.”

He stared at the red cord in her palm.

So familiar.

“Master…?”

A voice full of loss, with a hint of wounded grievance—like a beguiling sorcery—wrapped itself around Adrian and wouldn’t let go.

Tightly.

Adrian watched himself reach out slowly and take the braided red cord.

“I like it very much.”

His voice was hoarse; he squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them.

Was this Claire—or a demon?

He had no more escape.

Clutching the red cord, in the next instant he yanked the girl into his arms.

“Claire, Claire, Claire—”

He murmured the name over and over, fingers pressing the girl’s waist. She trembled in his embrace, fragile and completely surrendered to the one holding her—her Master.

For over two centuries… a voice that had trapped him for more than two hundred years screamed in his head: Adrian! Adrian! Do you dare face your own heart? You finally did it!

A mocking laugh tore through him with ruthless sarcasm. Adrian’s lips quivered as he bowed his head and inhaled the girl’s soft black hair.

“Adrian… say it. Say it out loud…”

“Did you touch Hazel?”

“Then who is your heart hiding for?…”

Those endless accusations, coming from nowhere, pounded like a migraine in the Divine Lord’s skull.

He could no longer care.

His hand slid from Claire’s waist and crept up toward her face—toward that cold face that now blushed with shyness, those distant eyes now full of affection.

Adrian lowered his head. His lashes fluttered, aching to fall on the girl he couldn’t stop thinking about.

And then—something pierced straight through his chest.

The longing in his eyes shattered like frozen water.

“Pft—”

“Too filthy.”

Divine blood sprayed from the white-clad Lord’s chest.

The gentle, handsome face that had been lost in feeling widened into stunned disbelief.

The Divine Lord gaped at the girl he’d just held—so much disbelief in his eyes. “Clai—”

A hand, stained with divine blood, kept pushing deeper into his chest.

The smile had vanished from the girl’s face; now she was indifferent.

In the eyes that had haunted Adrian for centuries there was disgust—and a cold, alien detachment.

“Divine Lord Adrian.”

I said his name without inflection.

Adrian, trapped in the nightmare and already weakened—his divine power retreating step by step—was no match for me.

At my voice his lashes fluttered; his words came out in fragments: “Claire…is it really—you?”

I stared at him and slowly took hold of his heart.

“Cough—”

At my move he coughed up a mouthful of blood.

Unlike Dominic’s force, Adrian’s divine power was gentle, like a trickling stream.

But against an intruder like me, Adrian’s power turned vicious. Even reduced, it sliced like a blade—fast and precise—cutting at my flesh and my hand.

My face remained calm. Millennia of power flowed through my palm. Then I seized the Divine Lord’s heart and ripped it out without mercy.

“Claire—I am your Master—!”

Adrian, finally bereft of strength, collapsed to his knees. He tried to rise and look at the heart in my hand.

“Claire, how could you…?”

“You didn’t expect that, did you, Divine Lord?”

I looked at the heart in my palm; the Divine Lord’s power surged and swelled in me. “I didn’t die.”

Adrian clutched his chest; his incredible regenerative power began to knit the wound closed. He blinked slowly, looking stunned. “You—your memories…?”

I didn’t meet his eyes. My voice was flat. “Yes. My memory returned.”

“That’s… thanks to the two Aether Lords.”

I paused, then turned to Adrian with a faint, cutting smile. “Not only did my memory return, so did my cultivation.”

Adrian groaned painfully, saying my name: “Claire!”

“So, we should thank those two Divine Lords. Since Adrian once was my Master and I have no gifts to give, I’ll take this heart that’s useless to a Divine Lord.”

“After all, a Divine Lord was a heartless man to begin with.”

I laughed and tightened my grip. My divine power flowed through me and I absorbed the heart completely.

“Ugh—”

Adrian bit back the pain of his divine power spilling away. That pain made the dreamworld centered on him tremble.

Divine Lords aren’t Aether Lords; even when you take their heart you can at most take half their power. But their feelings—those can disappear all the same.

I looked at my palm, stained and ragged from where Adrian’s power had sliced me, and said softly, “But the emotions in this heart…I don’t want them. They’re filthy. I’ll leave them to you.”

That heart would never ache again.

Adrian’s fingers tightened on his chest. He watched me, forcing the chaotic power inside him to stay caged. Centuries of suppressed feeling threatened to consume him whole.

