Blood fell in slow, patient drops.
It slid from broken reeds, from shattered bone fragments, from the trembling fingers of a man who no longer remembered how many times he had fallen. Each drop struck the marsh with a soft, obscene sound, swallowed immediately by the pale mud as if the land itself were thirsty.
Wang Qiu staggered forward.
His breathing came in broken gasps, chest burning, lungs scraping against his ribs as though lined with glass. His robes were torn nearly to rags, soaked through with red and black, clinging to his frame like a second skin. One arm hung uselessly at his side, shattered somewhere between the shoulder and elbow. The other clutched a saber he could barely lift anymore.
He did not look back.
He did not need to.
The marsh was too quiet.
No insects chirped. No wind stirred the fog. Even the bones beneath his boots seemed to hold their breath. Wang Qiu had spent his life studying formations, laws, probabilities. He knew the meaning of silence like this.
It meant the predator was close.
He stumbled, fell to one knee, palms slapping wet stone. Pain flared white-hot up his spine, and he bit down on a scream, teeth cracking together hard enough to draw blood. His vision swam. For a terrifying moment, the world tilted sideways and refused to right itself.
Get up.
If he stayed down, it would end here.
He forced himself upright, dragging his broken leg forward, leaving another dark smear across the ground. The trail behind him was unmistakable now. Even a blind thing could follow it.
That was the point.
He wanted it to follow.
Wang Qiu turned sharply, ducking between two massive rib-like bones that curved upward from the marsh like the remains of some titanic beast. He pressed himself flat against the slick surface, holding his breath, suppressing the tremor running through his limbs.
His talismans were gone.
Shattered. Burned. Devoured.
Every trick, every safeguard he had relied upon his entire life had failed him here.
A soft sound drifted through the fog.
Footsteps.
Unhurried.
Measured.
Not the heavy stride of a beast, nor the erratic charge of a berserker drunk on killing intent. These were the steps of something that knew, without doubt, that its prey could not escape.
A figure emerged from the fog behind him.
Tall. Barefoot. Crimson mist clung to his skin like a lover reluctant to let go. His hair hung loose, damp with blood that was not entirely his own. His eyes glowed faintly, not with rage, but with a quiet, intimate amusement.
The Blood Demon smiled.
"There you are," he said softly, almost fondly. "You run better than I expected."
Wang Qiu bolted.
He did not think. He did not plan. He ran.
Branches whipped his face. Bone fragments tore at his legs. The marsh sucked greedily at his boots, trying to pull him down, to claim him as it had claimed so many others. His heart hammered against his ribs like it wanted to tear free and flee on its own.
Behind him, the footsteps never sped up.
The Blood Demon followed at a leisurely pace, hands clasped behind his back, head tilted slightly as though admiring a piece of art.
"Do you know," he called out conversationally, "that prey always runs in curves when it's scared? Even when there's no reason to?"
Wang Qiu burst through a curtain of fog and skidded into a clearing, slipping on wet stone. He barely caught himself before plunging into a sinkhole of black mud. His chest heaved. His vision blurred again.
The Blood Demon stepped into the clearing a breath later.
"Ah," he murmured. "Cornered."
Wang Qiu spun, saber raised with both hands despite the agony. "I won't beg," he rasped.
The Blood Demon chuckled. "I know. That's why this is satisfying."
He took a step forward.
Wang Qiu struck.
The saber flashed, a desperate arc fueled by terror and stubborn will. It would have split a lesser cultivator in two.
The Blood Demon caught the blade between two fingers.
Metal screamed.
The saber cracked down the middle, splitting like rotten wood. The broken half clattered uselessly to the ground.
Wang Qiu stared, disbelief freezing him in place.
The Blood Demon leaned close, breath warm against his ear. " If only you're friends were here or if you had better luck."
Then he struck.
The blow was precise. Casual. A single clawed hand pierced through Wang Qiu's chest, fingers closing around his heart.
For a moment, there was no pain.
Only shock.
