The flames raged.
The entire world was burning.
With every passing second, fireballs fell from the sky toward the ground.
Rivers changed course, mountains and forests collapsed.
The world groaned like a tortured, dying patient.
"Look. All of this was caused by you."
"You're not only destroying everything—you're destroying yourself as well."
The voice came from above.
Bai? raised her head and saw a figure high in the sky, bathed in dazzling golden light.
The light was so warm that it made people want to draw near.
Yet it was also so dazzling that it hurt Bai?'s eyes.
"But all of this will end today."
Mei Ba, just... go to sleep."
"Preferably, never to wake again."
Bai? suddenly felt a sharp pain in her heart. Then she heard herself cry out, "I don't want this either!"
"I wish I could be an ordinary person like everyone else..."
"But I'm not. I was born from Jianmu. I can't escape my own power, or its influence over me."
"How I wish I could live out my life as an ordinary person..."
Golden light erupted, leaving Bai? unable to move.
Then a figure flashed forward.
Next.
A long sword pierced through her chest.
"Perhaps it isn't completely impossible."
"Even if I can't become an ordinary person myself..."
"I can let part of myself escape this identity and the fate that comes with it..."
Bai? watched herself raise a hand as two fingers rapidly grew larger before her eyes.
Suddenly.
Her eye throbbed with pain.
When she came to her senses again.
She saw a face.
A face very much like her own, but more mature.
There was a dark, empty socket in the forehead of that face, as though an eye had originally been set there.
But now, that eye had been removed.