Martial arts, it's the shadow beneath every breath I take, yet I've barely spoken of it. If you ask me what martial arts are, I'd answer: a tool for killing at its core, but it adds a colour that can't be described to a grey world. They call it a "discipline," but the truth is closer to a mirror, showing you every weakness you try to hide, every lie you tell yourself. And there is no greater lie than thinking it's a game of honour.
That day, standing opposite Seo Hyang, I felt the weight of everything pressing down. Seo Hyang's gaze didn't burn with anger, it was a quiet graveyard where I was already buried.
My hands trembled, not from exhaustion, but under the crushing weight of every failure, each one etched deep into muscle and bone. Two days of loss, fury, and broken trust only left broken pieces. No time for closure. No time for grief. Only the relentless march of fate and the cold edge of a blade waiting to speak.
"We never had a choice. Like puppets with severed strings, dragged into a dance neither of us wanted but both were forced to learn."
I wanted to believe there was another way. A sliver of light beyond this darkness. But each breath drew me deeper into the void and silence was my only answer.
I let my internal energy ripple outward, flowing like dark silk to cloak my hands in venom's cold embrace.
She drew her blade with a breath, soft yet decisive, cutting the air between us like a whispered secret stretched thin across a fragile thread woven from steel and shadow.
Her sword sang a silver ribbon through the dying light, cold, sharp, a fractured promise suspended in twilight.
I surged forward, a shadow unfolding, body low and coiled like a spring. My hands rose, steady as midnight, weaving a silent challenge in the narrowing space between us.
She met me with a swift block, the clash sparking the first words of our final conversation.
"I already miss your smile."
I leapt back, carving distance to reclaim control, but she responded with a crazed smile, launching herself at me, her sword arcing for my head. I blocked, hands steady as stone.
"I'll miss your poisonous tongue."
I gathered the venom in my throat, exhaling a mist that curled and writhed between us, silent death suspended in the air. She twisted, light as smoke, vaulting above it, untouched.
Her eyes burned with something I couldn't name, rage? Sadness? The ghost of all we'd lost.
I circled, feeling the poison pulse beneath my skin, a dark promise waiting to bloom.
She slashed again, this time aiming to disarm, to cut my wrists, the veins where the venom might seep.
I dodged, twisting in the shadows, fingers flicking out with sudden strikes, precise, cruel, seeking pressure points, veins, tender flesh.
A sharp cry tore from her lips as the poison took root, dulling her limbs, slowing the storm of her blade.
But she was steel forged in fire, never broken, only bent.
With a roar, she surged, sword flashing like lightning, cutting arcs of desperation and grace.
I stumbled back, pain flaring across my chest, her blade grazed me, slicing skin and muscle.
Blood bloomed, hot and insistent.
And yet, beneath the pain, the poison whispered its cruel lullaby.
The air thickened with poison and steel, each breath a gamble, each movement a knife's edge.
She steadied herself, eyes blazing despite the venom coursing through her veins. Her voice came low, laced with pain and bitter resolve:
"You think this ends with me broken? You're the one who'll bleed forever, Woon."
I wiped blood from my lip, voice steady, colder than the mist around us:
"Bleeding's proof of life. You forget, I don't need to survive. I only need to outlast."
She lunged again, faster now, desperate. Her sword sang as it sliced through the shadows, seeking flesh.
I ducked, twisting away, my hands darting out, not to strike, but to spread poison, flicking toxin into her exposed neck.
Her eyes widened. For a moment, the unyielding blade faltered.
"Mercy? From you?" she spat, staggering back, voice shaking but fierce. "You think poison is less cruel than a sword's kiss?"
I stepped forward, voice dropping to a harsh whisper:
"Poison doesn't lie. It tells the truth, slowly, surely. Just like you will, when you're broken."
Her gaze locked with mine, raw and unguarded:
"Then break me."
Her next strike was a blur, a desperate gambit. I caught her wrist mid-air, fingers like iron clamps. She struggled, but the venom spread, slow fire beneath her skin.
I pressed my forehead against hers, voice tight with everything I hadn't dared say:
"You were never my enemy, Seo Hyang. But in this world... kindness is the weakness that kills."
Her breath hitched. A single tear traced the poison's path.
"And yet... even the cruellest heart bleeds."
Her legs trembled beneath her, the poison creeping like ice through her veins, freezing her strength one shard at a time. The sword's weight was a cruel anchor, a reminder of every choice she'd made, every lie she'd told herself to survive.
I didn't hesitate.
I moved like a shadow and venom intertwined, swift and merciless. My hands, no longer just weapons but extensions of the poison itself, struck with precise cruelty.
A sickening snap echoed as I crushed her knee, the joint folding like brittle bone beneath the relentless force.
She fell, a broken marionette, sword clattering from numb fingers to the cold stone.
Her eyes, wide with shock and a flicker of pain, met mine.
The light was gone, replaced by something darker, colder. The kindness she'd worn like armour shattered, replaced by a void carved by agony and betrayal.
I knelt beside her, voice a bitter whisper barely audible over the pounding in my chest.
"This is no mercy, Seo Hyang."
"It's the end of the girl who believed kindness was strength."
Her lips parted in a silent scream, a scream swallowed by the void between us.
I stood, the weight of what I'd done settling like ash.
That night, I did not win.
Victory is a lie told by survivors to make the carnage feel righteous. What I did was endure, long enough, cold enough, cruel enough to become the necessary thing.
I remember her eyes more than her blade.
Eyes that once held constellations of faith, now dimmed into a mirror of my own collapse.
People speak of martial arts as if it is honor wearing form.
But martial arts, as I learned that night, is the will to impose meaning where none exists.
It is the abyss staring back and then being shattered because you refused to blink.
I did not just kill Seo Hyang.
I shattered a symbol.
A dream.
The last vestige of the part of me that believed in gentler outcomes.
And yet…
I do not regret it.
For too long I clung to the illusion that love, or loyalty, or mercy, could be sharpened into weapons against inevitability.
But the Cult does not tolerate hope.
And neither does the world.
Hope is the opiate of the soft. And I have been reborn of venom and necessity.
She said she would kill me to save what I was.
But I survived to become what I must be.
One must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.
But the stars I birth now dance in fire, not light.
She was my chaos. And I burned it.
And so, I am free, not because I escaped the Cult's grip, but because I destroyed the last tether I had to something pure.
I do not hate her.
Hate is for those still enslaved by meaning.
But I remember her.
Not as a sister.
Not as a martyr.
As a necessary sacrifice in the forging of this self.
There is no salvation.
There is only Becoming.
And I have become.
Irrevocably.