Blood fills Kael's mouth, copper and thick, drowning the scream that wants to tear free
from his shattered ribs. The forest floor presses against his cheek—damp earth and
rotting leaves, the smell of decay that will soon be his own. Above, through branches
that blur and sharpen with each labored breath, he catches fragments of darkening sky
The Shadow Panther circles. He can hear it even if his fading vision can't quite track the
movement—paws padding soft against stone, a predator's patient assessment of dying
prey. Smart enough to wait. Strong enough not to rush.
Kael's left arm won't respond. Something wrong with the shoulder, bones grinding
where they shouldn't touch. His right hand clutches uselessly at dirt, fingers digging
shallow furrows that accomplish nothing except confirm he's still conscious enough to
feel pain.
This is how I die, he thinks with the clarity that comes from accepting the inevitable.
Abandoned in the Crimson Fang Mountains. Seventeen years old. Body Refinement
Third Rank. Outer disciple of a sect that won't remember my name by tomorrow. Food
for a spirit beast that doesn't even need to hurry.
The panther moves closer. Kael tracks the sound—his hearing still works, even if
everything else is failing. Six feet away. Five. The beast is toying with him, drawing out
the kill the way cats do. Establishing dominance over something that stopped being a
threat the moment Zhang Wei screamed the order to retreat.
***
Six hours earlier.
"Remember," Zhang Wei had said, his voice carrying the casual authority of someone
who'd never questioned whether people would obey, "blood lotus flowers bloom in
clusters of three to five. We need at least twenty intact specimens. Don't damage the
roots—Elder Han was very specific about that."
Kael had nodded along with the other outer disciples, keeping his face carefully neutral.
The mission briefing was standard—Zhang Wei explaining what they already knew,
establishing hierarchy through the performance of leadership. Inner disciples led. Outer
disciples followed. Those who survived long enough learned to make the distinction
invisible.
They'd set out at dawn, six disciples trailing behind Zhang Wei like ducklings following
their mother. Except mothers presumably cared whether their offspring lived or died.
Zhang Wei cared about completing the mission and looking competent when he
reported back to Elder Han. The outer disciples were tools to that end—disposable,
replaceable, barely worth the minimal spiritual pills the sect invested in their cultivation.
Kael had taken his usual position in the middle of the group. Not at the front where the
eager disciples competed for Zhang Wei's attention, not at the back where the weak
struggled to keep pace. The middle was safest—visible enough not to seem like you
were shirking, unremarkable enough to be forgotten when things went wrong.
Three years in the Iron Talon Sect had taught him this calculus: survive each day, avoid
notice, advance when you could without making enemies. He'd progressed from Body
Refinement First to Third Rank—abysmal by any standard, but he was still breathing
when seventy percent of his cohort wasn't. That had to count for something.
The Crimson Fang Mountains earned their name from the iron-rich rocks that jutted
from the earth like broken teeth. Autumn had painted the sparse vegetation in shades of
rust and decay. Spirit beasts prowled these slopes—mostly low-grade creatures that
posed minimal threat to a group of cultivators. Mostly.
"There," Chen Wei had said, pointing toward a shadowed ravine. "I see the red blooms."
They'd descended into the ravine with the confidence of those who'd done this before.
Blood lotus flowers grew in places where ambient essence pooled—spiritually rich but
physically treacherous. Kael had started harvesting with practiced efficiency, using his
belt knife to cut around the roots without damaging them, placing each flower carefully
into his collection bag.
He'd been reaching for his fourth specimen when the Shadow Panther dropped from the
canopy above.
***
The memory splinters as claws rake across Kael's back. The pain is white-hot,
overwhelming, shutting down thought for precious seconds. When awareness returns,
he's face-down again, body screaming protests he can't afford to acknowledge.
The panther's breath is hot against his neck—rank with the smell of old kills. It's playing
with him. Establishing that it could end this anytime it wanted. Spirit beasts at Essence
Gathering Seventh Rank were intelligent enough for cruelty, strong enough to indulge it.
Kael tries to move and discovers new dimensions of agony. His left leg won't support
weight. Ribs grind against each other with each shallow breath. He's hemorrhaging internally—he can feel the wrongness spreading through his abdomen, warmth that shouldn't be there.
How long? he wonders with the detached curiosity of the dying. Minutes? An hour at
most. The cultivators' manual said Body Refinement disciples could survive injuries that
would kill mortals instantly, but there were limits. I've found mine.
The panther bats at his broken arm, toying. Pain flares bright enough to gray his vision.
When it clears, he's staring at his own blood pooling on stone, dark and getting darker.
***
The first disciple died before anyone realized they were under attack. Lin Shu—a
nervous boy of sixteen who'd joined the sect two months ago—simply ceased to exist
between one heartbeat and the next. Where he'd been kneeling to harvest a flower,
there was now only a spray of blood and the Shadow Panther's massive form, sleek
black fur rippling over muscle that moved like water.