He had no heart now, and yet it hurt so much. Adrian shut his eyes, unable to look at me.

No more voices spoke.

Then he thought of Zhongjing’s words: “Divine Lord Adrian, you have a heart demon.”

“Actually, it’s just a drop in the ocean.”

Heart demon?

Heart demon…

Yes—Adrian, one of the three Divine Lords who rule Aetheria, had a heart demon.

And it had been there for nearly three hundred years.

Adrian couldn’t help but laugh bitterly.

When had it started?

Maybe on the day he found Claire at Ravenmoor Marsh, when she looked at him as if her eyes held the most brilliant light.

Or maybe it was during days upon days of training—Claire getting hurt again and again, each time gritting her teeth and trying again.

It was the arrival of Dominic two hundred years ago that marked the beginning of the torment—what twisted him into a heart demon.
—He was clearly Master Rowan to Claire.

A teacher for a day, a father for life.

How could a master fall for his disciple?

Besides, Adrian had hurt that disciple once.

And Hazel… he would rather that the one he loved be Hazel.

The prophecy Jiñ once felt ten thousand years ago seemed, after ten thousand years, to be coming true.

Back then there were two lotuses—one black, one white—and three Divine Lords guarding the possibility that years from now one might become a "savior"—Hazel—
and the other, Claire, might become a "bringer of chaos." A millennium passes in a blink, and the two sisters who grew up bound together had become enemies.

Aetheria in unrest, demons running amok in the mortal realm… could Claire really be the root of all this calamity?

No. It couldn't be.

Every time Adrian let that thought in, he was racked with agony.

The heart he had lost once asked him, "Adrian, have you really looked at your own heart?"

Now he had looked.

But that heart might never return.

Adrian finally woke to the truth.

The moment he opened his eyes, the Divine Lord in white—whose hair had once been a waterfall of ink—suddenly turned snow-white in an instant—an instant of white hair.

Adrian rose slowly. His voice, usually smooth as jade, was hoarse and broken: "Claire."

I watched his hair—so white now—and felt nothing: "Master Rowan, I loved you for more than three hundred years."

At those words, Adrian trembled violently.

He looked up in disbelief and took a step toward me, but no more.

He kept muttering, "How could it be, how could it be…"

I glanced at the nightmare sky—black clouds thick and heavy, as if the heavens might collapse at any moment.

"This is the last time I call you that."

"For the three hundred years of guidance you've given me, I don't want to kill you—and I'm too lazy to kill you.

And please, Divine Lord Adrian, don't have this dream again."

"I no longer love you, and your doing this only makes me sick."

When I said "this dream," I knew Adrian understood. His face grew paler, his body trembling.

"No, Claire, I—"

He finally stepped closer.

Before he finished, my long whip lashed down and struck him hard.

He stood there and took the blow straight on, blood spilling from his mouth, unable to speak.

I looked at him and turned my face away with disgust: "Hazel and I are not playthings for the three Divine Lords.

Adrian's affection is tasteless and cheap!"

"And as for that supposed heavenly resonance—are you three Divine Lords really so incapable of seeing through it?"

"Cause and effect: there is effect only because there was a cause. Yet the 'cause' was planted right on the three of you."

For the ten thousand years before I lost my memories and the hundred years after, I had always been without shame.

After I shattered my true body and faced 'Heaven,' I saw through this so-called 'karma.'

Jiñ, loftier than all, always thought solely of the world's creatures. Because of one slender 'effect' born from a dark thread of future possibility, he had set about erasing every 'cause' that threatened it.

He thought he had seen everything.

But what he saw was just a drop in the ocean.

30. "But there is no 'if.'"

At that moment, I did not even realize that my thoughts had already stepped beyond cause and effect, crossing yin and yang, and had vaguely touched Heaven's will.

The white-haired Divine Lord stared at me, his handsome face breaking into something like a manic smile.

Above him, the storm-swathed sky finally began to collapse.

Clouds scattered, trees toppled—the celestial realm in that nightmare fell into ruin.

The nightmare was ending.

I retracted my whip and turned to leave.

But Adrian called after me in a voice gentle as when we first met: "Claire, I love you."

It was the same voice but no longer the same man.

I gave no answer and walked out of that absurd dream.

In the ruins, only the white-haired Divine Lord stood silently by a fallen tree.

