The Crimson Peak had never known such fury.
What had once been a sacred mountain, crowned with ancient pines and veiled in perpetual mist, now blazed like a beacon against the night sky. Rivers of molten rock carved scars down its slopes, and the very air shimmered with heat that felt as though it could melt steel. The spiritual beasts that had called this place home for millennia had long since fled, their mournful cries echoing across the valleys as they abandoned their ancestral sanctuary.
At the mountain's summit, where the Temple of Eternal Flames had stood for three thousand years, only ruins remained. The golden tiles had melted into streams of liquid metal, and the jade pillars that had once supported the sacred halls lay shattered like broken bones. The very foundation stones, carved with protective arrays by masters long dead, cracked and crumbled under the overwhelming spiritual pressure that pressed down upon the peak like the weight of heaven itself.
And in the center of this devastation, two figures faced each other.
Bai Zhaoxian stood, body lined with tension, his white robes whipping in the superheated wind, unmarked by ash or flame. His cultivation was such that the inferno around him seemed no more threatening than a gentle breeze. But it was not the fire that had carved those lines of anguish into his face, nor the destruction that had turned his dark eyes to mirrors of pain. It was the man who knelt on the opposite side of the chasm, blood streaming from wounds that should have been fatal, his dark hair falling like a curtain across features that had once been more precious to Bai Zhaoxian than his own life.
Gu Jian.
The name could have fallen from Bai Zhaoxian's lips like a prayer, like a curse, like the last breath of a dying man. How many times had he spoken that name in tenderness? How many nights had he whispered it against heated skin, into the darkness of their shared chambers, into the space between heartbeats where only love existed? With the smallest of smiles on his lips, softened and warmed to the other? Now, Bai Zhaoxian knew, it would taste only of ash and something acidic, representative of the betrayal he felt, of everything sacred turned to poison.
"Zhaoxian..." Gu Jian's voice was barely audible over the roar of the flames, but it carried across the distance between them with the clarity of a funeral bell. Blood frothed at the corners of his mouth, and his hands, those elegant hands that had once traced poetry across Bai Zhaoxian's skin, hands whose nails had dug into Bai Zhaoxian's back on numerous occasions, in the sweetest of ways, now trembled as they pressed against the gaping wound in his chest. "I... I never meant for this to happen."
The words hit Bai Zhaoxian like physical blows. Never meant for this to happen? Never meant for the Azure Sky Sect to burn? Never meant for three hundred disciples to lie dead in the valleys below? Never meant for the Crimson Peak, one of the five sacred mountains, to become a hellscape that would scar the spiritual realm for generations to come?
Or never meant to be caught?
"Liar." The word emerged from Bai Zhaoxian's throat like broken glass. His spiritual energy, usually so controlled, so perfectly contained, rippled around him in waves of silver light that made the very air sing with tension. "You dare speak of intention when the evidence of your betrayal burns around us?"
Gu Jian flinched as if struck, and for a moment, something flickered in his dark eyes, akin to pain, perhaps, or regret. But it was gone so quickly that Bai Zhaoxian wondered if he had, in fact, only imagined it. "The Sacred Flame..." Gu Jian began, his voice growing weaker with each word, wavering. "It was never supposed to... the arrays were meant to contain it, not-"
"Not what?" Bai Zhaoxian's voice cut through the night like a blade, harsh and angry, cold in a way he was certain he had never spoken to his beloved Jian before. "Not destroy everything we've built? Not murder innocents? Not betray the trust of every soul who looked to you as their martial uncle? Our disciples, led to their deaths by you!" He took a step forward, and the stone beneath his feet cracked from the force of his spiritual pressure. "Or not implicate you so thoroughly that even your lover could not deny your guilt?"
The wound in Gu Jian's chest was spreading, dark veins of corruption crawling up his neck like poison ivy. It was the mark of the Cursed Flame, the price of channeling power that mortals were never meant to touch. Bai Zhaoxian had seen it before, in the ancient texts that spoke of cultivators who had dared to steal fire from the gods themselves. The knowledge of how to wield such power was forbidden, sealed away in the deepest vaults of the Azure Sky Sect.
Sealed away where only those trusted so deeply by Bai Zhaoxian could access it, as he was the Sect leader.
Only those like Gu Jian, who had been Bai Zhaoxian's most beloved companion, his cultivation partner, his intended dao companion. Who had been given access to secrets that others would kill for, that others had killed for, in a useless attempt to gain intelligence, and all because Bai Zhaoxian had trusted him with his heart, his body, and his very soul.
