The Weight of Dust

The rain outside had stopped. The clouds parted, revealing the moon that Fan had sacrificed himself to see.

Xue floated a few inches off the ground. Her spiritual pressure pushed the dust away from her.

"Fan," she said. Her voice was calm, detached. "You have served me well."

"We are partners," Fan reminded her, his voice trembling. "You promised. The Elixir of Rebirth. The Celestial Peak."

Xue sighed. It was the sigh of someone explaining simple math to a child.

"Fan, look at you."

Fan looked at his hands. They were withered claws. He could feel the curse pulsing in his chest, a ticking clock that would end his life in a few years of agony.

"The curse you carry is heavy," Xue said. "It is concentrated bad karma. If I were to bring you with me, that karma would infect my cultivation. It would weigh down my ascent. The Dao is about severing attachments, not carrying dead weight."

Fan went cold. Colder than the ritual.

"But... I saved you," he whispered. "I gave you everything."

"And you were useful," Xue agreed. She reached into her sleeve and pulled out a pouch. She tossed it onto the dirt in front of him. It clinked heavily. Gold.

"This is payment," she said. "Enough to buy a cottage in a mortal village. Live out your remaining years in comfort."

"I don't want gold!" Fan screamed, tears streaking the grime on his face. "I want to go with you! You said we were partners!"

"I said what was necessary," Xue said. She began to rise, drifting toward the cave entrance. "A dragon does not partner with a worm, Fan. Be grateful. You touched the divine. That is more than a mortal like you deserves."

She floated out of the cave.

Fan dragged himself to the ledge. "Xue! Come back! Please!"

Xue rose into the night sky. She summoned a flying sword, stepping onto it with effortless grace. She looked down one last time. From this height, Fan was just a dark smudge in the mud.

She turned her face toward the moon and accelerated. A streak of blue light, beautiful and unreachable.

Fan watched her go until the light vanished behind the peaks.

Silence returned to the Medicine Dregs Valley.

Fan looked at the bag of gold. He reached out and touched it. It was cold metal. It couldn't heal his legs. It couldn't extract the curse eating his soul. It couldn't fill the hole in his chest where his heart used to be.

He laughed. It was a wet, broken sound.

He lay his head down in the mud, the same mud where he had found her. The rain began to fall again, washing over him, mixing with the tears of a sidekick who realized, too late, that he was never in the story at all.