Chapter 199 — Wounds of the Heart
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 6 of 6
"I heard her voice growing softer and softer, yet still she went on speaking to me: this was the last thing she could ever do for me. In days to come, so long as someone found the five sacred artifacts and placed them within this skeleton, I would be able to rise from the dead. But after that resurrection, though my demon power would remain, my body would already be human—and being human, it would no longer be a body of deathless immortality."
"She said she had set her heart on seeking eternal life, offended against the heavenly way, and created a monster like me—and then an unnatural love had sprung up, compounding error upon error. And because of me, she had brought about the deaths of countless lives, heaping yet more catastrophe upon the living world. And yet it was her own hand that destroyed me—and here she said no more. My consciousness was already fading; in a daze, I heard only her final words:"
"I will always be with you."
That sentence—I never understood it.
Not until I, ten million years later, rose from the dead and once more stood at the mouth of the ancient cave.
That statue, buffeted by wind and frost and rain and snow, worn by sun and moon and bitter cold, yet still gazing deeply into the depths of the ancient cave.
I held her in my arms.
I understood.