My first steps echoed hauntingly in the dark passage. The sound distorted as it carried down into the mountain’s depths, returning to me as a rolling growl.

  This place smelled of putrid incense and… blood. An iron tang hung in the air, faint but acrid. I only knew that a great demon was sealed here; I didn’t know how. But I did know who, or what it was. When I’d made the comment to Azalea that I’d been the biggest failure in seventeen generations, it wasn’t an offhand remark.

  Seventeen generations ago, more than a thousand years past, our family had very nearly fallen; one ancestor had embroiled the continent in a bitter, bloody war. He’d been a demon; he’d been unkillable. An absolute monster the likes of which no divine cultivator shy of Eighth or Ninth Ring could contest. Someone who could flick a finger and erase a city.

  But he had fallen all the same, secreted away, erased from history, and left to rot in the heart of a lonely mountain. From all I’d been told as heir, all I’d been able to find in our vault and archive, he was a talented, arrogant man.

  Everything I wasn’t.

  I tripped on the uneven floor and barely caught myself. For just a moment, I took deep breaths and stared at my hands clasped in each other. I couldn’t see, but I could feel them shaking. For just a moment, I leaned against the wall.

  Why didn’t I think to bring a torch?

  I’d slid down to the floor without realizing it, cold stone chilling my bones. To my left, the exit, a last chance to walk away from this madness. To my right, a deeper tunnel, dark as pitch. Even the silence didn’t spare me, as the echo of my breathing sounded too haggard and deep, my heart thudding in my chest too slow and tortured.

  I forced myself to stand, trailing one hand on the wall to steady myself. The awful echo of my footsteps once again drowned out my breathing and my thudding heartbeat.

  Why am I doing this?

  What was imprisoned here was no human—not anymore. No mere practitioner of forbidden cultivation, but a true demon.

  First, the mind warps, unguided vitae and desire stripping away humanity layer by layer. I recalled what Father had told me.

  A demonic cultivator was just that, someone who practiced a style fundamentally opposed to divinity. If divine cultivation purified the spirit and body to withstand vitae, demonic cultivation remade it into something else. The method for that, I did not know. All I knew was that demonic cultivation shared not the limitations of divine.

  Just as a tree could not grow in sand, the Divine Tree could not flourish in an unsuitable body. In order to begin the purification of mind and body, to grow the Tree and advance through each ring toward the heavens, the seed must sprout.

  A person must have enough purity, enough of the heavens’ divine perfection to be able to chase this dream. Such a thing separated the fallow from the cultivators, nobility from commoners.

  And me from my right by birth.

  How can “purity” and “potential” be measured so callously when talent and determination are cast aside? I was not mundane, or fallow, or any of the other countless terms for those who could not cultivate. Nor was to be mundane worthless.

  Fallow ideas made the printing press, the steam locomotive, the concept of industry.

  A sudden shiver ran down my spine. Another breath had followed on the heels of mine, a wheezing gasp from deep down below that rang out over my footfalls. I didn’t dare call out, didn’t dare stop breathing just in case the sound didn’t.

  Did he… think the same? Did he too lament the frivolity of “potential?”

  It didn’t matter; what this prisoner had done was inexcusable. A million dead, the Empire burned. Father’s lesson hadn’t stopped there. When humanity is no more, the flesh is next. A form suitable to the mind of a monster. A true demon. A being that seeks nothing but the vitae in the flesh of others.

  To most, demons were legends, stories told to scare children. From hulking, horned brutes to insectoid abominations and horrors of the ocean depths. Their true existence stood as the Four Kingdoms’ worst kept secret, something everyone pretended wasn’t true if only so they could sleep at night. So they wouldn’t panic over every missing village, every slain cultivator.

  Would I fall that far? Would I lose my humanity? Surely not every demonic cultivator transforms into a demon?

  How am I so arrogant as to think I could control myself? That this insane plan would even work?

  To begin the path of demonic cultivation is not something that is taught. It is not recorded for academic purposes, nor even alluded to in any official texts. This monster, however, was once family.

  His knowledge was not what I was after; it was his blood. He’d transformed people with it; accounts told grisly tales of warping bodies and murderous rampages. But in the untranslated texts from centuries ago, the ones I doubted the sects knew of, there was a single account.

  An ambitious woman, limited like I was, had become his foremost disciple. All it had taken was a single sip. In the chains holding her down, I saw myself—and like her I would not falter.

