It wasn’t the usual quietness of a closed eyelid or the darkness of falling asleep.

  Something else altogether swallowed me whole; the void which consumed me after death was pleasant compared to this. This was an absence that devoured even the notion of existence itself.

  I floated about, shapeless, and lost.

  Then, out of nowhere, the darkness collapsed.

  Reality erupted back into existence with a ferocity that left me dazed. Noise assaulted me like a wave: the collision of metal on metal, screams, the pounding of hooves on the ground. The smell of blood, smoke, and sweat hit me next. My mouth tasted of copper and dirt.

  I tried to open my eyes, but then I realised they were already open.

  “Tomas! Stop staring like a sheep and help us reinforce the barricade!”

  A massive man wielding a woodcutter’s axe was signaling to me from behind a barricade made of overturned carts and mangled furniture. He was covered in dust and blood. I couldn’t tell if it was his own.

  I reached for my face and touched unfamiliar features. A larger nose. Different facial structure. The skin felt rough and worn, as if weathered from years of exposure to the sun and the hardships of labor.

  It wasn’t Ke Yin’s body.

  “Azure?” I whispered, my panic growing within my chest.

  “I’m here Master,” he replied softly. “I’m still linked to your soul. But we have a problem.”

  “Yes, we do.” I looked down at myself.

  Gone were the dull gray robes of the Azure Peak Sect. In their place were tattered homemade clothes and what resembled an apron smudged with flour. My hands were also calloused, but in different areas than Ke Yin’s had been. These were the hands of a laborer.

  “What happened? Where are we?”

  “I don’t know. One moment you were breaking through to Stage Two, the next—”

  An arrow zipped past my head.

  I dropped, my heart racing.

  A young girl, armed with a pitchfork, grabbed my arm and dragged me behind the barricade.

  The girl couldn’t be older than 17 or 18 years old. Her skin was sun-kissed, and her hands were rugged from years of working on a farm.

  “Has fear addled your wits, Tomas?” She glared at me. “Those bandits will break through any moment now!”

  Tomas. She referred to me as Tomas.

  I opened my mouth to explain that I was not Tomas, that I had no idea what was going on, and that I was literally ripped from my own body into whatever this was.

  But the words died in my throat.

  What could I possibly say that would not worsen the situation?

  So instead of talking, I tried to take stock of the situation.

  We were situated in what looked like a small village square. The simple wooden structures that surrounded us on all sides showed signs of having been damaged by flames. Bodies, which I made sure to avoid looking directly at, littered the ground.

  We were a group of 30 people (if I counted generously). Most of them were farmers, craftspeople, and a couple of hunters. They each grabbed whatever they could find – pitchforks, hunting spears, rusty swords that likely had been simply decorative pieces on walls an hour ago.

  I could hear the battle cries of the enemy approaching.

  “I need to understand what is going on,” I told Azure silently. “Can you sense any qi anywhere?”

  “None, Master. There isn’t any qi present. There isn’t any sort of spiritual essence present either. It seems as though we are in a completely normal realm, except for—”

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  I looked up and immediately wished I hadn't.

  Two suns blazed in the alien sky: one blood red, one electric blue.

  They hung there like the eyes of some cosmic entity judging us.

  The large man wielding the axe, who I knew from Tomas’ fragmented memories was called Henrik, thumped my shoulder with enough force to cause me to stumble. “By the twin suns, I can’t believe you’re still on your feet after that blow to the head. But we need every able body now. The raiders are almost through the east gate!”

  A blow to the head. That explained how Tomas had died, I realized. And somehow, during the instant of Tomas’ death, my soul had been pulled into this world. The same way my soul had been pulled into Ke Yin’s body.

  But why?

  The girl handed me a sword that was ancient and had visible rust spots. The handle had been wrapped and unwrapped so many times that the leather wrapping was beginning to fray.

  “Here,” she said. “Try not to injure yourself with it.”

  I accepted the sword, feeling its weight. It was significantly heavier than the practice swords used at the Azure Peak Sect, poorly weighted. However, it was still a sword, and I had at least some basic knowledge of how to use a sword now.

  I tried to generate some sort of qi, tried to access the standard patterns of cultivation that had become second nature for me in the previous seven days.

  But Azure was right.

