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There is a god who has died a thousand times.
Legends say the god of balance and order could see all the good and evil in the world. Kasala’s eyes were twin suns, watching over the earth. For every evil he helped, a part of his life force would drain away, but still he guided them and cleansed them. He taught them to do good, believing that every living thing deserved redemption.
In every life, he would meet a demon, so deep in karma they were unsalvageable. Kasala did not give up, and in attempting to restore balance, the demon’s karma would kill him. Then he would live again, and die at the hands of another demon. Again and again, until every being in the world was saved and given a new life. That was Kasala’s oath.
They say, as he died, jackals would appear. They would devour the bitter remnants of karmic debt and lap away tears of thanks from the demons’ faces.
Then they would take Kasala, and he would live again.
“I want that priest’s heart.”
Xiao lowers his head, neck aching from the weight of Luan’s foot on top of it. Luan, of course, doesn’t care.
“So, so pure,” the god of chaos sighs dreamily. “The head priest of the Mausoleum is the one closest to Kasala. I can feel it. Only a heart as perfect as his can make me the strongest. Oh, Kasala.”
The horrible smile on their face twists into something like a gash. “You know,” they continue conversationally, “he never stopped trying to save me. Just being near me killed him. Guess how many times he died because of me!”
Luan’s face is remorseless. This is the master Xiao serves, and he hates it. Luan exists as the manifestation of chaos itself. They upheave the world purely for the joy of it, and Xiao kills for them, the needle slicing the finishing strokes of a bloody tapestry. Luan is sending him to the temple now not because they trust him, but because he is disposable. If the priests found out his true intentions and killed him, Luan wouldn’t even blink.
“I tire of this peace. And Kasala’s incessant preaching.”
Xiao is jerked out of his thoughts when Luan removes their foot to haul him closer, their sharp nails digging into his chin. Xiao trembles, from fear or anticipation, he doesn’t know. Luan sees right through him. They know he’s dying to get away from them, and he could get killed for that rebellion.
The god doesn’t do anything, though. They shove Xiao away and recline on their throne.
“I am made of fire,” they whisper, dangerously quiet, “and I will raze this land. None shall douse my flame. When I am ruler, I will have no need of you, little one. You will be free.”
They smile at Xiao, and for one horrible moment, Xiao almost thinks Luan cares for him.
“You’d like that, won’t you? Free from me forever. Does that sound good?”
Luan could slit his throat where he stands if he nods, but Xiao thirsts for freedom, and desperation makes one foolish.
And so he presses his forehead to the cold stone floor, his lips kissing the earth. “Yes, master.”
He kneels at the temple doors.
It’s been ten days and ten nights of endless snowfall. Stripped of his powers by the wards surrounding the temple, Xiao feels unbearably human. His whole body aches, whipped by the biting wind. When he gets hungry, he shoves snow into his mouth to fill his stomach. The sensation numbs his mouth, the cold spreading through his head.
Most of the priests have evacuated further into the building, ushering the younger ones with them. Xiao’s karmic debt is too strong, corrupting anything within his vicinity. The more powerful priests stand at the door, bearing witness to his determination.
They think he’s determined to repent. Only he knows he’s determined to kill their leader.
Xiao recognises his target the moment he steps outside, barefooted. The head priest has a cooling presence that undulates off him in waves, much like the physical manifestation of Xiao’s karma, only instead of hurting, he heals.
It would be easy. It would be so easy to reach out a clawed hand and grab that beating heart.
A cool hand touches his cheek.
Xiao’s gaze refocuses, and he realises that he has seen these red eyes before. In the murals his master destroys, the one with the jackal head always had these eyes. They stare at him now, the purest of flames. The priest presses his forehead to Xiao’s, and he can feel his pain ebb away. It’s a bone-deep pain, past the freezing ache in his knees, past the twinge of his old wounds.
“Does it hurt?” he whispers, his breath a caress.
The priest is not asking the people he killed. The priest is asking him. And so he crumbles, folding in on himself and the small heart fluttering like a weak bird in his ribcage.
It does, it does, it does.
They tell Kasala’s story to every child in Sumeru.
Xiao has never heard this tale before. He finds it hard to believe, but here are a bunch of people following the teachings of this god. The Mausoleum supposedly holds Kasala’s spirit, serving as both his resting place and his birthplace. As he’s led into the temple, he feels all his powers leave him, left at the door. The wardings are strong enough to prevent Luan from getting Cyno’s heart themself. It’s why Xiao was sent as a disposable servant.
