[World] Origin

A boat.

It slid from afar, a dark leaf on a silver river.

At the prow stood a figure, like an ink stroke against the water.

He lurked in the deep woods, long used to an empty, bare river.

A human shape burst into his view like lightning on still water, and he froze like stone.

Age had dulled his eyes like fogged glass.

He saw rippling robes like pale clouds, but the face was a blur.

He had pictured it a thousand times, like rehearsing a storm in a bowl.

If someone from home found him again, what would his face show?

Excitement?

Elation?

Rage?

Fear?

Or… a blank, winter lake?

Maybe none of those, or maybe all at once, like rain mixed with ash.

As the boat drew near, the face cleared like a moon through cloud.

All his emotions crashed together like waves, and settled into one word: sorrow.

He saw her standing at the prow, her tears falling like broken pearls.

He couldn’t recall the last time he cried, dust thick on that memory.

Yet he knew at once why she wept, like salt drawn from a wound:

the pain and despair of being cast off by one’s own people.

So familiar, like an old scar aching in rain.

Just like him, back then.

…

“You want to sleep with me?”

Her voice flowed from silver lips, lush as wine, and bones seemed to melt like wax.

Not a metaphor—bone truly turned to pulp, like wet clay.

Squelch—

Blood misted the air like red rain.

Fists met ribs with a cracking thunder that chilled the spine.

Screams, roars, the clatter of cups, the hiss of blades leaving scabbards—

the tavern swelled into a storm of noise and steel.

Thud—

A body hit the floor like a felled log.

Two legs in tight black leather crossed with lazy grace, a bow shaped in flesh.

Yin lounged sideways in a chair, one hand cupping her chin, the other hand drawing back like a tide.

“You killed him!”

“You’re dead!”

“You dared touch our man?!”

The dead one was likely from some mercenary band, a wolf in a pack’s colors.

He had catcalled Yin, and she popped his heart like a ripe fruit.

Over half the room surged up roaring, thick-necked, uniform, a single, ugly sea.

Night was pitch-black outside, but the tavern burned yellow like a lantern hive.

Shadows swallowed the silver-haired woman like a tide.

She felt no fear; her fox-bright face had gone still, a mask of moonlight.

Her silver irises didn’t blink.

She stared at her fist, where sticky blood clung like syrup that wouldn’t drip.

She stared so hard it cut the room from her, like glass between worlds.

Their rage burned hotter at her cold, skyward gaze.

“Don’t ignore us!”

“Enough waiting!”

“Cut her down!”

Steel flashed like fish in a net of light.

They swung, and the room fell like snow into the killing.

Then—

there was no then.

Three minutes later.

A fine, slim hand pushed open the tavern’s yellowed door, like a petal brushing bark.

Out stepped a woman with silver short hair and silver eyes, a blade of winter.

When she moved, the scent of liquor and blood poured out together, sweet and cloying as rotten fruit carried on wind.

She stood at the threshold and lifted her chin to the high white moon.

Her short hair flicked in the breeze like frost-tips of grass; her gaze went distant.

A passing man, snagged by her beauty like a moth by flame, glanced inside.

His face went chalk-white, like ash in rain.

Thinking it a trick of light, he looked again—then spun, braced the wall, and retched.

Inside, blood ran like a river, meat spattered like butcher’s scraps.

Organs and limbs lay in shards, a man-made hell lit by lamplight.

…

She walked alone along a mountain path, thin as a brushstroke on stone.

Yin felt wrong, like a note out of tune.

Yet she couldn’t name the kink in the string.

A day ago, she finished drinking in the power of that half-transparent greatsword.

The one that had skewered her from behind.

She swallowed it whole like a snake taking an egg, and slipped her shackles like a shed skin.

When the black-haired boy shamed her at the Empire’s square, the blade buried in her like winter iron, her mind was a furnace.

She planned to break free and pay him back double, pain for pain, like debt with interest.

But that night, while she drew his power into herself, the buried past rushed up like a beast from the pit.

It opened a blood mouth to drag her into dark.

He arrived right then, the black-haired boy, like a lantern at a cliff edge.

He pulled her back from the brink, then crouched and spoke nonsense, syllables like falling leaves.

She thought he’d come to humiliate her; every word was trash to her, like chaff in wind.

Then he said one line, and it stuck in her throat like a fishbone—

“I know what you’re truly after—”

She moved through dense woods; tree shadows broke like scales; moonlight dappled like sifted flour.

She kept murmuring the boy’s line, like a refrain in rain.

Whether it was that sentence, or the strength she’d taken from him, her state felt strange—a river running backward.

Just now in the tavern, if she’d answered offense as she truly was, the result wouldn’t be a butchered room.

The whole town would have lain dead like wheat after a scythe.

Who was she?

She was reckless as wildfire, arrogant to the sky, blood-hungry, kill-happy, mad as a wolf in famine.

Yet when she crushed the first man’s heart, and saw her fist shine wet as lacquer, a fatigue rose like dusk.

A sour weariness crawled over her skin.

In that instant, the boy’s face flashed in her mind like a mirror of water.

And his line slid in after, cold and clear.

That sentence was an ice splinter speared straight into her heart.

It melted inside her like snow, slow and sure, changing what she thought she’d held fast.

“What am I after?”

In the silent forest, the question rolled on her tongue like a stone.

For a breath, the empire’s walking nightmare showed a crack, fine as frost on glass.

Suddenly she halted, like a deer catching a far drum.

She lifted her head toward the bright moon, round as a coin.

Silver light seemed to answer, flaring brighter, pouring down like a waterfall.

It pooled in her eyes and lit them—two cold moons.

She blinked.

Black, then white.

Memory leaped up again, a ghost slipping through the ribs of now.

Her face tightened; her sight shifted.

She was back in the dark hut of her mind—a cramped wooden room where blood flew like rain.

Limbs and organs spun like thrown dice, and cold instruments clattered like teeth.

Despair.

Pain.

Rage.

Grief.

Hatred.

Each emotion slid back on like shed garments in winter, layer on layer, and the cold cut deeper.

The next blink, she stepped out of that black mire and back into night.

Her face went a shade paler, like paper under frost.

Her expression hardened into something new.

“What I’m after—”

She gripped the silver dagger hidden in her sleeve; her eyes iced over, focus fixed on a far, unseen boy with black hair.

Her voice rasped out between her teeth like a blade drawn slow.

“—is to kill you.”