  I was doing this to stop my brother leading the duchy to ruin. I was doing this for my people. And I was doing this for myself, to be what I deserved to be.

  Slowly, I continued on, focusing inward to steady my legs and still my breath. The tunnel twisted and turned as it wound down into the mountain. Chill gave way to a dull, cloying warmth.

  When I took out my canteen, only to realize it was empty, I fumbled placing the cap back on. The string holding it to the metal caught it, and the clinking echoed like a clash of blade on blade. A little too like that.

  I blinked and saw a field of bodies. Three steps more and ashen skies. My eyelids held a dark figure looming over a battlefield. The visions were hazy, but absolutely not the product of my own mind. They changed as I blinked, the figure getting closer.

  I cycled my vitae, took deep breaths, and deeply wished for a light source to banish what I saw with closed eyes. And so I held them open until they stung, gazing out into the blackness of the tunnel. By the time my eyes were forced to close again, only blackness remained, mirroring the tunnel.

  Except that when I opened my eyes, the dark was just a little less complete. The vague outlines of rocks were visible at a bend up ahead. The darkness dissipated around that corner as the tunnel opened wider. Now, faintly glowing runes lined the walls. Shallow breathing mixed with the faint tap-tap of something dripping. From each rune, power pulsed like the gentle movements of a slumbering beast. It washed over me, threatened to push me back even as I clutched the entrance key tightly in one hand.

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  My other hand drew a small blade from my robe. The metal was supernaturally cold, and I could feel its power thrumming into my palm. Enough to make a cut and draw blood. By my hip, the empty canteen swayed with each step.

  One last corner, and the tunnel opened into a room. Yet more intricate runes covered every part of the room’s surface—floor and ceiling included—except one outlined circle against the back wall. There, pinned up against the rock and held by chains with finely carved links thicker than my wrist, hung the sealed demon.

  Alabaster skin shone under pitch-black hair, and skin hung loosely from a massive-boned frame. No eyes glowed from sightless, swollen sockets. His horns were chipped, one shattered. Scar tissue and half-closed wounds covered his naked form.

  An immense, ancient spear pierced his heart and pinned him to the wall. Blood dripped from its tip into a small pool, the sound deafening in the silence.

  And then the sealed demon tried to speak.

  What came out was a rasping gurgle, and behind broken teeth I could see the stump of a tongue. But he didn’t need to speak aloud for his intent to hit me like an avalanche.

  Pain. Anguish. Unfulfilled vengeance.

  “I know what you did, monster.”

  It took me several seconds to realize I’d spoken. When I tried to continue, it was like I’d been struck mute and my lungs burned with effort. Clutching the key, I forced myself to remain standing with locked knees and an aching neck.

  I’d read of this demon’s crimes. Of his entire life’s story. Nothing could prepare me for the pure hatred pouring off the monstrosity.

  Like I was approaching a chained beast, I moved cautiously closer as the sightless head tracked my footsteps. All I needed was the dripping tip of the spear. Still, I held the knife; its weight was comforting in my hand.

  When I reached out with the open canteen, the faint sound of breathing stilled. Even without eyes, I could feel his piercing gaze.

  The first drop fell into the canteen with an echoing plink. Then the next, and the next. We stared at each other, wordlessly, as I collected the blood of a monster.

  He wants this, I realized. But I had no choice; it was this or die and watch from the heavens as my brother dragged my family down with him.

  I just needed enough to show me the way of demonic cultivation. To show me what it felt like; I had the talent to take it from there.

  Over and over again, I replayed my reasons as I gathered blood until the canteen was half full.

  That’s too much.

  I want more.

  I jerked the canteen away, spilling a line of blood across the cavern floor. All I needed was the first step on the path, maybe the first two. That’s it. Nothing good ever came from trying to cheat cultivation.

  Really, all I needed was that one sip. I’d gotten carried away, perhaps purposefully so.

  The demon offered no answers, just silent judgment.

  When I raised the canteen to my lips, it was shaking so badly, I had to stow the knife and use my other arm to steady it. Already the blood was cooling, vitae leaching out to be absorbed by the seal’s runes. It smelled of iron and sloshed in the canteen like warm molasses.

  I gave the sealed demon one last look—he returned it with empty, oozing sockets.

  Am I so arrogant as to think I alone can control that which drives the strongest to madness?

