The night bites. Not cold—cold would be too simple. This night bites like a beast that hasn't yet decided whether to kill or merely play.
Liyen kicks the tavern door in. Not sneaking. Not silent. She sings.
She sings loud. A Baitenger song her mother used to hum while baking bread. Cheerful. Too cheerful. Her voice trembles, breaks on a high note, grows louder again. Too loud. Deliberately too loud.
"Oh, pardon me, friends!" She laughs, and the laughter sounds like a shard that's fallen too many times. "Did I interrupt something?"
Everyone turns. Aunt Yu—the thing wearing Aunt Yu's face—freezes mid-gesture. Her hand had just been on Tessa's shoulder, fingers dug too deep into the flesh. Now they hang in the air, too long, too pale, too alive for a dead woman.
This is what Ma would have done, Liyen thinks. Storm in and smile while the world burns.
The remaining adventurers stare. Loran, who has drawn his sword but doesn't know where to point it.
Not yet, Liyen thinks. Not yet. Not yet.
Then she whistles once more. A shrill tone that hurts in her own ears, that tears through the air like a knife through silk.
The window explodes.
Luobo crashes through, a thunderstorm of muscle and hooves and rage. Glass rains onto the tables, onto the Noctusborn, onto the faces of those who had been laughing just moments ago. The horse lands heavy, turns, seeks her with its eyes—there, here, now—and whinnies, a deep, powerful sound that makes the room shudder.
And that's what Paps would have done, Liyen smiles as she runs. Distraction.
"Eat this," Liyen says, and her voice sounds foreign in her own ears. Deeper. Older. "Your empty Qi."
Something cuts through the air. A hiss. Then a wet thud, like an arrow striking flesh.
The creature freezes. Turns. And Tessa sees—through the veil of pain, through the tears she doesn't realize she's crying—an arrow. Through the creature's arm. Nailing it to the wall. No blood. Only something black and viscous that drips down the shaft and hisses as it dissolves the wooden floor.
A second arrow follows before the first stops trembling. Through the skull. And nails that to the wall. The crack of bone, then silence. The creature hangs there, still twitching, not dying—these things don't die so easily—but it holds still. And that's enough.
Tessa turns her head. "Liyen, is that you?" Tessa's voice breaks. "But you're—"
"Dead? Dead women don't trill songs." The girl laughs. It sounds wrong, broken, but it is laughter. "Seems Aunt Yu missed her lesson in honesty."
Luobo leaps—through the room, over a table, past Jaro who watches Liyen with empty eyes, past Loran who has drawn his sword. She lands beside Tessa, grabs her arm, pulls.
"Can you stand?" Liyen's voice is rough. Exhausted. But firm.
Tessa nods. Tries. Falls. Feels strong hands seize her, lift her, hoist her onto the horse behind Liyen. The saddle is hard. The girl before her is harder—a bundle of fear and determination that somehow still stands.
And behind them, they hear footsteps. Loran. The others who can still run. Those who still want to.
"Hold on," Liyen says.
"My husband. My children—"
"Are saved. Tarin fled. We'll find him."
The Qi-Flame flutters past, a spark in the graying dawn. "Chiu," it makes, almost like a promise.
Then Luobo leaps. Not through the door—through the second window. Glass rains, Liyen ducks, Tessa screams. Galloping out into the ash, into the smoke, into the night.
Behind them, in the tavern, something stirs. The creature with the arrow through its skull opens one eye. Then the other. It pulls the arrow out, slowly, savoringly, and the wound seals behind it.
It licks the blood from its fingers—its own, that of the fallen, all the same—and smiles.
"Interesting," it whispers to the empty room.
Then it follows the scent. The scent of life that still flees.
They ride through Yulong, and Yulong is dead. The houses stand empty, doors open, the smell of burning heavy in the air. But they are not alone. Liyen hears them—the scraping of claws on stone, the breathing from too many lungs, the clicking of teeth too long for human mouths.
"The gates," Tessa gasps. "They're now—"
"Closed. I know."
Liyen does not ride slower. She rides faster, straight toward the maw, the entrance to the cave, to the darkness, perhaps to death. Luobo's hooves strike stone, sparks fly, and behind them—closer now, ever hungrier—the Noctusborn.
