Jiang slammed his fist against the red barrier that had sprung up and blocked off the passageway behind them.

  It didn’t shimmer. It didn’t ripple. It felt less like energy and more like striking a wall of solid, sun-baked iron. The impact jarred his arm all the way to the shoulder, but the barrier didn’t so much as hum in response.

  “It’s not moving,” he muttered, lowering his hand. He poked he sword tip into the corner of the barrier and the wall, pulling a thread of shadow from his feet to extend the tip. Despite the fact that his shadows should – at least in theory – be so thin as to have no width at all, the darkness simply slid off the red surface like oil on water.

  “I told you,” Zhang snapped from behind him. The disciple was pacing the narrow stone corridor like a caged tiger, his boots scraping loudly against the floor. “It’s a containment array. A high-level one. We’re locked in.”

  Jiang turned, leaning back against the humming barrier. They were standing in a wide antechamber just past the drainage tunnels, a space that likely served as a cellar or storage room in the fortress’s previous life. The archway leading back to the tunnel they’d just crawled through was sealed tight by the sheet of crimson light, but at least there were two other exits from the room, so they weren’t totally stuck.

  “We can’t go back,” Zhang continued, his voice rising in pitch. “We disobeyed orders, we abandoned our position, and now we’re trapped in the heart of a demonic cultivator’s stronghold with no way out and no backup. This is your fault. If you hadn’t been so impatient—”

  “If I hadn’t been impatient, we’d be stuck outside watching as Gao Leng got stronger,” Jiang shot back, his own temper flaring faster than usual. “At least we’re inside.”

  “Inside a cage!”

  “Or inside the perimeter,” Jiang corrected, pushing off the wall. “If this were meant to stop us from escaping, we would have been attacked by now. What’s the point in giving us time to try and destroy the barrier? This isn’t to keep people in, it’s to keep people out.”

  Zhang opened his mouth to argue, then snapped it shut, his jaw working. He glared at the wall, then at Jiang, but didn’t speak.

  The silence that followed wasn’t peaceful. It was heavy, suffocating. Jiang could feel the weight of the stone above them, the press of the earth around them. And beneath that, something else. The air in the keep was thick, humid, and tasted faintly of copper. It clogged his senses, a greasy film that made his Qi sluggish and his thoughts sharp and jagged.

  Worst of all was the feeling of Mistress Bai’s technique. The sensory dampener clung to his skin like a suit of wet cobwebs. Every time he moved, he felt it shift and drag, a constant, low-level irritation that made him want to claw his own skin off. He knew he should be grateful for it – even if what he’d told Zhang was true and this wasn’t a trap, the moment the demonic cultivators in the fortress detected them, they would be in trouble – but right now, it just felt like another trap.

  He forced himself to cycle his breath, suppressing the urge to flare his Qi and shatter the technique just to feel clean again.

  “We can’t stay here,” Jiang said, his voice sounding too loud in the stillness. “We can’t go back. We can’t break the barrier. That leaves one direction.”

  He gestured to the heavy wooden door at the far end of the chamber.

  Zhang stared at it, his expression sullen. “Walking deeper into the trap. Brilliant strategy.”

  “Better than waiting here to starve or get harvested,” Jiang muttered. He didn’t wait for Zhang’s agreement. He walked to one of the exits from the room and checked it for traps – though with his senses muffled by the corrupted Qi all around them, he wasn’t sure he’d find any, to say nothing of if he’d even recognise a trapped formation anyway – and stepped through it.

  The passageway continued on for a few minutes before they found a rusted door that opened into a long, torch-lit hallway. The stone here was newer, the rough-hewn rock of the mountain smoothed over with dark grey bricks. The air was warmer, too, carrying the faint, sickly-sweet scent of incense masking something rot-like underneath.

  As they walked, the silence stretched, tight as a bowstring. Jiang found his mind wandering, drifting away from the immediate danger and latching onto the source of his frustration.

  I should be halfway to Biragawa by now.

  The thought rose unbidden, bitter and cold. He could be on the road. He could be tracking down the slaver, getting answers and finding his mother and sister. Instead, he was creeping through a damp basement in the middle of nowhere, fighting a war that wasn’t his, for a Sect that didn’t care if he lived or died.