The second disciple—Zhang Mei, competent and careful—tried to run. The panther
caught her in three bounds, jaws closing around her spine with a sound like breaking
branches. Her scream cut off mid-breath
"Form up!" Zhang Wei had shouted, his voice cracking on the second word. "Defensive
formation—"
But they'd never actually practiced defensive formations. Outer disciples weren't worth
the training time. Zhang Wei was Essence Gathering Fourth Rank—strong enough to
kill any of them in single combat, utterly outmatched by a mid-grade spirit beast.
The panther had looked at Zhang Wei, and Kael saw something he'd recognize later in
his nightmares: calculation. The beast understood hierarchy. It saw Zhang Wei's
spiritual pressure, measured it against its own power, and made a decision.
It went for the weak ones first.
Chen Wei died trying to fight. He had a saber—decent quality for an outer disciple—and
he knew how to use it. The panther batted the blade aside like it was made of paper and
opened his throat with one paw. Blood fountained. Chen gurgled something that might
have been a plea and collapsed.
Three dead in thirty seconds.
That's when Zhang Wei made his decision.
"Retreat!" His voice was high with panic, all pretense of authority abandoned. "Back to
the sect! Now!
He'd turned and run. Just—turned and ran, channeling spiritual energy into his legs,
moving at speeds Body Refinement disciples couldn't hope to match. The remaining
outer disciple—a girl named Yue whose name Kael barely knew—followed immediately,
survival instinct overriding everything else.
Kael had hesitated for exactly one heartbeat. Long enough to see the panther's eyes
lock onto him. Long enough to understand that someone needed to slow the beast
down, and Zhang Wei had just designated who that someone would be.
He ran.
Not toward the sect compound. He wasn't stupid enough to think he could outrun a spirit
beast. Instead, he'd gone sideways, scrambling up the ravine's rocky wall, hoping the
panther would choose easier prey.
But the beast had already made its calculations. Zhang Wei was too strong to bother
with. Yue was too fast. That left Kael—weak enough to catch, slow enough to toy with,
isolated enough that no one would witness his death.
The panther's first strike had shattered his shoulder. The second broke three ribs. The
third sent him tumbling down the slope he'd been trying to climb, body collecting new
damage with each impact against stone.
He'd landed here, in this small clearing, too broken to continue running and too weak to
matter as a threat.
The panther had followed. Not hurrying. Why would it?
***
Another strike. The panther's claws open new furrows across his back, deep enough
that Kael feels the muscle separate, the brief confusion of nerves trying to report
damage they're no longer connected enough to fully process.
He's beyond screaming now. Beyond thought, really, except for the cold calculation that
won't quite shut off even as his body fails:
Zhang Wei abandoned us. Standard practice. Outer disciples are expendable. He'll
report that we were overwhelmed by a mid-grade beast, that he barely escaped, that
our sacrifice allowed him to survive. Elder Han will nod and assign him new disciples for
the next mission. No one will ask questions. No one will care.
The unfairness of it cuts deeper than the panther's claws. Three years surviving in the
Iron Talon Sect's brutal hierarchy. Three years of careful navigation, strategic
deference, calculated invisibility. All of it meaningless because one inner disciple
decided saving himself was more important than the outer disciples under his
command.
Not even a decision, really. Just—reflex. The natural order asserting itself. The strong
abandon the weak. The weak die. The system perpetuates.
Rage ignites somewhere in Kael's failing consciousness. Not the hot anger of the
moment but something colder, harder. Crystalline clarity forming in the space where
hope used to live.
No.
The thought surfaces with absolute conviction.
No. I refuse. I refuse to die here. I refuse to be forgotten. I refuse to accept that this is
how my story ends—unmourned, unremarked, another corpse in the mountains that no
one will bother to retrieve
The panther strikes again, jaws closing around his useless left arm. Bone cracks. The
pain should be unbearable but Kael barely registers it because something else is
happening, something impossible—
Heat blooms in his chest. Not the warmth of blood loss or fever but something else,
something other. It spreads through his meridians like molten metal, burning and
freezing simultaneously, and with it comes hunger.
Not the hunger of an empty stomach. This is deeper, more fundamental. The hunger of
a void that demands to be filled. The hunger of something that has been starving for
seventeen years and has just tasted the possibility of satisfaction.
Kael's working hand moves without conscious direction. His fingers close around the
panther's foreleg—the one pressed against his chest as the beast worries at his broken
arm like a dog with a bone.
Contact.
The world fractures.
***
Later, Kael will try to explain what happens next and fail completely. Language isn't built
for this. Human experience doesn't encompass it.
