Within the throne of broken gods, Cruel Virtue met with Towering Pride, and the world did tremble.

A blade that was a mountain swung with force to topple cities, the wind of its passing a bellow of its wielder's righteousness. His proclamation to the world that he was right, and truth. That all others could but bow before him. His blade was vengeance, and all the blood that it did spill was righteous.

And the throne that was a grave shuddered, but did not shatter. A hundred hundred layers, the artifice of ancients, palaces and workshops and homes alike given unto dust, cracked and trembled but did not break, for they had withstood much worse tantrums.

Cruel Virtue was sundered, shredded, split unto a thousand pieces, mocking eyes and knives of night. It whispered numbers, it whispered names, and though they splashed like water upon the hide of Towering Pride, they burned and burned where they met the wounds that had already been struck.

Though Virtue could not touch upon pride, cruel knives could pierce the foundations upon which it rested. Treasures, slaves, twisted dependant love, these things could be taken, bonds broken, paths offered. Cruel virtue took his treasures, mocked Pride without mercy. In the heart of Towering Pride, vengeance roared with a heat to sear away the clouds.

And the Archivist of Vice spread her hands, and showed to him a thousand thousand flames piteous and small, who roared all the same, and in the same voice. Each one the child of his own flame. A million, million flames, his predecessors in ruinous tantrum. Her quill pierced his eye, drove past rationalization, self righteousness, and wrath, stabbed deep into the man who still dreamed beneath the crown. No different, no different at all. Merely a man, a lucky man and no more.

And when Towering pride Shuddered, his hide split by irrefutable proof of his mediocrity, his common-ness. Cruel Virtue drew Order unto a blade of silver and moonstone, and extinguished the conflagration which had devoured so many.

Sima Jiao stood at the peak of Blackglow Peak, the broken Throne Mountain where the bandit king and self proclaimed Emperor of a new age had gathered his armies, and looked out upon devastation. So far as a mortal eye could see and further, the ground was rent apart. Flows of superheated liquid stone ran in the trenches torn in the earth, steam escaped from broken wells with sounds like the wails of the damned. The Throne peak itself was scorched, its ruined interior in even further disarray, the structures the man’s followers had built were ash. Many of them were ash.

And at his feet was a shrunken husk. Curled in on itself, armor of gleaming gold reduced to slag, proud face a crumbling ruin, the talisman greatsword he had wielded shattered at the hilt, collapsed by a broken hand. He nudged the husk with his foot, and watched it drift away into ash.

Despite three centuries of life, just a boy inside the shell of a man. A child lashing out. Never to grow into anything more. Such was cultivation. And so many had died for and with him. Not all had allowed him to save them. Even for this miserable arrogant child, some had truly thought to love him. Not that he had allowed the man to see that, for it might have allowed the mortal blow to be defended against.

He brushed a gray thumb along the dusty edge of the equally gray dagger he held. Feeling the gritty, crumbly texture of the moonstone. There was no trace of the blood it had spilled, physically or otherwise. There never was.

Behind him, stretching for kilometers under the light of the moon, his shadow writhed, titanic and shapeless full of eyes and whispering mouths. Under it, fires extinguished, earth began to move. By morning there would be no battle here. It was strange, most men, once even himself, treasured the battle. He had begun to treasure the cleaning.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

What a ridiculous man he was.

“All men are ridiculous, and all women too, you know this well,” Xin said. There was no theatrics. She was simply there resting her hands on his shoulders.

“It’s absurd,” he said, maintaining this avatar as it was. Giving her something to touch, as she did with her own body. It was horribly inefficient and pointless, a voice whispered it scratched at his insides like sandpaper. He ignored it anyway, because it was the smaller itch, and because he wanted too.

“You’ll need to be more specific, Jiao,” Xin said, leaning against his back. He could feel her smile.

“That the most common threats to the Empire are the men most like its founder,” Jiao scoffed. It was enlightening, full access to the imperial archives. To the deepest depths where the sheer density and age of stored knowledge warped the world and bled into the realms of thoughts and dreams. That all of their great works, their civilization, stemmed from such a simplistic and thoughtless man.

There were many who had built the Peaks, built the Empire, but the one remembered and revered by all was the bloody handed, lusting tyrant.

“It is the nature of things, for men to put reverence onto one, rather than many. For the person to be forgotten, for their image to remain,” Xin said, now beside him. “You know this already, is it only the fading heat of battle that makes it more irksome?”

“Maybe,” Sima Jiao said idly, spinning his dagger in his hand, the deadly glittering particles of moon dust casting a faint silver halo around his fingers. “I do not know if I can reach the end of my path Xin.”

She stilled beside him, a phantom wind stirring her blue and red dress. The original was long gone. He’d bought it for her as a jape, back when they’d begun. Something ridiculous to match his wastrels persona. “You made oaths, Jiao, beyond even your own cultivation.”

She would know, she was the symbol of those oaths. But now with An retired to his final round of cultivation he doubted. There was so much to be done, and yet his Prince wanted to leave him behind, when he had centuries yet to rule and plan? Would the ripples of ascension really be so much better? He could not even ask, because the perfect emperor did not speak of doubts. Justice was sure. He felt something in him straining, on the verge of snapping as he laboriously arranged the thoughts that had been stirring. It felt like dredging up leviathans from an ocean trench, so deeply had he buried them.

“I do not think virtue and the Sage’s Empire can coexist.”

He shuddered, a spasm of pain twinging through the entirety of his being. The shadow behind him let out a silent keening wail that sent ripples through the immaterial and put spirits to flight.

Xin gave him a horrified look and grasped his hand. “Jiao! What are you saying? Everything you and I have done, these centuries, what your prince has done. Are you saying they are worthless?”

“No, they had value, have value,” he said through gritted teeth. “But I can’t pursue their end. Xiang will not pursue her Fathers ends, not really. ”

She looked pained, withdrawing. “Then…”

He caught her hand before she could back away, futile physical gesture for the both of them. Their essence’s burned against each other in the air and the earth, a thousand thousand eyes peering into each other, yearning for understanding. “I’ll be breaking one oath, but… would you make another with me?”

Xin sighed, rested her face in her hand. “I am surprised my Mother has not taken me to smite you, you foolish man.”

“I shall take it as approval,” he said, drawing his expression into a now unfamiliar smirk. It was a struggle to remember what he was like once. “Xin of the Black Moon, will you be my wife?”

“It will be recognized by no one.”

“It will be recognized by us.”

Her lips moved, but though there was no sound, he could feel her answer, in everything he was.

The Moon above witnessed their oath, and sealed it, unto death.