He stood motionless, divine power leaking from him, white hair and robes stained no longer visible with blood, and the figure who had stood before him—gone.

If only he'd realized sooner. If only he'd said it then… but there are no 'ifs.'

The three-hundred-year bond between Adrian and Claire was severed cleanly.

But the centuries of wild, frantic love Adrian had carried on still clung to him.

—In truth, after I reclaimed my memories and power, I seemed to care about very little.

Avenging the master who once plotted to take my heart should have been thrilling, but it felt dull.

Old hatred, when the wind blows it off my heart, blows away easily.

Once all that hatred is gone, nothing remains but emptiness.

I had clarity about some things—and because of that clarity, nothing moved me.

These turmoils could not bind me.

So when I noticed two familiar figures by the pond, I only paused slightly.

One in teal. One in white.

The teal-robed figure was Jiñ; the white-robed one was my sister—my sister whose immortal bones had been destroyed—the one who had used my heart, my eyes, even my former lotus platform.

My gaze fell lightly on Jiñ in teal.

He looked more haggard and aged than before. When he saw Hazel at his side, I understood what had happened—Jiñ had transferred nearly half of his cultivation into the sister who had lost her immortal bones, paying the corresponding price.

No wonder.

I couldn't help a bitter little laugh.

See? There is a way to mend immortal bones, isn't there?

Jiñ.

Before I lost memory and after, he had been a kind, benevolent elder to me.

Among the three Divine Lords, Jiñ was the strongest and the one most concerned with all living things.

To Jiñ, he would always guard the entire realm. So anything that might—however slightly—threaten that balance, Jiñ would eradicate without hesitation.

Better to wrongly slay three thousand than to spare one.

Jiñ had no demons of the heart; but from another perspective, from birth he was a composite of heart demons.

On him, mercy and ruthlessness were not opposites.

Everything Jiñ did aimed at absolute balance of the world.

Perhaps it was Jiñ’s extreme thinking that led Heaven, after creating him, to then create Adrian and Dominic—hoping the three Divine Lords would balance each other.

But perhaps even Heaven did not foresee the outcome.

After all, Heaven had slept for far too long.

In ten thousand years, seas change and mountains shift in a blink—let alone fickle spirits.

And I—perhaps I had become that tiny body of threat Jiñ feared, blown up into something enormous in his mind.

But by what right?

I looked at the teal silhouette coolly.

His divine power was halved, while I was more than full, even inheriting parts of two Divine Lords' powers—Jiñ was no match.

31. "A thread of life."

My killing intent flared.

He seemed to sense something amiss and turned his head almost immediately.

But it was too late—no hesitation.

My long whip snapped against his divine bones.

In that instant, Jiñ's true form revealed itself to my eyes—the ancient, green-tinged turtle that had endured ten thousand years, utterly unprepared for this fate.

Jiñ stared at me in shock, divine power not even formed.

He managed only to force out one word: "You…"

"Bang—"

With a thunderous sound, the faint turtle shell before me exploded.

At the same time, Jiñ's humanoid shell split apart.

That lash had not only struck his divine bones; I had brought killing intent and used a killing technique.

Jiñ perhaps never imagined he would die—especially this way.

Dead by the hand of the Claire he thought had vanished forever.

He didn't even have time to react. The "you" he spoke was the last sound he ever made.

One of the three Divine Lords, Jiñ—who had lived ten thousand years and stood first among them—was dead.

But then, a small turtle fell in the thunder, barely breathing.

A thread of life.

"Dào fifty, Heaven's lineage forty-nine, man escapes the one."

I watched the tiny turtle on the ground, and with a sweep of my sleeve, it vanished from sight.

Hazel, who had watched all of this, finally snapped out of shock. She looked up toward the thunderous sky—that was the omen of a Divine Lord's death.

"You—you can't—"

She stared at me, disbelief and hurt in her eyes.

"You actually killed Jiñ Divine Lord—you—"

"…Divine Lords can die, can't they?"

My gaze floated down onto Hazel. "If he can die, why shouldn't he?"

The sister who had accompanied me for centuries carried my power in her veins.

In this world, no power can merge completely—even sisters born of the same womb.

So within her flowed mixed forces, chaotic as a string that's near snapping.

To some, Hazel's existence might have seemed the "thread of life" to save the world.