The Shadow Panther's essence—its life force, spiritual energy, accumulated
power—floods into him through the point of contact. Not absorbed the way orthodox
cultivation teaches, filtered and purified through spiritual arrays. This is raw.
Unprocessed. Everything the panther is and was, pouring directly into Kael's starving
meridians.
The beast screams—a sound of confusion and terror that Kael feels as much as hears
because he's inside its head now, experiencing its final moments from both sides of the
consumption:
Hunting. Territory. Pride. The weak thing shouldn't be—BURNING—what is—can't
escape—no no NO—
The panther tries to pull away. Too late. Kael's grip is iron, strengthened by the very
power he's draining from his victim. The void inside him screams for more, and some
deep instinct teaches him how to pull.
Essence rushes into him in waves. With it comes everything else:
Muscle memory of hunts spanning three decades. The satisfaction of fresh blood.
Territory markers left on tree trunks. The taste of cultivator flesh—sweeter than mortal,
richer with spiritual energy. Den sites in hidden caves. Rivals driven off or killed. Prey
that ran and prey that fought and prey that begged in words the panther didn't
understand but enjoyed anyway.
And underneath it all: power. Pure condensed spiritual energy that crashes into Kael's
meridians like a flood breaking through a dam. His cultivation base—pathetic Body
Refinement Third Rank—simply cannot contain what's flowing into it.
So it breaks.
Kael's meridians tear and reform, tear and reform, expanding violently to accommodate
the essence flooding through them. The pain is transcendent—beyond anything the
panther's claws inflicted. He would scream if he could remember how to control his own
mouth.
Body Refinement Fourth Rank. His flesh hardens, muscles reorganizing themselves
around new pathways.
Fifth Rank. His bones strengthen, fractures knitting back together in patterns that
weren't quite human anymore.
Sixth Rank. His spiritual core ignites properly for the first time, a tiny sun of condensed
essence where before there'd been barely a candle flame.
The Shadow Panther collapses. Kael's hand is still locked around its foreleg, still pulling,
and the beast is withering before his eyes. Sleek black fur dulls to ash-gray. Powerful muscle deflate like punctured bladders. The intelligence in those amber eyes gutters and dies.
And still Kael pulls.
He can't stop. Doesn't want to stop. The hunger is being satisfied for the first time in his
life and he would drain this beast to its last whisper of essence if—
The connection breaks.
The panther's essence is exhausted. What remains isn't enough to sustain
consciousness. The beast's final thought—confusion and fear and the distant echo of
prey it had killed the same way—bleeds into Kael's mind and dissipates.
Silence crashes down like a physical weight.
***
Kael becomes aware of his body in stages.
First: he's breathing. Deep, even breaths that don't catch on broken ribs because his
ribs aren't broken anymore. The wrongness in his abdomen is gone. Internal bleeding
stopped and healed, organs that were ruptured now whole.
Second: his left arm responds when he tries to move it. The shoulder that was shattered
is intact. He flexes his fingers, makes a fist, feels strength there that wasn't present this
morning.
Third: he's covered in blood—his own and the panther's—but underneath the gore, his
skin has closed over the claw marks. Scar tissue that should take weeks to form has
already crusted over, pink and new but healed.
Fourth: power thrums through his meridians. Real power. Not the pitiful trickle of a Body
Refinement Third Rank but something substantial, dangerous, hungry
Kael pushes himself to his knees. The movement is smooth, effortless. Hours ago, he'd
struggled to keep pace on simple hiking missions. Now he feels like he could run for
days without tiring.
He looks at the Shadow Panther's corpse.
It's a desiccated husk. The magnificent predator that had killed three disciples and toyed
with him for sport is now a dried shell of skin and bones, as if it had been dead for
months rather than minutes. The flesh has collapsed inward. The eyes are sunken pits.
Even the fur looks brittle, like it would crumble at a touch.
I did that, Kael thinks. I drained it. Consumed it. Took everything it was and made it
mine.
He should be horrified. Some part of him is horrified—the part that remembers what
orthodox cultivation teaches, that understands consuming essence without purification
is forbidden for very good reasons.
But a larger part—the part that was left to die, that felt bones break and organs rupture,
that understood with perfect clarity that the world had decided he didn't matter—that
part feels satisfaction.
Power sings in his veins. His spiritual sense—barely functional before—now extends
outward in a sphere he can actually feel, perceiving the ambient essence of the forest,
the distant presences of spirit beasts, the absence where Zhang Wei fled hours ago.
Body Refinement Sixth Rank. He knows this with absolute certainty. Three ranks
jumped in minutes. What would have taken years of grueling cultivation, accomplished
through a method no orthodox sect would ever teach.
And underneath the satisfaction, underneath the power: wrongness.
