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It feels love.
It feels love, it has love, it knows love. It is love.
It has no name, but it is love, because if it were not love it would be nothing, and it can’t—it won’t be nothing because it loves…
Him.
It loves Him.
It does not know His name, can barely remember His face, but it knows above everything else that it loves Him.
That alone is reason to go on living.
Living?
No. It is dead.
It is dead, but that’s okay because it has become stronger in death than it was in life. Was it enough?
No.
It remembers pain. Not its pain, though it knows it has felt great pain, but His pain. He was hurt and it could not stop it, could not stop them from stabbing and stabbing and stabbing, taking more and more and more until it could hardly recognize the face of its beloved.
It remembers being stronger the second time. He was going to let it happen again, so it took the pain onto itself.
It knows pride.
It doesn’t think it has been very proud before, but now it feels the pride of having protected Him, and the stubborn pride of remaining still. It endures at the faint memory of His words.
Live for me.
It does. It has. It always will. It will never Rest in Peace, not so long as its beloved remains in this world. Its noble, gracious, special someone. Its god. Its savior.
Xie Lian!
It remembers, it remembers, it remembers!
It remembers Xie Lian’s face, and it sculpts those features into stone, defining its mission with every chip and curve. It remembers falling into Xie Lian’s arms, and it captures the moment in all the glory He deserves—save for its own form, rendered only as a bloody red streak because that is all it knows of itself. It remembers the cave and the flower yao, and it remembers learning desire. Those memories are captured as well because even though they bring it great shame, every moment with Xie Lian is precious.
They are all it has.
Every memory drives its purpose further and further, every painting and statue makes it stronger and stronger until it has dragged itself from the brink of nothingness to the cusp of becoming one of the most powerful creatures in the world.
It remembers carving a mask to show Him that there was still someone in this world that could still smile, even when He was soaked in blood.
Now it smiles with its own blood-soaked face.
Once again, it falls. Hua Cheng is reborn from the fire of the Kiln. He is fused together from the scraps a mangled spirit managed to hold together with every amount of willpower in its body, but above everything else, he is born of love.