"The vault was opened with your spiritual signature," Bai Zhaoxian continued, his voice deadly quiet now. "The protective arrays were dismantled with your techniques. The Sacred Flame was stolen using knowledge that only you and I possess." Each word was a nail in a coffin, each accusation a sword through the heart. "And when our disciples tried to stop you, when they begged you to reconsider, you cut them down like wheat before the scythe."
"No!" The denial tore from Gu Jian's throat with such force that more blood spilled from his lips, almost looking as though it was spit out instead. "I would never- I loved them, they were my martial nephews, my-"
"Your what?" Bai Zhaoxian's laugh was like the sound of breaking crystal. "Your victims? Your sacrifices to whatever dark power you've made a pact with?" He gestured to the chaos around them, to the mountain that burned like a funeral pyre for everyone they had both loved. "Look around you, Gu Jian. Look at what your ambition has wrought."
The truth was written in fire across the landscape. The Azure Sky Sect, which had stood for five thousand years as a beacon of righteousness and cultivation, lay in ruins. Many of the disciples who had trained in these halls, across the Peaks, who had laughed and learned and grown under their guidance, were dead. The sacred texts that had contained the wisdom of generations were ash. The spiritual beasts that had been their allies and guardians fled in what was seeming to be a futile effort of survival or were slaughtered.
And all of it could be traced back to one man's betrayal.
Gu Jian tried to stand, his legs shaking with the effort. The corruption from the Cursed Flame was spreading faster now, and Bai Zhaoxian could see the life draining from his face with each passing moment. "You don't understand," he gasped, reaching out with one trembling hand. "I was trying to save-"
"Save?" Bai Zhaoxian's spiritual energy erupted outward in a wave of silver fire that made the very air scream. "Save what? Save who? Everyone we cared about is dead, Gu Jian. Everyone we swore to protect is gone. What salvation is there in genocide?"
The force of Bai Zhaoxian's power sent Gu Jian tumbling backward, his body hitting the stone with a sickening crack. When he looked up, his eyes were wide with something that might have been terror, but Bai Zhaoxian no longer trusted anything he saw in that familiar face. How many times had those eyes looked at him with love? How many times had they shared wordless conversations across crowded halls, or gazed at each other in the aftermath of passion? How many times had Bai Zhaoxian believed he could read every emotion, every thought, every secret in those dark depths?
All lies. All of it, lies.
"I loved you," Bai Zhaoxian whispered, and the words carried such pain that the flames around them seemed to flicker in sympathy. "I loved you more than my own life, more than my duty, more than my cultivation. I would have given you anything, Gu Jian. Anything. All you had to do was ask."
Gu Jian's face crumpled, and for a moment he looked like the young man Bai Zhaoxian had first met years ago. Brilliant, passionate, and idealistic, if not very naive. The young man who had stood by his side through every trial, who had shared his dreams of making the cultivation world a better place. The young man who had held him through the long nights when the weight of leadership became too much to bear.
"Zhaoxian," he whispered, and there was such longing in his voice that Bai Zhaoxian felt his resolve waver. "I love you still. I have always loved you. Everything I did, I did for-"
"For power." Bai Zhaoxian's voice was like ice, freezing the words in Gu Jian's throat, though he still worked to pull himself back up. "Don't insult me with lies, not now. I know what you've done. I know what you've become." He raised his hand, and spiritual energy gathered around his fingers like liquid starlight. "The Cursed Flame may have given you strength, but it has also marked you. I can see the darkness in your spiritual core, the corruption that eats at your soul like poison. You are no longer the man I loved. Perhaps you never were."
The truth Bai Zhaoxian believed hit Gu Jian like a physical blow. He doubled over, coughing up more blood, and when he looked up, his eyes were hollow with despair. "Then kill me," he whispered. "If that's what you believe. If this is what you think I deserve, then end it. End me."
Bai Zhaoxian's hand trembled, the spiritual energy around his fingers flickering like a candle flame in the wind. It would be so easy. One strike and it would all be over. The betrayal, the pain, the memories that would haunt him for the rest of his unnaturally long life…all of it could end with a single moment of violence.
But as he looked at Gu Jian, broken, bleeding, and dying, all he could see was the man who had once been his everything. The man who had taught him to laugh, who had shown him that strength could be gentle, that power could be used to protect rather than destroy. The man who had been his anchor in a world that demanded perfection, his shelter in a life that allowed no weakness.
The man who had betrayed everything they had built together.
"I can't," Bai Zhaoxian said, and the admission tore from his throat like a physical thing. "Heavens help me, I can't. Even now, even after everything, I…"
He never finished the sentence. The mountain shuddered beneath their feet, and a crack appeared in the stone between them, widening with each passing second. The spiritual energy that had been contained within the peak was destabilizing, and the entire mountain was beginning to collapse in on itself.
