Wu Haoyu's POV:
The shack's dirt floor was slick with blood, but it was Meilin's void-like eyes—not hers, global, cold—and Huang Zhao's twisted crest, glinting like a curse, that tore me worse than the wounds screaming across my arm, thigh, and chest. Their star-daggers flashed, Meilin's blazing wrong, Zhao's hungry, both fixed on Yanyan, her star-etched dagger dim, Huang seal drained, her blood spent on that crestless vault, its memory—Huang vows, peace, wars, crests broken—humming, alive, a trap.
