Arc 1 –end
The sword forest was silent.
Only the echo of shattered Dao lingered, drifting like smoke across a broken sky.
Nyxen stood at the center of the devastation, his body cracked with silver light, crimson blood still trailing down his lips. His duel with his own reflection had ended, and though he stood victorious, he was far from whole. His new power—neither mortal nor demonic, neither pure nor corrupt—burned within him like a curse.
Stage Two.
He should have been proud. He should have celebrated.
But even as his wounds sealed, the weight of countless gazes pressed upon him.
The world had seen.
The sects, the cults, the hidden eyes of gods. His existence was no longer a secret.
If he stayed as Nyxen, he would never walk freely again.
He looked at his hands—one trembling, glowing faintly silver, the other drenched in blood.
"…Too bright," he muttered. "Too loud. If I live as myself, I'll be hunted like a beast."
For a long moment, the silence stretched. Then Nyxen raised his cracked sword and drove it into the ground. Qi swelled—distorting, bending, weaving. He summoned the fragments of his shattered reflection, twisting them into a final illusion.
From the mountain's edge, the explosion looked like heaven's wrath.
When the dust settled, a body lay buried beneath the broken stone, face unrecognizable, aura extinguished.
The world would remember this place as the grave of the heretical outsider.
Nyxen—the transmigrant who defied the Dao—was dead.
---
But in the shadow of the ruins, a lone figure stepped out.
His crimson eyes were veiled beneath a strip of gray cloth, his sword gone, replaced by a worn pilgrim's staff. His once-vivid aura was bound, sealed, hidden beneath layers of restraint. He walked slowly, unhurried, like a blind man feeling his way forward.
No longer Nyxen.
Not a demon.
Not a hero.
Merely a traveler.
He whispered to himself, voice calm, almost amused, as though he had already buried his past.
"The world doesn't need Nyxen. Let them mourn him."
He tapped the staff against the stones, each sound steady as a heartbeat.
"From now on… I am no one. Just a blind wanderer searching for the scent of beauty."
The wind carried his words across the silent mountain.
And as the sun set on the grave of Nyxen, a new path began—one walked by a faceless monk, veiled in gray, destined to walk between gods and madness.