  Li Xuan. Mistress Bai. They talked about duty and the greater good, but what was that to him? They were just using him. Using his Pact, using his desperation. They were anchors, dragging him down.

  Why am I even d?o?i?n?g? this?

  The question circled in his head, gaining speed and weight. He had the information he needed. He had the skills. He didn’t need them anymore.

  He glanced at Zhang’s back. The disciple was walking stiffly, hand on his sword, radiating tension.

  I could leave, Jiang thought. Right now. Slip away in the chaos. Let them fight Gao Leng. Let the S?e?c?t?s? deal with their own p?r?o?b?l?e?m?s? for once.

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  But then the cold reality hit him. He couldn’t. Not because of honour, or duty, or even the debt he owed Mistress Bai. But because they knew where he would go.

  Both Li Xuan and Mistress Bai knew his family was in Biragawa, and Mistress Bai even knew the name of the slaver.

  If Jiang ran, if he vanished… the Azure Sky Sect wouldn’t just let him go. They would hunt him. And if they couldn’t find him, they would find the only leverage they had. They would go to Biragawa. They would find his mother and sister. And they would wait.

  A surge of pure, black hatred welled up in his chest, so violent it nearly made him stumble. They had him trapped. Just like this fortress. Just like the barrier.

  Unless they d?o?n?’?t? ?m?a?k?e? ?i?t? ?o?u?t?.?

  The thought was a whisper, seductive and dark.

  If Gao Leng k?i?l?l?s? them… if Li Xuan and Mistress Bai d?i?e? here, in this ruin… no one knows. No one comes looking. I’m f?r?e?e?.

  The image of Li Xuan broken on the stones, of Mistress Bai lifeless in the snow, flashed through his mind. It didn’t bring horror. It brought a rush of relief so potent it made him dizzy.

  Jiang stopped.

  He shook his head, physically trying to dislodge the thought. That… that wasn’t him. He was pragmatic, yes. He was ruthless when he had to be. But wishing death on allies? On people who, however manipulative, were currently fighting to stop a monster?

  “Jiang?”

  He looked up. Zhang had stopped a few paces ahead. The disciple had turned back, his face half-shadowed by the flickering torchlight.

  “What?” Jiang asked, his voice rough.

  “You stopped,” Zhang said. His tone was accusatory, sharp. “Are you hesitating? Now? After dragging us into this?”

  “I’m thinking,” Jiang snapped.

  “Think faster,” Zhang spat. “Or get out of the way.”

  There was something wrong with Zhang’s eyes. They were too wide, too bright, shining with a feverish, brittle intensity. The disciple’s hand was clenching and unclenching around his sword hilt, a rhythmic spasm of violence waiting to be released. He looked… hateful.

  Jiang stared at him, and the realisation washed over him like a bucket of ice water.

  With a brief effort of will, he let his Qi rotate in his meridians, instantly shredding Mistress Bai’s shroud… and revealing the corrupted Qi that had been settling over him without him even noticing.

  He opened his mouth to warn Zhang, to tell him to guard his mind, but the sound of footsteps cut him off.

  Jiang spun, his hand flying to his sword.

  Three men rounded the corner at the end of the hallway. They weren’t the mindless, shambling thralls they’d seen outside, though even through the haze of corrupted Qi in the air Jiang could sense that they were enhanced. Unlike the rag-tag bandits out front, though, these men wore matching grey armour, and their weapons were drawn and ready. They moved with purpose. A patrol.

  They froze when they saw Jiang and Zhang. For a split second, there was silence.

  Normally, Jiang would have assessed. He would have checked for alarms, for backup. He would have considered a distraction, or perhaps his stealth technique.

  But the red haze in his mind surged, and despite how his own Qi was rapidly breaking it down, enough remained to affect him. The irritation at Zhang, the hatred for Li Xuan, the frustration of the barrier – it all coalesced into a single, burning point of focus.

  Enemies.

  Obstacles. Things standing in his way. Things that needed to be removed.

