The Dawn of the New World

None of the severs reacted with any hostility, in fact, they were all asleep at this moment despite the Mind Palace creaking and shaking violently as if it was on the verge of breaking down.

The middle door that held the essence of Hao Xuan's remaining soul was cracked open just a smidgen, barely enough to be noticeable but enough to allow entry.

The remnants of his psyche, of what made him HIM were sitting in an empty void taking the exact form and position his body was in outside. This was the place Jin Wang had used to reach out to him.

There was nothing but darkness all around. It was just Hao Xuan floating in a void surrounded by hundreds of millions of moving images. Each one represented a different life he was living through right at this instant, a painful and miserable excuse of a life.

The weave and the ones that controlled it, the ones that called themselves the 'fate weavers' had locked away Hao Xuan's soul by scattering it in millions upon millions of different paths and probable timelines, each one more terrible than the last.

He could never find happiness in there, not a moment of respite would be given to his soul as it was washed over with neverending waves of pain and agony. He could not change the outcome of any of these gruesome events.

Hao Xuan could not even consciously know that it was happening to him. He was but a spectator forced to endure a hundred million lifetimes worth of pain every waking moment. Their goal was simple, to break him until there was nothing left that could be labeled as a person.

Every moment he was pushed further towards madness, every fiber of his being twisted and deformed from pure unadulterated anguish. This was a deserving punishment for someone that had tried to change their fate, for that was only reserved for the chosen sons and daughters of heaven.

The images spun faster and faster around Hao Xuan. His shoulder-length hair were going through the exact same process as his body outside, forcibly changing color from black to white and white was winning.

More than half of it was already white. The moment it turned all the way it would signal his defeat. He would never ever be the same again after that.

At that moment the void trembled and a figure emerged out of the darkness from behind him. The darkness circled around his form hiding most of it from plain sight, revealing only the face.

It was Hao Xuan, an identical copy of him but this one had eyes the color of rubies.

He stopped just a foot away from Hao Xuan, looking down at him with an unwavering gaze. His eyes were locked onto the tug-of-war between the two colors reflected on his hair. He watched in silence for a good long while before finally uttering three short sentences.

"You can't stop this. It is the only way. The price must be paid."

The void trembled once again but this time from the front as another figure materialized.

The darkness was pushed back as a spark of pure white light ignited in the air before quickly expanding to take another humanoid shape. It was 'humanoid' but not completely human because there were thirty-two sets of ethereal wings of light entrenched on its back.

The span of each wing was so impossibly large that the ends were not even visible and YET, all 64 wings began from the back of the same humanoid being.

The light dimmed just enough that the figure's true appearance could be made out. It was a girl with three golden halos hovering overhead. Her eyes were closed, or rather sewn shut but the appearance was not foreign to Hao Xuan.

It was Xu Qing. (Image posted in discord, just search for her name)

She shook her head gently while looking down towards the kneeling Hao Xuan.

"The future is not yet certain."

The red-eyed Hao Xuan scoffed lightly, "Your people made it certain. It cannot be any other, not anymore."

Xu Qing slowly looked up in his direction, "But you can change it. Help him."

"Until when?"

"....Until I am no more, only until then."

The red-eyed Hao Xuan seemed a little confused by her words, "What will that achieve? In the end it will all come back, like always."

Xu Qing shook her gently, "But he will have known love by then, he will have known friendship. It will not all be bad. There will be a spark of hope."

He cackled in response, "Hope!? You dare speak of hope after what you did? None of this would have happened if it wasn't for your kind!"

Xu Qing remained silent for a brief moment before nodding, "I know. That is why I must make it right."

The red-eyed Hao Xuan slowly stopped laughing, ending in a weary sigh. He inched forward and placed one hand on the kneeling Hao Xuan's shoulder. His voice fell to a whisper that only he could hear.

"One can only peer into the abyss for so long before its everlasting gaze finds you. Once again I take all your pain, all your worry, and anguish, to lock it away for when you are ready to accept the gift of madness that it brings with it. But until then, let the blood of your enemies fuel the fires of rage and fury that have always burned in our hearts, rip and tear until there are none left."

By the time he finished speaking there was only the kneeling Hao Xuan left. But now his hair had turned back to the original black color, perhaps even darker than ever before.

All those negative emotions that were dragging him down had disappeared. Suddenly he could not feel it anymore.

The leftmost door in his mind palace slowly began to close but not before one of the severs was awoken by the commotion. The Scorpion King looked up and saw a figure walking into the darkness.

His hair ashen white and eyes blood-red as they peered back at this king of beasts from within the void.

"Sleep," a word resounded within the mind palace and the Scorpion King fell to the ground weightlessly as if a switch had been turned off.