The stars were bleeding.
Ying Yue saw it from the high terrace of the Celestial Vault. It wasn't a sight for just anyone. You needed a spirit that could reach out and touch the fabric of the night sky. Hers could. She had trained for a hundred years to do just that.
Up here, the world was silent. The only sound was the faint hum of the cosmos, a vibration you felt in your bones more than you heard with your ears. Below, the mortal realm was a swirl of light and life, but up here, it was just her, the stars, and the High Elder.
Bai Zhen stood as still as a mountain, his long white robes untouched by a breeze that didn't exist. His eyes, the color of a cloudy dawn, were fixed on the constellation of the Serpent of Chaos. Its red light pulsed like a dying heart.
"It is getting worse," Ying Yue said. Her voice was soft, but it broke the heavy quiet. "The Serpent bleeds faster. The threads of fate are coming undone."
The Elder turned his head slowly. "You see well, Ying Yue. But seeing is not the same as understanding."
She stepped forward, the blue and white of her disciple's robes a stark splash of color against the black stone of the terrace. "The ancient texts are clear, Elder. When the Serpent bleeds, the Voidborn is awakened. The one who will end the world."
"And you think you know the answer?" Bai Zhen's voice was calm, but it held the weight of centuries. "To read a prophecy is easy. To walk the path it describes is another thing."
"The answer is to stop the problem before it starts," she said, her voice full of the confidence of youth. "The Voidborn is not a god yet. He is a man. A prince of the Northern Wastes named Xue Lian. If he is killed, the prophecy is broken. The Serpent will sleep."
The Elder's face showed a flicker of something, a deep sadness that made him look even older. "You speak of killing a man as if you are pulling a weed from a garden. Do you know his story?"
"I know he is a monster in the making," she said, her chin held high. "They call him the Ice Prince. He was born with a soul as empty as the void. He rules his land with fear. The world will be safer without him."
"Stories are written by the winners," Bai Zhen said, pushing himself to his feet. "You see the monster you expect to see. You do not see the boy they threw to the wolves as a child. You do not see the prince whose own mother was afraid to touch him. You do not see the man who has only known pain, so he learned to give it to others first."
Ying Yue was quiet. She had read the stars and the old books. She had not read the man.
"The power inside him is not his," the Elder went on, his voice filling the space between them. "It is a piece of a great demon that shattered at the beginning of time. It looks for a soul full of pain, a soul so empty it will welcome the power to burn everything down. Xue Lian is that soul. But he is also its prisoner."
"Then we can perform an exorcism," Ying Yue said, grasping for a better way. "We can capture him and use the Sky-Sealing Array to purge the demon from him."
"The demon and his soul are woven together now," Bai Zhen said. "To pull one out would be to tear him apart. He would die, and the demon would be free. The prophecy would happen anyway. There is no way to separate the man from the monster without destroying both."
The silence that followed was heavy. It pressed down on Ying Yue, crushing the simple, clear world she had always believed in. Good and evil. Light and dark. It was all a messy, ugly grey.
"Then what is the answer?" she finally asked, her voice small. "If we cannot kill him and we cannot save him, what do we do? Watch the world end?"
"There is a third path," the Elder said. He looked at her, and his gaze was so intense it felt like he could see right through her. "It requires a different kind of sacrifice. Not a weapon of steel, but a weapon of the soul."
He waved a hand, and an image appeared in the air between them. It was a young woman, her face pale and sad. She was pretty, but her beauty was fading, like a flower in a vase.
"This is Ye Qingwei," the Elder said. "In one week, she will be married to Prince Xue Lian. It is a political marriage, and she is terrified. She has heard the stories of the Ice Prince. She is a gentle soul, not meant for a brutal court."
Ying Yue frowned. "What does she have to do with this?"
"Everything," Bai Zhen said. "The heavens have shown me a way. A soul can be traded. A spirit can be sent down the river of time to live in a body that is not its own. It is a forbidden art, and it will cost you dearly. But it is our only hope."
He looked at Ying Yue, his eyes locking onto hers. "You, Ying Yue, will take the place of Ye Qingwei. You will go to the Northern Wastes. You will marry the Voidborn."
Ying Yue stared at him, her mind a blank. "Marry him? Elder, I don't understand. My mission is to—"
"Your mission is to find the crack in the prophecy," Bai Zhen said, his voice hard. "The prophecy says the Voidborn will be awakened by a final, great betrayal. That is what will break his heart and free the demon. It is a future set in stone. But every stone has a weak spot. You will be that weak spot."
He stepped closer, his presence filling her senses. "You will not go there to kill him, Ying Yue. You will go there to love him. You will be the one person in his life who does not betray him. You will show him a warmth he has never known. You will melt the ice around his heart. And by doing that, you will change the very nature of his soul from the inside out."
The full weight of his words crashed down on her. To not just live with the monster, but to love him? To tie her life to the man who was supposed to destroy everything? It was a fate worse than death.
"And if I fail?" she asked, her voice shaking.
"If you fail," Bai Zhen said, his face grim, "you will be the first to die when the world ends. And your soul will be gone forever." He paused. "But if you succeed… you will not be a hero who killed a monster. You will be a gardener who saved a dying rose, and in doing so, saved the whole garden from its thorns."
He put a hand on her shoulder. It felt as heavy as a mountain. "The choice is yours, Ying Yue. Stay here in the safety of the heavens and watch the world fall, or walk into the storm and become the eye of it. Will you be the world's killer, or its savior?"
Ying Yue looked from the Elder's face to the bleeding star in the sky. The fate of everyone was in her hands. It was a terrible, impossible choice. But she was a disciple of the Azure Sky Sect. She was trained for the impossible.
She took a deep breath, the cold air filling her lungs.
"I will go," she said, her voice steady with a new kind of strength. "I will become Ye Qingwei. And I will face the Ice Prince."