Corrupted Love| XIAOVEN

Chapter 9 (flashback): Only on moonlit nights

(TW: slight gore)  

2000 years ago...

The cool wind whipped hard along his face. Biting cold surrounded the young man. Blood stuck to his face. On his clothes, on his spear.

 It was that of hundreds he had already killed. But also, that of himself. Because even the worst demons could bleed, he had learned, and he counted himself among them. 

His hair was messy, and his clothes were largely ripped. Several bleeding cuts gaped on his lower body. Individual older scars shone white in the night, while his body was also littered with crusted wounds and hematomas. 

He had probably broken some ribs and his muscles burned painfully. Small clouds formed in the cold air each time he exhaled. Since his clothes were almost completely destroyed by now, his whole body was shivering. 

Though his mind was much worse off than his body. 

He had lost all sense of reality and had gone insane. He did not feel his own pain at all but enjoyed the self-destructive aura that surrounded him. He didn't even think about dying, no he enjoyed all this a bit too much. 

The killing. 

The blood.

 The wounds. 

The pain. 

Does that make a person insane? 

Retribution would come later. Remorse would come later. He looked around wildly. Black karma enveloped him. The dark mask was as beautiful as it had ever been. Like a young girl just growing into a beautiful woman, this mask became more beautiful the more corpses it saw.

The wild monster had lost all orientation by now. It didn't matter where he went, enemies everywhere, corpses everywhere. His heart in the blender slowly bled away while people around him died like flies. He was laughing maniacally. 

By now he was more than a god. For what is a god to an unbeliever? Someone who only chases after one task for however long or why. Someone who no longer believes in anything else.

 Getting out alive or a future were ridiculous wishes for such someone. 

This beautiful storm was Xiao. As lost, as crazy, as could be.

His body was broken, and his mind was too. The only thing left to do was to kill. Until even that would no longer be possible. Only then he would gratefully fall down on the spot and be overcome by his deserved death. 

Until that moment, this endless suffering would continue. No matter how much Xiao begged for death, it did not come. Seconds felt like hours as his body was slowly torn apart. 

He was forced to watch as now his hands held fleeing residents of Liyue and cut their throats open so that red blood flowed down their necks. 

The world around him burned. The clang of swords and the whir of arrows could be heard everywhere. Ashes as thick as fog lay in the air so that the eyes of the young man teared, and his lungs burned. Despite the bitter cold, it made him feel a little warmer. 

Screams suddenly came from the left as a burning tree toppled into a small house. Xiao saw two crying children whose faces were black with soot while tears ran down their cheeks in lighter streams. A younger woman, presumably their mother, coughed violently and ran into the house in a panic. 

As she did so, she kept shouting a name that Xiao did not understand. Now the rest of the wooden house also collapsed, bursting into flames, while the mother was also buried under the rubble. Thousands of small sparks flew into the dark night air, while the children cried and screamed loudly.

 Both their parents were now lost forever. 

They probably should have died with them, since at these times the chances of survival for orphans were very slim. 

Xiao probably could have granted the two the wish of death, but his attention was now on a gigantic black wolf, with several lilac eyes, a demon. 

He ran after the wild beast as sparks and heat enveloped him and the screams of the nearby village grew quieter. Ash burned on his skin. 

He did not turn around, but he knew by now the whole town was burning. 

He reached the animal and didn't take long to kill it. He was now alone. Among the Guyun towers. A lake lay before him as pitch black as the night. 

Only the moon shone, a bright orb in the sky that was reflected on the dark water. Here the air was clearly better, as only in the distance could the smoke of burning villages be seen. 

Here it was very quiet and peaceful. One could hardly hear the sounds of war.

Xiao collapsed to his knees in exhaustion. He breathed heavily and coughed ash. In the bright moonlight, he now saw someone. 

The figure was sitting on a large stone rock that lay in the water. Even from a distance, the Adepti could see that it was only a boy. He had not even his twentieth year of life behind him.

 It was a pity he had to be born in such a war and would probably die there, even if he died naturally. Life was unfair. But Xiao didn't care, he would probably rather kill the boy now than leave this sad child to die in a war. It was almost for the good of the male. 

His hand closed tightly around his spear. Arriving on a stone at the water's edge, he stopped. His body did not move a single millimeter. 

Soft flute music was carried over to him. It was so beautiful and sweet, as Xiao knew it from no one else. But it was not only the fantastic music that touched him. No, it was something more than that. 

He didn't even know exactly why, but his heart felt lighter, his anger was less, and the need to kill was gone as suddenly as a warm breeze. 

It felt like he could finally breathe again after being underwater for so long. The night was beautiful now, Liyue was beautiful. It was all so peaceful, even if it would only last for a second.

 The world was shut down for that moment. 

There was nothing but the present. Everything that had happened, everything that would happen, did not matter now. Who he was, what he had done, everything was lost in the beautiful clear flute music. 

A tragic, yet peaceful silence enveloped the two, protected by the music. The notes of the flute were delicate, high, and fast, yet soothing and healing. 

Xiao was safe. 

It was just this feeling, something he had never felt so strongly before. As if nothing in the world could touch him anymore. Protective like nothing beforeseemed this music  to him. 

His breath slowed and deep sadness spread through him. His chest was heavy and his eyes tired. He slowly settled down on the stone he was standing on. On the soft cold sand, he fell down half fainting but still felt safe from the flute music.

 His eyes closed and just before he fainted, he heard a bright voice. It was calm and gentle.

 "Sleep now, you will die if you go on like this. I will take you to a safe place, trust me. An anemo vision...very intriguing..." 

Xiao had never known who had saved him. Whether it was perhaps the boy or a stranger? He had woken up alone. In a warm hut, with bandaged wounds.