They’re also strong enough to prevent Luan from getting to Xiao.
He sags bonelessly between the priests’ arms, but his mind is whirring, calculating the risks. He’s safe. Luan can’t find him here.
If so, he’s free, isn’t he?
There is much distrust in the temple. Aside from the people carrying him, others hide behind pillars, watching him warily. Likely demons of his calibre don’t repent often, but Xiao isn’t here of his own will. He has no choice, and has long since given up on fighting for one.
(But maybe, maybe this temple can be his shelter. The priests could easily dispel his very existence, but the most dangerous place is the safest, after all.)
He’s taken to a vast, empty room, shaped like a dome with the ceiling made entirely of glass. The howling winter outside drapes the room in cold white light, and a single person stands in the middle.
“Priest.”
He turns, motioning for the guards to let go of Xiao. Xiao wasn’t hallucinating in his fatigue; the priest’s eyes really are a burning orange-gold, but somehow as still as a pool of water.
“My name is Cyno,” the priest introduces himself. “What is yours?”
“Is that important?” Xiao asks.
“Is it not?”
Xiao has always been selfish. He’s utterly willing to take the life of a kind man who’d saved hundreds like him, just for his own freedom, but now, he’s biding for time. He wants to hide here, away from Luan, away from anyone who could hurt him, and anyone he could hurt.
He would have to kill Cyno one day, he knows. One day, Luan will get powerful enough to break through the wards, and Xiao would be in danger. Then, he would have to fulfil his end of his promise to Luan in exchange for his life. But not today.
Today, he wants to be free, if only for a moment.
“Xiao,” he answers. “I don’t see why the name of a heartless demon matters to you.”
“You are not heartless,” Cyno says firmly. “Or you wouldn’t be here.”
You don’t know anything about why I’m here, Xiao thinks, but deep inside, he knows Cyno is right. It would’ve been easier if he couldn’t feel.
When Luan enlisted Xiao into their ranks, they hadn’t been merciful enough to cut Xiao’s emotions out of him. They’d left him with a heart, as alive as Cyno’s, and he’d never stopped feeling. That made the slice of his spear through every body all the more painful.
He’s tired, more exhausted than he has been in centuries. Luan’s hatred for everything that breathed sustained the darkness of every demon around them, but away from them and bound by wards, Xiao is as human as the priests who live here. Cyno catches him as he collapses. He leads Xiao to the bathroom, lowering his frail body into warm water. He scrubs the dirt and sin away from Xiao’s skin, singing something that suppresses the karma in him. Then he dries Xiao, patting his face gently with a towel, and gives him a clean white robe. It’s spotless, and Xiao is suddenly afraid of getting it dirty. Afraid of marring another thing with his own hands, deep in a temple where he’s supposed to be good.
Cyno takes him to the prayer hall. Faced with the golden statue of Kasala, Xiao finds that he doesn’t believe in the god. He doesn’t believe that of all the demons Kasala saved, he deserved to be one of them.
Still he asks, Will I be okay?
Cyno finishes his prayers and takes Xiao’s hand, impossibly gentle. Maybe that’s an answer.
The first thing Cyno teaches him is meditation.
He’s asked to sit still, empty his mind, and simply breathe. To let go of all his guilt and regret, troubles and fears, and simply be, for a small pocket in time.
Xiao does not have the patience for this.
Meditation does not help him. It leaves him with nothing to do and only serves to amplify the voices in his head. He hears phantom whispers of Luan’s voice in his dreams, and the screams of everyone he’s ever killed echo in the empty room. He cannot let go, not when the ghosts of his own making cling to his robes. Not when he lets them, using them as a reminder that he is a creature of chaos, not order.
Yet still he wants. Cyno told him meditation would bring him closer to Kasala, so he continues, hoping the god he doesn’t believe in will see him. He hopes Kasala finds him before Luan does.
Without Luan’s will forcing him into obedience, Xiao is stuck with himself, and what a terrible thing it is, to be himself.
He stumbles out of his room into the back garden one day, where Cyno is tending to a myriad of plants. He’s overwhelmed, choked by his past, afraid of his future. He pounds his fist into the earth, head throbbing.
The fresh smell of dirt after warm rain greets him. It’s the middle of winter, yet here they both are, in an impossible garden of greenery. He breathes out, then in, then out, trying to calm the feverish beating of his heart. The grass embraces him, coaxing him to lie down.