  Beside him, Zhang let out a sound that was half-snarl, half-laugh. There was no hesitation. No code of conduct. No demand for surrender.

  Zhang didn’t even draw a breath. He just lunged.

  And Jiang, his blood singing with a dark, borrowed fury that wasn’t fading quickly enough, was right beside him. The lead guard, a man with a scar across his forehead, barely had time to raise his sword before Zhang was on him.

  The outer disciple didn’t parry or dodge. Instead, he drove his blade straight through the man’s chest, ignoring the clumsy swing that scraped across his robes, fortunately robbed of enough strength that it didn’t even manage to cut through the fabric.

  If nothing else, seeing that close call was enough to jolt Jiang further back towards clarity.

  Zhang was a whirlwind of fire and steel. He had abandoned all semblance of Sect discipline. He wasn’t using forms; he was just burning. A blast of fire engulfed the second guard, the man screaming as his armour warped in the heat. Zhang followed up with a vicious slash that nearly decapitated him.

  Three more bandits rounded the corner at a dead sprint, faces twisted with a mixture of fear and frenzy. Despite the matching armour, these ones seemed to be more mentally affected by the corrupted Qi – their eyes were glazed, and Jiang could feel the way the Qi flowing through them churned and sputtered.

  Zhang roared and surged forward again.

  Idiot, Jiang thought, but the anger behind the word was already fading, replaced by the cooler clarity that was finally returning to him. The haze in his mind was thinning, burned away by the steady circulation of his Qi. His senses were sharpening. Details snapped back into focus: the uneven footing, the narrowness of the corridor, the overextended angle of Zhang’s blade.

  Zhang swung too hard, too wide. The first bandit dodged under the arc of fire and jabbed a short spear straight at Zhang’s side.

  Jiang’s shadows moved before he did.

  A tendril of darkness snapped up from the floor, slapping the spearshaft aside. The wood cracked cleanly in half. The bandit staggered, eyes widening. Zhang didn’t even seem to notice. He pivoted, flames bursting from his free hand, and incinerated the man at point-blank range.

  The other two bandits were already on Jiang. One swung an axe; the other thrust with a long knife. Sloppy. Fast, but sloppy. Jiang slid back, parrying the knife with the flat of his sword and letting a ripple of shadow rise behind the axe-wielder’s feet. The man’s stance collapsed, and Jiang caught him by the throat and drove his blade up under the breastplate.

  He turned in time to see Zhang take the last guard down with a brutal overhead strike that cracked helm and skull in the same blow.

  Then stillness – nothing left but the harsh sound of their breathing and the faint hiss of Zhang’s lingering fire.

  Jiang exhaled slowly, hard. He could feel the red fog peeling away from his mind, thread by thread. Still present, still clinging, but no longer steering his thoughts like a horse with reins.

  Zhang, however, looked like he was still drowning in it.

  His breaths were sharp and ragged. His eyes darted between the corpses as if expecting them to rise again. His hand was clenched so tightly around his sword that the knuckles were bone-white.

  “Zhang.” Jiang kept his voice low, careful. “Hold still.”

  The outer disciple didn’t even look at him. “More will come,” he muttered. “They’ll come, they’ll—”

  Jiang grabbed his shoulder and pushed a pulse of Qi directly into him.

  Zhang jolted as if struck. His flames guttered out instantly. The corrupted haze around him cracked like brittle glass, not fully dispersing but definitely losing some strength.

  Zhang’s breath stuttered, and some of the wildness bled out of his expression. Not all of it – maybe not even half – but enough.

  “You—what did you—?” Zhang swallowed, voice hoarse. “I can think again.”

  “Good.” Jiang released him and stepped back, glancing around the hallway. “But we have a problem.”

  When he’d pulsed his Qi into Zhang, he’d felt something snap. Mistress Bai’s dampener. The delicate web of energy that had been hiding Zhang’s signature had been shattered by the influx of power.

  Almost as if on cue, the air shifted as a heavy, oppressive weight settled over the hallway. It wasn’t the ambient corruption – too focused, too intentional. It was the intent of a cultivator.

  “Well, if they didn’t before, they certainly know we’re here now,” Jiang said grimly.