For thirteen years, Hanguang-Jun Lan Wangji of Gusu waited, traversing the four seas and eight wastelands, offering his flesh and blood as a sacrifice and letting obsession guide him as he challenged the boundary between life and death. He carved ice and shaped snow to imprison the fading image of his old friend, burned his soul as a lamp to continue the incantations for the dead, and bore a fragment of a Cleansing Bell embedded in the scar over his heart. Even the discipline whip gnawing at his bones could not break his mad devotion. When the remnant soul in the misty valley took shape, he burned the portrait and carved his love into his bones. At last, on a stormy night, he embraced that remnant soul, only to learn that reunion required a pact sealed by the scattering of his soul. This is a lament of devotion sharpened into a blade and time offered as sacrifice: the living are trapped in memory, carving love into a tombstone and branding the word “worth it” into a wound that will never heal.