Cyno comes to sit next to him. Xiao doesn’t take note of him, focusing on breathing so he doesn’t forget how to. When he feels like he won’t drift away, he opens his eyes slowly.
Cyno is braiding something, his movements soft but deft. Xiao wonders how a single person can have so much care in them. Cyno moves like he’s afraid of hurting the grass beneath his feet, light and floating like he’s a ghost. Xiao is struck momentarily speechless as the winter sun shines through the transparent roof of the greenhouse. If he has any doubts of whether there is any good left in the world, they are all dispelled now. Cyno is right here, after all.
Cyno finishes his handiwork and reaches over to adorn Xiao’s head with a crown of dandelions. “For hope,” he explains. “And freedom.”
Staring into his earnest eyes, Xiao thinks that he is an ugly, ugly demon indeed.
Xiao is going mad from meditation. Instead of calming him, it puts him on edge, making him flinch at the smallest sound and get more nightmares than sleep.
Cyno gives him something else to do. The flower in the pot he’s given is a drooping red, like sunset. Cyno tells him it’s called a mourning flower.
There are many things Xiao has to mourn.
He cares for it like he has never cared for anything before. He tends to it like it is the reincarnation of the child whose dreams he’d taken and taken until all she could do was stare blankly into nothing. Every morning, he waters the plant, then spends the rest of the day touching its leaves lightly, counting the green veins. He pokes the petals and runs the soil through his fingers. The greenhouse feels like it exists separately from this world, away from anything Xiao has ever known, both good and bad. It’s only him and all this sprouting life, and he has never felt more at peace.
Cyno visits him sometimes. Whenever he’s free of his duties, he comes to watch Xiao as he plucks the weeds carefully and trims off excess leaves. For all the handsome, angular lines that paint Cyno into a person, to Xiao, he is blurred with beauty, like a mirage in the desert. He feels like Cyno might disappear at any moment, yet Cyno looks at him like he would stay forever.
“Does winter ever end?” Xiao asks. He has only known cold despite serving the fire god of chaos. Luan does not use their flame to warm. They use it to burn.
Cyno nods. “It does. One day, you will see the spring flowers bloom.”
It feels cathartic, doing good things. Like he’s atoning for all his sins.
Cyno says he will have to do a lot more before his karma is balanced. That it might take the rest of this lifetime, the next, maybe a hundred lifetimes more, before Xiao can reincarnate into someone with happiness. Xiao thinks it’s okay. As long as he is good for one day. As long as he gets to be good one day.
Once he doesn’t jump at every footstep, Cyno allows him to walk around the temple. He drew a marking on Xiao’s arm that keeps his karma from staining anyone around him, the strokes careful and beautiful. First a pure white robe, then a circlet of flowers, and now a delicate tattoo. If anyone could make Xiao less monstrous, it would be Cyno.
Xiao has started helping out in the kitchen. The old lady there can’t see, so he runs around getting plates and utensils for her. He helps her dice tofu and peel potatoes. She doesn’t know he’s a demon.
She feeds him spoonfuls of soup every time she cooks, but the taste settles on his tongue like ash. He can only stomach her almond tofu because it’s a taste he recognises, and how ironic it is, that his sin has become a comfort, that his evil has become a constant. He eats all of the tofu, clinging on to the soft texture that is identical to happy dreams. Xiao is used to eating dreams.
The old lady doesn’t scold him when she finds all the plates empty. She laughs and pats Xiao’s cheek.
“Thank you,” she says, and Xiao feels like crying.
One day, he asks her for help, and together they make a dish Xiao has never seen before, but he heard from the other priests that it’s Cyno’s favourite. He brings the plate carefully into his room and waits for Cyno to finish his duties and come to him.
His eyes light up when he sees the food, taking the spoon from Xiao eagerly. He takes a bite, and his face breaks into a smile, so wide his eyes crinkle into shining crescents.
“You made this?” he asks, mouth still half full.
Xiao can’t help but let out an amused huff. “Yes.”
Cyno laughs brightly and starts wolfing down the food. The sound travels down Xiao’s chest and buries itself in his heart. It’s a warm grave.
Xiao can feel himself fading away.
