"If I have to become the floor to survive it, then carve my name into the walls."
The walls were bleeding. Not literally, but it might as well have been. Mold crawled like black veins through the cracked plaster. The ceiling sagged—heavy with years of neglect and despair. One day it would fall. Crush him. Maybe soon.
Jié Dè lay on the thin, threadbare mattress that had long given up pretending to be a bed. His ribs pressed against the filthy floorboards. His breath came slow and shallow. A faint stink of sweat, piss, and old blood hung in the air.
He was fifteen. Chubby, broken, and half-starved. The weight of the world had been sitting on his chest since before he could even crawl. His skin was sallow and scarred—bruises that never healed, fading like tattoos of pain. His hair hung greasy and tangled in dreadlocks that smelled of sweat and neglect—the only thing he bothered to keep because it was his only shred of pride.
Then came the footsteps. Slow. Heavy. Angry.
The door to the apartment rattled on its hinges. And then his father's voice—slurred, hateful, dripping with venom:
"Boy, you're not even worth the piss I piss out."
A fist slammed against the cracked wooden doorframe.
"You ain't my son. You're a fuckin' mistake I can't flush. You're garbage."
Jié didn't move. Didn't blink. He was used to the words, the blows, the bitter silence that followed. His body had learned to fold itself into nothingness. To disappear.
But the voice kept coming, raw and brutal:
"Your mother wanted to kill you the moment she saw you. I wanted to drown you in the bath. And Yanyue? She ran off like the coward she is, leaving you here to rot. You're not family. You're a parasite."
The last word hung in the air like acid. A glass bottle shattered in the kitchen. Sharp fragments scattered across the floor. A scream—Xiǎorú's.
Jié rolled off the mattress and pushed himself to his feet. His knees cracked. His chest burned. He didn't even flinch.
He moved to the door and opened it a crack.
There, on the threshold, was Xiǎorú. Barefoot. Bruised. Silent. Clutching a ratty stuffed rabbit, its eye missing, stuffing spilling out in ugly clumps. Her fingers trembled as she held it to her chest.
Her innocence was bleeding out of her like the stuffing from that toy.
Their eyes met—hers wide and terrified, his hollow and empty. Three knocks. One knock. The secret rhythm. The fragile lifeline they had built between the chaos.
Jié swallowed the lump in his throat.
"Protect her. Protect her. Protect her..."
But how? When he couldn't protect himself?
They sat on the floor, back pressed to the wall, the darkness swallowing them whole. Jié pulled the torn rabbit onto his lap.
"Do you want the story?" he whispered. She nodded.
The Tale of the Abyssal Lightning Emperor
"He was a cripple, born without a core, a failure in his own sect."
"They carved lightning into his bones. Shattered him with pain."
"Every breath was agony. Every step a trial. But he never died."
"When he broke, he became a storm—unstoppable, unforgiving."
"He wasn't chosen. He was forged in hell."
Xiǎorú leaned her head on his shoulder.
"Do you think he had a sister?"
Jié's hands clenched into fists. For a rare moment, the walls of steel around him cracked.
"If he did," he said, voice low, "he probably couldn't save her."
The silence that followed was colder than the broken room.
Jié wanted to promise her the world. But the only truth was this: They were leftovers. Castoffs. Broken pieces no one wanted.
Jié Dè's Origin
He wasn't chosen. He was discarded. Five years earlier, the abandoned concrete apartment block where they found him smelled like rot and forgotten sins. A six-month-old baby. Emaciated, silent, wrapped in a stranger's hoodie. No documents. No family. No future.
Li Xiujuan had lost hope after her third miscarriage. She took him in like a wound she needed to cover. Her husband, Li Qingsheng, only accepted because his security company got paid to take in a "charity case." They named him Jié Dè—"Calamity's Own"—like he was a disaster they could sign their names to. But they never claimed him.
His sister Yanyue, the only one who ever showed a flicker of kindness, disappeared when he was ten. Before she left, she whispered to him in the dead of night:
"They took you to fix something that's already broken."
He was never a son. He was never family. He was a mistake to be hidden away.
Jié looked up. The ceiling had shifted. The crack had grown—like a wound reopening.
And within it…
A door.
A glowing circle—pulsing like a heartbeat.
A button.
No numbers. No names. Just the promise of something more.
If the world was ending, Jié thought bitterly, then maybe the broken had a chance to rise.
And for the first time, he smiled. But it was a smile born from the edge of madness.
"This world doesn't want me. Fine. I'll take the next one. And if it tries to break me—I'll break it first."