Waiting

"Honestly, from the beginning, I couldn't stand you..."

Xie Heli lowered his head and looked down, expressionless. "You clearly did nothing, yet you always acted like you were the only one awake!

"You kept denouncing me as a traitor, as though I had committed every evil under the sun..."

"When I was committing every imaginable crime and stopping at nothing, wasn't it you who did nothing? When the situation collapsed, weren't useless people like you the ones standing by with folded arms?!"

"Please tell me, Lord Inverse Scale, what exactly did you do?"

"You did nothing, yet somehow became the most innocent one. And what the fuck does that make me?"

Xie Heli roared, raising his hand to point at the Forest Kingdom. "Take a good look! Is this merely my Evil Karma? This is everything created by your prolonged dying struggle!"

"Was I the only one who personally destroyed the White State?!"

He turned back, coldly staring at the exhausted White King as he delivered his final accusation. "Wasn't it Your Majesty, forever wavering between two sides and unable to make up your mind, who brought about all this?!"

"Enough, Xie Heli—"

At the instant the final blade was about to fall, the White King closed his eyes.

He said, "Let him go."

And so, the blade stopped before Inverse Scale's eyes.

Then, inch by inch, it rose...

Xie Heli smiled silently and lifted his head.

But Inverse Scale felt as though he had fallen into an icy abyss. He widened his remaining eye and looked towards the Sacrificial King's raised hand as it gripped the sword hilt before his chest.

Slowly, it pulled it out.

Inverse Scale stood rigid and numb. Only bloody tears trickled down his face.

"Your Majesty! Your Majesty!!!"

The White King remained silent as