  Yes.

  I downed the blood before I could think otherwise. One sip became a gulp and I felt the last of it ooze its way down my throat before I could stop myself.

  The taste was awful: metallic and rotten with an acrid burn up through my nose and into my head.

  “Weak.”

  Starting from a kick to the gut, prickling, stabbing pain ripped through me like my flesh was being shredded. The canteen clattered to the floor and my lungs lurched empty. But I didn’t hear a scream.

  Just a voice in my head.

  “Arrogance without merit. Desperation without fury.”

  I was on the ground, head lying in the puddle of cold demon blood. All I could see were twin fires of demonic vitae in the sealed demon’s eyes as he stared down at me.

  “Do you think this will be enough? Do you think power will save you?”

  My knees slammed into my chin as my whole body seized. All I could focus on were those eyes of fire, and his voice in my head.

  “You lack ambition. You are ruthless, but easily bent. You scheme, but are naive. Do you think you can hide your stolen power?”

  I… couldn’t. He was right and I couldn’t think otherwise.

  “You will be found. You will be executed. And they will find what you stole and know of your family’s darkest secret.”

  My jaw wouldn’t move; I couldn’t feel my tongue and I heard teeth cracking. One thought surfaced clearly from an ocean of confusion. Then perhaps someone will find a way to kill you.

  “Find a way?”

  Stars exploded across my vision and the cave wavered sickeningly as I realized the demon was laughing, the sound like daggers in my mind.

  “I am not alive because I cannot be killed. I am not secreted away out of shame; I am secreted away so that I may be of use.”

  No…

  “Yes. This is your family’s true legacy. And you are a failure.”

  A failure. No, my family—

  “Have you really deluded yourself this much? Was it really ever about your family? Or was it your own inadequacy?”

  No, of course not. Right?

  “You know you deserve more power. You know your parents failed to grant you this upon your birth. Enough is not enough.

  “You deserve more.”

  I deserved more…

  “Let me give you more.”

  The voice was clearer now, warmer.

  “I will give you more. You alone will hold the power of an ascendant.”

  I led the duchy, prosperity flowing from my outstretched arms. Then the Kingdoms, then up to the celestial realm beyond.

  Me alone. Alone.

  The other words fell away even as the burning eyes drew closer and closer in my vision. No useless family, no one trying to use me for my influence. No one to stand in my way. I reached forward when a voice from a memory stopped my arm short.

  Now you’re not alone!

  Azalea. I remembered the chill breeze of early spring on the sect’s mountain. How she’d managed to find me in a spot I’d thought private, bringing her own meal with an extra portion for me.

  I’d turned it down and told her off.

  But she’d come back the next day.

  And the next.

  And the next until I’d finally said yes just to get her to stop. She said she’d never seen me smile before.

  I don’t want to be alone.

  Heavy lids blinked and I realized I was standing, strands of blood holding up my limbs, my face a handsbreadth from the demon’s. His mouth hung open, stump of a tongue oozing and broken tusks gleaming sharply.

  Another vision? My skin tingled, the heat pressed against me, and the demon, the very real demon, let out a puff of wet, rancid breath right into my face.

  My locked jaw muffled the scream I made as I stumbled backward, slipping on the pool of blood as the strands holding me up disintegrated. Skull hit rock and my vision swirled.

  The demon roared, a haggard hissing sound that rose from broken lungs and windpipe. It echoed in my mind, distant. I could feel now that the pain went deeper than my body; something was wrapping around my Celestial Tree, draining it. And that something carried in its twisting limbs a heady sort of power, a twisted, corrupted vitae.

  Demonic cultivation: a garden of weeds and a strangling vine choking out all I’d spent my life working toward. But at the same time, I saw potential, untamed strength that I could—

  “Wretch!”

  The word was hoarse, pained. Half in my mind and half not.

  “Craven!”

  All at once, several sealing runes shattered even as the others flared to life and held strong. The floor rent and buckled and the mountain rumbled. From the cracks, blackened, ancient blood oozed up. Cold sludge wrapped my legs, crawled up my chest, pinned my arms. As if possessed, my jaw wrenched open, bone snapping.

  My vision whited out and the vile ooze thrust inside my mouth: sludge-like blood and echoes of ancient vitae.

  “You will become all that you hate.”

  My eyes opened into a pool of ichor. It held my limbs and dragged me under; I couldn’t even scream.