Han Xin didn’t speak. He couldn’t. He sat on the cold marble floor, his back against the bedframe. The jade pendant still clutched in his hand he buried his face into his mother’s shoulder.
She was curled around him, her tears soaking into the folds of his robe. She wept without restraint, her sobs raw and unfiltered, the kind that cracked through centuries of composure.
Who would have thought the Divine Empress stern, unyielding, revered by gods and mortals alike would break down in tears? But in that moment, she was only a mother. And he was only a son.
Han Xin didn’t really know how to comfort her so he simply stroked her back in slow, steady motions, his fingers tracing the embroidered sigils of her mantle. His gaze was distant, unfocused. His mind was elsewhere, lost in the echo of a name, in the phantom warmth of a hand that no longer held his.
The ache in his chest was unbearable, but he let her cry. She needed it. Maybe he did too.
Then the doors burst open. Han Zhan stormed in like a tempest of emotion, robes flaring, eyes already brimming with tears. "AH-XIN!" he wailed, throwing himself to the floor beside them. "I thought you’d never wake up! It’s all my fault! I should’ve protected you from that vile woman—wuwuwuwu!"
Han Xin blinked as Han Zhan clung to his other side, sobbing like a heartbroken matriarch. Between his mother’s trembling embrace and Han Zhan’s dramatic collapse, Han Xin was thoroughly smothered. He honestly thought he might suffocate under the weight of their grief.
"My ears..." he muttered, wincing as Han Zhan’s wails reached a new octave. But he didn’t push them away. Not after everything.
They cried for him because they loved him. And considering what he had been through, Han Zhan’s heartbreak was justified. Still, Han Xin’s thoughts drifted. He closed his eyes and reached out with his divine connection, calling for his father. The Divine Emperor had always been there—always. But now, nothing. No pulse. No presence. No reply.
Han Xin’s brows furrowed. "Where is Father?"
The Empress stiffened. "Well... um..." How could she explain it? That Han Jun was in council chambers, trying to negotiate Xiang Yu’s release from divine banishment, a punishment so severe it erased one’s existence from the celestial plane. She couldn’t say it. Not yet.
But Han Zhan couldn’t help himself so much so that he blurted, "He is trying to get Xiang Yu out of banishment!"
Han Xin’s heart sank. His breath caught in his throat. "Banishment?" he whispered. "How... how did he end up there?"
Silence. The Empress looked away. Han Zhan wiped his nose, suddenly quiet. Neither of them had the answer. And Han Xin, still trembling, still holding the jade pendant, felt the weight of the unknown settle over him like a second death.
Far away from the panic that gripped Han Xin and Han Jun, Xiang Yu awoke to a silence so vast it felt alive.
He blinked, the haze in his mind clearing just enough for his senses to drink in the alien sky above. It was blood crimson, heavy and endless. There was no sun, no moon and no stars.
Only that dull, oppressive red, stretching into forever, casting the land in a light that was neither of the living nor the dead.
With a sharp breath, he jolted upright. His eyes swept the barren horizon. The ground beneath him was cracked and scorched, a broken mosaic of jagged obsidian and rust-colored dust. Mountains rose like broken fangs, their hollow peaks yawning toward the sky as though some ancient predator had bitten chunks out of them. Below, rivers of molten ash twisted through the valleys, whispering in a language so old even the Divine Realm had forgotten it.
Nothing here grew. Nothing healed.
The air pressed down on him thick, heavy, empty of scent, yet carrying the weight of endless suffering. Every breath he took scraped at something deeper than flesh, gnawing at the fibers of his soul. Across the land, echoes drifted not as sound, but as memories of pain so profound they clung to the wind like frost to bone.
"Ha..." Xiang Yu muttered, more to fill the suffocating quiet than to express thought. Against all expectation, panic didn’t claim him.
The ground, however, did not share his calm. It shuddered violently beneath his feet, splitting wide with a groan that sounded almost alive. He leapt back just as a section of earth gave way, crumbling into a molten chasm.
"That happens a lot," a voice said from behind him smooth, almost conversational, and yet carrying the weight of a presence that made his skin prickle.
Xiang Yu turned sharply.
And met the gaze of Xue Wuheng.
The man stood chained, yet every instinct in Xiang Yu screamed that the iron bindings were no true safety. His eyes glimmered with a predator’s patience, the kind of ancient malice that measured time in centuries.
The chains were thick and glowing with divine restraint, but the way Xue Wuheng carried himself, as if the bindings were an inconvenience rather than a sentence, sent a shiver crawling down Xiang Yu’s spine.
In that moment, Xiang Yu knew he was standing before something far worse than the realm itself.
Xiang Yu’s pulse kicked at his ribs, but his face betrayed nothing. He straightened his back, forcing his voice to remain steady.
The man before him tall, chained, and radiating a predator’s quiet menace did not answer immediately.
Xue Wuheng’s eyes pinned him in place, unreadable yet heavy with something close to contempt. He studied Xiang Yu for so long that the silence itself began to feel like a blade pressed to the throat.
Anger coiled beneath Wuheng’s calm.
Peng Xiu’s failure was an insult he could scarcely fathom. She had stabbed the wrong one brought the wrong soul here. How she had managed it, he could not decide. Was it incompetence or cosmic mockery?
His gaze raked over Xiang Yu again. Beneath the surface, buried deep, he saw it. It untamed divine power, coiled and waiting, like a dragon in slumber.
This was the twin he would have chosen. This was the one who could have been shaped, sharpened, turned against the Divine Realm until it bled.
In Xue Wuheng’s mind, the vision unfolded with cruel clarity:
Xiang Yu breaking the heavens, Xiang Yu twisting Han Xin’s heart until loyalty curdled into love and love into ruin; Xiang Yu tearing at Han Jun and that bitch until their perfect façade shattered.
But no thanks to that fool of a demon king, the wrong twin had been plucked from the thread of fate. A thin, humorless sneer curled Xue Wuheng’s lips. He turned away, chains clinking with the weight of centuries.
"Waste," he muttered, more to the realm itself than to the man behind him.
The molten light caught the edge of his face as he walked into the horizon of crimson sky, leaving Xiang Yu with a puzzled look on his face.