The world still spoke his name with awe and fear: Divine Supreme Xie Lian.
To me he was never a title or a legend. He was the man who laughed when I tripped on stones, who warmed my hands when mountain winds bit through my sleeves, who kissed me as if the rest of the world did not exist.
And it was that world that tore him away.
The battlefield was still burning when I arrived. Ash fell like gray snow, blanketing my robes. The once green peaks of the Azure Sky Sect lay in ruins, a graveyard of shattered stone and torn banners. The sky hung low and heavy as if the heavens themselves were mourning, blotting out the sun.
"Supreme…" My voice broke, raw from running, from screaming, from searching.
Bodies lay everywhere—disciples, nameless soldiers, the faces of men who had died in someone else's war. Blood had seeped into the earth until the mist wore a sickly red.
And then I saw him.
He stood at the centre of the ruin, tall and proud even as his body swayed. His robes, once pure white, were drenched crimson. Heavenbreaker, his sword, was split down the middle; the light trapped in the blade guttered like a dying star.
My breath froze.
Enemies ringed him like wolves around a dying lion: elders from rival sects, traitors with smiles that tasted like bile, celestial envoys who had once bowed to his name now spitting contempt.
"Divine Supreme," one of them sneered, voice sharp across the smoke. "Your reign ends today. Heaven itself has abandoned you."
Even at death's edge he smiled. Not at them—at me.
Our eyes met across the carnage, and everything else blurred into nothing. For a suspended breath, it was only him and me, like those countless nights before. His lips formed words I could only feel.
Live.
Then the heavens answered.
A bolt split the sky and struck him as if the sky itself had judged him. The ground fractured. Peaks exploded. The Supreme's body flared with unbearable light and was consumed by the blast.
"No!" I screamed, charging forward though my legs felt like stone.
When the light died, nothing remained. No sword, no robes, not even ash. It was as though the heavens had taken him whole, leaving a hollow where he had stood.
My knees gave way. I clawed at the scorched soil with bleeding fingers, as if digging harder could unmake the sky. There was nothing to hold. Nothing but silence.
I do not remember how long I stayed—hours, days. Tears dried into salt on my face until footsteps drew near.
"You should not linger here," a voice said, calm undercut with steel.
I looked up. A cloaked figure stood among the corpses, leaning on a staff carved with strange runes. His eyes glowed faintly, like distant stars trying to pierce smoke.
"Who are you?" I rasped.
"A witness," he said. "One who knows the heavens does not strike without reason. The Supreme was betrayed—yes. But do you not wonder why the heavens chose this moment to fall upon him?"
His words cut through my numbness. Betrayal I had seen in the curled lips of those sect elders. But the heavens turning on him? That idea would not fit the memory I kept of him smiling beneath moonlight.
The man bent closer, his voice dropping until only I heard. "His legacy is not gone. If you wish to uncover the truth, if you mean to defy fate itself, seek the remnants of his will. Only then will you understand what truly happened."
Before I could answer, he turned and vanished into the smoke as if swallowed by the battlefield.
That night I buried the nameless dead with trembling hands. I could not bury him. How could I, with no body, no ashes, no proof that he had fallen?
Perhaps that was my curse, or perhaps my salvation. The world declared him gone. My heart refused to accept it.
As the horizon burned, grief hardened into something else. Resolve settled behind my eyes.
"They may have taken you from me," I whispered to the embers, "but they will not take your truth. If heaven itself has turned corrupt, I will tear open the skies to find you."
So my journey began—not as his lover, not as the shadow he left—but as the one who would chase his memory across the world.
If the heavens could betray him, then what was heaven worth at all?