Deep within Yoriichi's chest, beneath the physical wound, a bubble of emotion began to rise. It was an alien, suffocating feeling that tightened his throat and burned behind his eyes.
It was frustration.
Pure, unadulterated frustration.
It tasted like ash. It was frustration over the failure at the very last hurdle, after doing everything perfectly. It was frustration over seeing the station he had practically lived in for two weeks reduced to rubble. It was the biting, humiliating frustration of not being able to command his own legs to stand up.
He closed his eyes, and the darkness behind his eyelids did not offer peace. Instead, it offered a memory.
- A moonlit night. A monster with multiple hearts and brains, regenerating instantly. The desperate swing of a red blade. The horrific realization that the demon was splitting its body into three hundred pieces to scatter to the wind. The feeling of the monster slipping through his fingers, escaping into the night, dooming the world to centuries more of bloodshed.
It was the first time he had felt this specific, hollow despair since the night he failed to kill Muzan Kibutsuji. The context was different, but the core truth remained: his strength, no matter how great, had not been enough. The limits of his mortal, Dou Zhi Qi vessel had betrayed him.
Tie Shan walked slowly back to the boy.
The Grandmaster Smith looked at the ruined station, then down at Yoriichi. Tie Shan had seen many apprentices cry over broken swords or melted slag. But Yoriichi wasn't crying. The boy's crimson eyes were wide open, staring into the middle distance with an unfocused, haunting emptiness that made the hairs on Tie Shan's arms stand up.
It was the look of a veteran who had just lost a war he thought he had won.
Sympathy, heavy and profound, gripped the burly blacksmith. Tie Shan understood the agony of a craftsman's ultimate failure. He understood what it meant to pour your soul into a piece of steel, only to watch it shatter because the world was too brittle to hold it.
"Kid," Tie Shan's voice was unusually soft, lacking its usual gravelly bark. "Can you walk?"
Yoriichi remained silent for a long moment. The listless gaze did not break, but he slowly pulled himself back from the ghosts of his past.
"Hmm..." Yoriichi whispered, his voice incredibly frail. "I can stand."
He tried to push himself up with his hands, but his triceps instantly gave out. He swayed, about to collapse back into the ash.
Before he could fall, a massive, soot-stained arm wrapped around his shoulders.
Tie Shan effortlessly hauled the boy up, supporting almost all of Yoriichi's weight against his own side.
"Let's go," Tie Shan muttered. "The forge is closed for tonight."
They walked out of the Smithing Hall. Yoriichi limped heavily, his bare feet dragging slightly against the cobblestones. The cool night air of the estate bit at his exposed, burnt skin, but it did nothing to cool the quiet turmoil in his chest.
It took them twice as long to navigate the winding paths of the Xiao Clan compound. By the time they reached the quiet isolation of Yoriichi's private courtyard, the moon was high in the sky.
The warm glow of lantern light spilled from the main room.
Xiao Yu was standing on the veranda. She had laid out a spread of simple, hearty dishes for a family dinner, waiting patiently for her brother to return from his "secret project."
When the courtyard gate creaked open, she smiled and stepped forward.
"Ning'er, you're late, the food is getting—"
Her words died in her throat.
The porcelain bowl she had been holding slipped from her fingers, shattering against the wooden floorboards.
She saw the towering figure of Grandmaster Tie Shan. But more importantly, she saw her brother hanging limply from the man's shoulder. Yoriichi was half-naked, covered in a horrific mixture of black soot, white ash, and dirt. His trousers were shredded. And across his pale, perfectly muscled chest was a fresh, jagged cut. The bleeding had slowed to a crawl, but the blood had dried into a stark, terrifying smear across his torso.
"Ning'er!"
Xiao Yu screamed, a sound of pure, unadulterated terror. She scrambled off the veranda, her long legs carrying her across the courtyard in an instant.
She rushed up to them, her hands hovering frantically over his chest, afraid to touch him and cause more pain. She looked up at Tie Shan, her eyes wide, glistening with unshed tears of panic.
"What happened?!" Xiao Yu demanded, her voice trembling. "Grandmaster Tie Shan, what happened to him? Who attacked you?!"
Tie Shan looked down at the terrified girl. He didn't offer excuses or sugarcoat the truth.
"No one attacked us, girl," Tie Shan said quietly, his voice heavy with regret. "He pushed the metal too far. The core became unstable. He failed at what he wanted to create."
Xiao Yu's breath hitched. She didn't care about the metal or the creation. She only cared that her little brother was injured.
She quickly slipped her shoulder under Yoriichi's other arm, taking the bulk of his weight away from the blacksmith. Yoriichi leaned into her, his head dropping slightly, his eyes still distant and unfocused.
"I have him," Xiao Yu said fiercely, wrapping her arm securely around his waist. She looked at Tie Shan, her panic warring with her manners. "Thank you, Grandmaster. Thank you for bringing him back. Was it... is anyone else..."
She wanted to ask a dozen more questions. How big was the explosion? Was his cultivation damaged? Did he need an alchemist?
Tie Shan simply shook his head, cutting her off.
"He is physically exhausted, but he will live. The cut is shallow," Tie Shan advised, taking a step back toward the gate. He looked at Yoriichi one last time, recognizing the deep psychological fatigue that no healing pill could fix. "Go. Take care of him. Don't ask him to explain it tonight. He just needs rest."
Without waiting for another word, the Grandmaster Smith turned and walked away into the dark, his broad shoulders slumped slightly under the weight of the evening's failure.
Xiao Yu stood in the courtyard, supporting her brother.
"Come on, Ning'er," she whispered, her voice incredibly gentle. "Let's get you inside."
She walked slowly and carefully, guiding his limping steps up the stairs and onto the veranda, ignoring the shattered porcelain and the cooling dinner. She led him into his bedroom, the air smelling faintly of clean linen and bamboo.
She gently lowered him onto the edge of the bed.
Yoriichi sat there, his hands resting limply on his thighs. He didn't speak. He didn't look at her. His crimson eyes were fixed on the opposite wall, staring through the wood, through the courtyard, into the void of his own disappointment.
Xiao Yu knelt in front of him. She reached out and softly brushed a lock of soot-stained red hair out of his eyes. She desperately wanted to ask him what he was trying to make, why he was pushing himself to the brink of death in that forge.
But then she remembered Tie Shan's words. She saw the profound, uncharacteristic emptiness in her brother's usually resolute gaze.
She swallowed her questions.
"I'll get a warm basin and some bandages," Xiao Yu murmured softly, standing up. "Just sit here. It's going to be okay."
She turned and walked quietly out of the room to fetch the water, leaving Yoriichi alone in the dim light, a king without a sword, sitting in the silence of his shattered ambitions.