Fear nothing but yourself. You are your own worst enemy. -Teachings from the Heaven’s Blade Sect after the fall of their three greatest masters.

  Fog, a deep black smoke which injected cold despair deep into my bones wrapped me in an inescapable vice. I was choking, gasping for air, unable to see or hear anything but my own screams and the bitter voices that rose louder than I’d known in recent years. I knew without having to see the world beyond my own mind. The part of me that was filled with rage and insanity, driven to the very edge by the vast emptiness of the void with all its voices echoing unto eternity…it was back, and the reunion would be violent and bloody.

  I was shoved deep, wrapped in chains of fog and moonlight, and left to die inside my own mind. I couldn’t even see the world beyond, nor the actions my darker self was taking upon it. All I could do was hope that Satoro caught enough of my plea to know the only way forward. He would have to kill me. There was no other way to stop the monster before it became too powerful.

  From there, I knew nothing more than the deafening roar of the voices. I sifted through them, searching for the quiet ones that sang of safety and peace.

  But there were none. The voices of destruction and pain were too loud. It was as if I’d spent the last two years living in a peaceful valley with a lazy river flowing through it, entirely unaware of the dam built to keep me safe. That dam was broken now, and I was drowning. Connections I’d forgotten I had were reestablished and amplified by the Echo Chamber in my soul until I could hear nothing but raw noise.

  “I’m sorry, Yoru. I couldn’t reach you after all.”

  Xinya’s voice cut through the noise. It was only there for a moment, but in that single moment, I heard her fear, and I knew that she was afraid of my dark alter ego. Was he trying to kill her? Surely, even he wouldn’t stoop so low as to kill the girl we’d worked so hard to protect, who meant so much to us.

  But then I remembered. He didn’t care. He was little more than the monster who laid waste to entire kingdoms just because their leaders were a threat. He was unfeeling, uncaring, and he would not hesitate to kill a little girl.

  For a brief instant, Xinya’s broken body flashed before my mind’s eye. She lay at my feet, as my maddened laughter filled the air. Next to her, was Lin. He wasn’t defeated yet, but that didn’t matter. He soon would be.

  “No! Stop!” I shrieked into the fog. Darkness surrounded me and bitter chains bit into my skin on every side. I didn’t know how, but I knew that I’d do anything to get back to them, even if I had to split my soul to do it. Lin and Xinya would live. They would not die to my mistakes like so many others!

  In a burst of qi, I dissolved my body. Chains fell from my form and into the nothing space of my mind. When I reformed myself, I was already running, sprinting into the darkness where I knew that my wicked self was pulling the strings on his demented puppet show.

  In a flash, I was back in my own body, seeing through my eyes. I couldn’t control my body. My limbs moved of their own power, but at least I could see.

  A bolt of lavender shot past me, and I cheered, seeing that Xinya wasn’t just alive, but mostly unharmed!

  “Nice try, little girl,” my voice growled. “I might not be able to see the blessed Sword Saint coming, but you lack his-”

  Pain flowered across my back, and I felt the Darkened Moon’s frustration. Somehow, Lin had found a way to counter Flash Forward. I didn’t know how, and frankly, I didn’t care. What mattered was that he’d done it! He stood a chance!

  Flash Back, however…

  Never before had I been so frustrated by my own proficiency. If the vision was to be believed, that strike should have been lethal, something that would have killed me, save for thirteen blessed seconds of qi weaving that shattered reality and reduced the strike to a mere fraction of its true potential. Lin wouldn’t be able to win, not against an enemy who cheated as blatantly as I always did.

  Lin was moving again, and I recognized the use of Mist-bound Moonlight. My dark self was no fool, though. He knew that Xinya and Lin were planning something. Rather than be caught in the blow, he mounted Eclipse and soared overhead, rallying his qi for Heaven’s Rain.

  I watched helplessly, begging Lin to find a clever solution, to escape the trap that was closing around him with every moment that passed.

  “Yoru! Remember what Hanako said!” Xinya’s voice sliced through the voices, leaving the Darkened Moon confused. He didn’t know Hanako, but I did.

  “Take care of them both…for me,” those were her words.

