The lanterns of Cloudreach Citadel blazed like captured stars.
Festival music, sweet and distant, drifted on the perfumed air.
Fifteen-year-old Yun Zhuo adjusted her grip on the practice sword, its wooden edge catching the crimson light.
"Keep your stance lower, Jin'er."
A gentle push against her sister's slender back.
"Like this?"
Ten-year-old Yun Jin's voice was a fragile bell, her white training robes pristine despite the dusty courtyard.
Her movements were hesitant, delicate.
"Yes. Stronger."
Yun Zhuo's own vibrant red silk whispered as she demonstrated, a sure, swift thrust.
"Root yourself. Feel the earth."
Yun Jin mimicked her, a fragile blossom trying to be steel.
"Father says my spirit is too gentle for the sword."
Her pale eyes held a flicker of doubt.
"Father worries."
Yun Zhuo ruffled the younger girl's dark hair.
"Gentleness is strength too. But strength needs protection. This," she tapped the practice blade, "is protection."
A comforting warmth spread in Yun Zhuo's chest watching her sister concentrate, her small tongue poking slightly between her lips.
This peace, this home, was her entire world.
A shadow passed over the twin moons.
Sudden.
Swift.
The festive music died mid-note.
An unnatural silence descended.
Thick.
Suffocating.
Yun Jin froze, her practice sword clattering to the flagstones.
"Jiejie?"
Her whisper trembled.
Yun Zhuo's hand snapped to the real sword belted at her waist.
Cold steel met her palm.
Something was wrong.
Deeply, profoundly wrong.
The air crackled.
Not with festival sparks.
With raw, malevolent energy.
Above, the citadel's shimmering dome shield – the Cloud Veil – flickered wildly.
Blue light sputtered.
Fractured.
With a sound like shattering glass, it dissolved.
Silence exploded.
A roar ripped through the night.
Not thunder.
Not beast.
It was the sound of the sky tearing open.
And from the rent heavens, fire rained.
Not festive rockets.
Incendiary terror.
Stone towers erupted.
Wooden structures bloomed into infernos.
Screams.
Not joyful shouts.
Agony.
Terror.
Panic choked the air, thick with smoke and the coppery tang of blood.
"JIN'ER!"
Yun Zhuo screamed, lunging.
Her arms wrapped around her sister, pulling the smaller girl hard against her body, shielding her with her own back as flaming debris rained around them.
Heat seared her cloak.
"Mother! Father!" Yun Jin shrieked, burying her face against Yun Zhuo's chest.
Chaos reigned.
People ran, stumbled, were crushed by falling masonry.
Shadows, twisted and huge, detached from the inferno.
Not shadows.
Armored figures.
Their silhouettes monstrous against the flames.
Their weapons glinted, hungry.
"To the Ancestral Hall!"
A voice cut through the din – sharp, commanding, fraying at the edges.
Their father, Yun Zheng.
He appeared like a storm cloud, his ceremonial robes torn, his face smeared with ash and fury.
His sword was already bloodied.
"NOW!"
He didn't look at them.
He looked through them, towards the slaughter unfolding.
Their mother, Li Mei, materialized beside him, her elegant features set in grim resolve.
No words.
Only a shared, desperate glance towards their daughters.
"Run!" Li Mei hissed, her voice raw.
Yun Zheng shoved them towards a section of the ornate garden wall.
His palm slammed against a hidden sigil.
Stone groaned.
A section slid open – a dark, narrow passage.
"The escape tunnel! Go!"
He pushed Yun Zhuo towards it.
"But Father—!"
"GO!"
His roar held finality.
Pure, primal fear for his children.
"Protect Jin'er!"
Li Mei added, her gaze locking onto Yun Zhuo's.
It was a command.
A sacred trust.
A farewell.
Yun Zheng pressed something cold and hard into Yun Zhuo's grasping hand as he propelled her into the darkness.
A broken piece of jade.
Warm from his grip.
