“Vega—or my old man—their methods mirror like twin shadows cast by one lamp. The head maid’s will is his hand extended, no gap in the weave. When we met, their intent lay on the table like cold knives. My old man needs a role that can be killed by right, with weight like an anchor. Mr. Eil fits perfectly.”

“I don’t understand…”

“No, Julian-chan, you should, deep down. Sacrifice and salvation balance like scales under moonlight. Great heroes and great villains do the math. Only the angle differs. You simply refuse to look.”

Julian moved to pry open the plates and set Qing An’s arm back, but Qing An brushed her off like wind dismissing snow.

The senseless, painless monster studied her bleeding shoulder stump like a stranger’s limb, turning it as if it were driftwood, no pain, only curious chill.

“The story’s begun, Julian-chan. Actors should honor their parts. Mr. Eil, no matter how strong, is human as a bird of bone. Lose the heart, he dies. Snap the neck, he dies. Kill him, he dies. He doesn’t have miracle regrowth to plug a limb back and run.”

“Then what will you do?”

Qing An took her own arm from her housemate, weighed it twice like a hunter testing a bow, then stirred the scar at her soul’s floor, the mark stained by the Ocean of Darkness, and bent the iron dust sleeping in the limb.

“This. Watch.”

The steel needle buried in flesh kept growing like a thorn-vine. It bent, barbed, and hooked into bone, forcing the two severed halves to lock like jagged ice floes.

The arm, gnawed apart by broken teeth, had a shoreline of ruin. The rough join didn’t heal it; white shredded meat bulged out like pale foam from a wound.

Qing An snatched a bottle of HolyWater, bit the cap like a wolf, and flooded the wound. Smoke boiled up like mist off a marsh. Iron armor sprouted slow as black moss, sealing the break under dusk-dark steel.

“Feels fine. HolyWater Type-III does the job. I won’t be back to peak in three days, but if it moves, that’s enough.”

“This leaves a cliff-edge of risk! Your arm isn’t healed at all! Bones aren’t aligned, muscle’s not combed. Treating your body this crudely—do you even call yourself a warrior?”

“Of course not a warrior. I’m a player, an actor.”

“…”

People barely understand each other; recognition’s rarer than rain in a drought. Julian stared into her eyes. They were a black hole in winter sky—no stars, no map, just falling.

Qing An spoke with her usual light tone, like bells ringing over a grave.

“Julian-chan, from the top. The tale starts here. My old man wants someone killed, maybe to say something, like opening a new era. Then his gaze landed on me. As for making the beheading feel righteous—‘give a hero the right graveyard, and he’ll gladly die.’ That line always holds. But at this specific hour, silver and cold jade crossing like frost and fern, ‘can’ turns to ‘will.’ The ancient hero and the ancient age get buried together. The new world, which looks ugly to them, won’t be seen again.”

“…I know. The Divine Being once advised me, but, but…”

“Julian-chan refused that path, right? It fits. You’re chieftain of the northern Lunarfolk. Even when you choose who dies, it’s for more survivors, not for ‘dying to die.’ But Mr. Eil will. He sacrificed every world for it. The era he loves is passing like leaves in rain, never to return. He accepts that as the price for mankind’s step forward. He’ll make one last charge for the mortal world, then sleep like a sword put to rest.”

“What does that have to do with you, Qing An? You aren’t Eil! Why die in his place!”

She finally said it.

The knot in her chest surfaced like a stone breaking water.

“I don’t think what you’re doing is right. It’s meaningless. Did you swear to Eil to carry his honor? Why die for him, Qing An? Julian doesn’t flinch from death, but dying here is empty, so I keep silent. As for you—you’re right—I won’t accept ‘dying to die.’”

Qing An only shrugged, like a bird shaking off rain.

“I don’t expect you to pat my shoulder and say take care. Just don’t flare. Speak slow; unspoken words are fog. First, about my old man…”

“He ceded prisoners to test you and me, pegging your serious injury as the floor. Whether you saw through him and held back, or played your trump, to Vega, trading a few prisoners for leverage is a bargain.”

“Exactly! That’s it! Julian-chan, it’s an open stratagem, a sunlit trap. He pushes with grand momentum like a tide. Any choice we make feeds him. It’s brilliant, leaving the enemy no road, only cliffs.”

“But how does that touch you, Qing An!”

Qing An slumped into the single sofa like a cat, scratched her cheek with her left hand, then felt the newly set arm catch wrong and twisted it side to side like testing a branch.

“Then tell me, what in this world belongs to Miss Qing An?” Her voice peeled away from the room, from this body, from this name, rising to a higher, colder, lonelier altitude. “What thing insists it must be Miss Qing An?”

“I once thought only I could save the world, that it had to be me. I could die there as Qing An, like a true hero falling with banners. But the Divine Being told me the world was already saved, it didn’t need me. Do you know what that felt like?”

“…”

“Despair. One step short of reed fields, fairyland, heaven—one breath from warmth—then the bridge cut, the river gone.”

“Qing An…”

“The Divine Being knew. Even an actor hopes to tear off the mask once, to go all out for a single scene. He knew, and still told me the truth. That’s the Divine Being’s tenderness. Yes, tenderness—but to hell with that tenderness.”

Qing An shot both middle fingers at the sky like arrows, then her snarl collapsed into regret. She drove her fingers into her own eyes. Blood spilled in a sudden tide, ran down her slender cheeks like red tears burned into stone.

Actors don’t cry. They carry smiles like lanterns. Actors never cry.

“Damn it… Divine Beings never make mistakes. You can’t even vent your hate at them; it disperses like smoke.”

“Hey—Qing An, you…”

“Julian-chan, do you know the term ‘Golden Blood’?”

“Your wounds matter more, your eyes especially! How did you… heal?”

Her eyes swiveled whole in their sockets, the black pupils rimmed with faint blood, and found Julian again like a hawk fixing on a moth.

“This flesh has a hard limit like a mountain cliff. Human iron can’t bite it. Without resolve to die and a mountain-bronze blade, a challenger can’t scratch me.

No hero of earth can stop my one cut. Even the Demon King wouldn’t surely beat me.

Golden Blood is the Creator’s last war-making craft, elder brother to mankind, a thing entirely perfect.

Even the great dark of the Ocean of Darkness can’t seep into a flawless golden soul.

That’s me—the last bearer of Golden Blood.”

Qing An rose from the sofa and gripped Julian’s shoulder like anchoring a ship.

“But I’m also a mixture of good and evil. The oldest Demon King’s trick on the abyss of evil can’t be played twice. So I can’t have a golden soul. I can’t have wishes. Only blood. Only strength. Then someone told me he could give me his identity—his legend, his history, his obsession—as a gift. I was grateful. It was glorious. Even a flawed product like Miss Qing An could ‘rightfully’ desire something. I can’t throw that identity away. Do you understand, Julian? It’s the only thing I truly own.”

“You finally said something real… Qing An.”

At that moment, Julian’s smile looked like the gentle one’s—like the Divine Being’s—soft as moonlight over snow.