"Liyen!" Loran's voice, panicked. "Are you sure? Into this hell-maw?"
Before he can finish the question, Tessa dismounts. "Give me the saddle."
Liyen presses her face to Luobo's neck. Smells sweat and fear and trust older than words.
"Wait at the other exit," she whispers. Her voice breaks, and she hates herself for it, hates the weakness pouring out of her. "Wait for me, Luobo. Please."
Luobo whinnies. Once. Deep. Then turns and gallops away, into the night, into freedom, into perhaps.
"Come!" Liyen waves to the others. Loran. The remaining guild members who stumble from the shadows, pale, rigid with horror. "We have no time!"
Quickly, Liyen soaks a cloth in the well, holding it to her face. The others follow her example.
They descend into the darkness. Not slowly—falling almost, sliding, climbing. The air grows heavy, damp, smells of stone and old water and something Liyen doesn't want to name.
Tessa is before her. Then Loran. The others. Liyen covers the flank, bow ready, eyes fixed on the light above that grows smaller, smaller, vanishes.
Then there is only darkness. And the breathing of the cave. And the knowledge that they are not alone.
Suddenly, the Qi-Flame appears. Small. Tiny. A spark that shines too bright for its size. It flutters past Liyen's cheek, warm, almost comforting, and disappears into the depths.
"Chiu," it whispers. A promise. Or a warning.
Back in the Crypt
The Dark King still sits on the overturned tree root. Waiting. Thinking.
His fingers—the Alchemist's fingers, spotted, old—drum against the root. A rhythm he doesn't consciously choose. Something old. Something that was there before him.
"You're still here?" Liyen's voice cuts through the darkness. She stands in the entrance, bow raised, though she can barely see him in the blackness. "I thought you'd be long—"
"Not yet finished." He smiles, and the sound is wet, wrong, doubled somehow. "My thoughts were not yet concluded."
Behind her, the others stream in. Tessa, Loran, the remaining guild members. They draw their swords, take attack stances, and their fear smells sweet in the damp air—like ripe fruit, like hope that would rot.
"What? You knew this monster was here and still brought us?" Loran's voice trembles with rage, with fear, with the need to have someone to hate. "Are you working with this thing?"
"No, of course not. I thought—"
"Enough!" Tessa steps forward. Her voice is steel, cold and hard and unyielding. "Liyen is my friend. And that alone matters."
Silence. Then the Dark King's grin, broad on the foreign face. "A little family quarrel? How... sweet."
He stands. Slowly. The old body cracks, protests, lives still, unwillingly.
"Liyen may leave at any time," he says. "But the rest of you will go nowhere."
Then something changes.
It begins in his chest. A pulling, a tearing, as if something in him is growing that no longer fits in this body. He reaches for the place where the Alchemist's heart should beat, and his fingers find something else. Something that pumps, that hungers, that is angry.
"What..." His voice breaks. "What is..."
The pain comes like a wave. He kneels, writhes, and his form—the hunched, old form of the Alchemist—begins to stretch. Skin tears, not bleeds, tears like old paper, and beneath it something emerges. White hair. Long, stringy hair, continuing the Alchemist's beard, covering the entire body.
"My flesh-garment..." He gasps, and the voice is no longer one, but two. His own. And another. Deeper. Wilder. Angrier. "What is happening..."
Then the Dark King remembers, even through the pain, when he had visited the old Alchemist in Yulong:
The damaged door when I knocked. And the half-repaired floor when Master Sheng crossed it.
He squints. Memories flash—not his own, but those of the flesh-garment he wears. Fragments he had overlooked then, too blinded by greed. Almost like those of a small child receiving a toy for the first time and barely able to wait to play with it.
What really happened that night?
Flashback — Village of Yulong, before the chaos broke out
The old Alchemist hunches at the table when the door practically explodes.
Not opens—bursts through with full force. Wood splinters rain through the chamber, a beam crashes against the iron pot, and then he stands there: A shadow, too large for the doorway, pitch-black fur, red eyes like blood.
Varnok, the Bloodclaw. The Alpha.
"You belong to me, old man," the beast growls. "Before he takes you."
