The cool air of the dormitories did little to dull the hammer inside Lei Ze's skull. He had woken on his floor, the wood grain pressed into his cheek. One of the other nine had dragged him to his bunk, likely assuming he'd simply collapsed from the lingering chill of the Forbidden Stream.
He sat on the edge of the mattress, his fingers digging into his scalp. Every time he closed his eyes, the image returned—crusty, black volcanic rock and a halberd that looked like it had been forged in a dying sun. The vision felt less like a dream and more like a tether, pulling at something deep in his marrow.
"Why me?" he muttered. The words felt heavy, like wet sand.
He stood, his legs still humming with that strange, jagged energy. Dinner was a roar of voices and the smell of boiled fat in the next room.
"Hey! Over here!"
The others waved him over, their faces expectant. They looked at him with a new, guarded kind of respect. Lei Ze didn't want the respect. He wanted silence.
"Eat your fill," Lei Ze said. His voice was sandpaper. "I need the air."
He stepped out into the night. The mountain was a wall of black against a sky scattered with cold, distant stars. He hadn't gone fifty paces before he heard the rhythmic soft tread of boots behind him. Lán Tíng. She didn't say anything at first, just walked beside him until they reached the overlook.
"I miss her," Lán Tíng said. She wasn't looking at him. Her gaze was fixed on the horizon, where the southern peaks were nothing more than ink-blots. "My mother."
Lei Ze turned. The grief in her voice was a physical thing, a weight that pulled at the corners of her mouth. "What happened?"
Lán Tíng leaned against a waist-high stone wall. "I was three. We were in the Southern markets. The Emperor there... he was a man who hated the poor for being visible. He taxed the air we breathed. My mother got sick—the kind of sickness that comes from not eating—so I took our stall. I told the Emperor, to his face, that I'd be a warrior one day."
She let out a short, dry laugh that didn't reach her eyes. "He laughed. Everyone did. Then my mother tried to stand. She was shaking, but she told them to leave me be. The Emperor... he didn't like the tone. He told the guards to take her away. To end it. I tried to run after them, but a boot caught me in the ribs. I woke up in Wèi Kāng's arms. He'd found me in the dirt."
Lei Ze felt a heat behind his ears that had nothing to do with his cultivation. His hands balled into fists, the knuckles white. "I'll find him," he said. It wasn't a boast. It was a statement of fact. "I'll avenge her for you, Lán Tíng."
Lán Tíng's breath hitched. She stepped closer, resting her head against his chest. The silence of the mountain was broken by the sound of her soft, jagged sobs. But as she leaned in, her body went still.
"Lei?" she whispered, pulling back just enough to look at him. "Your heart. It's... why is it so fast?"
Lei Ze didn't move. His heart wasn't just beating; it was slamming against his ribs like a trapped bird. "I was just... thinking of someone," he lied. "Someone precious."
"Who?"
The answer was cut short by the sky tearing open.
A streak of green fire hissed through the atmosphere, slamming into the neighboring ridge with a sound that wasn't a crash, but a groan of breaking earth. The shockwave rattled the stones beneath their feet.
"Wait here," Lei Ze commanded. "Tell no one."
He didn't wait for her to argue. He was already moving, his feet finding purchase on the jagged rocks with a speed that surprised him. The Tri-Path energy in his legs felt like a spring, coiling and releasing.
The crater was a jagged wound in the mountainside. The meteorite sat at the center, the green flames dying down into a low, pulsing red. It looked like a heart made of stone.
"What is this?" Lei Ze stepped to the edge. He reached out, his fingers inches from the glow. A spark of green static jumped to his palm, a needle of ice-cold fire that made him recoil, his arm goind numb to the elbow.
Then, the sound of wind. Not natural wind. The whistle of a cultivator's descent.
Lei Ze dived behind a boulder, pressing his back into the cold granite.
