Shizun, he reflects, tastes like blood.

He's not sure what he expected – maybe something larger than life. Maybe a sense of accomplishment, of fullness, or even finality –

Hollow. There's blood on his face. Shizun’s ribs look the same as any number of monsters he's slain – any number of adversaries, of demons and of people. Extending outwards, gutted unnaturally, metallic tang and pink-tinged bone.

It's blood, like anyone else's, like anyone who isn't Luo Binghe. Blood on his face, in his hair, matted viscera. It's not like prayer. It's not like relief. Shizun, his shizun – he almost expects him to stand, maybe, to whip him, trussed up and screaming, hardly more than skin on bone.

Vertigo: past, present, future. His future, he now knows, will be very empty. His future will be cold. He has what he wanted, he has it inside him, warm and slick down his throat, very still, Shizun's heart. He thinks, it shouldn't be warm and soft.

Shizun was never warm and soft. Shizun operated on a sliding scale of extremes, Shizun is the jade centerpiece of every room, and Shizun is dead, and Shizun is the jade centerpiece of his tomb now too.

Shizun is dead and dismembered by his hand.

Very cold, now, and very dead – once an alive thing.

He remembers the library at Qing Jing peak. He read of cannibals, once – cannibalistic demons, to be precise. A ritual of blood and bone, an exchange of power, as with everything borne of demons.

And Binghe – is he a cannibal? Or is he just another demon? If he reaches down his throat and forces himself to vomit, will he still be a cannibal? If it happens against his will?

Binghe won't vomit. The Endless Abyss on top of a childhood of scraps taught him to keep what he could get, even – especially – what makes him sick.

A wild thing, he is, hands reaching into the corpse – into Shizun's body, seeking, chasing warmth. Could it be hidden behind his spine? In the tender cavity behind his lungs? In his throat? His core? Binghe can't find his core, it must've dispersed. He digs anyway. His eyes are glassed, and Luo Binghe keeps expecting breath, warmth, life, something –

A revival, knelt beside the body and only just now putting a name on what he hopes for. There is a calcified pearl of emotion in his throat, a whine that quickly turns feral as his nails extend, rending bone as easily as cartilage as easily as skin, thin as paper, veins unwriting Shizun's perfect script, he swears he can feel the heartbeat in his stomach, the growl in his throat, his mean mean Shizun in his place in his body.

“Shizun,” he says in a voice he can't quite recognize as his own. The entrails are already in his palm. Blood dries sticky, but this is still slick enough to coat his tongue with.

He's breathless, almost – this act of consumption, an acknowledgment and refusal of the humanity he never had. First the heart, then the rest, orderly and methodical, fickle Shizun would be so proud.

“Shizun,” with Shizun in his throat, he's awful, he's terrible, and no one could ever love him, Shizun is right.

“Shizun,” a sob that won't come, a hitch in his throat for every lashing, the white-hot anger he never knew he was capable of until the Endless Abyss, that final betrayal and,

“Shizun,” a debt repaid. There could never be anything but this. There's no other way it could've ended, nothing but drying blood, the awful disfigured torso of what was once Shizun and that perfect face, same disdain even in death, Luo Binghe snarls,

“Are you mocking me?”

He never knew he was calm until after his forceful eviction from Qing Jing peak. Shizun draws his fire to the surface, a wick to what is otherwise cool and inert, and Shizun taught him only what mattered: to forgive no slight, to bring those foolish enough to cross him down to his level and then to cut them off at the ankles – arms, legs, he still remembers the pull, his quiet fury – there's nothing quiet about his fury here, now, it echoes, catches on the rungs of Shizun's useless ribs, cracks through any bone left unsplintered. The outsides of him bruise, overripe fruit, cloudy spots of color and broken blood.

Luo Binghe can't stop eating, can't stop screaming, can't tell if it's him or Shizun, screaming, can't tell head from toes. It's war, war against himself, war against Shizun that never ended while it had the chance to, a grudge never laid to rest.

There's no closure in it. His appetite is endless, bone and blood and meat and the moment he realizes it's meat, it's meat, it's not Shizun any longer, it's nothing but meat.

Shizun. There's nothing of the boy who stared up through the cracks in the woodshed and hoped for a better future, hoped for nothing but a kind word, a gentle touch, spring breeze, a hand in his hair.

He wails, but he still cannot cry. There's blood, nothing but blood, Shizun tastes so human, so animal, violent blooming flavor, quite nearly sweet.

Shizun, when he was alive, preferred sweet things, preferred light things, would turn his nose up at meat on principle. Complex flavors held no interest to him unless they were delicate, he'd hate the way Luo Binghe chooses to indulge.

“I'm sorry,” Luo Binghe says. It's pantomime, a jagged smile that pulls at the blood dried to his face. “Shizun, Shizun, forgive this one, forgive this disciple, Shizun, thank you for the food, thank you for the food, this one is just so hungry, this one is always so hungry, forgive your unruly disciple, please please please, Shizun . . .”

And at the end of it all, he comes to rest where Shizun's heart was, a hollowed cavity. There's nothing left of him from clavicle to waist. There's the shape of where he was on the floor and the shape of where he was scarred into Luo Binghe’s back, seared through to his heart.

“I'm sorry,” says the demon king, wrapped into a space too small for him. “Shizun,” a whisper, pitched higher than he could handle at spoken volume. There's no smile, not anymore. “Shizun, I just can't forgive you.”