I knew I shouldn't blame her.

A thousand years ago—no, ten thousand—she had truly loved me, her 'sister,' with all her heart. Even after she pledged herself to Adrian and became Hazel, she still came back to Ravenmoor Marsh to see me.

But Jiñ’s ridiculous sensing ruined everything; there was no turning back.

Four hundred years ago the 'sister' harmed the 'sister' and destroyed her lotus platform; four centuries later she was reborn because of Claire—Hazel—yet whether sister or sister, Hazel or Claire, both had become playthings of the gods.

And now I stood before Hazel—the lotus platform inside her, my eyes she used, and my heart beating in her chest—all calling to me.

Hazel looked at me, trembling lips: "How could you!"

It was Divine Lord Grayson who saved her life.

And the person standing before her calling himself "Claire" had mercilessly—cold-bloodedly—killed him.

Grayson was one of the three Divine Lords!

Hazel's hands brimmed with Aether power, and her gaze locked onto Claire.

Strangely, Claire didn't strike back. He only looked at her with a complicated expression.

"That strange feeling again."

The same strange familiarity and closeness Hazel had thought she could ignore the first time she met Claire welled up inside her now.

Hazel clutched her chest without thinking. She ground her teeth and lifted her chin. "I never knew you could be so vicious! Divine Lord Grayson had no quarrel with you—why did you attack him?"

"Everything feels déjà vu."

No sooner had Hazel spoken than Claire let out an almost bitter smile. He simply watched her, and the sorrow in his eyes made Hazel's heart lurch; she could barely breathe.

After a long moment he spoke, voice flat as if the words meant nothing: "Vicious? No quarrel?"

"I don't believe in fate," he continued. "But sometimes… sometimes you can't help thinking that maybe fate is just the sum of choices. And some choices aren't in your hands, nor mine."

Hazel circulated her Aether, unmoving, eyes fixed on Claire.

In the hush, Claire's voice came again—soft, intimate. "Sister, don't you think so?"

The moment those words left his mouth, a surge of Adrian's power gathered again in my palm.

Hazel, stunned rigid by my words, seemed to wake all at once. "You mean to—"

But she never finished. In the next instant, I released that power into the center of Hazel's forehead—

"Ah!"

The energy didn't injure her. Instead, it flowed through her, using my previous lotus seeds as conduits to help Hazel recall the past.

Lotus platform, lotus core, lotus seeds, and Adrian's divine power spun like an array inside her. The heavens trembled—that was the fall of a Divine Lord.

I stood at the poolside, motionless; lightning flickered above but never struck me. Even if it had, I wouldn't have been afraid.

I watched Hazel wrapped at the center of that power, my expression tangled.

Hazel's face turned from flushed to ashen; sweat poured from her. Those long-buried memories rose to the surface with the force of the energy.

"Sister Hazel! Sister Hazel!"

"Hazel, how are you?"

"Junior sister—"

She snapped her eyes open.

"Hazel, you're finally awake. How do you feel?"

A figure appeared before her—Marcus Whitaker!

But wasn't Marcus already corrupted by darkness? How dare he return to Aetheria?

Hazel, though angered that Marcus had fallen and would harm Master Rowan, still had that bond of senior and junior. She grabbed Marcus' arm, panic in her voice. "Senior—how are you back? Run—"

But her body didn't obey. A weak voice came instead: "Senior brother, second brother, Dominic? And—Master Rowan?"

At the last name her voice threaded with a faint joy, then confusion: "Huh? My lotus platform was… didn't it—? Why am I—"

Marcus hurriedly cut her off. "It's fine. Thanks to Master Rowan and Divine Lord Grayson."

"I see."

Hazel didn't think further. A gentle smile touched her lips.

This conversation—why did it feel so familiar? It seemed like it had happened a century ago… yet the words weren't exactly the same. Hazel felt an intense bewilderment. "What is going on? How can something that's already happened be happening again?"

Back then, she had shielded Dominic from disaster and fallen into unconsciousness when her lotus platform was destroyed… They said Grayson and Master Rowan saved her.

Right—Divine Lord Grayson had surely been wounded by Claire and then fallen!

How could he be here now… And she remembered the power Claire had released. But now?

As Hazel thought, the body's gaze swung to the white-robed Divine Lord standing nearby. She hurriedly asked, "Master Rowan, during the time I was unconscious, did my—my sister—come by? She must be worried about me."

