Cultivator of the End: I Refine My Own Death-Chapter 153: Brother’s Shadow, Brother’s Knife

The mirror stood where no mirror should—half-buried in the marrow dust of the Cradle of Severed Reflections, surrounded by skeletal lanterns made of fingerbones and crimson thread.

It called to Rin Xie.

He did not know how he had found it, only that his steps had drawn him here, guided by something that reeked of familiarity and rot. The mirror was tall and blackened, framed in a twisted alloy of soulsteel and silent gold, its surface unnaturally still. Not reflective. Not opaque. Just waiting.

Waiting to be seen.

Waiting to be remembered.

The Vale of Wounded Promises whispered around him. Cold wind curled like forgotten breath. The bones of extinct spirit-beasts formed the jagged landscape, and each step Rin took crunched on the remains of things that should not have died. The sky here was starless, endless—like a great gaping maw.

But it was the mirror that consumed him.

"This place is wrong," muttered Ny'xuan from his sheath. The dagger's voice was subdued, as if even he feared memory's domain. "What you find in there may kill more than your body."

Rin did not respond. He approached the mirror and stared.

And the mirror stared back.

The surface rippled, and then—it began.

The First Memory: A Crimson Kite

They were children.

Jiang Wei's laughter rang in the wind like a blade on porcelain. He ran ahead through a field of ghostgrass, holding a red kite shaped like a lotus bloom. Rin, smaller, quieter, followed behind. His eyes glistened with silent admiration.

"Faster, Rin!" Jiang Wei called, his smile the sun. "If you can catch it, you can keep it!"

The wind tugged. Rin stumbled, fell. Laughed.

He remembered this day. It had been his first smile in the sect. Their first shared secret, away from the cold halls and stricter elders. Just the two of them, free and foolish, before death had sharpened their tongues.

But the memory did not end there.

The grass around them wilted. Blood wept from the soil.

And Jiang Wei turned, smiling still—but his eyes were wrong. Older. Knowing.

"Run faster, Rin," he said again, and now the voice was an echo, layered with something else—a deeper resonance, like the scraping of blades. "Run faster, so I don't have to slow down for you."

The Second Memory: The Night of Fireflies

The image changed.

The disciples of the Hollow Lotus Sect knelt in the moonlight, lighting spirit-lanterns to honor the dead. Rin stood beside Jiang Wei at the cliff's edge, watching the lights drift into the canyon below like glowing tears.

"Do you think they can see us?" Rin asked.

Jiang Wei didn't answer immediately. "No," he said at last. "But we see them. That's enough."

Another pause.

"Would you ever betray the sect?" Rin asked, voice small, the way only the innocent could ask impossible things.

Jiang Wei smiled. But this time it was crooked. "No. Never the sect."

Then—suddenly—the memory fractured.

The lanterns reversed their drift. They spiraled upward. Screams replaced silence.

And the cliffside burned.

Rin saw them—elders impaled on cursed lances. Disciples screaming as soul-devouring flames carved through formation lines. He saw the Sect Master's final invocation shatter mid-chant. He saw himself, younger, helpless, dragged from the rubble by an enemy cultivator laughing as Rin bled from his eyes.

He saw Jiang Wei, cloaked in shadow, watching from the treetops with calm, calculating eyes.

And speaking to a stranger in black:

"I've done what you asked. The formation keys are in place. The rest is your carnage to sow."

The Third Memory: The Knife Beneath the Bed

This one was quiet.

A simple room in the disciple's quarters. Moonlight filtered in through a cracked paper window. Rin's small figure slept on a mat, breathing softly.

And beneath the bed, in the shadows—Jiang Wei knelt.

Older now. His expression unreadable. In his hand, a ritual knife, its blade soaked with blood not yet dry. The symbols etched into the steel glowed faintly.

He reached for Rin.

And hesitated.

Then, he whispered, "Not yet."

The knife vanished. Jiang Wei stood and left.

Rin staggered back. The memories slammed into him like soul-weighted stones. His breathing turned jagged, chest heaving.

"No..." he croaked, the word clinging to ash and disbelief. "No. He wouldn't..."

But the mirror rippled again.

And this time—it spoke.

"He was always the first death you refined. You just didn't know it."

Rin's knees gave out. He crashed into the bone-dust, the taste of old iron coating his tongue. He had suffered betrayal before. He had become betrayal. But this—this was fratricide painted as love.

He screamed.

The sound cracked the mirror.

Hairline fractures spread like crawling insects across its surface, and as they did—so too did they appear within him.

His Soul Sea—an endless lake of mist-black death qi—shuddered. A great crack thundered across it. Storms rose, uncontrollable.

Rin's core surged. Death Qi surged through his veins, a thousand shades of grief, rage, betrayal, and heartbreak coiling together. His Death Core glowed like a heart devouring itself.

New Path Unlocked: Knife of Kin – Death of Betrayed Blood

He clutched his chest. Something shifted. An ability etched into marrow:

Brother's Knife (Active): Strike using grief-bonded death qi. The target receives true damage equal to the weight of shared memories. Cannot be blocked. Cannot be healed. The closer the kinship, the deeper the wound.

It was powerful. Devastating.

And yet—his soul bled.

A second crack ruptured through his soul sea. Phantom screams echoed in his mind. Jiang Wei's laughter turned cruel. The memories repeated in maddening loops.

"No," Rin whispered again.

But it was not denial now.

It was fury.

He rose, death qi bursting from his form like black flame. His arm lashed out. He punched the mirror.

Once.

Twice.

Thrice.

With every blow, his bones cracked. His knuckles split open. The mirror resisted—howling with a thousand stolen truths.

On the final blow—it shattered.

Black glass rained like midnight daggers, embedding into his flesh. His blood hissed on contact. But the mirror was gone.

And with it, the last lie he had clung to.

Rin stood in silence.

Wind tugged at his torn robes. Ny'xuan pulsed faintly, absorbing the death qi like a vampire tasting grief.

"You should not have done that," the dagger whispered. "Not without preparing your soul anchors. The truth is a dangerous cultivation resource."

"I didn't break it for power," Rin said, his voice hollow. "I broke it so I wouldn't see him smile again."

He stared down at his bloodied hand.

In the center of his palm, where a shard had embedded itself deepest, a single reflection remained—Jiang Wei, as he had once been, reaching out to Rin with that same red kite, laughing.

Rin crushed it. frёewebnoѵēl.com

His Death Core pulsed.

And the sky wept.

System Update: Soul Sea Fracture Detected

Stability: 64%

Anomaly: Emotional Contagion — echoes of unresolved kinship may manifest as hallucinations

Trait Gained: Fractured Bond – Gain strength when harming those you once loved.

He stepped away from the shattered shrine.

And behind him, the broken mirror reformed—not in the physical world, but inside his soul sea.

A shrine of blood. A mirror of betrayal.

Always there. Always watching.

Elsewhere...

A man in golden robes walked through a battlefield of corpses. Each body was burned from within, their souls extracted cleanly. He paused beside a still-breathing cultivator.

The man looked up, trembling. "Who... who are you?"

Jiang Wei knelt beside him, smiled that same sunlit smile Rin once knew.

"I'm no one, really. Just a brother."

He drove a blade into the man's heart. "Cleaning up family business."

Then he turned toward the distant horizon—toward the Vale of Wounded Promises.

Toward Rin.

And his smile faded.

To be continued...