He'd gotten away with his escapade during the night without too much trouble. The only problems he'd faced were to wash away the rust marks and, slightly more difficult, how to get another tent peg and bring it where he needed it.

  The one he had now was broken, after all. Thick cracks ran through the entire peg, and he felt like even pulling at it with only half his strength would easily break it into fragments.

  Was that his fault? Would the art do the same thing to any dagger he used it with? It was hard to say, and impossible to experiment.

  In the end he'd thrown the used-up peg away, then bided his time until they left and stole one of the fire pokers from the fires outside of his own tent. He'd picked the one that looked thinnest, then just bound it tightly to his back for the entire time before they set out.

  He'd received a few scattered odd looks afterwards once they'd set out, but for once the unthinking nature of the deathsworn was working in his favor. 726 said nothing and he was at the head of their group anyway, too busy navigating to notice that Wu Hao had carried something from the camp with him.

  Still, the rusted iron against his back was cold. Wherever it touched his skin had begun to burn with an odd heat, and the tip occasionally jostled enough that he had been left with little pockmarks on his back that itched like nothing he'd ever felt before.

  But he could ignore all that, and so Wu Hao figured he was safe. He'd love to get his hands on something better, but first he'd see what he could accomplish with this.

  They arrived at the battlefield and, after a moment where Wu Hao had stared out over the assembled forces fighting for their lives in that monumental smog of qi, he tore his eyes away and looked back at the group. 726 gave him a quick glance, but then they continued onwards to the gully where they'd all died last time.

  "We wait," 726 ordered, and then let himself drop quietly into the muck. Some of it splattered on his clothes, but all he did was track more of it onto himself so that he could better camouflage himself.

  The others followed suit, including the deathsworn from the other group. One by one they laid themselves down into the muck and smeared themselves with it, making not a single noise despite the cold or the occasional trickle of filth streaming down from above.

  Wu Hao followed suit, feeling the iron fire poker pierce another small wound into his back. After he'd gathered the dreck over himself, he loosened the bandage with clenched teeth, drawing his improvised weapon by sliding it down his back and then turning it quietly and slowly until it fell from his back and into his hand.

  He was tracked with rust, filth, and sweat. His back hurt, his head spun with the scent of the unidentifiable dreck that dribbled down, and he was cold.

  Still, he clutched his weapon, feeling that cold back dread rise up into his chest the way it had the last time as well. He could feel that same dread spinning itself into a dark tangle of nerves that was fraying his patience badly.

  It was worse now that he knew what was actually out there.

  They laid there for an unknown amount of time, waiting for something. He wasn't actually sure what. Dawn crept up on them from behind, its brilliant reds and yellows painted on the mud in front of him.

  Finally, finally, 726's head turned towards them and he opened his mouth to give the order to move out before his gaze fell on Wu Hao and he stopped.

  "What?" he asked, voice cold. "What are you holding, 721?"

  Wu Hao barely heard him. His fingers clenched around the fire poker so tightly that the rusty edges cut into his palm.

  "What are you doing?" 726 asked in an angry whisper. He didn't move but his eyes narrowed. "721, are you defective?"

  "No," Wu Hao said, his throat so tight it felt like pushing the word through a vice. "We've been spotted."

  There was a moment of quiet, a fragile silence.

  He smelled it, then. A sudden flareup of qi, that same stench of rotting meat that had emanated from the cultist just before he'd died earlier.

  The smell of a predator.

  "Where?" 726 whispered, expression unreadable. "Who -"

  But Wu Hao was already rising to his feet, shaking off some of the muck that covered him, staring back. He saw nothing, but his senses wouldn't lie to him.

  Wu Hao took as deep a breath as he dared, then stared directly at the place where he knew the cultist was.

  "Come out," he said, brandishing his poker. Sweat was trickling down his back and dripping into the wounds there. His breaths felt heavy.

  But - nothing.

  He could hear only the shallow breaths of the other deathsworn, who must have been wondering if he was losing his mind.

  Finally a low sigh was audible, exactly where Wu Hao's poker was pointing.

  726's head whipped around, and he wasn't the only one.

  "How'd you figure it out?" the cultist's leisurely voice asked from behind them.

  They all spun as one, and Wu Hao's eyes weren't the only ones that went more than a little wide at the sight of the man standing there.

  He only now got a proper look at the cultist. The man had an average face that wouldn't stand out in a crowd and a physique to match, except for a glaring scar on his face - a long patch of dark skin that twisted from his left cheek up to just above his left eye, cutting through his eyebrow. A few strands of white hair hung from his wild hair, which was otherwise dark. He wore a dagger sheathe on his hip, decorated with a long series of symbols that meant nothing to Wu Hao.