The Alchemist leaps up, reaches for his Baitenger dagger—too late. The claw strikes him mid-leap, hurls him against the workbench. He falls to the floor. The beast stomps with full force on the old floorboards, which break under its weight. Dust swirls up.
He lies in the dust, writhing, feels the warmth at his chest. Blood.
Varnok is over him, one knee on his chest. "He comes. The Shadow King. He wants to absorb you, consume your Qi."
"Who...?" the Alchemist gasps.
"Elandor." The beast raises its claw, the tips dripping black. "But I mark you first."
The strike comes precise. Between the ribs. Burning. The Alchemist screams, but Varnok presses his paw over his mouth.
"Quiet, old man."
The Alpha bites into his own wrist, black blood wells up. He presses the wound to the Alchemist's fresh bite mark. "Take it in. Become one of us. Then you control him."
The blood burns like liquid fire in his veins.
Varnok springs up, listens. "He comes. Already close."
He turns to the door—to the splintered door. "Repair it. Hide the traces. If he realizes you're already marked, he kills you immediately. But if you deceive..."
The Alpha disappears through the window.
The Alchemist lies panting in the dust. The foreign blood throbs in his veins, wild, uncontrolled. But he is Baitenger. He has learned to tame his Qi-flow.
He presses his hands to the wound, forces the transformation back, into sleep.
Then he crawls. Wood. Nails. He props the door up makeshift, nails loose boards over the splinters, half, only half, just enough not to be immediately noticeable. He throws a rug over the hole in the floor, over the fresh bloodstains.
Just in time.
Outside: footsteps. Quiet. Calculating.
A knock. Gentle. Almost tender. "A seeker of aid, my lord."
The Alchemist sits at the table, hands hidden beneath it, trembling. He takes the cold teacup. Waits.
Qi-flow, he thinks. Even. Controlled. Flow.
He goes to the door, opens it. The Dark King stands there.
The Alchemist smiles—a twitch of his lips—and opens the door wider.
He doesn't know, the Alchemist thinks as he lets the false King inside. He doesn't see the door. The floor. Too blinded by his own greed.
He leads the Dark King in, offers him tea, while the wolf's blood boils in his side and waits. While he hopes the mark is strong enough to surprise the monster when it's too late.
Back in the Present
The Dark King—now in the crypt, in battle with the beast within—freezes.
The floor. The door. Varnok was there first.
The realization hits him like a blow, as the claws of the beast—the Alchemist-wolf—dig into his own flesh.
"This is... your work?" he gasps as the body around him deforms. "You... marked him?"
The beast laughs—a gurgling sound, half the Alchemist, half the animal.
The beast stands.
It is larger than the Dark King. Larger. More muscular. Half-man-half-wolf, covered in white hair that glows in the dark like moonlight on bone. The claws dig into the stone floor, the eyes—red, blood-red, but different from the Noctusborn's, wilder, untamed—find Liyen.
"Begone!" the beast roars, and its voice is stone and earthquake and the grinding of glaciers. "Begone from my body!"
"Never!" The voice comes from the beast's mouth, but the words are the Dark King's. "This is my flesh-garment!"
It strikes at itself. The claws slit the chest open, blood—black, thick—wells up, and before the claws can plunge deeper, the wound closes, lightning-fast, unnaturally. The beast screams, a sound no lung should make, and tears itself open again. Again. And again. A dance of destruction and healing, of Two fighting for One.
Liyen freezes. She should run. Should shoot. Should do something.
But she sees something else. In the beast's eyes—in the eyes of both fighting there—she sees something she knows. The pain. The old, rusty pain that doesn't heal.
"Liyen!" Tessa's voice, sharp. "Run!"
She runs. Not because she wants to—because Tessa seizes her, pulls, drags. The others follow, stumbling, rigid with horror, and behind them the beast roars, roars in two voices as it tears itself apart and heals and tears itself apart again.
They reach the exit. The light—gray, dim, beautiful—blinds them. Liyen falls to her knees, breathes, tastes ash and freedom.
"What in the Sun's name..."—Loran wipes his face. His hand trembles. "What in the Sun's name was that?"
Liyen shakes her head. She doesn't know. Or: She knows, but the words fail her.
"We find Tarin," she says instead. "And the others."
