Reforged from Ruin [Eldritch Xianxia Cultivation]

Across the south-western horizon, fires blaze without end. Crackling with volcanic lightning, screaming with high-pitched gases, reflecting the sound of those dying within them. An infernal parade, tinged with the colors of Dao and expanding even as it is fought back and assimilated by the Overgrowth and the burning sands to the true south.

Against the Wall, there is a new territory being fought over, a new zone cleared of all combatants save for the rarest of conflicts. Trees and coral structures of black metal grow there, darker than pitch and glowing with a cold that is not of temperature, and from their razor-edged branches grow the brass casings of bullets and fruits of the powder that fuels them. Those who dare to approach it do so for the rich harvests of violence that grows there, collecting munitions for their guns and materials that they bind to hilts of improvised swords which Cut better than most know how to- and yet they never stay for long. No industry takes hold in the time since the birth of this place, for there are things within it that are not for harvest. They crawl out from beneath sands rich in millenia of murder, glowing barrels emerging from their frames, Blacksteel in place of bones, able to swim through flesh like a knife carving butter.

A great and living city, grown into a tree which has been pierced by a sword of crystal, spasms and roils in the aftermath of ruin. Their streets break open, their homes shaken as if by an earthquake, the mad growths that have so overtaken their farms wilting and collapsing in on themselves seemingly without reason. They live, and the city lives, but something is different in the air, and what was once vibrant, ever-growing and ever in tune with its surroundings, remembers fear, and the sound of stalking predators in the dark which smell prey.

Across the Overgrowth, throughout thousands of miles, carefully crafted pieces of scenery detonate like bombs, shaking the ground beneath them and coloring the sky in new colors. In their wake, the Overgrowth spasms, expands, as if filling the shape of the clouds left behind by the explosions, life-aspected Qi turning the plant-life crimson and fleshy in its wake. Beasts flock to these sites, consuming new resources and insights, drinking in an abundance of Qi and growing in turn. The scars left in the environment are devoured, replaced by life born from a death that shook the eastern side of reality.

In a room surrounded by people who cannot see him, a man who Is Not There looks down at his handiwork and wonders at the results of his labor.

This is a man of many talents. If he was not, he would not Be, no matter where he was. This is a man of Truth, bequeathed with an Imperial Halo, capable of influencing Fate and reality itself, who has served at the side of one of the greatest powers in the world for millennia.

In that time, he has honed a singular talent above all others.

Above all others, the man who Is Not There is a murderer.

In older times, when elders and cultivators swore to kill an enemy's family "to the ninth generation", it was him that was called. In old times, when wars still raged within the Empire rather than at its whims, he eliminated rivals, enemy clans, families, and those so powerful that to fight them would be to have a pyrrhic victory no matter the outcome.

He kills, but that is not enough. To kill is indiscriminate, a broad thing that covers fields worth of deaths, a word that is at home in a war and a shadowed alley and an engineered accident.

He has murdered so often he has forgotten the sound of safety. He has murdered so often that he has forgotten the face in the mirror. He has murdered so often that he has forgotten the names of his mother, his sister, his brothers, his children and their children, and left in their place a naked, sharp-edged thing.

His Soul is [That Which Murders What It Touches], and it has never failed, for its shape is whatever shape is needed to make itself True.

It's never taken this shape before. A similar thing, once- the hilt of Cold Sun is a distantly remembered and horrific thing to hold, and serves to kill the deeper parts of him it is made from, but it is a purpose-driven killing, one he accepts. Only the Cold Sun could hold the shape of the blade that his Soul has become.

His soul is [That Which Murders What It Touches], and in preparing it to face this target, its syringe-edge became a void, liquid like night's fall, bleak like the stillness of a child's grave.

It took time to shape it properly, to find what he had to match it to. The target was not difficult to encounter- she barely even approached the idea of stealth, arriving as herself with all the fanfare that battle brings. She did not hide her name as her newfound allies carved out the auction where she so thoroughly damaged the Emperor's plans for this little corner of the world.

And yet he waited, because the shape of his Soul wasn't right for that figure.

A Soul is a symbiotic thing. A part of the same whole as the person it emerges from. [That Which Murders What It Touches] shapes itself as it is needed- but it is to the man who Is Not There to find the right place to sink in the knife.

So he waited. So he studied. So he prepared, because Fate guided his path, its threads knotted where he wrapped them about the madwoman and those who danced to her tune.

And then, at last… she Became.

Months ago, he was told to follow the thing which escaped into the Overgrowth. He did. She did not hide her trail, even then, traveling as if unaware of even the possibility of being followed.

He watched it grow. He watched it kill one of his Master's distant descendants. He saw it begin to spread. He went to the Republic of Morae, as he was ordered- and after informing his Master of developments, he found that the new thing he was given to END had traveled to his door.

Stolen story; please report.

