"What… are you?" he hissed, voice brittle with unease.
Astra didn't answer.
Her feet touched the ground soundlessly, the corrupted wind parting around her like it dared not cling. The mirror in her hand pulsed faintly subtle, steady.
Mo Yeyan's eyes narrowed. The moment he caught sight of the mirror, instinct took over. He staggered back, muscles tensing. His grin faltered.
She began to move slow, deliberate. Circling him. Still silent.
And though her eyes remained unseen, every step felt like a weight pressing down on him. Like she could see through more than just flesh. Mo Yeyan clenched his jaw. The vessel he had taken, Kriya's body tightened, reacting involuntarily to her nearness. He felt it. A tremor in the stolen flesh. Something that made him feel… watched.
Mo Yeyan shifted uneasily, subtly turning his body to keep his reflection from catching the mirror's surface.
That mirror… he thought. No ordinary object. Such darkness should not carry such divine light.
Suddenly, the sound of her footsteps stopped.
He spun around nothing. His frown deepened, and he turned again—She was there, inches away from him. Too close. He couldn't move. Couldn't even breathe. A suffocating paralysis gripped him as if her very presence disrupted the spirit tethering him to the body.
Then gently, Astra raised her hand and began to trace his face.
Mo Yeyan twitched violently at the contact, jerking back, a snarl rising in his throat. "What are you?! How dare you touch my new face?!" His eyes flicked to the mirror in her hand, narrowing. "And that—why are you carrying that cursed thing? What is it? It reeks of something wrong. Divine, Is that what it is?"
Astra tilted her head. "New face…?" She stepped forward, voice sharp now, each word cutting through the air like a blade. "Your new face?!"
Mo Yeyan straightened proudly, brushing his sleeves with an air of arrogance. "Of course. After a thousand years… after all the sacrifices, the pacts, the pain—I earned it. This is mine now!"
"Then why…" she raised the mirror slowly, deliberately, "…don't you take a good look into it?"
Mo Yeyan stared into the mirror, expecting dreading something to happen. For a heartbeat, the surface rippled faintly… but nothing emerged. No backlash. No reflection warped. No surge of rejection. He exhaled, relief flooding through him. He scoffed, dismissive. "It's just a mirror—nothing more."
"Describe it," Astra interrupted, voice low.
He frowned. "What?"
"Describe what you see," she repeated, colder.
Mo Yeyan rolled his eyes but obeyed, glancing back at the mirror, gaze flickering with vanity. His gaze lingered on the reflection. "Look at that…" he murmured, voice laced with reverence. "Eyes like silver fire… lips cut with precision… a nose shaped like it was carved by divinity itself." He leaned in slightly, the corner of his mouth twitching into a smirk. "A face not of mortals… but of power. A face worthy of the gods."
Mo Yeyan scoffed, shaking his head. "No… not the gods. Those pitiful heavenly dogs aren't worthy of it." His voice dripped with disdain. "This face belongs to something far greater."
He tilted his head, admiring the symmetry, the ethereal sheen of his pale skin smooth, untouched, ageless.
"A face carved by triumph," he whispered.
He reached up instinctively, as if to touch the face—just to confirm it was real. But halfway there, his fingers froze. A sudden chill licked across his skin, and something whispered in the back of his mind. His breath caught. And in a rare moment of hesitation, he withdrew his hand. Swiftly.
Astra's lips curled, faintly pleased, as if she'd seen exactly what she wanted.
Without a word, she tossed the mirror aside. It spun once in the air—then shattered against the ground, its pieces scattering like fragments of fate.
"…."
Mo Yeyan blinked, stunned.
He turned to her.
"Come out of him," she said, voice low and cold.
"What?" His expression twisted. "No. I won't!"
"Come out…" she repeated, slower this time.
A chill slithered down his spine. Still, he snarled defiantly, "I said no!"
But the air shifted. Again.
The black mist around Astra thickened coiling with purpose, like it heard her anger and answered in kind. The pressure crashed down on him like a tidal wave of gravity, thick and crushing.
Panicked, Mo Yeyan launched forward, hand flaring with cursed flame, aiming to strike—but she caught him mid-motion.
Her grip didn't bruise. It was gentle. Still he couldn't move. Couldn't breathe.
"Mo Yeyan… come out of him. If you don't want your thousand-year-old soul already withered and barely surviving to be shattered into nothing." And this time… she wasn't asking.
Mo Yeyan froze.
Astra's words slithered into his mind like truth older than memory, older than self. And for a heartbeat, something deep within him… remembered.
His soul shuddered.
And then, without meaning to, without a single word, he obeyed.
The spirit tore itself from Kriya's body in a howl of shadows, a wisp of smoke and venom coiling outward as Astra held firm. The moment it left him, Kriya collapsed forward, unconscious his weight falling into her arms.
She caught him gently, sinking to her knees with him, cradling his head against her shoulder. Her hand pressed softly against his back, grounding him.
But behind them… the black mist grew violent.
Mo Yeyan spirit, now swirling without a host, surged like a storm uncontained. The black mist coiled fast around Mo Yeyan's spirit, which hovered mid-air, flickering in and out of form. The moment the mist touched him, he screamed.
A scream not of rage but of sheer, unbearable agony.
His form spasmed, twisted unnaturally. Veins of dark light split through his ghostly shape, cracking him like glass under fire. The mist didn't just bind, it tried to devour. Pulling him limb by limb, soul thread by soul thread, like something sent to unravel the very essence of what he was.
"No—NO! I FULFILLED THE PACT!" he shrieked. "I GAVE THE BLOOD—I—AGHHHHHH!"
His scream fractured, turned guttural. The black mist wrapped tighter around him like a sentient vice, clawing through the last fragile seams of his soul. His form cracked again, splitting down the center, lightless veins branching like rot.
"STOP—PLEASE!" he wailed. "WHO ARE YOU?! WHAT ARE YOU?!"
"I don't want to perish not like this! Not without seeing it! The fall of this world—THE END OF THIS WORLD!"
The mist hissed, shrieked around him. It began to twist faster, rising like a whirlpool of punishment.
But just as it was about to close over him completely—
It stopped.
Frozen mid-consumption.
Then, like a breath reversing in time, the dark mist peeled away—retreating, uncoiling from his ravaged spirit like smoke sucked back into a void.
Mo Yeyan's spirit shuddered—flickering, half-formed, barely clinging to shape. The remnants of his scream died in the air, replaced by a ragged silence. He hovered in place, trembling, a ghost of the fury he once embodied.
Astra didn't move.
She remained still, cradling Kriya against her, her form shadowed by the retreating mist. Her voice, when it came, was low, cold, and final.
"Scram."
Mo Yeyan's essence quivered. Fractures split further along his spiritual form, as if her words alone threatened to undo him.
"I'm leaving you for a reason," she continued, voice steady, stripped of emotion. "Waste it… and you won't get another."
There was no anger in her tone. No mercy either. Just quiet certainty.
Mo Yeyan didn't question it. Whatever that reason was, he didn't care to challenge it. Not now. Not when his soul still screamed silently from the edges of death. In a flash of darkness, he vanished—fleeing the way only the damned do, as if the air itself might devour him if he lingered a second longer.