Intricately carved.
Half of something.
"Live!"
His voice was swallowed by the screaming chaos outside.
The stone slab slammed shut behind them.
Plunging them into near-total darkness.
Only the frantic orange glow flickering through cracks in the masonry illuminated their path.
The air was thick with dust and the smell of ancient stone.
"Jiejie...!" Yun Jin sobbed, clinging to Yun Zhuo's arm like a lifeline.
"Hold on!" Yun Zhuo commanded, her voice tight.
She dragged them forward, one hand gripping the cold jade fragment, the other wrapped protectively around her sister.
The tunnel echoed with the muffled sounds of destruction outside.
Thuds.
Roars.
Shrill metal on metal.
Screams that choked off abruptly.
Each sound hammered against Yun Zhuo's ribs.
Mother. Father.
They ran.
Blind.
Terrified.
Suddenly, a colossal boom shook the tunnel.
Dust rained from the ceiling.
Ahead, the faint light filtering through the exit grate vanished.
Blocked.
Heavy debris.
"No!" Yun Zhuo gasped, stumbling to a halt.
They were trapped.
The sounds of pursuit grew louder behind them – heavy boots thudding in the tunnel entrance chamber.
Despair clawed at her throat.
"We... we can't..." Yun Jin whimpered, trembling violently.
Panic threatened to drown Yun Zhuo.
Trapped.
Helpless.
Her parents...
The image of her father's bloodied sword, her mother's desperate gaze…
A low, guttural voice snarled beyond the blockage.
"Search! They went this way! The Heiress must be found!"
Heiress?
A surge of pure, white-hot fury erupted within Yun Zhuo.
Not just fear.
Rage.
Incandescent rage.
It burned through her veins, hotter than the fires outside.
It pooled in her stomach.
Ignited.
Something deep inside her, something ancient and terrifying, stirred.
Woke.
Her vision swam.
The world tinged red.
Her body screamed in protest.
Her meridians felt like glass shards were tearing through them.
Agony.
But beneath the agony, power.
Raw.
Uncontrolled.
Cataclysmic.
"Get back, Jin'er!" Yun Zhuo rasped, shoving Yun Jin deeper into the tunnel behind her.
Her voice sounded strange.
Guttural.
Filled with fire.
The soldiers reached the blockage.
Started hacking.
A blade tip punched through the debris.
Light stabbed into the darkness.
A triumphant shout.
"Here!"
Yun Zhuo raised her empty hands.
Not empty.
Filled with the inferno inside.
She didn't understand it.
Couldn't control it.
She simply unleashed it.
The world exploded.
Scarlet fire vomited from her palms.
Not normal flame.
Liquid fury.
Living vengeance.
It roared down the tunnel, an unstoppable tide.
It didn't just burn.
It consumed.
The blocked exit vanished in a heartbeat.
Stone vaporized.
Timber turned to ash mid-air.
The soldiers…
Their triumphant shouts became shrieks.
Brief.
Terrible.
Armor melted like wax.
Flesh charred and peeled away to bone.
Bone turned to powder.
Their weapons dissolved into molten slag.
The air itself seemed to scream as it ignited.
Lightning bolts of agony shot up Yun Zhuo's arms, into her skull.
Blood trickled from her nose.
Her ears.
She tasted copper.
Her vision blurred.
The tunnel ahead was gone.
Replaced by a swirling vortex of incandescent scarlet, a gateway to hell she had opened.
Beyond the hellfire, the ruined courtyard lay exposed.
Flames still danced on the skeletons of buildings.
Smoke choked the sky.
And there, just beyond the scorched radius of her blast, stood a figure.
Impossibly clean.
Impossibly calm.
White robes untouched by ash or blood.
Face sculpted with angelic concern.
Shen Qingheng.
The Crown Prince of Tianshu.
The revered disciple of the Lingxiao Sword Sect.
His handsome features were a mask of shock and sorrow.