But she was smaller. Not right for the shape of his Soul, not right no matter how he tugged at Fate, which is a subtle thing and does not like to be tugged.

And then, when she Became, and he knew it was time, and Fate knew it was time, and his Soul knew it was time, he stepped forward, and did the thing which defined millennia of servitude, and murdered her.

His Soul aches.

The standards to which he created it, how he has shaped it in the intervening millennia, have been… exacting. It is a thing of singular purpose and existence, and fulfills both without fail- but there is a cost to so grand a concept, so universal and powerful a defined act. A Soul is what it is, and his Soul is [That Which Murders What It Touches], but a Soul still requires power, Qi, life.

He looks at where the void-END of his Soul was. Where the murder of a godling-in-the-making took shape, and what it cost.

It's gone.

He thrust the syringe-tip in, and that infinite night, deeper than he can express and darker than the void between stars, flew into that penetration of flesh. How that dark flashed, lightning-bright and reaching into a deeper place than could fit inside the body before him, swimming down and out and away from him into an expanse of flesh.

It cost him to kill this thing. More than most of the murders.

But she is dead. The body before him is an empty thing, void of identity and sapience and even Qi, vaporized in a single burst of absolute END which even now scars him. Summoning even so little a fragment of an Ur-Concept is enough that his hand shakes, that his immortal lifespan lies unsteady and insecure, that the Fate he wears in his crown shakes and frays.

She is dead. He feels the locations he marked earlier detonating, the other manifestations he tracked transforming into mess, and can only assume that the ones he hasn't found have done the same.

She's dead. He took months of tracking and examination, built comprehension of his target down to every part of her being, understood her as only a person can understand another- to do less would be to misalign his Soul, malform its transformation into the required version of [That Which Murders What It Touches]. He found the perfect moment, guiding Fate and destiny to lead him to where he needed to be. He stabbed a fraction of a fragment of one of the ideas that makes reality itself.

She's dead.

Not since a Titan bled out in his arms has he so thoroughly enacted the murder of a living thing.

She has to be dead.

The thought is enough to make his hand clench around the painful hilt of his Soul.

The hilt which has not returned to his Core, or the World within it. Which remains in the same shape as it once was, as if trapped there, as if in limbo.

What is [That Which Murders What It Touches] if what it has touched does not die?

Nothing. Nothing at all.

It's still here.

But it hasn't changed to its next shape. Has not returned to the formlessness he so carefully made of what was once a manifestation of a person.

The man who Is Not There stares down at the body, the expanse of flesh which exploded against the back wall of the chamber, turning a fifth of it life-crimson and beautiful indigo.

He ignores the shouts of confusion of the men and women of the chamber, the little things that play their little games in their corner of the world. Perhaps, had Fate not intervened on his command, they might have become more, empowered by the strange realm that the target offered and the flesh which she so freely traded.

But that is not what Fate has decreed, because it is not what he has decreed, because it is not what his Master decreed, and what his Master decrees is all.

She is dead.

She has to be dead.

He watches the remains, fingers that can see the building blocks that make up cells tracking every single part of it for even the slightest hint of life.

The job is done. He should update his Master of all that has occurred, including that which is still unknown, and move on. He Is Not Here, but there are other places he needs to not be, with war so close on the horizon.

But in all the wide world, the only certainty is that all things END, and many things can happen on the way.

The hilt of his Soul aches in his palm, trapped between what it is and anything else.

She is dead. Murdered. If she were not, his Soul would have shattered, ending his immortality and most of his power along with it, dragging him down to nearly nothing. Fate commanded that she die, and that Fate has been met, his halo assures him.

And yet this man, who above all other things is a murderer, listens to the little voice inside him that says something is off. Something has been missed. Some angle he has missed.

…He will have to observe. Prepare.

In a world of infinite possibility, the slightest deviation from the expected can spell failure.

The man who Is Not There cannot abide that.

The Fate that ties his halo to his being shivers, as if laughing. As if alive, and bearing witness to something amusing.

He ignores it. Fate and the Emperor that holds it are not his concern. His Master demanded that this target be eliminated, both as a threat and as reciprocation for what was done to the Feng bloodline at its hands, before and after the Wall. An embarrassment erased, a danger eliminated, a life ENDed.

He will have to visit the other sites, and confirm that the job is fully done. Track down any potential infection vectors he might have missed, some small fragment that has escaped the end of the greater whole.

And then, as he is and always has been, the man moves from one place and time where he is not, and goes somewhere else.

Of course, there are limits to such an act. There are many places where a man could or might not be, but a man must know a place to not be there.

Deep within the dying and the squirming and the CHANGING, a small sound echoes across a limited infinity, reflecting off a pillar of flesh and glistening metal.

Ba-bump.

In the deep and dark and wet there is a war of flesh and silence.

Glory Be.