  There was none. There was no qi. There was no spiritual energy. Only the typical aches and pains of a body that had never experienced the effects of cultivation. My movements were clumsy, slow. This body was weaker than Ke Yin’s had been, and Ke Yin had only achieved Qi Condensation Stage 2.

  “Master, maybe we should discuss our options,” Azure said. “If we can find a safe place to meditate, maybe we can return to your body back at the sect.”

  “Yeah, if it’s still alive,” I muttered.

  The possibility sent a shiver through me. What was happening to Ke Yin’s body? Was it lying comatose in my cell? Would anyone eventually discover it and assume I’d died? Or worse, would the sect elders begin investigating and discover what I truly was?

  “Tomas!” Henrik shouted, yanking me down just as another arrow shot past the area of the barricade where my head had been. “Stop daydreaming and help us! The Seventh Band doesn’t leave survivors!”

  The Seventh Band.

  The name didn’t mean anything to me, but Henrik’s terrified tone told me all I needed to know.

  The young woman, who I know knew was called Maya, crouched beside us. “Here’s the situation,” she explained, speaking in a surprisingly calm tone for someone who could not be more than a couple of years younger than my body in this realm. “The Seventh Band has broken through the east gate. Around 40 of them, most of them are on foot with a few on horseback. We have around 30 fighters, and roughly half of them have never wielded a weapon prior to today.”

  “What specifically is the Seventh Band?” I asked.

  She stared at me. “By the Twin Suns, that head wound obviously scrambled your brain. They’re the worst of the Red Sun raiders. They are named for the seventh hour of the day when the red sun reaches its highest point and causes men to go mad with bloodlust.”

  I risked a peek over the barricade.

  The raiders wore mismatched armor bearing crude red sun emblems. While most of them carried swords, axes, and spears, others wielded farming tools that had been modified and sharpened. But it was their eyes that caught my interest. From this distance, I could see something was wrong with their eyes. It reflected the red sun’s light in an unnatural manner.

  “Maya,” Henrik shouted, “Take five to the south wall. They’re trying to flank us around the grain storage.”

  Maya nodded and grabbed her pitchfork. Before she left, she looked back at me. “Don’t kill yourself while I’m away, Tomas. I wouldn’t want to have to explain to your father how his son survived a head wound just to die doing something foolish.”

  She ran off, leaving me alone with Henrik and a few other defenders.

  “So, about the red sun madness,” I said, adjusting my grip on the rusty sword, “how does that work?”

  Henrik smashed a makeshift shield belonging to a raider with his woodcutter’s axe before responding to my question. The brutality of it sent a shudder through me; this was not controlled sparring like we had back in the sect. This was raw, desperate survival.

  “You really forgot everything,” Henrik grunted, wrenching his axe loose. “The red sun rises along with the blue sun every morning, but its radiance… it has an effect on people. Most are able to resist it. Some aren’t. And some … ” He pointed toward the attacking raiders. “Some welcome it. Allow it to transform them. The raid bands are the worst of the lot; they plan their raids for when the red sun’s light is at its most intense.”

  I turned to gaze upward at the crimson sun once more. Then I quickly turned my head back to stare away from it when it gave me a sharp headache. The blue sun glowed with a steady, soothing quality. But the red sun felt hungry.

  The first wave of the raiders hit our segment of the barricade.

  They charged toward us, brandishing their arms, shouting, their eyes possessed by something greater than mere battle-fury. Henrik led the charge against them, swinging his axe in wide, crushing arcs. I remained behind him, using what limited experience I had gleaned from combat training to remain alive.

  A raider broke through the barricade, charging toward me with a crude sword in his hand.

  I lifted my own blade hesitantly, bracing for the impact.

  The blow sent waves of pain through my arm. My wrist nearly gave way from the force.

  This body had no cultivation.

  I was just an ordinary human.

  The raider laughed and charged again.

  I barely avoided his swing, tripping over uneven terrain.

  He continued to press, thinking he would get an easy kill.

  “His footing is unbalanced,” Azure warned urgently. “When he swings high, he leaves himself vulnerable on his right side.”

  The raider swung high, just as Azure had predicted.

  Instinctively, I stepped inside his guard and plunged my sword into the center of his neck.

  He fell, blood spewing from his wound.

  I stared at him, at what I had just done.

  My hands began to tremble.

  This wasn’t a simple sparring match.

  I had just killed someone.