Something whispers at the edge of his thoughts. Not words exactly, but impressions:
territory markers, the taste of blood, hunting patterns that aren't his own. The panther's
memories, bleeding through from wherever they've lodged in his consciousness.
Kael takes a slow breath, centering himself the way the cultivation manuals teach. The
whispers don't disappear, but they quiet. Manageable. For now.
He looks at his blood-covered hands. Studies the desiccated corpse at his feet. Feels
the power thrumming through meridians that had been pathetically weak this morning.
Choices cascade through his mind with the clarity that comes from accepting the
unacceptable.
One: I can return to the sect and tell the truth. That would be suicide. Consumption
techniques are forbidden. I'd be hunted by every orthodox cultivator on the continent
Two: I can run. Abandon the Iron Talon Sect, try to survive in the wilderness as a rogue cultivator. Without resources, without guidance, I'd be dead within months.
Three: I can lie.
The third option crystallizes with perfect clarity. He'd been left for dead. Zhang Wei
reported him lost, probably dead—standard outcome for outer disciples on dangerous
missions. If Kael returns claiming he survived through luck... well, rapid advancement
through fortuitous encounters wasn't unheard of. Rare, but known.
He could claim he found a treasure. Consumed a spirit herb that accelerated his
cultivation. The panther attacked, he fought it off, and—
Kael looks at the corpse again. No. That won't work. A Body Refinement Sixth Rank
killing an Essence Gathering Seventh Rank beast is impossible even with fortuitous
advancement. The story needs to be believable.
Better: he found a treasure that advanced his cultivation. The panther was already
dying—injured from a territorial fight, perhaps. He merely survived until it expired and
took its beast core as proof.
The beast core.
Kael moves to the corpse and draws his belt knife. The blade sinks into the desiccated
flesh with less resistance than he expected—the consumption left the body brittle, dried.
He cuts carefully through the chest cavity, avoiding the ribs, reaching for where the
spiritual core should be—
It crumbles when he touches it.
The beast core—valuable spiritual treasure, proof of the kill—disintegrates into ash the
moment his fingers make contact. Because he'd consumed it. Drained the panther so
completely that even the crystallized essence at its center couldn't survive
Complications, Kael thinks, but his mind is already adjusting the story. No beast core
means no proof, but also no inconsistencies to explain. He survived. The panther
died—natural causes, territorial fight, whatever. He advanced through a fortuitous
treasure and is returning to serve the sect.
Simple. Believable. Unverifiable but not impossible.
Kael stands. His blood-soaked robes are ruined, but that works in his favor—evidence
of a difficult ordeal. He'll need to find water to clean the worst of it, but some staining
should remain. Survivors of spirit beast attacks don't emerge pristine.
He orients himself, spiritual sense reaching out to find the direction of the Iron Talon
Sect compound. Northwest. Four, maybe five hours' walk at his old pace. Less than two
with his new strength.
The sun is setting, painting the Crimson Fang Mountains in shades of blood and
shadow. Kael takes one last look at the Shadow Panther's corpse—the predator that
should have killed him, reduced to a husk because he'd refused to accept his ordained
fate.
Power thrums through him with each heartbeat. The panther's memories whisper at the
edges of his consciousness—alien but becoming familiar, instincts that aren't his own
bleeding into muscle memory.
He'd crossed a line. Become something the cultivation world fears enough to forbid. The
question isn't whether that was right or wrong—survival doesn't have morality. The
question is what he does next.
Zhang Wei abandoned him. The sect views outer disciples as expendable resources.
The entire cultivation world operates on brutal hierarchy where the strong devour the
weak.
Fine.
If that's how the system works, Kael will learn to work the system. He'll hide what he is,
cultivate in secret, advance through methods orthodox sects consider forbidden. He'll
survive in a world built to ensure people like him don't.
And when he's strong enough—when the hierarchy can no longer crush him simply
because it wants to—
Well. Zhang Wei will learn that abandoning disciples to die has consequences. Elder
Han will learn that treating people as disposable creates enemies. The entire Iron Talon
Sect will learn what it means to underestimate the outer disciples they grind beneath
their boots.
Kael turns away from the corpse and begins walking. Northwest, toward the sect
compound. Toward the lies he'll tell and the mask he'll wear. Toward a future where he's
no longer powerless.
The voice of the consumed panther whispers in his head—alien thoughts about territory
and dominance and the satisfaction of prey between one's jaws. Kael doesn't fight it.
Instead, he files it away with everything else he's learned today:
Power has a cost. The question is whether you're willing to pay it.
As the sun dips below the mountains and darkness spreads across the Crimson Fang
range, Kael walks toward the only home he has. His footsteps are silent—predator's
instinct, absorbed from the beast he killed. His spiritual sense extends outward,
monitoring for threats.
He doesn't look back.