Chapter Text
“Do you want revenge?”, the souls asked.
His body screamed, it burned, it shattered. His lungs were useless against the resentful energy filling his body, his throat rasped trying to keep screaming but nothing else was able to come out. His bones and limbs did not answer, his face smashed against the dirt, ashes and corpses at the bottom of this massive grave.
He tried to move, but spikes of burning pain sent through him as shockwaves threw him stumbling down once again. He tried again, same thing. His screams resonated in echoes accompanied by the screams, whispers and sweet voices of the dead trying to coerce him.
Between the pain he wondered why he hadn’t been consumed yet, but trying to be convinced. A part of his mind found sufficient energy to be curious still and amused.
How long has it been? It felt like ages since the fall.
He tried to stand up again.
And again.
And again.
Until he gave up, just for a moment. Embracing the pain in his body. It would be easier to just give in, die. Why keep going through the pain when he was sure his own body was useless. He was dragging out the inevitable.
But. Wen Chao.
Wen Chao, his laugh kept resonating in his head barely drowned by the rest of the voices surrounding him.
At some point the suffocating energy of the place started filling his body, burning like fire was consuming him and yet he felt so… so cold.
The screams of the souls in the mountain started to increase, consuming him, he was sure.
His mind filled with the images and screams in Lotus Pier, Wang Lingjiao demanding his hand with an annoying voice, the burning strikes on his back with Madam Yu rage, the fire of his home, the burnt smell of the bodies of his shimeis and shidis. Jiang Cheng, cold and weak on his bed with glassy and faraway eyes, Wen Chao and Wen Zhuliu dragging him across the air.
“Torture me if you dare! The more brutal, the better— that way, I’ll be sure to return as a malicious ghost and haunt everyone in the Wen Clan of Quishan. I’ll curse you all and not allow you a single hour of rest!”.
His own voice resonated with rage within the darkness, echoing and overlapping but he knew how interesting the prospect of it becoming true had been when he said them to Wen Chao.
“Do you want revenge?”, the souls repeated.
“Yes”, Wei Wuxian answered.
And then, he closed his eyes. Welcoming the resentful energy that filled him with curiosity before, just as a curious and interesting subject. But now the reality of it was terrifying and painful to say the least, and a little bit exciting, picturing how his hands would take the blood and revenge that filled his heart.
He was dying. His heartbeats slowed down, the pain became unbearable, the nasty smell of corpses and resentful energy was all he could sense.
Jiang Cheng…Shijie…
His mind was slowly drifting away...
Lan Zhan.
Cold and darkness, pain and then no more.
Wei Wuxian was dead.
And with his death, the skies turned red in fury and pain, in disconsolate and grief, rage and revenge. The clouds above the burial mounds turned black surrounding them with threats of red lightning.
The people of Yilling saw the sky and the mountains that day, and fear settled in an unease that they have never felt before.
It was a threat.
A promise.