Chapter 83
I looked at him, and there wasn’t a ripple of emotion in my gaze–just a still, lifeless void. A dead lake inside
- me.
After a moment, I slowly lowered my leg and turned to face him. My voice came out hoarse, as if scraped by sandpaper.
“If you don’t want to interfere with my fate, then why are you here stopping me?”
The man took a drag of his cigarette and exhaled slowly. Smoke curled upward, catching the moonlight and swirling between us like a veil. His eyes locked onto me through the haze.
“Life’s like a play,” he said, his tone calm and unhurried. “Sometimes all it takes is one more audience member to change the story. I’m curious–if you don’t die tonight, what kind of tale you’ll end up telling.”
I blinked, momentarily stunned. His face remained cold and detached, so indifferent it chilled me.
Most people either cared or didn’t. He… hovered somewhere in between, like he could walk away and forget me ever existed.
And yet his words, not quite a plea, not even encouragement–still managed to crack something inside
- me.
No one really wants to die. Not deep down.
If life could still be beautiful… who wouldn’t want to stay and see it through?
“My story’s already ruined,” I murmured, eyes dropping to the pavement. “There’s nothing left worth watching.”
He didn’t seem fazed.
“Not necessarily. The best parts usually come at the end.”
I went silent. My gaze dropped to my body–bruised, scarred, aching. For a while, I just stared. Thinking.
Then I looked up again, and for the first time in a long while, there was a faint flicker of light in my eyes.
“Do you think I could really start over?”
“Why not?” he replied. “If you want to, you can. Anytime.”
His words settled into me like the first warmth after a long winter. It wasn’t hope exactly… but it was close. A small crack of sunlight in the endless dark.
A gust of night wind whipped through the bridge, and I shivered involuntarily.
He noticed.
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Without a word, he shrugged off his black jacket and held it out to me.
“Put this on. Don’t catch a cold.”
I hesitated. Then took it.
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It smelled faintly of smoke, clean cotton, and something else I couldn’t quite place–something masculine and steady. The warmth wrapped around my shoulders like a shield, and for a second… I felt safe.
“Thank you.” I said quietly.
“You really want to thank me?” he asked.
“Huh?” I glanced at him, confused.
“You said thank you, didn’t you?”
“I… yes?”
He looked at me with a strange expression, like he was both amused and vaguely entertained. His eyes- sharp, unreadable–narrowed slightly.
Then he asked. “You practice Moonweaving?”
My brows furrowed. How did he know that?
He tilted his chin slightly toward me.
I looked down–and froze.
Right there, stitched into the chest of the jacket I was wearing, was a lunar bloom sigil.
And not just any bloom.
Mine.
I recognized the stitchwork instantly–woven threads enchanted beneath moonlight, petals inked with ancient lunar patterns, glowing faintly under the right light. It was unmistakably mine.
I jerked my head up, staring at him.
How…?
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.
“Your Moonweave is impressive,” he said eventually, his voice still cold, but with an odd note of reverence. He pulled out his phone and tapped it.
A photo filled the screen. It was another piece of Moonweaving–this one etched onto silk, shimmering in its unfinished brilliance.
“This sigil is clearly crafted by a true daughter of the old packs,” he said. “But it’s incomplete. The weaver
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didn’t finish it. If you could complete it for me, that’ll be your thank you.”
I stared at the screen, stunned.
I knew this pattern. I knew every glowing strand.
It was mine.
I had started weaving that sigil while imprisoned–quiet nights, moonlight filtering through iron bars. I hadn’t finished it because I’d been released before I could.
But… how had it gotten into his hands?
“Sir,” I asked, voice trembling, “where did you get that Moonweave?”
“Pack auction house,” he said simply. “I bought it.”
A Pack auction? My Moonweaving? I thought I must’ve misheard.
I knew I was skilled. The guards used to whisper about my hands like they were sacred. But I’d always assumed I was just… good enough. Nothing more.
And yet…
I clutched his phone tightly. My voice shook as I whispered, “Do you mind me asking… how much did you pay for it?”
He studied me for a moment, then replied, “Twenty million.”
I nearly dropped his phone.
Twenty million?
Twenty. Million.
He said it so casually, like he hadn’t just dropped a bomb.
And that wasn’t even the end of it.
“That was actually a discount,” he added. “This piece was supposed to rival the Moonwoven Pines tapestry I bought last year for thirty million. But since this one was incomplete, its value dropped. Still… the sigil on your jacket–it matches flawlessly. If you complete this piece, no one would ever tell it wasn’t woven by a single soul.”
Moonwoven Pines…
My mind reeled. I had crafted that too.
My hands shook. Without meaning to, I swiped the screen again.
There it was.
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A majestic silver crane perched beneath moonlit pines. Threads gleamed as if blessed by a lunar priestess. Every stitch in that piece–mine.
I couldn’t breathe.
He went on, calm as ever.
“I gave that one to my grandmother as a solstice gift. She adored it. So when I saw another Moonweave by the same hand, I had to claim it.”
Thirty million?
Thirty. Million?
My throat went dry. My vision blurred. I couldn’t process it.
Those numbers… I couldn’t even fathom them.
And they were attached to something I made with my hands?
No wonder the prisoners never touched my fingers, no matter how cruel their beatings.
No wonder the guards shielded me each time I took up the Moonneedle.
My hands… weren’t just skilled.
They were sacred.
A wave of sorrow followed the shock–cold and bitter and suffocating.
If I had known…
If I had known what my Moonweaving was truly worth, maybe I wouldn’t have endured all that begging, all that degradation, for ten million promised by the Vales.
The weight of those years, every humiliation, every tear I shed believing I was nothing–crashed down on
- me.
My eyes burned. I bit my lip, trying to hold it in.
But it was too late.
The tears came anyway.
And all I could do was clutch his phone, shaking under the grief of everything I could’ve been–and wasn’t.