Bing Xin watched the foolish monk head inside the room of pure darkness. He couldn’t see a thing yet he still wandered inside. Ah, but that wasn’t the blindness she warned him against. Darkness alone wasn’t enough to warrant such worry. The old bird’s influence was much more wicked than that.

  “What was it again?” She pondered before she reached the thought she remembered the old bird’s words.

  "Time is a cruel illusion, blinding us to our decay or growth until the mirror of the past forces us to see what we've become. To see the present is to be blind to the passage of time; only in looking back do we uncover what it has stolen or bestowed. But to see the future is to blind oneself to the present, trading certainty for the shadows of what may never come."

  Bing Xin reminisced of an era torn by the ravages of time. Ah, so poetic. She eyed what Dejiu needed to face — but a mere fragment of a bygone era of the many Hells.

  [Choros, Lesser Veil of Aged Decay.]

  “Go on, little monk. Win my wager.”

  —

  I need her help more than ever, but I’m alone. Dejiu thought, wandering around the darkness. He had no flame and no light. Not that he thought it would do a thing. Because her words were so misleadingly ominous, he didn’t think a flame would help him. Well, maybe his nerves. On the other hand, at least he didn’t die yet.

  He’s been wandering inside the chamber for about a minute. Other than the profane air that pressed against his airway, nothing happened. Ah, but that wasn’t to say the chamber itself didn’t feel oppressive. Because it was.

  Darkness swallowed each footfall. His breath echoed, swallowed by the void, and still, there was nothing but the weight of the air around him. There was no light, no direction. It was as if the darkness itself had no end, no beginning — just a vast, endless nothing.

  The faintest hum buzzed in his ears, barely audible, but persistent. It was as though the very air was alive, watching him, waiting. He couldn't shake the feeling that something was lurking just out of sight, moving with him in the dark. It was maddening, the sensation that he wasn’t alone, yet unable to perceive any form or shape to cling to. Even worse than the ever-present Bing Xin.

  Dejiu took another step and it felt different. He passed through something beyond a mere entrance.

  Before he could think of the repercussions of his step, the air in front of him shifted. An eye — larger than his entire body opened. As though the darkness itself were the eyelids, the faintly glowing eye peered at Dejiu. Or perhaps into him.

  Dejiu staggered back, feeling his knees tremble beneath him. The eye watched, unblinking. Dejiu felt startled, but before a second passed he drove his spade into the eye. He was frightful, but no slave to it. His instincts demanded him to cut it down. Strike to kill!

  He stabbed through the eye, dark ichor poured out. Pulling his spade out he stabbed it again. And again. And again.

  Each time more fierce than the other. He used the Wilted Stem reinforcement technique to hasten his attacks and make them more powerful. He drove the spade deep into a flurry of stabs. But the soft eye wouldn’t react.

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  Dejiu roared with might. He was going to kill the thing and leave. Ichor spilled out with each blow, illuminated by the eye’s glow. Feeling it splatter onto his robes and face, he didn’t stop. His spade stabbed with the desire to kill.

  “Wha–”

  He trembled and felt an unfathomable pull on his entire being as he suddenly fell to the ichor-ladden ground.

  Dejiu tried to step up but he couldn’t. His body refused to move as though he was stuck in place. He looked at the eye and noticed it had lowered its gaze to match his position. Fuck! What now!?

  He wanted to scream, but it felt like he had no mouth.

  The only thing that moved was his prana. With nothing else to do, he cycled his prana faster. Violently. Brashly.

  He didn’t know what overcame him, but he wanted to be able to do something. Uneager to find out what the eye was capable of, focussed on the Wilted Stem technique and turned it up. It was reflective of the winter phase of the Dark Flower cultivation technique. Like how his mountain avens would wilt underneath the pressure of snow, deprived of sun and nutrients. But there was a certain energy to that — the struggle for life. He yearned for it now, he needed that temporary burst of strength more than ever.

  Come on! Come on Dejiu! Kill that monster! Kill the fucking thing, damn it! He urged.

  His meridians burst. It didn’t hurt, at least not now. But it didn’t matter. Spring. He’ll usher in a new spring!

  In his peripheral, it seemed that the eye strained itself and pulsed. Black vessels of ichor revealed themselves around its pupil as though it gazed with more intent. Dejiu felt more motionless pressure press not on his body, but his mind. His senses dulled even more, but left without choice he focussed on his prana rather than his body.

  Then the eye glowed brilliantly.

  From the wisps of darkness, something coalesces beside the eye. Dejiu watched in horror as he cycled his prana for some strength. Get up, you useless monk! This pressure, it’s buying time for something!

  The darkness shimmered like glass as it formed solid. After a second, a small manifestation of darkness formed beside the eye like a molten mess as its form stabilized. As for the eye itself? It looked overstrained, the vessels burst themselves without Dejiu’s doing as more ichor poured out. It hovered back and away from him.

  But he couldn’t worry about that now. Feeling returned to his hand! Without pause, he focused his prana into the ends of his palm to perform the Withering Palm. He didn’t care how much prana it used, he wanted it to hurt. He wanted to feel anything.

  Another second passed and his right shoulder and arm burst from the inside. Violent pockets of volatile prana cycled recklessly, but purposely. He used what little he knew of the Withering Palm and applied it here.

  “Kruek!” He spat blood. It was good! His senses were returning!

  If the eye could look startled, it did. Ha, was it not in the eye’s plan for him to move before that thing formed completely?

  A bloody smile stretched across Dejiu’s lips as he turned his body to stand. Wry laughs followed.

  He looked at the coalesced darkness beside the eye — likely something it formed with a lot of resources by how much it strained itself. The eye looked like a step from death it such a thing was possible.

  But before he walk over to drive his spear into the eye once more, he stared at the dark figure now stabilized as it stood between himself and the giant eye.

  It was himself.

  Back when he was seven or so. No, perhaps even younger. A child that looked like him but also not.

  Because what child would have blood splattered on a sparsely covered body?

  What child would have a cut so deep on his cheek that revealed teeth inside his mouth?

  What child’s hands would have skin so mangled that bone could be seen?

  But most importantly, what child would be smiling in such a state?