  Qi streamed downwards from his head as he apparently disengaged whatever technique he had used to keep himself hidden from their senses. More and more of his scent was being shown, like someone had opened an air-tight door into a derelict butcher's shop.

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  Wu Hao raised a hand, trying to ward off the smell, but it didn't help much.

  The cultist sniffed.

  "Answer me," he demanded. "Your demise needs not to be brutal. I can offer you only a minimum of torture instead."

  It was then that 726 threw himself forward, bellowing a war cry. A scent like trodden snow filled the air, which Wu Hao recognized as the scent of 726's qi. Using the qi for a burst of speed that propelled him forward like an arrow, 726 pivoted hard and threw his fist forward into a monster of a punch.

  The dagger flashed once. 726 died without even having made contact, arm abruptly just sliding into two separate parts in a cut that carried straight through his neck like it had all the resistance of air.

  The cultist, eyes flicking back to Wu Hao, didn't change his expression at all.

  "So?" he asked. "How did you know I was there? You're not good enough a martial artist to have figured me out."

  "Charge!" 723 called, and together they jumped forward, fists raised in formation.

  Wu Hao stayed behind, though, hating himself on some level for it and trying to frantically wrangle the qi where it was supposed to go.

  "Never mind," the cultist said, dancing away from a blow that might have caved his skull in if it had hit. "I suppose the lord will find a way to tell me, if he is so inclined."

  Dodging one of 732's jabs, the cultist abruptly stopped in place like he was a puppet on a string and instead catapulted himself forward, outspeeding even 726 by far. His dagger tore towards Wu Hao.

  His vision narrowed to a thin point at the tip of that dagger, and he saw nothing else.

  The qi clicked at that moment, and Wu Hao couldn't have stopped it anymore even if he'd wanted to.

  "Rending Dagger Art," Wu Hao shouted, pushing all of the qi he could manage. "Void Rip!"

  The dagger plunged into him at the same moment as Wu Hao's hand shot forward uncontrollably, the fire poker vibrating so hard with the qi he'd forced into it that he lost his grip midway through the technique. The poker lasted a moment after it had left his hand, Wu Hao's eyes and the cultist's eyes tracking it as it flew.

  Then it exploded.

  Tens of sharp fragments of iron exploded everywhere, each trailed by one or more razor-sharp threads of qi that spiralled everywhere.

  There was a sharp, stinging pain as Wu Hao was hit by some of the shrapnel, leaving lines carved into his flesh and fragments buried into his limbs, and he fell back instinctively. That allowed him to see that another fragment had hit 732, who had jumped forward to try and tackle the cultist to the ground when his steps had instinctively slowed.

  The cultist exploded into a blur of motion again, dagger flashing, to block the three fragments. He slapped one out of the air and, in the same breath, slipped past the other two, ducking his head in the middle of one dizzying step to evade easily.

  And yet -

  One of the "threads" of qi had managed to reach him.

  A thin red line had opened up in the cultist's cheek, just below his right eye. He paused in the middle of another of his steps as the pain must have registered in his mind. With an unbelieving expression on his face he reached up and touched the wound.

  His finger came back with a little speck of red. Nothing more than that. Only a little speck.

  The cultist stared at it for a moment, before 726 rushed at him and his dagger flashed to cleave 726's head from his shoulders.

  "You," the cultist snarled, visibly upset for the first time. His red eyes flickered up to rest on Wu Hao's face. "You're going to pay for that."

  He took a deep breath. Qi exploded outwards from him, the scent of rotting meat so intense that Wu Hao's eyes began to water. That was the last of him that Wu Hao saw before the other man tore forwards.

  A moment later, his dagger buried itself into Wu Hao's skull.

  Wu Hao's hands came up a little bit as if his brain hadn't registered that he was dead yet.

  Another dagger-stroke took his head from his shoulders and set to dicing the rest of him into nothingness with a vengeance.

  The last thing he saw was the others rushing the cultist. He could have told them not to try, though. If he hadn't been dead again.

  A long moment of nothingness, and then he was back again. Back to the start of the march, back to a day before that.

  He grasped his throat and felt for injury, but there was nothing, of course. There never was. He felt a dull ache of phantom pain that began to fade, but moved past that. When his head came back up he had to fight off a small smile.

  After all, another window had appeared.

  He'd died, yes. But he'd wounded the cultist. He'd fought back. He'd earned another fragment.

  It'd been a pretty meager blow, all things considered. All he'd probably done was add a small scar that would probably go unremarked next to the one the cultist already had.

  But it was something. It had shown him a possibility.

  All that remained was to make the most of that possibility.

  His first step, he thought as he set off to march, was to get a proper dagger, as well as a couple more fire pokers.