Gāo Fēng landed. The Elder was alone, his hands tucked into his sleeves, his long beard swaying in the heat haze rising from the crater. He didn't look surprised. He looked hungry.
"The Emperor's Scorch," Gāo Fēng whispered. His voice held a reverence that made Lei Ze's skin crawl. "Finally."
The Elder didn't waste time. He moved his hands in a sharp, circular motion. The red aura from the stone didn't just fade; it was sucked into Gāo Fēng's palms. The Elder's skin began to glow with a sickly, internal heat. Without looking back, Gāo Fēng blurred, heading toward a secluded cave a hundred yards up the slope.
Lei Ze stayed pinned to the rock. He took it. He didn't wait for the Sect Master.
More voices. The official investigation team. Six Elders landed, their robes snapping in the wind. They poked at the now-grey, lifeless rock with their staves.
"Just a stone," one muttered, wiping soot from his brow. "The energy must have dissipated on impact."
"Tell Lord Lǐ it was a common fall," another agreed. "Nothing to waste a night on."
They took to the air, leaving the mountain to the silence and the smoke.
Lei Ze emerged, his eyes fixed on the cave where Gāo Fēng had vanished. "The Emperor's Scorch," he repeated. He knew he should go back. He knew he should find Jìng Xū. Instead, he found himself moving toward the cave mouth.
The air inside was hot enough to singe the hair on his arms. Gāo Fēng was deep in the shadows, sitting cross-legged. The red fire he had absorbed was fighting him, leaping from his skin in jagged sparks.
A tongue of that fire suddenly detached. It didn't fall to the floor; it tasted the air, turned, and hissed toward Lei Ze as if it recognized the Tri-Path energy humming in his veins.
"Move," Lei Ze hissed to himself.
He turned to run, but the flame was faster. It wrapped around his ankle like a branding iron. Lei Ze hit the ground, his teeth gritting against a scream as the fire began to climb his leg, seeking his spiritual sea. The pain was absolute—a white-hot needle threading through his nerves.
With a frantic burst of his own golden Qi, he kicked out, the sudden explosion of energy snapping the flame's tether. He scrambled out of the cave, his boots skidding on the loose shale, just as Gāo Fēng's eyes snapped open.
The Elder didn't chase. He just watched the shadow of the boy vanish into the trees. His face remained a mask of cold, predatory calculation.
"Lei Ze," Gāo Fēng said to the empty cave. "You've seen too much."
Thirty miles away, the Jīn Yàn Sect sat like a fortress of obsidian.
Yáng Zhān sat on a throne carved from a single block of basalt. His fingers tapped a rhythmic, impatient beat on the armrest. Huò Jié stood before him, the man's black cloak still damp with the night's mist.
Behind Huò Jié, half-hidden by a pillar, Měi Lín watched. She was sixteen now, her face losing the roundness of childhood, replaced by a sharp, lethal beauty. Her eyes, the color of wet earth, never left the back of Huò Jié's neck.
"The Green Pine is moving," Huò Jié said. "I heard the monk. They are sending their best for the Jade Sun Pagoda."
Yáng Zhān's hand stopped tapping. The air in the hall went cold. "The Pagoda? That relic is meant for a king, not a mountain sect's collection."
"They are sending the boy. Lei Ze."
Yáng Zhān let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-growl. He stood, his Qi rolling off him in waves that made the torches flicker and die. "Then let him come. My son will be there to meet him."
Huò Jié blinked. "Your son, My Lord? I wasn't aware—"
"Mò Zhàn," Yáng Zhān said. The name held a weight that made Huò Jié's shoulders sag. "The strongest soul in the East. He returns for the hunt."
In the shadows, Měi Lín's grip tightened on her sword hilt. Mò Zhàn. She'd heard the name in whispers—the boy who was sent to the waste-lands to train among the demons.
"Lei Ze," Měi Lín whispered to herself. The name felt strange on her tongue. "I hope you're as strong as they say. Because Mò Zhàn doesn't leave survivors."