The Qi-Flame dances before Liyen's eyes, a tiny glimmer in the maw of darkness. Deeper. Always deeper. Liyen follows without hesitation, without thought. Her lungs burn, the air grows thinner, heavier—thick with ash and something ancient, smelling of scorched earth and forgotten dreams.
Hold on, she thinks. Wherever you are, my love. Hold on.
Then: Nothing.
When Liyen awakens, she does not know how much time has passed. Minutes? Hours? The darkness here is different. Not empty. Inhabited.
Red eyes glow in the black. Too many. Too close.
Liyen gropes for her bow. Her fingers find only stone. Cold. Damp.
"Who's there?"
Silence. Then breathing—wet, heavy, like from a lung full of slime.
"Answer me!"
A step. Then another. From the darkness emerges a figure, hunched, old—and yet utterly wrong. The Alchemist's hands. The Alchemist's eyes. But the smile...
"Master Sheng?"
"Sheng." The voice sounds like his name—familiar and yet distorted, as if someone speaks through a mask. "Yes. And no. I am more than Sheng ever was. More than you can imagine, little Li."
Liyen flinches. "You have no right to call me that."
"Right?" A dry laugh. "I know you better than you think. Your fear. Your rage. The nights you lie awake wondering if what you do is enough."
Liyen presses her lips together. "We are nothing alike."
"No?" The figure—he—steps closer. The cave seems to narrow, the walls breathing with him. "Then explain to me, little Li: Why did you want to shoot me before you knew who I was?"
"Because you—"
"Because you knew." The voice grows softer, almost fatherly. Repulsive. "You smelled it. The unnatural. The tear in the world I leave behind wherever I go." He tilts his head, a confession and an accusation in one. "We both know what monsters are. We both have learned to tremble before the shadow—and then to kill before the shadow reaches us."
Liyen tastes the truth in his words, bitter as bile. She swallows it down. "You have wiped out people. Villages. Innocents."
"And those who wiped out my beloved and my two little sunshines?" The calm breaks. For the first time, something trembles in the voice, old and rusty like a blade too long steeped in blood. "Are they perhaps innocent?" He falls silent. The milky eyes of the Alchemist flicker, shot through with black. "They took everything from me. Everything. And you ask why I became a beast? You do not know how much I suffer. Day after day, these nightmares plague me. Of the fallen. Of Melandor. This nightmare simply will not leave my head."
"You are no beast." Liyen's voice does not tremble. She refuses to tremble. "Beasts cannot choose. But you chose."
Silence. Then, quietly: "Chose? Perhaps. But the alternative—to forgive, to forget—was not one I could survive."
Liyen thinks of her aunt. Of the village that is now ash. Of Mara, whom she barely knew and whose death she feels nonetheless in her bones. "And the others? Those who had nothing to do with your revenge?"
The Dark King—for that is what he is, she sees it now, behind the eyes of the dead man—turns away. His shoulders, hunched by the Alchemist's age, twitch once. "Every death..." He begins the sentence, breaks off. Begins anew: "Every death weighs heavy. Too heavy. In the end, one carries only bones."
"Yaoming." The name escapes her before she can hold it back. "Where is he? Is he still alive?"
No answer.
Liyen reaches behind her, finally finds her bow, half-buried under rubble. Her fingers close around the shaft. Slowly. Unobtrusively. And suddenly she fires an arrow with all her strength. As if she herself were the arrow. The arrow races and races. Yet the Dark King catches it with only one hand. "Not bad, but still not fast enough, little Li."
"What if you had been hit?" He does not turn around. "How should I answer you then, little Li?"
Liyen takes another arrow. The arrow lies against the string. Liyen draws, feels the tension in her shoulders, the old familiarity. "Stop it. No games."
"Games?" He laughs, once, brief. The sound rebounds from the walls, rings false. "You shoot without hesitation. Ready to take my life, just as I took the lives of the guilty. Tell me, where is the difference?"
"The difference is that I am not..." Her hands tremble. "That I am not a..."
The Dark King turns. Slowly. The Alchemist's eyes meet hers—and behind them, deep in the black, something else. Something that is tired. So infinitely tired.
"...not a monster? And those who wiped out my beloveds, were they not monsters? Why? Because they looked like humans?"
"Let me go."
"You are no prisoner." He spreads his arms, a gesture that seems almost human. "Go. Whenever you wish. The cave is not mine. I... do not enjoy crawling in caves, you know? I prefer to fly. Free. Majestic." The smile again, crooked on the foreign face. "But be warned: If you return to the village, my children will not be so... hospitable as I. For they cannot feel your love."
Liyen does not lower her bow. "Your children?"
"The Noctusborn. My... offspring. They smell the life in your veins, little Li. They will hunt you. They will find you."
"And why are you here? In this cave? Why?"
He turns away, his form dissolving into the shadows. "I sought something. Something that dwells here—or dwelt. Another creature of darkness. But this..." He taps against the rock wall, and the echo sounds hollow, vast. "This is too large for it. Too old. Either there were many—or something we do not yet understand."
Liyen feels the cold in her back. Not from the cave. From the idea he casts into the space.
"One more question." Her voice sounds small, almost childlike in the vastness of the gulf. She hates it.
"Only one? You grow lenient."
"The direction. To the village."
He raises a hand. Points. "To the right. Follow the draft. It leads to the chasm that leads outside." A hesitation. Then, quieter: "And little Li, if you see my children—run. Run as if you had fire in your veins."
The ascent is agony. Liyen's lungs burn, her fingers bleed where she grips sharp edges. But she climbs. Higher. Always higher.
Then: Light. Weak. Gray. The twilight.
She emerges from the chasm like a drowning woman gasping for air. The sky above Yulong is colored wrong—not the warm purple of evening dusk, but a leaden gray, shot through with ash. It smells of burning. Of loss.
And then she sees them.
Figures stepping from the houses. Slowly. Too synchronized. Their movements have something of marionettes, of animals learning to play at being human.
Liyen recognizes Aunt Yu. Recognizes the blacksmith. Recognizes the old man who always sat by the well.
But their eyes...
Their eyes glow in the twilight. Red. Hungry.
Noctusborn, she thinks. All of them. The entire village.
She presses herself flat against the rock, her heart hammering against her ribs like a caged bird. The bow lies heavy in her hand, useless against an army.
Yaoming, she thinks. Where are you?
The answer does not come. But in the distance, almost too faint to truly hear, she believes she recognizes a whinny. A horse. Her horse?
Luobo.
Hope is a spark in the ash. Liyen breathes deep, tastes soot and determination.
Then she moves. Soundless. A shadow among shadows.
Night falls—and with it, the hunger.