The void mist shuddered, as if the space itself reacted to the newcomer's arrival.
Liuxue's hand hung suspended in the air with mere inches from the twilight figure's outstretched palm. Her fingertips still tingled with the pull of recognition, the strange magnetic pull that called to something deep in her soul.
But the newcomer's voice was sharp, cutting, utterly certain that froze her in place.
"Step away from him, Liuxue."
Her breath hitched.
The young man stood only a few steps behind her. His presence was impossibly solid in a world made of mist and half-formed reality. The void seemed to bend around him, unwilling to touch him, as if his very existence here was an intrusion.
He was tall.
Sharp.
Eyes like stars trapped in winter ice.
And familiar.
Painfully… disturbingly familiar.
Her heart lurched in her chest.
"Liuxue?" Yining whispered behind her, terrified, glancing between both figures. "Who… who are these people?"
Liuxue swallowed hard. "I don't ...."
But the moment she tried to speak, a throbbing pulse erupted behind her ribs. Her seal flashed violently. The scroll beneath her robes burned.
And the twilight figure stepped forward.
"Do not interfere," the being murmured toward the newcomer.
Its voice was smooth. Calm. Too calm.
"She came to me by choice."
The man's expression hardened.
His gaze sharpened into something deadly.
"Choice?" he repeated coldly.
"You're still using that word?"
His voice was so steady it frightened her more than shouting would have.
Liuxue forced herself to breathe.
The twilight figure turned its luminous eyes back to her.
The mist curled around her ankles, tugging gently, like a tide pulling her toward shore.
"Come," it said softly.
"You belong with me. You always have."
A chill slid down her spine.
Her.
Belonging.
Always.
Her throat tightened.
"Belong?" she whispered.
Her voice felt too small, too fragile in the vastness of the void.
The twilight figure inclined its head.
"You knew me before time wrote your name."
Her pulse stuttered.
Yining's fingers dug into her sleeve. "Liuxue… don't listen. Please."
The newcomer stepped forward, positioning himself slightly in front of Liuxue and Yining in a protective, controlled, furious stance.
His eyes locked onto the twilight being.
"You have no right to speak to her as if you know her," he said softly.
The twilight figure smiled but not with lips, but with the shift of its aura.
"And you have no right to follow her here. This place rejects the living."
"Then it should have rejected you first," the man replied.
Liuxue stared, stunned.
"You… can't be alive?" she asked the twilight being.
It turned back to her with a gentleness that made her chest ache.
"Death cannot claim me. Not fully."
Then its tone shifted.
Softer.
More intimate.
"You know this."
Her knees nearly buckled.
Because it didn't sound like a claim.
It sounded like a memory.
The newcomer noticed her unsteady breath and reached out to her,not touching her, but hovering his hand near her arm, ready to catch her.
"Liuxue," he said quietly.
"Don't move closer to him. He is not what you think."
She swallowed. "Then what is he?"
The twilight being's form flickered slightly.
And the temperature of the void dropped.
"I am what she lost," it said.
The newcomer's jaw tightened.
He stepped forward.
"And I," he said calmly, "am the one she should never have met again."
Liuxue stared at him, startled.
He held her gaze, unflinching.
"I shouldn't be here," he admitted.
"Every rule of Heaven and the lower realms forbids it."
"Then how....."
"Because you fell," he said simply.
Her breath caught.
"And I followed."
Yining choked. "You… jumped into a void dimension after her?! Are you insane?"
The man didn't look away from Liuxue.
"Yes."
The word hit harder than any blow.
He continued, voice low:
"I followed because if she disappeared again, I....."
He stopped himself.
A crack in his composure appeared, then vanished.
The twilight being moved closer, its aura darkening.
"How touching. But this is not your place, Starborn."
Starborn.
The word struck Liuxue like a bell.
She looked sharply at the man. "Starborn? You're..."
He cut her off. "do not say,Later."
The void trembled underfoot.
The two figures' energies collided against one twilight, one starlight was twisting the mist between them into spiraling currents.
Yining pulled Liuxue back. "Liuxue, we need to move!"
But neither of the two powerful entities looked away from her.
The twilight being lowered its hand, voice coaxing.
"Come with me now, Liuxue. Let me restore what you lost."
The Starborn man extended his hand toward her as well,
but his voice was much more quieter.
Rougher.
Almost in pain trying to reach her.
"Come to me. You're not ready for him."
Liuxue's heart slammed against her ribs.
Two presences.
Two pulls.
Two destinies she did not yet understand.
The void shook again, violently.
"Mist currents are destabilizing!" Yining cried. "Liuxue, the space will collapse!"
The twilight being's form flickered.
The Starborn's aura surged.
Both reached for her.
And in the split second before the world split apart
A single thought rippled through Liuxue's mind:
"Who… am I to them?"
The ground shattered.
The void cracked like breaking glass.
Light twilight and starlight collided with each other in a deafening surge.
Liuxue was thrown backward, Yining ripped from her grasp. Her vision blurred, her seal burned, and the scroll shrieked inside her chest like a living thing.
And then
Darkness swallowed everything.