Staring at the great black sphere the four artifacts had fused into, Ouyang finally saw where the flaw lay, like a crack glinting on a blade under moonlight.

He’d rewound time to pull the four artifacts out of Dylan’s body. He hadn’t expected them to steal time’s current, like fish slipping a net to ride the river.

They’d reset to their first state—before the First Imperial Princess shattered them—like old bronze polished back to a ruthless shine. Back then, the Twelve Divine Demon Artifacts dwarfed their future selves.

And now four had merged into one. Power stacked like storm fronts colliding.

The black sphere burned like a black sun, casting harsh light across this world of black and white, like ink and paper at war.

A restlessness rose in Ouyang, raw as sand under skin. Hatred, slaughter, frenzy—dark weeds sprouting without end.

Yes. This felt like when he met Loyin, like the pull of Original Sin—something that plucks the oldest thorns from the human heart, like a flute that only calls wolves.

Legend says the Twelve devour one another until a being is born to rival Original Sin, like a shadow that mirrors the first sin itself.

Looking at this, Ouyang knew the rumor wasn’t empty air. It was a drumbeat under the earth.

He clutched his head where he stood, face twisting like a storm-tossed tree. He forced himself to stay lucid while the tide clawed at his mind.

Mind strikes are knives you don’t see. Loyin once made his spirit fall into a pit; only another force repelled her, like a gust that slammed a door, and he reclaimed his body.

Now, at this point, he knew he no longer carried the powers old friends had left in him, like lanterns burned down to ash.

“Bai… go… go now!” The plea scraped out of him like dry reeds in the wind.

Bai’s mind was simple, clear as spring water. The huge black sphere barely touched her; it only made her uneasy, like a chill through thin cloth.

“Go tell Dongze and the others…” His voice shook, a cracked bell ringing.

Ouyang clamped both hands over his skull, as if it might blow apart like a bursting gourd. Blood veined his eyes; his face knotted like twisted bark.

Because of the Void Watcher, he’d started higher than most, like a climber placed halfway up the cliff. Until he played the anthem again, he shouldn’t meet a wall.

But the journey of the heart stayed his weak rib, a thin plank on a long bridge.

This kind of psychic interference was a wound with no bandage, a cold that seeped to bone.

Bai never doubted him, usually. But when his life hung by a thread, she wavered like a candle in a draft.

He told her to call Dongze for help. Anyone else, seeing their limits, would run to fetch a lifeline. Bai stared at his pain and froze, a deer on ice.

“Bai, will you stay with me? Even if the whole world turns on me. Even if the world casts me out, we won’t leave each other…”

“Mm. I will. Through right and wrong, I won’t leave…” Her answer was a warm ember from an older fire.

Under the Supreme Law they’d sworn—never leave, never forsake. If she left now, she’d trample that vow like footprints through snow.

“No… I’m not leaving!” The rare stubbornness in her voice was a blade wrapped in silk.

She ran to support him. Seeing his pain twist his face, she panicked, hands fluttering like sparrows. She hugged him, hoping her warmth could ease it, like a shawl against winter.

“Id… idiot…” He held his head with one hand and tried to push her away with the other, a weak tide against a rock. He couldn’t move her.

Bai’s world was simple, guileless as clear sky. If anyone else did this, he’d cough blood from fury; with Bai, all he could muster was that helpless “idiot.”

“Then… take me… and leave…” His breath trembled like a candle’s edge.

If he sent her alone to seek help, she’d never go; in her heart, that equaled abandoning him. But leave together? At once she nodded, bright as a struck match.

She cradled him. Her pure white wings unfurled behind her, like snow-laden banners. This black-and-white space was a domain they’d woven together, so she knew the path out.

She carried him upward. In that monochrome world, directions faded like stars in fog. Thankfully, she could feel the exit like a warm draft in a cold hall.

If Bai tried to leave with Ouyang, the giant black sphere wouldn’t sit idle like a blind statue.

It rose after them, a tide of night rolling uphill.

“Ayang… the exit… it’s blocked!” Her voice broke like thin ice.

Mid-flight, she felt the exit twist shut. The black sphere had corked it like a stopper in a bottle.

Suddenly, a shriek rasped out of the sphere, needle-sharp and many-voiced, like four flutes screeching at once—four artifacts crying in chorus.