"Sorry…"

Sister?!

Hazel thought of Claire's "sister" before he released his power, of Claire's face—the resemblance to her own features. Her mind convulsed.

No… how could it be? Sister, sister… As Hazel froze, the white-robed Divine Lord replied calmly, "Don't worry. She's been training under Grayson."

Training under Divine Lord Grayson?

Who? Who was this sister?

Before Hazel could puzzle it out, the image of that sister rose in her mind—ten thousand years ago, two lotuses, one black and one white, nestled together, breathing in spirit energy.

As that image surfaced, Hazel's head split with pain.

"Ah—"

When she opened her eyes, everything had changed. She felt Aether rising and life blazing through her again. Familiar figures clustered around Hazel.

"Hazel, don't be foolish!"

"Yeah, junior sister! It's done; why keep going—"

"Hazel!"

The sternest voice was Master Rowan's from nearby. He frowned coldly. "We and Divine Lord Grayson went to great trouble to bring you back. Is this how you repay us?"

What are they saying? Hazel watched them, bewildered. Bring me back? This scene felt new, yet oddly familiar.

She wanted to ask, but the body began to break down and cry out: "Great trouble? Is your 'great trouble' what you call hurting my sister?"

Tears flowed uncontrolled down Hazel's face. "How could you do this? How dare you deceive me—how could you trade my sister's lotus platform to save me?"

Her voice faltered; she wept and murmured, "No wonder she never came all this time… how hurt she must have been…"

Lotus platform? Had she once lost her lotus platform?

Aether gathered, and Hazel felt the world spin.

Through the cries, Hazel watched herself destroy her true body… and in that instant, all the memories returned—ten thousand years of them.

They included who she was, and who Claire was. As the memories flooded back, the scene around Hazel shifted, and when she opened her eyes again she was back where she knew, facing the one whose spirit was linked with hers.

She was Claire—the sister who had accompanied her since birth.

Hazel's face was wet with tears. The flood of recollection left her staring, stunned, at the sister she hadn't seen for a hundred years.

Not just the lotus platform from four hundred years ago—she could feel the present eyes, the present heart.

When I saw that familiar gaze, I knew the sister from ten thousand years ago had returned.

Before I could react, she stumbled forward and hugged me tight. Her voice choked against my ear: "Little sister… it's me, I'm so sorry…"

"Sorry…"

"If I could do it all over…"

I moved my lips and whispered two small words: "Sister."

Hazel tightened her hold on my hand. Tears fell onto my neck.

"I'm sorry, sister…"

Her voice was soft.

Just as I was about to answer, Hazel—still clinging to me—suddenly shoved me away.

Something was wrong.

I looked up.

Hazel hovered in front of me, tears in her eyes. Three glowing orbs drifted slowly from her body.

In an instant I understood what those orbs were.

"No, sister—"

Hazel looked at me gently. Her voice trembled: "If we could do it again…"

At once the three glowing orbs fused into my body. As I whipped my long whip to stop her, a self-destructive force exploded outward, pushing me far away.

"No—"

"If we could do it again…"

I couldn't stop her.

She—my sister I had known for ten thousand years and had been separated from for a century—ended her life with a self-destruction.

It happened so fast. I hadn't had a chance to say one full sentence to her, to tell her, "Sister, none of this is your fault."

The thunder in the heavens ceased, and white motes drifted down, gently landing on me—on my hands, on my whip.

It felt like Hazel replying to me with tenderness.

But in truth she left nothing behind—only those luminous orbs.

Even soft as they were, she left me without looking back.

My sister had always been gentle.

But she had also always been resolute.

Before I became "Hazel," she would always stand in front of me and protect me, no matter the danger.

"Little bloom, sister will protect you. Don't be afraid."

Ten thousand years ago, the sister in memory would gently take my hand and smile.

"Why didn't I become human sooner? Then I could be your elder sister."

I pouted with a sigh. "Sister, stop treating me like a child."

"In my heart you'll always be a child." She tapped my forehead, then, with a hint of wistfulness, said, "But the other day Grayson told me I should go to Aetheria and study under Divine Lord Adrian."

"Sister—you want to go?"

I frowned slightly.

