Xueru, despite her injury, held onto him tightly, cushioning his fall, her small frame absorbing the impact. She wrapped her arms around him, pulling him close, pressing his head against her uninjured shoulder, as if to shield him from the aftermath of his own storm. The violet glow flickered once more, then vanished, leaving only the pale, bruised skin of a young man, utterly spent, utterly broken, but finally, irrevocably human.
The frigid morning air bit at the exposed skin of the Ice Fortress’s remaining defenders, but the chill felt almost secondary to the pervasive gloom that clung to the ravaged battlefield. The sun, a pale, indifferent disc above the ragged mountain peaks, did little to warm the scene of devastation. Where once a disciplined phalanx of Azure Sect cultivators had s