She stands. The world tilts, rights itself, becomes firm again.
Tessa nods. "Your Ma and Yaoming?"
"My Ma is safe. Yaoming... Perhaps there is hope. I didn't see him in the village."
"The tracks." A guild member points to the ground. Mud, churned by hooves. "There. West."
"And there." Another points to a different spot. "Larger. As if a tree had walked."
Liyen considers both tracks. "We should actually go east," she says.
"No." Liyen shakes her head, contradicting herself. "We follow Tarin."
She mounts Luobo, who appears as if from nothing, who whinnies to her, whose eyes know.
"Tessa's family is there," she says to the others. "And family matters."
Tessa's mouth twitches, a small smile.
They ride out. Into the forest, into the mist, into the night.
Behind them, in the cave, the roaring falls silent.
Tarin's Riding Group
The forest swallows them. Not gently—greedily. The trees stand too close, their branches reaching for the riders, for the horses, for the last light breaking through the canopy. Tarin presses the twins to him. Elin trembles. Lora breathes too fast, too shallow, as if the air itself would betray her.
"Papa?" Elin's voice is a thread threatening to tear. "Where is Mama?"
Tarin opens his mouth. Closes it again. What should he say? That she stayed behind? That she is perhaps dead? That he ran like a coward while she—
"There!" Vara's voice tears the thought apart. She points forward, through the trees, over a hill. "A village!"
Lights. Warm. Golden. A few houses, smoke from chimneys, the promise of walls and roofs and safety.
"It seems inhabited." Vara's breath comes in gasps, almost laughing. "Thank the Sun. Thank the cursed Sun."
Tarin hesitates. The reins in his hand grow heavy, too heavy, as if someone had poured lead into the leather. He thinks of Yulong. Of the lights that were warm. Of the doors that stood open. Of hospitality that was a trap.
"Shouldn't we keep riding?" Another guild member—Pelion, the young archer with the freckles—edges closer. His voice trembles. "I mean... after what happened in Yulong..."
"Yulong was dead." Vara turns in her saddle. Her eyes glow in the dark, too bright, too wakeful. "This is alive. Hear it? Do you hear it, Tarin?"
He hears it. Voices. Distant. Human. The clink of dishes, the murmur of conversation, the normal he had thought lost.
"We should go into the village." Vara speaks faster now, the words tumbling over each other. "There we'll find reinforcements. Weapons. Perhaps a pigeon post to send a message to Marenlor." She swallows. "Besides, we can't just leave the villagers to their fate. If these creatures come—if they follow—then they'll destroy the village. Tear it apart. Everything."
Tarin looks at his hands. They tremble. He presses them tighter around the reins until his knuckles whiten, until the blood hurts.
You are the leader, Tessa had said. Be it now.
"Vara." His voice sounds foreign. Rough. As if he had screamed, though he had only fled. "You've been on several missions. You know this region better than anyone. You know the rumors."
"Rumors." She laughs, a short, hard sound. "Rumors are what people invent when they're afraid and find no answers. This is real, Tarin. This is life."
Elin stirs in his arm. Her breath is warm on his neck, too warm, feverish almost. "Papa, I'm tired. I don't want to ride anymore."
Lora says nothing. She has said nothing since the tavern. Only her eyes—so large, so knowing—hang on him, waiting for an answer he doesn't have.
"Very well." He nods. Slowly. As if the head were too heavy for the neck. "Then we go into the village and seek shelter there."
Vara smiles. For the first time since Yulong. It doesn't reach her eyes, but it is there.
They ride out. Not fast—carefully. The horses sense his fear, grow restless, snort, want to turn. Tarin presses his legs tighter, steers them forward, ever forward.
The village has a name. He sees it on a weathered sign standing crooked in the ground: Otanheim. Below, smaller, almost forgotten: Otan.
The gates are open.
Not barred. Not guarded. Just open, like a mouth waiting for someone to enter.
Tarin pauses. Once more. One more second in which he could turn around, in which he could flee, before it is too late.
Then he rides through the gate.
Behind him, the mist falls. Not slowly—fast, as if it had only waited. As if it had only breathed, until they were inside.
The gates still stand open.
But the way back has already vanished.