“Why? Why swing the blade so far? So many in the prince’s manor were innocent, like lambs under a storm.”

She didn’t understand, and confusion pooled like rainwater; in shattered shards of memory, the demon sword burned like a black sun. A blade that could butcher gods still scoured the manor to the roots, like a wildfire in dry grass.

“Those mortals aren’t your match in a thousand years, like ants against a cliff. Why not leave them a path, a ribbon of road in the snow? So many were innocent, like clear wells untouched.”

Through those borrowed pupils, Angela saw earth soaked red like dusk over a river; corpses clawed and lurched like puppets tugged by night wind. From the moment she changed, her body slipped from her grasp like a kite cut loose; the demon sword, steered by Youwen, pulled the strings like a black tide.

“Innocent? There’s no right or wrong, only where you stand, like banners in contrary wind. Their place decided the seeds they’d reap, like cause and effect sprouting from one field. My master always said it: stance decides our fate, like a compass welded to the heart.”

“But you should at least give them a chance to surrender, a white flag in the rain. Maybe they never chose that banner, like leaves blown into a pile.”

Grief surged first, a cold wave; then her words stumbled like pebbles. A princess since childhood, she carried the country like a lantern cupped against the gale; such slaughter tasted like iron and ash, and she couldn’t swallow it.

She couldn’t accept Youwen’s way, like frost against flame; yet Youwen bristled at her softness, like steel ringing against silk. He didn’t think her a fool; he knew rivers run different ways, and stance is a riverbed that shapes the flow.

He understood her, like a man reading weathered script, yet he couldn’t agree, like a mountain refusing to bow. Dog lovers flinch when others eat dog meat, like two tables set under one roof; they love their dogs, we eat our dog meat, two fires in the same night.

She couldn’t bear to watch the “innocent” be swept into blood, like boats dragged by a whirlpool; but in Youwen’s eyes, among those “innocent,” hands surely counted doses and opened doors, like shadows passing notes. Royal members decided to poison, but intel, execution, and logistics called for helpers, like scaffolds around a gallows.

From his side of the board, Youwen saw the pattern, like lines in old wood; innocence blurred, and only sides remained, like black and white on a Go board.

“Enough. Annihilating one prince’s manor is warning enough, like thunder over a sleeping town.” Inside, she screamed as Youwen drove the dead into a night parade of a hundred ghosts, like lanterns snaking through fog. The royal kin would connect the dots like crows to carrion; cold dread would stalk their halls like winter.

“Naive,” Youwen’s voice drifted like mist from a grave. “You don’t know what godly majesty is, like staring at lightning and calling it fireflies. On some worlds, one mortal annoys a god, and the god snaps the world like a twig; civilization starts over, like spring after a burn. They provoked my master’s majesty; if I don’t kill them, that lightning falls here like a hammer. Do you want a handful dead, or a world shattered like glass?”

It wasn’t bluster; it was iron and sky. Tiered Beings are lords of the stars, like wolves among constellations; to end a world takes one thought, like dusting a table with the back of a hand. If a cluster of worlds feels crowded, one wave and that patch of stars goes dark, like candles pinched out; who do their creatures petition, when even the night has no ears? And this time, the royals poisoned first, like ink spilled before the judge.

Through those eyes, Angela watched the outside world; a column of corpses wobbled like reeds, shuffling toward the street like tidewater. Relief loosened her chest like a knot undone; the sword didn’t turn the dead on bystanders, but steered them toward the palace like arrows nocked for a single target. The next quarry sat under that roof, perhaps a brother or sister, like chess pieces lined for capture.

She’d been bullied and had cursed them like thorns muttered at roses; yet when danger rang the bell, her gut tightened like a drawn bow. It was only fear, a moth hitting glass; she knew she couldn’t stop that blade, like an ant under a boot.

Bloody corpses walked the avenue like scarecrows come down from poles; the sky had gone ink-dark earlier, and many ran home like birds to eaves. Even so, it was the capital; some still walked, and screams rose like gulls over surf.

From afar, the sudden dusk hid details like gauze; up close, strangers stood cheek by jowl with gore-slick dead, like sheep eye-to-eye with wolves. A commoner who didn’t faint on the spot was a stone in a river, stubborn and small.

Chaos rang the alarm, and city guards turned their heads like dogs to a whistle; but they were window dressing, like painted gates on a stage. Blades hacked and spears thrust, arrows hissed like hail, and nothing mattered; the dead were already dead, and even shot into pincushions and chopped to ragged chunks, they kept walking like tides against rocks.