Once one’s soul has been tainted by evil, it will take more evil to shape it, to render it, to continue that very soul’s existence. Evil gives as much power as it takes, and that is why Xiao cannot leave Luan. Luan’s existence feeds the monster inside him and grants him the mercy and punishment of surviving.
He rolls out of bed one night, head pounding. His vision swims, and in the dark, he can’t see his hands. Are they even there? Is his body still intact, or has he been dragged into the whirlpool of reincarnation and is about to meet the judge of his fate in hell? He stumbles out of the room, Cyno fast asleep beside him. It would be easy to just kill him and take his heart back to Luan. Xiao can live.
(And yet, he cannot bear to kill the man who promised him spring.)
The priest standing guard in the hallway outside his room is yawning when Xiao opens the door without a sound. He melts into the shadow, moving where the candlelight doesn’t illuminate. His claws inch towards the priest’s throat, aiming for blood. Just one small life. He’s seconds away from undoing everything he’s worked on for the past weeks but he doesn’t care.
When he was with Luan, he never had to worry about staying alive, because Luan’s power kept him mercilessly tethered to this world with no escape. Now that he’s faced with the prospect of actually disappearing, Xiao is afraid. Maybe he’s just terrified of facing true punishment for everything he did. Maybe he finally found something he doesn’t want to lose.
His claws are inches away from drawing blood when he’s tackled from the side, rolling painfully before the person pins him to the ground.
The guard yelps, but Xiao’s attention is on Cyno, the other’s eyes narrowing above him.
“Xiao.” Cyno doesn’t sound angry, only disappointed, and it makes Xiao hurt more.
“I’ll die,” he blurts out, voice rising as he gets more hysterical. “You don’t understand, all the things I did to live, I can’t just fade away like this, I need his life, I need–”
Cyno touches their foreheads together and the frantic heat burning inside Xiao dies a little. He pulls himself back from the edge of hysteria, focusing on Cyno. His claws dig into Cyno’s forearms, but the priest doesn’t flinch or let go of Xiao’s face.
“You can’t,” Cyno whispers. “To repent is to never take a life again, even if it’s at the cost of your own. Trust me. I can help you. I can save you.”
Xiao curls into a ball, body shaking with sobs. Cyno wipes away his tears, kissing his eyelids and nose.
“I don’t want to die,” Xiao chokes out, his grip so tight bruises are starting to form on Cyno’s wrists. “I’ve done a lot of terrible things but I don’t–I–”
“Shh.” Cyno brushes his hair away from his sweaty temples. He kisses each of Xiao’s cheekbones, then between his brows. “You’ll be good. You’ll be good one day.”
After that, Xiao is bedridden most of the time.
Denied of his powers and Luan’s presence, there is very little anchoring him to the mortal world. Any moment, he could fade away and enter the hall of the underworld, into the never-ending cycle of reincarnation, where punishment would surely await him for all the things he’d done. That is why demons sink their claws on this mortal plane. It is better to live with guilt, even if it would last forever. Living is damnation, and no one wants more pain than they already have.
Cyno brings him back to existence, little by little. One day, while they’re sitting side by side in the greenhouse staring at the grey-white sky, he asks, “Xiao, do you want to go anywhere?”
Xiao’s heart leaps into his throat. “No,” he says harshly. Cyno reaches out, apologetic, but Xiao shies away, curling up against the wall.
“No,” he repeats, softer. “I serve a god. Used to. They would kill me if they found out I escaped.”
Cyno is silent for a moment, and then he stands, brushing his robes lightly before leaving. Xiao fights the crushing feeling in his chest, but when the priest returns moments later with a small box, the feeling floats away like light clouds.
Cyno leads Xiao back into the dim warmth of their room and sits down opposite him. “How about a game?”
It’s a card game, and relies on strategy enough for Xiao to fully focus on it. It’s nice, taking his mind off everything. He can forget about his task, forget about his master. Nothing exists except him and Cyno, and the greenery a door away, the sky a ceiling away.
“Oh.” Cyno raises an eyebrow when Xiao beats him. Regardless, he smiles. “You’re very good at this. Were you a general in your past life?”
Was he? He doesn’t remember. He tells Cyno as much.
“What about you?” Xiao asks. “Do you remember who you were in your past life?”
Cyno stays silent. Then he leans close and lies on Xiao’s shoulder, simply breathing.
“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” he whispers. “Let’s stay like this, just for a while.”
His ghosts come for him at night, when he’s unconscious and vulnerable.
