The Blood Silk Realm, once delicate, shimmering, almost holy in its woven stillness, could no longer be called the Silk Realm at all. It had transformed into something stranger, something that defied familiar naming. Like the mortal world where sunlight chose a side to bless with day and abandoned the other to night, here too duality asserted itself, but in a way that felt wrong to the bones.
Above, a black sun bled out a white radiance, thin and sharp like a blade scraping against glass. Opposite it hung a white moon, trembling with a sickening pulse as it spilled its black moonlight, thick as ink, onto the stretching realm. Where the two lights crossed, the silk began to smoulder, not burning with fire, but burning with definition, as if reality itself was being rewritten.
Silken landscapes that once rippled gently were now painted in harsh white strokes or drowned in bottomless black. The borders between things dissolved. Mountains flattened into silhouettes. Rivers froze into thin stripes of darkness. Trees lost their branches, their shadows, their memories—becoming simple lines drawn by a single brush.
It should have been horrifying. But the way the light sculpted everything…It was beautiful, in the most merciless way beauty can be.
A single stroke. A single brush. Discarding everything unnecessary. Leaving only the absolute.
A cold tune drifted through this collapsing world, thin, needle-like, trembling with held breath. It wasn't quite music; it was like someone plucking at nerves stretched too tight. A tune that insisted the world feel sad, even if it had forgotten how.
The Demoness, her mirrored copy, the one made from fractured emotion and devouring hunger, sat on her throne of tangled blood-silk, laughing. Not a normal laugh, but one that snapped apart at the edges, rising and falling uncontrollably. She looked down at the sinking place where the real one, her source, her original, lay submerged in the cocooned pit of memories. Her lips stretched wider than her face wanted to allow.
But suddenly, the laugh choked. Her chest tightened. Her heartbeat grew heavy, thick, slow, unnatural.
"…What… is this?" she whispered.
She stood abruptly, the throne behind her hissing as the silk recoiled from the abrupt movement. Her hair twisted around her as if afraid. Slowly, she turned, scanning the realm. And there she saw it - The Silk Realm had vanished. Only a platform remained. Everything beyond it had split into two opposing worlds: one pure black, one pure white, both swallowing endless distance.
Her breath stuttered. She recognized this duality.
"Impossible…" she muttered, her eyes widening until they trembled.
This was the same phenomenon that had broken her seal inside the original's heart. She was sealed at the place of her heart to make it real one's the second heart.
"But how…? How did it reach here?"
Her voice was a thin thread. Fear wrapped around her throat like a living hand. The presence that came with the black-and-white split was overwhelming — so complete, so absolute, that her own power felt childish before it.
A new tune rose, no longer the trembling, sad one, but a melodic rise and fall, drifting like a living breath. Soft at first. Then sweet. Then suddenly sharp, twisting into something that brushed the spine like a blade's back edge.
The Demoness snapped her head to the source.
At the farthest corner of the platform, almost blending into the monochrome horizon, sat a woman on the back of a massive tiger. The beast's fur shifted between white and black with each breath, stripes rearranging themselves like living ink. The woman held a flute, her fingers dancing across it with an ease that contradicted the doom around them.
Sometimes the tune she played was gentle, almost warm. Sometimes it sank into sadness deep enough to drown in. Sometimes it bubbled with cheer, almost childish. And sometimes it grew empty, echoing boredom so profound it felt like decay.
The woman sitting atop the tiger drifted forward as though the world itself moved beneath her rather than her mount. Her long black hair, heavy and glossy as ink, flowed behind her like a living river. Peacock-feather streaks shimmered through it, emerald, sapphire, indigo, catching the diseased glow of the black sun and the maddened white moon. Her peacock-blue robes glimmered like scales of some divine serpent, each thread whispering faint prayers or curses. On her right temple rested a golden headband adorned with a fan of ten peacock feathers arranged in a perfect semi-circle, and on her forehead lay a symbol of ten fanned feathers, like a miniature cosmos compressed into a single ornament. When she lifted her eyes, the colours inside them swirled exactly like peacock plumage, rings, spirals, layers of deep beauty that felt too profound, too ancient, too alive.
Her braid, thick and smooth with the same feathered motifs woven into it, fell like a rope of midnight along the tiger's back, ending in a loose cascade of strands that brushed the silk ground as she passed. The flute in her hand looked carved not from wood but from bone glazed in iridescent colours, almost singing on its own even when she paused. Its melodies had been shifting moments earlier, melancholy, joyous, bored, empty.
