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Umbra of Chaos:
Mai

"You do not see yourself." Her voice is suddenly accusatory. Mai's hands do not move at all, and yet the phantom sensation of a blade against skin presses against Lubei's neck. "Is it that you cannot look? Or do you simply choose not to? No, the answer is meaningless. You will never understand the question as you are. You have not even taken a single step on the path. You merely mouth the words, stumbling blindly without direction."

"Coward." She practically spits out the word, as if she can barely stand saying it.

Her hand throbs with the killing impulse, with the barely restrained desire to sever his head from his shoulders. To sentence him to whatever eternity he so fears. She can see it so clearly that the man before her seems little more than a phantom. As if the headless corpse before her was true reality.

But Mai knows restraint. So even as her body sits on the verge of action, she does not move. The shadow grants him a chance. "In the story, the shadow hates herself most of all. She despises her sister, the moon, for under her light the shadow's ugliness is revealed. Those who have never seen their own face can continue in their unsightliness. Consider this question carefully, you who fear your own face. Do you seek to escape your punishment or yourself?"

YOLF:
Lubei

Mai accuses him, and this time Lubei slams the table between them, spilling the tableware through a crash. He roars at that one word of insult, coward.

"And what of it?!" Admitting is like an explosion of bitterness in his mouth. The black ice that serves him shudders to be set free. On the verge of action he thinks - coward or not, it's none of her business, least of all to judge him!

But it doesn't come out. He knows exactly how dishonest it would be, and it turns into old ash on his tongue.

If it was solely his life on the scales. But it is not. Lubei Sang has responsibilities. He has a duty, with a whole lifetime of hubris to motivate him. He has not stopped thinking about those he must return to but for moments where instinct overtakes all else. Even now, he is acting for this destiny to come, expecting to return to Ivanna and hear all she can tell and collect that may offer a clue to leaving the Nexus. But... a king cannot be a coward. If the difference between a tumor of a ruler and a blessed sovereign lies in discerning what should be done from what must be done, and choosing the right one, he will have to try.

Lubei has never been meek but for his second lifetime, when he hurt and regretted too heavily to not cower, to not do precisely as the King of Death demanded. But he was not a coward by nature, and all he had held back came rushing out foolishly in the transmigration that followed. It is fear of the frozen hell that restrains him. Fear of that future, the self-flaggelating terror of proving that he belongs there and that is all he will be remembered for.

In the end, he struggles through the silence, but finds purchase. It is like emerging from a frozen lake without air, and on the other hand, like letting go and floating to the clouds. He sighs. "It... has only ever been me."

He cannot explain the way that shifts the weight from his shoulders. It feels incomplete. But it lets him breathe. It lets him feel his fingers again, curled into fists, and relax them. He raises his gaze to her cold one and inhales. "You are correct. I am, have been... afraid of beholding myself."

Umbra of Chaos:
Mai

She exhales then, and the tension bleeds from the air. Tiredness suits her. With this lull in her heated demeanor it reasserts itself. And perhaps there is vulnerability. Perhaps he is not the only one with a companion, even if hers is not the guide but the lesson incarnate. For a moment, it is possible he sees It behind her eyes. The seat of nothingness, a place where no one exists, the blind pursuer of the peak of swordsmanship. The thing that can never know what it possesses, even as it clutches its deepest desire in its hands.

Or perhaps not.

Mai truly is feeling exceedingly charitable. It must be the soup, she decides, that has made her tongue so loose. A full stomach makes one chatty. Yet this creature is so pitiful that she is compelled to continue. "You will never escape your punishment. To focus on its inevitability is to be as the man who shakes and sobs every night for he knows he will die. Understandable, perhaps, but stupid. You will die whether you fear it or not. You will only change if you wish to change, not because of your cowardice. If you do not think yourself capable, simply say so. That too is understandable."

Her hand grasps the hilt of her blade, but her eyes hold nothing more than mild curiosity. "Say so, and I will take your head for you. It will be painless."