She gently used her finger to smooth the deep furrow between my brows and smiled, “I really don’t want to leave our little Hazel, but your sister wants to grow stronger so she can protect you better!”

I returned her smile with a quiet one of my own. “If you want to go, then go. I’ll always support you.”

Always.

But neither the sister I once knew nor the me back then ever imagined that those words were the beginning of a lie—the beginning of a tragedy.

And ten thousand years later, unable to bear hurting her sister any longer, unable to continue carrying the name Hazel Everett—my sister detonated herself right in front of me.

Had she already lost all courage?

I never blamed her.

The tears I’d not shed for so long now threatened to drown me.

A wind stirred. The white halo that had always surrounded me drifted away with that gust, light as feathers.

The sister who swore ten thousand years ago she would forever stay by my side and protect me—left.

In this world, I lost my only blood relative.

35. “Marcus Whitaker, you don’t deserve it.”

Where Hazel had vanished, something slowly fell from the sky.

I sent a thought and retrieved it—an iridescent scale, dazzlingly bright.

A dragon scale.

The moment I saw it, an image flashed through my mind.

Marcus Whitaker.

If Grayson was the mastermind behind what happened to me, then the others were his accomplices.

And the one who fueled the whole thing—pushed it forward—was Marcus.

I’d known Marcus’s extremity from the start.

His extremity was different from Dominic Reed’s.

Marcus truly loved Hazel, and his possessiveness was suffocating. When I’d stood in as Hazel’s replacement, he’d treated me as if I were Hazel—demanding the same devotion—while never once feeling any fondness for me.

If something was useless, he discarded it.

He hated me.

In another way, though, he was like Dominic—Marcus could focus all of himself on loving Hazel.

But he had no right to use hurting me as proof of that “love.”

Besides, his kind of love wounded Hazel deeply.

I held the dragon scale in my palm, tears still at my lashes, but my expression had gone cold.

I clenched my fingers. The brilliant scale—perhaps a heart-guarding scale—flashed white and crumbled in my hand.

At that moment, an attack struck from behind.

Cultivated force flared at my back, and with a thunderous noise I turned—and found a figure standing between me and the blow.

White hair, white robes, handsome as carved jade.

I looked at him without warmth.

He slowly turned. His face was pale, blood leaking at the corner of his mouth, but he forced a smile. “Claire Bennett… are you all right?”

“Step aside.”

My voice was flat.

My gaze slid past Adrian Hale to the figure behind him—Marcus.

Marcus had fallen into corruption and was nothing like he had been.

His eyes were enraged and bloodshot; a cruel smile twisted his lips. “Claire Bennett, you’re still alive.”

“Claire…”

Adrian’s face creased with worry as he turned.

“Step aside.”

I didn’t spare him a look. The single command left my mouth like ice.

Adrian’s expression fell. He opened his mouth, as if to say something, but closed it and stepped back.

At the sight of Adrian’s retreat, the unhinged Marcus laughed out loud. “Adrian, this is your day!”

He laughed and then leveled a cold gaze at me. “It’s you—”

“Claire Bennett, which Aether Lord did you kill?”

I met him calmly. “I didn’t just kill one. I took an Aether Lord’s eyes and another’s heart.”

I paused. My voice softened into a steady, quiet certainty. “Now it’s your turn.”

Marcus didn’t move.

He elongated his tone into a taunting laugh. “Claire, my precious junior—where is my Hazel? Where did you hide her?”

I watched him. “She’s dead.”

“…”

His smile didn’t falter. “I said—where is my Hazel? Where did you hide her?”

“She’s dead.”

The three words hit Marcus like a catalyst. He surged forward, power roaring around him; behind him, a dragon’s true form shimmered into being.

I didn’t budge.

I stood where I was and spoke plainly. “She wasn’t yours to begin with.”

“Marcus Whitaker, you don’t deserve it.”

“Shut up!”

Marcus screamed at me, frantic. The hostile energy slammed into my space.

I raised my palm.

A lotus throne began to rise, the white pedestal blooming with both the strength I’d had ten thousand years before and the cultivation I’d gained in the last century.

The collision of those two potent powers made the air itself tremble.

Boom—

36. “Everything in this world leaves traces.”

My skirt whipped in the wind. Opposite me, Marcus spat blood, eyes full of murderous hatred. “This can’t be—are you saying…”

The lotus spun, its petals shimmering like ink in water.