They whisper in his dreams, their hands tugging him down to hell with them. Why? Why did you kill me? Why did you take my dreams? What did I ever do to you?
What did I ever do to Luan? he rages in return. What did I ever do to exist?
He would wake up, sweating and crying and retching over the side of his bed. Cyno would be by his side in seconds, a comforting hand on his back.
Cyno looks at him like he can see good. Xiao stares into the mirror, and cannot for the life of him see what Cyno sees.
He was naive.
He’d let the temple and its priests lull him into a false sense of security. He’d let his guard down, thinking he would be fine, thinking he could be good.
Luan’s consciousness attacks him in the middle of the night, searing his whole body.
Cyno hears his endless screams. This time, it takes more people to calm Xiao down, to chase Luan out of his mind. They’d gotten stronger, and Xiao knows exactly how because they forced him to choke on images of ravaged villages and dead soldiers. This is what I can do, the wreckage says. How dare you think you can escape from me?
He was greedy. He asked for salvation that wasn’t his to have, and Luan came to remind him who he belonged to.
“Xiao.” Cyno cups his face, his eyes glowing faintly in the dark. “Xiao, look at me. I’m here, I’m here, you see? I’m right here. You’re okay.”
What else is there to do but kiss him when he speaks like this? What else is there to do but love him?
Is this enough? Xiao thinks as he presses their bodies close. Do I have his heart now?
Fear possesses him for the next few days.
Cyno stays with him, but he can’t hear the soothing words through his panic. Luan bombards him with chaos every time he closes his eyes, and every waking moment shreds his sanity little by little. His terror of them runs deep, his entire body seizing up whenever he thinks of their power and the pain they could bring.
He knows what he has to do to make it all stop. All love stories have an ending.
Xiao is waiting for Cyno when he returns to their quarters for the night. The dagger in his hand is on the priest’s throat in no time.
(He knows Cyno is a warrior. He wonders what it means that Cyno did not have his guard up around Xiao at all.)
Cyno looks at the dagger in Xiao’s hands. Xiao cannot bear to look into his eyes.
“I want my freedom,” he blurts out. “You’ve seen what Luan can do. They can break me. They can break my mind, my body, my soul, until there’s nothing left of me to reincarnate. I need to give them your heart.”
Cyno only hums, unable to nod without cutting his own throat on the blade. He doesn’t look like someone who’s about to get killed.
“Why aren’t you fighting back?!” Xiao shouts, his voice breaking. “Are you just going to let me kill you?”
Cyno raises his arm slowly, like he’s afraid he would startle Xiao. The demon stands stone still as Cyno caresses his cheek.
“Yes. This day was bound to come. Though,” he stares at the stars like they would give him an answer, “it would be kinder if it wasn’t you.”
The starlight sets Cyno’s eyes ablaze. Kasala’s eyes were twin suns, watching over the earth.
The realisation hits Xiao. “It’s you. You are–”
Cyno stares at him with those jackal eyes. “The incarnation of Kasala in this life, yes.”
“You knew I was fated to kill you.” And you let me in. You let me into the temple, into your heart. You kept letting me in.
“I did,” Cyno admits, “but know this, Xiao. I was not fated to love you, yet I loved you all the same.”
It all becomes much, much worse. Much worse than if he’d just killed Cyno when he was a stranger, because now he is more than that. He is a promise to be fulfilled next spring.
Cyno strides forward. He takes Xiao’s hand, and impossibly gently, he pushes the blade into his own chest, his hand still warm over Xiao’s.
“Take my heart,” he whispers. A trickle of blood paints his lips a mourning red. “You’ll be free. In exchange for my life, you’ll be free.”
He’s beautiful even in death.
There is a god who has died a thousand times.
Legends say the god of balance and order could see all the good and evil in the world. Kasala’s eyes were twin suns, watching over the earth. For every evil he helped, a part of his life force would drain away, but still he guided them and cleansed them. He taught them to do good, believing that every living thing deserved redemption.
Every life, he would meet a demon, so deep in karma they were unsalvageable. Kasala did not give up, and in attempting to restore balance, the demon’s karma would kill him. Then he would live again, and die at the hands of another demon. Again and again, until every being in the world was saved and given a new life. That was Kasala’s oath.
They say, as he died, jackals would appear. They would devour the bitter remnants of karmic debt and lap away tears of thanks from the demons’ faces.
Then they would take Kasala, and he would live again.