She slid the flute away from her lips and spoke, voice soft but resonant like a temple bell submerged underwater. "Enough… master of—" her voice warped, glitched, rippled as if reality refused to let the name be spoken, "—come out now. I believe she has endured more than required. You asked me to guide her through this tide, and I have done so." Her tone carried no arrogance, no pity—only a strange serenity that made the air around her quiver.
The demoness recoiled, clutching her head, her voice breaking into a ragged shriek. "W-who are you? How… how did you enter here?! What is this thing devouring my blood-silk realm?! H-how was it inside her?! This realm is mine! MINE!"
The peacock woman tilted her head slightly, smiling with a softness that did not reach her eyes. "Oh… demoness bound in borrowed flesh or better to said in silk, this realm was never yours. This power is not yours. This skill…" she tapped her flute lightly against her thigh, "belongs only to her. You merely squatted in a hollow left behind by tragedy."
"Lies!" the demoness spat, stepping back as silk beneath her feet began to ripple like disturbed water.
"But I should thank you," the peacock woman continued, voice growing almost playful. "You allowed her to witness enough scenery, half-truths, half-delusions. That was necessary for her awakening. Don't you agree?"
Before the demoness could scream again, laughter, raw, cracked, and chilling, rose from the sunken silk cocoon. The demoness's eyes widened as she turned. The skull throne beneath her, once a symbol of dominance, began to tremble. The many skulls embedded in the silk twisted, cracking open like eggs. One by one, skeletal faces crawled out of the throne, their hollow sockets glowing with black-white fire, orbiting her like starving spirits. Their jaws chattered, producing screams and sobs out of sync, forming a grotesque choir.
"What… what is happening?!" the demoness gasped.
The silk throne melted beneath her, threads unweaving themselves with an almost deliberate slowness, so slow it felt cruel. Strings spiralled up from the ground and started to create another silk realm around demoness.
And from beneath the unravelling cocoon, the real one emerged. As she opened her eyes a ripple sent through the realms. Her hair floated weightlessly, strands splitting into silk-like threads that dissolved into the air. As she stepped forward, the silk realm rebuilt itself around her, twisting into towering structures, dripping like wax, rearranging into painterly strokes of red.
Faces formed around her, silk faces, they started to crawl out beneath demoness's feet, first ten then hundred then thousand and then it felt like whole world was under them, but they have different expression. Six of them, each representing an emotion: grief, rage, joy, desire, fear, and despair. Their expressions warped, melting into grotesque caricatures. Some drooled. Some cried threads of silk. Others whispered incoherently—a thousand small voices merging.
..............
It was as if the entire world had been carved out of skulls.Skulls that still remembered grief, skulls that still whispered regret, skulls whose empty sockets trembled with endless sorrow.Broken faces dangled like torn masks, twitching with half-formed expressions—fear, envy, hunger—forever frozen between life and decay. An ocean of agonized murmurs rolled across the crimson-black horizon, as though the realm itself breathed suffering.
From deep within that shifting landscape, a warped voice rose.
"You liar… you lied to us… you said you would free us from this darkness… aahhhh—burning—AAHHH—PAIN!"
The voice scattered like insects crawling under the skin.Demoness flinched, twisting her body in panic, her face contorted into something feral.
"I will free all of you," she hissed, forcing a seal through her trembling fingers."I will peel away your delusions… and see your true faces!"
But the moment her seal ignited, the skulls reacted.
From every skull's nose, eyes, mouth—a thick red vapor gushed out.It twined mid-air, knitting into threads, then into ropes—blood-silks, shifting like hungry serpents.They slithered toward her with silent intelligence.
Demoness tried to command them—only to find the silks twisting around her wrists first, then ankles, then torso.
"Wh–what is this? HOW is it backfiring? I am the controller! YOU DARE—YOU DARE USE MY OWN WEAVE AGAINST ME?!"
She struggled violently, but the silks wrapped tighter, binding her from toes to neck.Only her mouth was left free, forced into a grimace of outrage and disbelief.
The realm dimmed—then brightened with that unsettling contrast of white shadow and black light, as if the world were being inverted stroke by stroke.
Real one began walking toward her.
Her movements were slow, deliberate, almost ceremonial.She raised her right hand, palm outward, then retracted her fingers from middle to thumb—a gesture that made the surrounding silks hum like plucked strings.
From beneath her feet, ribbons of silk sprouted and twisted together like vines.They formed a glowing lotus platform.At the center of it, a folded fan unfurled upward.