“You should be younger than me, Marcus,” I said flatly. “A few thousand years isn’t exactly wise enough to lecture me, is it?”

A suppression from the far wilds exploded outward. Marcus, already teetering, collapsed utterly. He tried to push himself up. “You—you remembered the past? How is that possible?”

“If you remember, how could you hurt Hazel?”

He roared at me. I answered with a gust-blade of wind that slapped him back down.

“I never hurt my sister,” I said, each word deliberate. “You did.”

Marcus glared with a murderous intensity like it could shred me. He spat, voice low: “It’s all your fault! Why do you keep living? My Hazel was supposed to be unique—your existence ruined that! Keep whatever parts of you were useful for her, but why can’t you just die cleanly?”

His cold gaze slithered over me like a serpent. A cruel smile curled his lips.

His words did not enrage me. If anything, I felt more calm than I had before.

I watched the torrent of his dissipating energy and said lightly, “You plan to detonate yourself?”

He stiffened.

“You think blowing up will hurt me?” I scoffed. “Besides, would I let you die so easily?”

Marcus lifted his head at my words.

In that instant, the lotus throne I’d raised shot forward toward him.

“Claire, what are you—”

Marcus cried out in horror, but before he could finish, the lotus imprisoned him in a flash of light.

The throne rose, then shrank, falling back into my palm.

It trembled, as if something inside still strained, but it stilled.

Who can resist absolute power?

The past and present—Adrian, Grayson, Marcus, and the me who had been manipulated—they were a loop.

Everything in the world left traces.

I looked at the lotus for a breath, then tucked it away.

For Marcus and Grayson, their ends were chosen.

Perhaps in some ways I’d become as ruthless as they once were.

I smiled at the thought and gave no denial.

As I turned to leave, Adrian—who had stood silent the whole time—spoke, voice small. “Claire—”

I tilted my head slightly.

A servile smile edged his pale face. “You’ll come back, won’t you?”

I was silent for a moment, then answered slowly. “Adrian Hale, you make me feel sick.”

I said it and walked away, leaving Aetheria without hesitation.

The white-haired Aether Lord stood frozen, staring after me until I vanished.

In the depths of Ravenmoor Marsh, where bitter cold met searing flame, two springs flowed side by side—one, the Yellow Spring that separated yin and yang; the other, the purest Aetherial spring.

I stood between those waters. With a flicker of light in my palm, Grayson—who’d been reduced to a turtle—appeared in my hand.

He was no longer an Aether Lord, but by a thread of life there remained some protective power in his shell.

Grayson had always cherished living beings—perhaps that was the last scrap of his protection.

But compassion for the world did not excuse what he’d done. I could not forgive him.

37. “The road of reincarnation.”

For me, and for Hazel.

I would never forgive him.

I eyed the struggling turtle and hurled it into the searing flame.

The little shell was swallowed by fire.

Maybe that thread of protection would keep him alive. Maybe it wouldn’t.

I let a smile touch my lips and glanced away.

Then, in my palm, the lotus appeared again, and above it a figure surfaced—Marcus, wild-eyed, crimson killing intent blazing.

“Marcus, this Aetherial spring is pure. You should cherish it and return to the path of the Aether.”

My tone was calm, an almost amiable smile on my face.

For a fallen Marcus, what could torture him more than being drenched in heavenly power?

With a thought, I released him from the lotus. He fell uncontrolled into the pristine spring.

“No—!”

Marcus’s scream echoed through Ravenmoor. He strove to rise, but at that moment thousands of lotus petals became the world’s toughest chains, wrenching him back into the white water.

His anguished howl rang out across the land.

“Claire Bennett, you vicious—”

"Kill me, kill me—"

In that sacred spring, there wasn't just pure, holy water; there were carnivorous spirit-creatures too.

Those fish—maybe they craved this fresh… monster flesh.

I smiled and pulled my gaze back.

Right then, a pale white glow drifted into view, floating toward me.

I knew what it was—"Hea—"

The light coalesced in an instant into a shimmering butterfly, fluttering delicately before my eyes.

At the same time, a gentle voice sounded in my mind: "Claire, don't you think you're being too hard?"

There was no accusation or hurt in "Hea—"'s voice, only confusion and curiosity.

I watched the butterfly land on the tip of my nose and couldn't help smiling. I answered the voice.