  I wanted to scream my frustration. Lin was in trouble, in danger of dying by my own unholy claws, and I could do nothing! This was worse than the memories of seeing towns destroyed, worse than the thirty thousand years of hell I endured at the hands of the Labyrinth. Fate had not been written, yet I was helpless to stop it, and I screamed my rage for all the void to hear.

  “Where is the safety you promised!?” I howled. “Where is the sanctuary when I need it for those I care for!?”

  My qi cracked. The Darkened Moon did, too. Heaven’s Rain faltered. Lin was still standing.

  “How…what did you do to me?” the Darkened Moon muttered before speaking directly to me. “You are just a fragment!”

  “I’m more whole than you are!” I screamed back. “I have a family. I have loved ones. I am healing while you are stuck reliving your pain and reopening your wounds!”

  “‘You are more than your titles.’” Xinya said through the fog, reaching both of us.

  “No, I don’t know any of you!” he screamed. Eclipse drifted slowly to the ground. “I don’t know any of this! I won’t let any of you get in my head!”

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  “I know he’s still in there!”

  “I’m here, Xinya!” I shouted. I didn’t know if she heard me or not, but I didn’t wait for an answer.

  I rallied my qi, focusing entirely on doing anything I could to stop my dark self from using his techniques to kill my family.

  “You have to fight whatever this evil is that binds you,” Lin’s voice was laced with qi. The binding on my core squeezed, but while the Darkened Moon choked and gasped, I could only think about how much I could have kissed Lin for his cleverness. Turning my greatest weakness into the strength that would help me to win. This was one order I would not be disobeying, even if it killed me.

  “Yoru, I’m scared. I want my Uncle back.” Xinya’s voice cut clear through the voices, hushing them until they were a dull roar.

  I watched myself fall to the ground, screaming with pain and confusion. This was my opportunity. I would not let it slip through my grasp!

  Void qi gathered, and I imagined a battlefield like the one that existed outside. The armillary shone its baleful light over the field, locking out any chance that my darker self could use the blooded techniques that would give him an edge. Nearby, our body lay still against the ground, voidlight threads encasing it in a cocoon that, should I fail to regain control, would inflict such misfortune upon him that hopefully, it would end us both once and for all.

  Then there was me. Shadows of the void dotted with beautiful voidlight stars twisted lazily around my feet. Across from me, my darker self glared at me with hatred.

  “Well, I should have known it would come to this,” he growled.

  “Your voice sounds hoarse. You should lay off the tormented screams,” I answered calmly. “You’ll ruin your perfect image at this rate.”

  “Oh yes, because all of us can be as lucky as the one who escaped.”

  I shrugged. “You’re just jealous because I’m glowing.” I flipped my hair, sparkles of voidlight dislodging and dissipating into the air.

  “You’re a disgrace to everything I stand for.” He took three menacing steps forward, but I didn’t flinch. “You’re more the void’s toy than I ever was. You really believe that the Hated One’s descendent is on your side? Look how quickly they turned on you.”

  “They turned on you. Not me,” I corrected. “I’ll buy her a bag of sweets later for having good judgement. I’m proud of her for reaching me with her voice.”

  “You really are the void’s toy. The Hated One created that child to destroy you.”

  “What can I say? She’s cute. Reminds me of Chouko.”

  Dark Yoru snarled, looking more and more like a rabid wolf than the ethereal beauty I pictured myself as. “If you spent more time remembering what happened to our sister, and less time listening to the void, you wouldn’t have been so easily taken over!”

  A silver blade appeared in Dark Yoru’s hand, and he lunged forward. I leaned back, letting the blade swipe cleanly over my head. In the same motion, I put down a hand, kicking my feet up to slam into Dark Yoru’s chin before flipping back to my feet. Before he had a chance to regroup, I channeled the voidlight within me. A bow of solid light formed in my hand, just in time for me to whip the end around to slice across his face.

  Dark Yoru howled in pain as a blue-silver gash formed over his cheek. He staggered back, and I put an arrow to the shimmering string, training the arrow on him.

  “You are a mistake!” he shouted. “I never should have created something as weak-spirited as you!”

