Yan Wuchang sneered at the heavens, a feral, desperate sound that scraped at the edges of his throat. “A truly tasteless tribulation, even by your standards!” He didn’t hesitate. With a guttural roar, he launched himself toward Victor Dalgaard, whose body now writhed like a tormented star, radiating raw, violet rot that peeled paint from the walls and curdled the air. The black ooze on the ceiling pulsed, a viscous, hungry heart. Dr. Hess screamed his name, but the sound was swallowed by the rising wail of the city’s sorrow. Wuchang plunged his bare hands into the shimmering vortex of Victor’s chest, a whirlwind of despair and decaying spirit. A freezing density of a thousand deaths slammed into him, threatening to splinter his mended core before he could even begin. “Foolish! Pathetic!” Wuchang snarled, his voice cracking with the strain. “Do you truly think a Grandmaster of the Cinder Vein Sect can be felled by such common grief? I’ve seen greater tragedies before breakfast!” He began to pull, not at Victor’s body, but at the very fabric of the sorrow itself, drawing the toxic, necrotic rot into his own meridians. It felt like swallowing a sun made of pure, distilled agony. His flesh crawled, his vision blurred, the faces of his fallen sect members flashing behind his eyes, each one a fresh stab of guilt. Outside the VIP room, the hospital began to buckle. Lights flickered and died. A low hum vibrated through the structure, the sound of a city’s collective despair finding its voice. Inside the room, Elias Dalgaard, still paralyzed but with terror hardening his stare, watched Wuchang’s struggle. His lips moved, forming a silent plea. Yan Wuchang stumbled back, a dark, churning cloud now coalescing around him, swirling inwards. His skin began to crack, thin lines of violet luminescence glowing beneath, the exact hue of the spectral blight he was absorbing. “This is… truly distasteful,” he gasped, sweat plastering strands of black hair to his forehead. His energy sea, newly whole, screamed in protest, buckling toward complete rupture. “Wuchang!” Toby Vance cried out, his voice a distorted echo, not entirely his own. His eyes, now pools of cosmic black, stared fixedly at the ceiling. A shimmering, iridescent blue light, previously seen only as a faint aura, now burst from Toby, coiling around Wuchang like a protective serpent. It pulsed with the gentle, rhythmic thrum of a deep ocean, a cosmic filter against the toxic miasma. The azure radiance swirled through the violet mist, purifying it, refining it, making it bearable. “Hurry, Doctor Hess!” Wuchang choked, his voice hoarse, fighting the encroaching darkness. “Victor’s life force wanes! This vile curse feeds on his vitality!” Miriam Hess, despite the surreal horror unfolding around her, didn’t question. Wuchang’s sacrifice, Toby’s impossible manifestation – it was all real. Victor’s body had gone limp, dropping from its levitated state onto the pristine white floor with a soft thud. He was pale, lifeless, his chest still. She lunged, her training kicking in, a desperate anchor to the tangible world. “He’s flatlining!” she yelled, tearing open Victor’s gown. Her hands found his sternum, pressing down, hard and fast. “One… two… three… four…” Her palms hammered his ribs with steady, brutal rhythm. Toby’s sapphire stream braided into Wuchang’s vortex, pitting primordial cleansing against ravenous rot. Elias Dalgaard watched, tears streaming down his face as his cursed bloodline’s doom and salvation played out before him. Wuchang grit his teeth, the force of the grief-taint tearing at his ribs. Toby’s primordial aura bought him precious seconds, enough to attempt the impossible. He channeled and coiled every stray strand, packing the raw despair—the very essence of the city-destroying plague—into a pinpoint anchor inside his dantian. He forced it, against every instinct, to coalesce, to solidify. “A Tier-Nine… Grief Pellet,” Wuchang grunted, the words ripped from his throat. The concentrated seed of the calamity, a black pearl of calcified anguish, formed inside him. It was a perfect, terrifying sphere, radiating a cold so profound it promised oblivion. With its creation, the violet haze around Victor receded, snapping back into Wuchang. The cracks in the ceiling sealed themselves. The wailing hum from outside the room softened, then died. Dr. Hess delivered two more powerful compressions, then paused, checking for a pulse. Nothing. She leaned down, covering Victor’s mouth and pinching his nose. “Clear!” She delivered two breaths, then resumed CPR. “Come on, Victor! Don’t you dare give up on me!” With the source of the curse now contained, Victor’s soul, no longer actively consumed, began to flicker. It was faint, but Wuchang could sense it, a fragile spark. The black grief pellet in his dantian pulsed like a buried landmine, threatening to detonate. He had done it. He had drawn the entire city’s doom into himself, transforming it into a contained, albeit lethally unstable, artifact. But the cost… Yan Wuchang’s knees buckled. The violet fissures beneath his skin deepened, then spread, turning his entire body to a mottled, ashen grey. His vision swam. The air grew cold, a chilling echo of the pellet nestled inside his gut. He heard Dr. Hess gasp, heard Toby’s frantic cry, but their voices sounded distant, warped, as if heard from across an impossible gulf. He felt the essence of his soul begin to splinter, a fragile vase cracking under unimaginable pressure. This was far beyond what his newly mended core could sustain. He had saved them, saved the city, but at what price? His last thought was of the green fields of the Nine Cauldrons Realm, of the faces of his sect members, smiling in the sunlight. “My master… my disciples…” he whispered, a final, fading apology. His body began to crumble, fine grey ash drifting from his skin as the condensed pellet inside threatened to obliterate his very existence.

The Sorrow Pill