In the palace, Ouyang stared into the distance like a sailor reading stars; from the land rose threads of black smoke, a swarm drifting skyward like gnats. “Fear, sorrow, despair, anger, hatred,” he murmured, each word a coal; “something is drinking those feelings, like a sponge in the void.”

Glorious Moon followed his gaze like a swan gliding to the same lake; at the sky’s edge, something fed on that darkness like roots in rich rot. “So that thing is the Original Sin you spoke of, like a serpent in the orchard?”

After she pushed open the Gate of Truth, she’d thought threats rare as snow in summer; yet that presence pressed her heart like a cold palm, and it picked her pulse like a harp. In that breath, she understood Ouyang’s grave face when he smelled Original Sin on Qihe, like a hunter catching a tiger’s musk; such a creature deserved their full regard, like a storm deserving closed shutters.

The princes’ and princesses’ palaces boiled like an ant nest kicked wide; bloody corpses ringed the halls like iron thorns. Brave guards stood like posts, and once-mighty hands swung like windmills; before unkillable monsters, they were driftwood in flood.

“Angela, call them off, make those monsters stop, like dousing a fire! I’m your sister,” a princess cried, her voice frayed like a torn banner. “Even if we were cruel, you didn’t have to go this far, like winter with no spring. Remember your seventh birthday? I watched stars with you all night, like fireflies caught in dark silk.”

She met only Angela’s cold face, winter-hard as ice on a well; in truth, it was Youwen’s look, wearing her skin like a borrowed mask.

The real Angela thrashed in a dark cage like a bird beating bars; her sister’s words cracked open sealed memories like sunlight lifting dust. Back then, they were children, running fields with no crowns, only simple laughter like bells.

Whatever happened, they were still kin, blood tied like roots under one tree; that bond was hard to sever, and that warmth hard to bury, like embers under ash. They grew and lost themselves, and kinship thinned like morning fog; but what once existed was fact, like ink on paper.

“Big Sis… Big Sis, don’t die,” she howled, her soul a wind over reeds; a corpse tore a mouthful from a princess’s flesh, like a wolf at a sheep. “Don’t go, don’t leave me,” she cried, words breaking like waves.

Suddenly, the cold Angela clutched her head like a violin string about to snap; ink-black hair paled to gold like dawn on a river, and red eyes cleared to blue like sky after rain.

A long sigh floated out, thin as smoke; the pitch-black sword hung in the air like a shard of night.

Released from Youwen’s hand, Angela came back like a diver breaking the surface; she wept and shook like a leaf in rain, then crawled to one sister like a child toward a hearth. “Third Sis… I… I’ll stay with you,” she whispered, her breath a candle flicker.

Squelch. The sound was wet as mud; Angela smiled like a flower in frost. She wasn’t surprised, as if she’d read the script, and she toppled content into Third Sister’s arms like a falling petal.

“Bitch! Little bitch, who do you think caused today’s blood, like rust on a blade?” Third Sister ripped the dagger from Angela’s heart like a thorn from flesh, and laughed up at the ceiling like a wolf baying.

Once. Twice. Thrice. The dagger worried Angela’s body into a honeycomb, like a hive torn apart. Then Third Sister died, her throat seized by corpse-Angela’s bite like a trap snapping on a hare.

“Big Sis, Second Brother, Third Sis… everyone… let’s be siblings next life, like cranes returning together,” corpse-Angela murmured, cradling Third Sister like a doll. “I hope… we all find happiness,” she said, and her eyes closed forever like doors at dusk.

Youwen finished gutting the poisoning faction and slipped back to Ouyang like a shadow to a lamp. He’d known the ending like a foretold eclipse; none of them could escape his hand, like fish in a drained pond. He’d guessed the result, but not that the path would break like this, crooked and cruel.

“That child… craved kinship so much, like a thirsty deer at a spring? She knew her siblings had traded love for power, like merchants weighing hearts on scales. She still chose that, like walking into snow with bare feet.”

Angela had been bullied for years, bruises like faded ink; she knew her Third Sister hated her like a thorn in a thumb. She still picked that ending, like a moth choosing flame. She could’ve stood aside and lived, like a stone in a flood, maybe even become the next queen of the kingdom, like a crown waiting on a pillow.

“No right or wrong, only sides, like two shores of one river? Who was right, like sun at noon? Who was wrong, like shadow at dusk?”