Wang Qiu gasped, blood bubbling at his lips, eyes wide as the world dimmed. He looked down, saw crimson spreading across the Blood Demon's wrist, felt his own heartbeat stutter against foreign fingers.
The Blood Demon tilted his head. "Your heart beats loudly," he observed. "It's almost rude."
He tightened his grip.
Wang Qiu screamed.
The sound tore through the marsh, raw and broken, echoing off bone and fog alike. Then it cut off abruptly as the Blood Demon crushed his heart and tore it free in a spray of blood and light.
The body fell.
The marsh drank deeply.
For a long moment, nothing moved.
Then the Blood Demon knelt among the settling blood mist, shoulders trembling, breath coming in ragged pulls. His hands shook, slick with warmth, his chest rising and falling too fast.
It was not satisfaction that twisted his expression.
It was jealousy.
Shi Feng.
Yang Jian.
Lan Yuer.
Each of them had touched fortune. Each had brushed against destiny and walked away changed.
And he had gained nothing.
Nothing but hunger.
The marsh pulsed beneath him, ancient and slow, like the breath of a sleeping god. The Blood Demon pressed one bloodied hand into the ground, fingers sinking into cold mud and bone.
"No more," he whispered.
His eyes burned brighter, crimson madness bleeding into the whites. "I will not be the shadow of their legends. I will devour their paths and become greater."
Something answered him.
A heartbeat beneath the earth.
Then another.
Faster.
Deeper.
The Blood Demon froze as pain lanced through his skull, a memory not his own tearing its way to the surface. Not learned. Not taught.
Inherited.
A legend buried so deeply in blood that it had survived extinction.
Long before sects carved their names into mountains, before empires learned the meaning of fear, there existed a race whispered only in apocalyptic prophecy.
The Evil Dragon-Kin.
Half dragon. Half human.
Born of tyranny. Shaped by blasphemy.
Three hundred thousand years ago, the Vermillion Abyss Sect ruled the Central Continent from beneath a sky permanently stained red by war. They believed humanity was weak, dragons imperfect, and heaven's design flawed.
So, they defied it.
They captured a Calamity Red Dragon, a wyrm whose flames erased history itself, and bound it beneath a ritual altar. Abyss Emperor Mu Qing performed a rite so forbidden that the heavens themselves struck lightning upon his sect.
They failed to stop him.
The child that emerged bore crimson scales beneath human skin, eyes that devoured light, and a soul that hungered endlessly.
The first Evil Dragon-Kin.
Perfect.
And doomed.
They could not cultivate.
They could only devour.
The Vermillion Abyss Sect unleashed them as weapons, and the world burned. Cities vanished overnight. Clans were erased without flame or sound. The Dragon-Kin fed and grew, their hunger never sated.
Until they turned.
The Scarlet Collapse drowned the continent in blood. The Dragon-Kin slaughtered their creators, and the surviving immortals united to seal them beneath a shifting marsh, erasing the sect from history itself.
For three hundred thousand years, the world believed them extinct.
But a fragment remained.
A remnant soul.
Waiting.
The Blood Demon screamed as the ground split open beneath him. Black-red light erupted skyward, lightning tearing the heavens apart as a skeletal dragon claw manifested, vast beyond reason.
It crumbled into smoke.
And sank into him.
Bones cracked. Spine twisted. Scales formed beneath his skin like a second skeleton. His eyes slit, vision sharpening until he could see the marrow within bone.
A voice older than civilization coiled around his mind.
Devour.
Ascend.
Become the heir.
The Blood Demon laughed, sound breaking into a roar as power flooded him, reshaping flesh and soul alike. This was no inheritance.
This was evolution.
When the light faded, he stood taller, claws flexing, heart pounding with a purpose that eclipsed everything he had been.
"The Evil Dragon-Kin," he murmured. "The perfect predator."
He lifted his head, scenting the marsh, lips curling into a smile filled with promise and blood.
"Run," he whispered to the world.
"Hide."
"Pray."
Because the Abyss had been reborn.