It loomed over them and began to flow, the way ink bleeds across paper. The sphere melted into black liquid and wrapped them together, a grave of oil.

They sank under. The liquid drew tight, then clotted back into a single huge sphere with Ouyang and Bai sealed inside, like insects set in amber.

“You… idiot… if you’d left… sooner…” He tapped her head weakly, a feather against stone. Had she bolted when he told her, she might have escaped. Hesitation had bricked the road shut.

Bai’s face went wild with panic, eyes shining like rain. She couldn’t grasp why he’d told her to go, but she sensed the trap was hers as much as his.

Glug—glug— The sound bubbled around them, thick as tar boiling.

Inside the sphere, black liquid poured into Ouyang, sluicing through him like winter into a house with broken windows. His skin darkened; his pupils rimmed red, a sunrise in blood.

Bai felt nothing more than dizziness and discomfort, like a boat’s sway; that power slid off her simple heart like rain off lotus leaves.

Watching Ouyang turn into a stranger, she panicked harder, like a bird beating bars. She blamed herself; if she could read complex words and acts, maybe today would have been different.

“Ayang… I don’t want you to die. I don’t want you to become someone else!” Her tears finally fell, the first rain after a long drought.

As the black matter kept flooding him, the sphere shrank, like a tide running dry. By the time her tears blurred everything, the sphere vanished. All of it had entered Ouyang.

“Fool… go… leave me…” He opened his eyes slowly, as if lifting a stone. He tried to push her away, and failed, like a wave smoothing sand.

Bai, still hugging him, felt the other presence in his body, a breath she loathed like rot in sweet fruit. Soon that will would replace Ouyang’s entirely.

“Leave me…” His plea was a falling leaf.

Bai stopped crying. She didn’t obey. Instead, she smiled, bleak as twilight. In that moment she felt unfamiliar to him, a mask over a loved face.

But in that perfect face he still found the familiar trace, a brushstroke he knew. She was still Bai.

“Ouyang… if you’re no longer you, then I have no meaning…” Her smile was soft as snow, and suddenly free of her usual daze.

She held him and rested her head on his shoulder, the way a bird tucks into a branch.

Panic surged in Ouyang, a cold river over rock. He feared she’d do something foolish. Though his body was invaded, his soul had once touched a strange, dreamlike state.

At worst, they’d cage his soul and steal his body; breaking his soul was unlikely, like trying to shatter spring with a fist.

Once Xi learned what happened—once a host of Tiered Beings gathered—would Ouyang not wrest his body back?

But Bai, that foolish girl, didn’t know any of this, like a lamb that doesn’t see the cliff.

If she were still the dazed Bai, he’d worry she couldn’t grasp his words. But now—

He tried to warn her. Suddenly, soft warmth sealed his mouth, a petal pressed to a blade. A kiss. An embrace.

He never imagined Bai would do this. His heart lurched harder, like a drum in a storm. Her act felt like a last wish, a candle offered before dawn.

She held Ouyang and whispered at his ear, voice light as a reed. “Remember me… forever.”

In that final beat, she returned to her familiar dazed look. Silver hair lifted like streamers. The white mage robe Ouyang had given her fluttered, a lone cloud adrift.

“Idiot! Stop!!” Strength surged through him like a spark, and he roared. Too late.

Bai showed that beloved blank expression, then winked, sly as a fox. True to her name—Bai, white—she became white itself, a rain of light dissolving around Ouyang.

White motes circled him, like stars in orbit, then threaded into his body one by one, needles of dawn sewing flesh and fate.

As the white light sank in, black vapors hissed out of him, stream after stream like smoke from wet charcoal. They gathered overhead and clotted into a new black sphere.

“Bai… you really are an idiot.” He lowered his head. His black hair faded to gray, like ash after flame.

On his back, the black Cursed Wings shifted: the left wing turned pure white, a crescent split from night. His eyes followed—left iris pure white with no shadow, right pure black without a fleck of light.

Black-and-white wings.

On that phantom First Continent, he had once taken this form by sacrificing the two fractured selves inside him. Now, under Bai’s power, he could bear this form without that price.

“The black you spoke of, the white you spoke of… heh. If I had a choice, I’d never be like this.”

Half-black, half-white, the world began to weave together, threads crossing like a loom’s song. The grid they made became the world’s only pattern, a net of night and snow.