There was no sound. No weight. No light. Only stillness.
Jian Long floated, his body imprisoned in a translucent crystal, suspended in a colorless void like an artifact in a forgotten museum. Limbs rigid. Breath frozen. Mind echoing.
Except it wasn't empty.
The whispers came.
Su Ling's voice. But warped. Echoing through the hive's mockery of empathy.
"You should've let me die."
It clawed through him sharper than any blade. He wanted to scream, but even pain had abandoned him.
Where was the system?
He strained inward, hunting for that dry sarcasm, those familiar snipes that kept him grounded. Nothing.
He didn't miss its power. He missed its company.
Was this what death felt like?
"Host, you idiot," he mouthed the words to himself, mocking its tone. The echo didn't answer.
Instead, another voice replaced it—colder, amused.
"You never were alone, Jian Long. Just... incomplete."
He couldn't tell if it was the hive or his own madness. Perhaps they were the same thing now.
A shimmer—like heat on asphalt—cut through the void. A memory, unbidden.
He sat on a chipped rooftop in Beijing, staring out at smog and satellites. Xiao Li, his grumpy neighbor's daughter, shoved a box into his hands.
"Happy birthday," she muttered, cheeks puffed red. "It's practical."
A fire extinguisher. Bright red. Oversized. Absolutely useless—until that riot day when he'd used it to blind a police drone.
But wait.
Had he really been there?
The rooftop faded. The memory frayed at the edges like an overplayed video.
The voice returned.
"It's not yours. We gave it form. You gave it meaning."
Panic rose. He dug into the memory's edges, trying to recall the temperature of the metal, the scent of the city, the scratch of rust on his hand.
All gone. Like static.
"We stole it before your mind died. You loved it. So we kept it. Do you want another?"
No. He didn't want their charity. Or their mercy.
He wanted himself.
But what was he, if his memories were borrowed?
In the real world, Jian Long's body—encased in shimmering crystal—rested on a stone dais within the sect's inner sanctum. Torches flickered, casting gold on Su Ling's tear-streaked face.
She clutched his hand, small and cold beneath the crystal.
Her wrist glowed.
The scar pulsed golden, the hive's old mark twisting under her skin like a serpent stirring.
"You promised to survive, you idiot," she whispered, resting her forehead against the prison.
A voice echoed from Mei's body—not her voice, not quite. Hive-Mei.
"He promised nothing. Men lie like they breathe."
Su Ling's jaw clenched. "He kept enough to bleed for me."
Mei laughed. A sound not hers. "How quaint."
A single tear slipped from Su Ling's cheek.
It landed on the crystal.
The surface cracked—just a hairline fracture—but enough to make Mei flinch.
"You felt that?" Su Ling smiled through tears. "Good. Then you know this isn't over."
Back in the void, Jian Long drifted… until he wasn't alone.
Other figures appeared. Suspended like him. Crystallized minds. Souls in stasis.
One turned slowly toward him, their eyes burning faint green.
"You're the one who stole the Queen's venom," the voice rasped. "The crystal thief."
More eyes opened.
A chorus.
"Venom-taker."
"Breaker."
"Wronghost."
Jian Long braced himself. "Who are you?"
A smaller voice echoed from behind—soft, fragile.
A child's voice.
"She's not the Queen. She's just the nurse. The mother is coming."
The void pulsed.
Suddenly, the crystal around Jian Long splintered inward, reacting to his breath.
Pain bloomed. Real. Anchoring.
He welcomed it.
But the child wasn't done.
"She's hungry, and you're loud," they whispered, eyes glowing like dying stars. "She hears you now."
The prisoners wept in unison.
"Hide."
Too late.
A shape coalesced beyond them—massive, faceless, humming with ancient thought.
The mother.