YOLF:
Lubei

Lubei leans back, forcing himself to relax into the bench, and he does not see how their surroundings release a sigh of relief. He sees, whether by trick of the mind or by the momentary shedding of a veil, the very picture of frozen eternity, incarnate within a sleeping corner of her spirit as the gruesome mania of cutting. It makes him shiver, but there is a sliver of clarity in it.

"I decline," he answers to her proposal, and for the only time in this conversation he is devoid of hesitation. "Whatever awaits me at the end, there are things I must do on earth, and responsibilities I needs must answer. I am not an island apart from the things and people who have made me, and I would not disappoint them when bearing the ability to ensure otherwise."

It is not untethered from the destined outcome to his soul, it's not a resolve fully actualized. But in this he is focused on the present, and not fixated on the future.

The lull is brief, because his thoughts run away from him without something defined to address. Orbiting around the detail of Mai's chastisement, they prompt examination and doubt. How much could she know, simply by conversing with him and looking into his eyes? But the curse that clings to her, borne of what appears to be her own extremes, is no lie, and her words sank true in the cracks of his defenses, loath as he is to think of it. If his penalty is unavoidable, then he has misunderstood from the onset the purpose of this reincarnation. It is not a chance to avoid punishment, because it cannot be nulled, and neither can the past. It is an opportunity to become better and to prove himself. To do good with the decisions he has left instead of leaving the earth lesser, before... before the time comes where he can never do so again. Stasis unending with only sour introspection left.

It is not a cruel possibility. The truth of your errors can be painful, but she does not offer it out of cruelty. Maybe he deserves the disdain, though. How simple was it to fool himself into the prisoner of an undefined test? How much did he want for it, to be blind to the real terms and limitations that imprison him? It's enough for a headache. Lubei has more to work on than he realized.

He lets the silence wash over them, after that. No one still quite dares to approach.

Umbra of Chaos:
Mai

Attachment. Who, she wonders for an instant, could be waiting for one such as him? The bitterness behind the sentiment almost surprises her. It erodes, pushing through the cracks in the mountain of duty that she shoulders. Why does he have something return to? How dare he?

How dare he wring his hands, and bemoan his fate, and shut his eyes meandering about when he has a life!

She tastes ash. How long has she been doing this? This path measured in only steps from herself, was it really only for her sake? No, no, impossible. She can still see them. She can still see her. The man before her might not know his destination, but Mai knows her own. She is a corpse haunted by phantoms that will not even speak to her. They simply stand apart, ever distant, even as her feet are left raw and bloody. All this time and they are no closer. All this time and the Demon is still but one step behind her.

A sharp crack breaks the silence between her and Lubei. Mai blinks in surprise at the shattered chunk of the table in her hand. She feels like she should cry, or perhaps howl, or maybe even laugh. But she fails to do even one of those things. The moment is gone, and whatever is left of that fire choked on the ash. She feels empty, again. But that is no surprise. Things have always been like this. There has never been any catharsis in her outbursts. Not even when she was younger, weeping with guilt, and drawing repentance across her flesh as if that meant anything. It was as hollow as when she spilled her heart to a sibling that was no longer here.

Dear sister, everything is gone.

Mai drops the chunk of the table on the ground and finds her sword in her hand. She does not grab at it as it falls. It is intuitive, an understanding as fundamental as water flowing downwards. And when she looks at her fellow sinner she seems just a tad lesser than when they had met. "You are kind," she admits, "so I will take advantage of your kindness. If the time comes, please kill me. It would please me, I think, to die at the hands of someone who would regret doing so."

She stands then, and Mai can only feel a vague disappointment that she does not even have the sincerity of tears to offer in exchange. The nuns do not impede her. She walks through the door and vanishes like an apparition, like a breath of warm air in the freezing cold.

She walks because that is her punishment, because that is her redemption. She walks because there is no other path.

Because nothing else remains.

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