"Yun Zhuo?"
His voice, smooth as silk, cut through the roar of the flames and the ringing in her ears.
"By the heavens... what happened here?"
Yun Zhuo swayed.
The power receded as violently as it had come.
Leaving a vast, hollow agony.
Her limbs felt like lead.
Her head pounded.
The fury faded, replaced by the chilling reality.
The gaping maw where the tunnel exit had been.
The charred, grotesque outlines on the ground where men had stood.
The utter devastation she had wrought.
And Shen Qingheng.
Standing there.
His pristine white robes seemed to mock the carnage.
His eyes, wide with simulated horror, scanned the destruction.
Lingered on the smoldering remains.
Then snapped to her.
To Yun Jin, still cowering behind her legs.
His gaze was sharp.
Calculating.
Too fast.
Not the gaze of someone overwhelmed by tragedy.
It was the gaze of someone taking inventory.
Assessing damage.
Confirming targets.
He stepped forward, carefully avoiding the still-glowing patches on the ground.
"Yun Zhuo! Yun Jin! Thank the constellations you're alive!"
His voice dripped with manufactured relief.
He reached out a hand.
Clean.
Unblemished.
"Easy now... You're safe. Can you stand? What monstrous attack was this? We came as soon as the beacon faltered..."
His tone was soothing.
Reasonable.
The perfect rescuer.
Yun Zhuo tried to speak.
Her throat was raw.
Smoke and blood and something else... the scorched taste of her own power.
She saw his eyes flick past her shoulder.
To her hand.
The hand clutching the broken jade piece.
His gaze lingered on it for a fraction of a second too long.
A spark of something... recognition? Greed?
Quickly masked by deepened concern.
"The Cloud Veil... it failed," Yun Zhuo managed to croak, swaying again.
Black spots danced before her eyes.
The backlash of the fire.
The horror.
The exhaustion.
It crashed down.
"Monsters…" she whispered, the word tasting like ash.
"Monsters indeed," Shen Qingheng murmured, his voice low with feigned sorrow.
He took another step closer.
His hand was still extended.
Offering salvation.
Promising safety.
Yun Jin peeked out from behind Yun Zhuo's legs, her tear-streaked face pale as death in the firelight.
She saw Shen Qingheng.
Recognized the shining prince.
A tiny whimper escaped her.
Hope?
Relief?
Yun Zhuo tried to focus.
Her father's face.
His last roar: "Live!"
Her mother's eyes.
"Protect Jin'er!"
The cold jade digging into her palm.
Shen Qingheng's gaze on that jade.
That... calculation.
Her father shoving her into the tunnel just before the shield fell...
The soldiers shouting about an "Heiress"...
Coincidence?
Her vision tunneled.
The ringing in her ears grew louder.
The pristine white robes swam before her.
The hand reaching out...
Was it rescue?
Or a leash?
She tried to push Yun Jin further behind her.
Her legs buckled.
Darkness surged at the edges of her sight.
She heard Shen Qingheng's voice, closer now, a hushed murmur to someone behind him she hadn't seen.
"Secure them. Gently. They are in shock. And... retrieve any remnants."
His eyes flicked pointedly towards the charred ground.
Towards the space where the soldiers had been.
Towards anything left behind.
Yun Zhuo's knees hit the scorched earth.
Agony lanced through her abused meridians.
Blood dripped onto the broken flagstones.
Her own.
She saw Yun Jin's terrified face swim into view above her, heard her sister's desperate cry muffled by the roaring in her head.
"JIEJIE!"
The last thing Yun Zhuo saw before the darkness claimed her was ShenQingheng's face, leaning close.
His expression etched with perfect, beautiful concern.
His eyes, however, were cold.
Sharp.
Utterly focused on the half-jade amulet clutched in her limp, bloody hand.
Weeping would come later.
Much later.
Now, there was only the dark.
And the ember of rage, banked but not extinguished, deep within her shattered core.