"Zhaoxian!" Gu Jian struggled to his feet, swaying dangerously close to the edge of the chasm. "You have to go! The mountain-"
"The mountain is falling apart because of you!" Bai Zhaoxian snarled, but even as he spoke, he was moving, his body instinctively preparing to leap across the gap. Even after everything, even knowing what Gu Jian had done, his first instinct was still to save him.
But Gu Jian saw him coming, and something shifted in his expression, like resignation, perhaps, or a kind of terrible peace. "No," he said softly, taking a step backward. "Let me go, Zhaoxian. Let me carry this burden alone."
"Jian, don't-"
But it was too late. Gu Jian smiled, and for a moment Bai Zhaoxian saw him as he had on their first night together. Young, beautiful, and full of impossible dreams, looking at Bai Zhaoxian as if he had carved a piece of his soul out and handed it to Gu Jian on a silver platter.
"I'm sorry," Gu Jian whispered, the momentary facade dissipating, and then he was falling, his body disappearing into the molten heart of the mountain.
"NO!"
Bai Zhaoxian's scream echoed across the dying peak, raw and primal and broken. He threw himself forward, his hand reaching desperately for empty air, but there was nothing to catch, nothing to save. Gu Jian was gone, swallowed by the flames that had been his final weapon, his final betrayal, his final choice.
The mountain continued to collapse around him, the mountain's self inflicted erosion slowing now that it'd gotten what it wanted, but Bai Zhaoxian knelt at the edge of the chasm, staring down into the fire that had claimed the only person he had ever loved. The only person he had ever trusted. The only person who had ever truly mattered.
The person who had destroyed everything.
Hours later, when the leaders of the other peaks in the Azure Sky Sect arrived to survey the damage, they found Bai Zhaoxian still kneeling in the ruins. His white robes were caked with ash, his silver hair streaked with soot, but his eyes were dry. He had no more tears to shed, no more pain to express. There was only a vague sort of emptiness now, a hollow space not so dissimilar to when he found himself thinking of his long dead family for too long.
"Sect Leader Bai," one of them said gently, approaching with the caution one might use around a wounded animal. "We've searched the wreckage. There's no sign of Gu Jian's body."
Bai Zhaoxian didn't look up. He couldn't bear to see the mixture of pity and suspicion in their eyes, and couldn't endure the questions that would inevitably come. How had he not known? How had he not seen the darkness growing in his lover's heart? How had he failed so completely in his duty to protect the cultivation world?
"He's dead," he said simply, his voice oddly calm and bland. "The Cursed Flame consumed him. There would be nothing left to find."
It was true, in a way. The man he had loved was dead, had perhaps been dead for years while something else wore his face. The corruption of the Cursed Flame left nothing untouched, nothing pure. Whatever Gu Jian had become in his final moments, it hadn't been the man who had once promised to stand beside Bai Zhaoxian until the end of time.
"The Azure Sky Sect is no more," he continued, finally rising to his feet. His legs were unsteady, but his voice was firm. "The disciples are dead, the halls are destroyed, the sacred texts are ash. I have failed in my duty as sect leader. I will withdraw from the cultivation world and enter closed-door cultivation until the heavens see fit to end my existence."
"Sect Leader Bai, that's not necessary-"
"It is." Bai Zhaoxian turned to face them, and they took an involuntary step back from the emptiness in his silver eyes. "I loved him. I trusted him. I gave him access to powers that should have remained sealed, and he used that trust to bring about this catastrophe. Three hundred disciples are dead because of my failure. The cultivation world is diminished, lost of its supposedly greatest Sect, because of my weakness. I will not compound that failure by clinging to authority I no longer deserve."
With that, he walked forward, towards them, and then around his martial siblings. He made his way away from the ruins of everything he had ever built, everything he had ever loved. Behind him, the Crimson Peak continued to burn, and would burn for months to come, even as his martial siblings would surely start to rebuild. A monument to betrayal, a scar on the world that would never fully heal, in Bai Zhaoxian's eyes.
Bai Zhaoxian did not look back.
But if he had, he might have seen the way the flames flickered in one particular spot, as if disturbed by something moving within their depths. He might have noticed how the spiritual energy in that area swirled in patterns that seemed almost deliberate, almost purposeful. He might have felt the faint pulse of a familiar presence, weakened but not entirely extinguished.
He might have realized that some things are too stubborn to die, even when death would be a mercy.
But Bai Zhaoxian was already gone, carrying his grief and his guilt like chains around his heart. And deep within the burning mountain, something that had once been Gu Jian stirred in the darkness, trapped between life and death, between love and betrayal, between the man he had been and the monster Bai Zhaoxian seemed so certain he had become.
The wheels of fate had been set in motion, and only the gods could say where they would finally come to rest.