  “I’m not the mistake!” My arrow flew, slamming into his shoulder and bursting into a shower of voidlight threads that began to wrap around him. “You are the mistake! The greatest mistake of my past that I have to live with! It’s thanks to you that I’m the monster hiding under the bed of every child who’s ever heard the name of the Darkened Moon! You defiled my name, you ruined my life, and it’s thanks to you that Jinshi locked me in hell for thirty thousand years!”

  Dark Yoru lunged forward with his blade. “He never understood the sacrifices we made!” This time, when he swiped at me, he aimed for my middle. I lowered my bow, blocking the sword with a limb. He grabbed my weapon, gripping it with tight claws.

  “We never gave him the chance to understand!” I hissed. “He loved us, and we threw that back at him. We isolated ourselves, just as the void said to! If anyone is their toy, it’s you for failing to understand the powers you were dealing with!”

  He thrust his sword forward, but before it could land, I dissolved my body. Rather than smoke, I became pure voidlight. In this mindscape, I moved with ease, darting under his sleeves and reappearing behind him.

  “That was my great mistake,” I said sadly. My double twisted around, thrusting his sword with a desperation that grew with every strike. “I didn’t let others in. I isolated myself, which only gave the void more power to drive me to insanity.”

  “No, you’re wrong!” Dark Yoru shrieked. He lunged at me again, but it never landed. I dissolved into light which crawled up his arm like a snake. Before he knew it, I had reformed behind him with my arm around his neck and an arrow poised over his heart.

  I felt his tension as the sight of the arrow shaft filled his vision. It looked a lot like the nail that was driven into my heart by Jinshi when I was locked in the Labyrinth. This arrow would serve a similar purpose.

  “You are my mistake,” I repeated softly in his ear. “And, I will not let my mistakes harm anyone else. If that makes me the Darkened Moon, then so be it. I will show that my light is a different kind now. My misfortune belongs to no one but myself, and that means that you are no longer welcome here. Take your destruction and return to the hell that spawned you!”

  I plunged the arrow into his heart, pinning him between the arrow and my body. He howled in agony as threads of voidlight spread like veins beneath his skin. The chains that wrapped around my limbs suddenly slackened and shifted, falling from my body and wrapping themselves around him instead. They constricted like snakes around him until his screams were cut short. Then, with a cracking of bone, he went still and dissolved into black mist.

  Without warning, I was thrust back into my real body, this time with myself in control. Every inch of my body ached with pain, but the qi around me was still shifting. I forced my eyes open, only to see a dark cloud of malicious qi roiling and writhing overhead. The chains that bound me in the real world shimmered and snapped, dissipating into light which shot to the cloud, wrapping it round and round until it was thoroughly bound.

  Then, with one last maddened scream, the cloud was sucked back into the portal created by Song Qiu. Silver, gold, green, blue, and brown threads stitched across the mouth of the portal, pulling it closed until the hole in reality was thoroughly closed.

  “Is it over?” Lin whispered, coming to kneel next to me. “Is it you?”

  “I hope so,” I muttered. “Because he wasn’t nearly pretty enough to be me.”

  “That’s him, alright,” Xinya said with a laugh. “Vain as ever.”

  I didn’t have the energy left for a clever retort, and Lin must have seen it. He put his hand under my arm and pulled me to my feet. I leaned on him.

  “Let’s go home, okay?” I whispered. “I’m too tired for anything else, and I don’t really want to talk about what just happened.” The last thing I needed was for anyone to continue poking at the secrets of the Labyrinth. Some secrets were meant to remain buried, even from my own mind.

  “We can’t go home just yet, Yoru,” Lin answered.

  I raised my eyes to see where he was looking, only to find a crowd had formed. Shattered Moon disciples stared at me expectantly.

  What to say, though? As far as they knew, their god had just appeared before them. They’d seen everything. If I lied to them, continuing to play into the backstory I’d built over the last year, would they even believe it?

  If they did, was that something I even wanted? Even as I considered the lie to feed them, that I was just the descendent and the real Ascendent had used our blood connection to take me over, a weariness dragged at my heart with just as much weight as the chains had done to my body.

  Perhaps it was finally time to let that weight go.

  Summoning enough strength to stand on my own, I faced them down. “I am Tsuyuki Yoru, the Darkened Moon and Demon of Misfortune. As the demon to whom your sect has sworn allegiance, I demand that you stand down immediately.”