She lifted it gracefully, letting it half-hide her lips as she spoke.
"Thank you… for helping me erase those unnecessary sins," she said softly, tone colder than death."They were only burdens I chained to myself. You cut them for me.So… I will give you a worthy battle before I end you."
She paused, eyes flicking sideways.
"But let me finish my conversation first."
A sudden weight pressed against her back.
"Mm?"The woman on the tiger appeared behind her, squeezing her chest playfully.
"Ohh… they did get bigger also," she purred, leaning her cheek teasingly against real one's shoulder."But still…"
"Enough."Real one moved the fan slightly, her voice steady but carrying a tremor of irritation.
The tiger-woman smirked, dragging one finger slowly across real one's jawline."But I must say… your demoness showed you quite the scenery, didn't she?"
"Half-truths."Real one exhaled, the black-white aura swirling behind her."I overcame the inner-heart tribulation just now.I do not fear the illusions anymore."
Demoness thrashed, the blood-silks pulling her taut.
"You—YOU THINK THIS IS OVER?! I AM—"
"Shh."A single glance from real one made the silks tighten.
The woman on the tiger hopped down lightly, landing with cat-like grace.
"I'm healing him, by the way."She wiped her hands together, as if brushing away stardust."You almost shattered his soul nucleus. Though… in exchange, I got a little gift."
Real one turned her head.Her eyes, glowing with mixed light and shadow, narrowed slightly.
"…A gift? What did you receive?"
Tiger-woman smiled, eyes curving like crescents, tail flicking behind her.
"I'll tell you later. For now—"
The woman circled real one with a sly grin, tapping her fan against her chin."Didn't you… absorb his... hehe?" she teased, mimicking the exact expression, half-dazed, half-shuddering, the demoness had worn earlier when she had stolen the boy's essence of vitality.
Real one's face flushed with an emotion she hated, heat, humiliation, anger."That—!" She bit down her words. "That was her doing. Not mine. Do not compare us."
"Oh? But your face says otherwise," the tiger-woman laughed, gliding around her like a moonlit ghost. "You're going to have a very interesting husband soon…"
A spark cracked in the air.
Real one's aura snapped, white light slicing across black, black light swallowing white. Heat surged off her skin like the breath of a furnace.Her foot whipped upward in a vicious kick.
The woman dodged effortlessly, her laughter echoing like bells in a haunted temple. She landed atop the tiger, her long hair flowing like spilled ink.
Real one glared, jaw tight."Humph."
Behind them, the realm split like paper.A roar surged from the fissure, so loud the skulls in the landscape shook loose from the ground, rattling like bone-chimes.
The voice thundered, layered with ancient tones.
"My time ends here. I go now… to save him. Leave the rest to me."
Without hesitation, real one and the tiger-woman bowed deeply.
"Thank you for helping us."
The world inverted again, black bleeding into white, white into black, until the scenery twisted like a melting mural.
Below, where the boy lay motionless, the very air rippled.The fractured sky poured down streams of monochrome light, drifting toward his body like falling feathers.Each feather hissed the moment it touched him, igniting into black-white flames—peacock feathers woven from yin and yang, spreading outward to form a massive circle.
Beneath him, the red silk that had once bound fate itself writhed from nowhere.A perfect black ring etched itself over it.Then a white ring layered atop, locking into place like interlocking halos.
Both circles began to rotate in one direction, with their motion path drawn in arc with different colours. White circle with black arc and Black circle with white arc. They are not letting those flames to touch him.
Deep under the rings, a symbol rose.A sigil shaped like a twisted swastika, ancient and terrible, its limbs turning in the opposite direction of the circles, creating a dreadful resonance.
That platform trembled.
Five elemental marks burst upward, metal, wood, water, fire, earth.Each hovered between the rings, flickering like dying candles in a wind made of whispers.
Cracks appeared across the boy's skin—then sealed.His breath returned in faint tremors.Bone knitted.Pulse strengthened.Life crawled back through him like a hesitant dawn.
Suddenly, the sword beside him jolted awake.It tore free of the ground, spiralling upward in a majestic arc before landing neatly in the peacock woman's hand.
Her eyes widened slightly."Oh my… what a beautiful sword!!"
The tiger-woman leaned back with a dark smile, voice dripping with omen.
"Now then… the stage is set.One final tune, and this finale will be perfect…"
The realm trembled again, as if bracing for what came next…
To be Continued...