Nguyên was no longer a ghost.
He had taken form — towering like a dormant volcano, cold on the outside, yet filled with smoldering ashes capable of burning anyone who stepped too close.

An looked at him — for the first time in many months.
He hadn’t changed.
He didn’t need to.
Because he never wanted to evolve.
He only wanted to dominate.

“You betrayed your blood,” Nguyên hissed in their final confrontation. “You chose to become a spiritual puppet of the West.”

“And you chose to become a slaughterhouse,” An replied. “You want to turn both East and West into a place where your knife rests on everyone’s throat.”

Linh stood between them, like a painting torn in half. One half leaned toward softness, the other drowned in fear.
Because she didn’t know — she, too, was just a sacrifice.

Nguyên never loved Linh.
He needed her — as living proof.
As the “fake Western woman” to be dragged back to the pen, just so he could declare:

“I have conquered the very kind that once ruled us with their gaze and language.”

He needed Linh to fall —
So that she, too, could die alongside An, if necessary.
Because to Nguyên, even a counterfeit Western woman still had to pay the same price as a real one.

“You thought I was your ally?” Linh asked An in confusion.

An answered gently, “I am the last one left who can still protect you.”

Only An — as someone in-between, a double-edged blade who had lived on both sides — could see what Linh couldn’t:

If Linh stood equal to Nguyên in spirit — strong enough, defiant enough, unyielding —
Then only her body remained a weapon for Nguyên to use violence against.

But if Linh continued to wield Western values as a shield, keeping herself “above” Nguyên —
Then he would not dare touch her.
Because no matter how tyrannical, Nguyên still feared the powerful image of the West he never truly understood.

Spiritual value — even a fabricated one — still held a weight that made a brute hesitate.

“You thought pretending to be Western would make you loved,” An said.

“But you didn’t know… pretending to be Western was the only way you wouldn’t be beaten like an Asian woman from the Middle Ages.”

Nguyên grew furious.
He slammed the table.
He screamed in An’s face.

But An did not fall.
She was no longer the An of the memory-erasing drug, no longer the An lost between three bloodlines.
She was An who had unified her body, mind, and spirit.
An who knew she didn’t have to be anyone else.

And what frightened Nguyên most —
Was not rebellion.
It was serenity.

“You can’t defeat me,” An said, eyes fixed on him.

“Because I no longer have the ambition to defeat anyone. I only want to stop being dragged into being a sacrificial pawn for any so-called civilization.”

Linh began to cry.
For the first time, she saw An —
Not as a shadow.
Not as a rival.
Not as the original.

But as a sister, a friend,
A woman who refused to kneel — and in doing so, saved Linh from kneeling forever before a man cloaked in the words nation, tradition, heritage, who was in truth merely obsessed with controlling women.

“I don’t need a man to survive,” Linh whispered.

“Not because I’m strong — but because I was once lifted from the abyss by another woman.”

She looked at An —
No more envy.
No more shame.
No more walls.

An had succeeded.
Not because she defeated Nguyên —
But because she refused to be a pawn in his game.

She had protected her dignity.
Without falling.
Without surrendering.
Without choosing a side.

She remained herself while others lost who they were.
She saved Linh — not from death, but from a life that was like death.

She shattered Linh’s dream of becoming a wealthy Western bride —
Not by crushing it,
But by placing a mirror in front of her,
So Linh could see who was truly using that dream to chain her down.

Nguyên left.
Like a shadow rejected by the light.

An wrote the final line in her journal:

“Freedom doesn’t come from breaking the chains.

It comes from no longer believing you need chains to survive.”