"I always remain true to myself. I don't descend into darkness and I don't kill because I can't—I simply don't want to.

I've always been ruthless when I need to be.

I never liked the name Claire at first, but the more I thought about it, the more it fit. In my past I did envy—to have a past, and to want a future—those things don't conflict."

"Hea—can you understand?"

The soft white butterfly only fluttered its fragile wings once, then settled back into my hair.

After a long moment, that forgiving, gentle voice spoke again.

"I understand."

"Claire."

The warm tone breathed my name like the most dangerous and most sacred of whispers.

My smile was small and easy; even I didn't realize how relaxed I felt in Hea—'s presence.

Then a familiar voice pulled me back—"Sister."

I looked instinctively toward where the voice came from.

It was the Yellow Spring.

By the spring stood a figure as familiar as my own shadow.

"Sister."

He said my name again softly.

Tears slid slowly from the hollow black of his eyes. The once-fiery young Divine Lord now looked barely alive.

It was Dominic.

"Sister, in this hundred years, I haven't been a good brother to you, nor a good Divine Lord," he said with a wan smile. "If the Dominic of the past could see, he'd be—if there are spirits under the spring—he'd be disappointed."

Dominic looked slowly toward the Yellow Spring beside him.

My lips moved but no words came.

"If there's a next life for Dominic, he'll do better than me," he murmured.

"Sister, I really want to see you one more time."

On that tear-streaked handsome face, his lips trembled.

"Dominic."

I finally spoke.

At my voice, he broke into a brilliant smile.

By the Yellow Spring, the young Divine Lord in red stood quietly, and above him the dragon carriage wailed in sorrow.

"Sister, next life, I want to be Oliver."

He let that last sentence fall like a feather.

Then, amid my vision and the dragon carriage's mournful cries, this Dominic of the present threw himself decisively into the endless flow of the Yellow Spring.

Thunder shook the air; the dragon carriage cried—thus one of the three Divine Lords, Dominic, once more walked the path of reincarnation.

38. "After that…"

The world settled again.

Both the mortal realm and Aetheria eased back into their rhythms.

When I saw Dominic again, it was decades later.

A small, short child who wore a face so familiar asked me softly, "High Deity, have we met before?"

I bent slightly and ruffled his hair, smiling. "Look, the dragon carriage has come for you. Go, bring the sun to the world."

He turned and indeed saw a figure.

The man that the dragon carriage had become waved at him, then bowed to me. "High Deity."

"Go."

"High Deity, Dominic will complete his task well!"

The little boy smiled, then darted toward that figure. "Dragon carriage, let's go!"

Behind the cloud veil, the proud sun rose slowly.

I stood alone on the cloudbank, watching the rising sun in silence.

As the sunlight washed over everything, a white butterfly landed softly on my shoulder.

Hea—'s voice was as gentle as ever: "Claire, do not worry that no one loves you. This is heaven's favor—granting you eternal power: at a thought, mountains and seas; granting you age like antiquity, blessings and long life."

From then on, Claire walked beside Hea—through countless millennia.

A few closing ramblings: this is the end of the story. Around the twists of cause and effect, in the end no one truly wins.

Grayson, who regained his true form, is of unknown fate. Adrian, who lost his heart, continued on for thousands upon thousands of years. The reincarnated Dominic was no longer the same Dominic.

Claire, who lost her sister, at least still had Hea—by her side.

Thank you to the readers who accompanied me through this story, and thank you to myself for not giving up—it's finished ^ ^.

I hope everyone who reads this can believe in themselves. Whatever path you walk, recognizing yourself and staying true is what matters most.

There may be extras later—Senior Brother Two's side story, Hazel's side story, Claire and Hea—'s extras…in short, please continue to follow me ^ ^

– Feel free to bookmark my next story, super sweet but not cloying—What if, at the dentist, you flirt and realize the dentist is your ex?: What's a novel that makes you chuckle with auntie energy?

And another completed work, "Moonset in My Arms": Looking for a stoic, aloof hero toppled by the heroine's seduction? – Zhihu

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The next scene of I Was the White Lotus Stand-In begins with: I went on slowly, "I don’t know who you are, but hearing your voice makes me a bit sick. Politeness would demand I ask your name, but I’d rather not soil my ears with it — so I… Continue with the remaining 1184 story sections.

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