The sun had begun its slow descent into the west, a molten disk sinking toward the horizon, yet evening still lingered beyond reach. Shadows stretched long and thin across the road, painting the world in muted bronze.

  Xiao Lei walked ahead in steady silence, his steps neither hurried nor lax, his gaze drifting across the ridges, the scatter of trees, the passing bends of the road as though sketching a map in his mind. He did not look back.

  Behind him, Lian struggled to match his pace. Her breath came uneven, her chest rising sharply with each intake. Beads of sweat traced along her temples, dampening the collar of her robe and causing the cut on forehead to sting.

  The bundle of clothes in her arms weighed more with every step, its rough fabric chafing against her forearms. Still, she pressed forward, unwilling to slacken, unwilling to give him cause to think her a burden.

  The road itself offered little comfort. Only the occasional cart wheel or far-off laughter broke the hush, then silence pressed in again.

  When Xiao Lei finally slowed, it felt to Lian as though an eternity had passed. Her legs trembled with relief as she quickened her stride to close the distance, drawing near him before her body could betray its exhaustion. She bent forward slightly, drawing deep breaths, yet dared no sound.

  A sudden trill of birdsong split the quiet, sharp against the hush. Her eyes rose. For the first time, she noticed how the road had narrowed here. On either side, brush and low trees leaned inward, their branches weaving together into a canopy that dappled the ground in fractured light.

  It felt less a road now than a passage into seclusion, a green archway carved by nature’s hand. Remote, sheltered—too quiet. She wondered why he had chosen to halt here, but before the thought could shape into words, Xiao Lei moved again.

  Without glance or explanation, he stepped from the road and pressed into the thicket. Branches shifted around him, releasing faint scents of crushed leaves and resin. Lian hesitated only a heartbeat before following. Each step carried her deeper into shadow, farther from the comfort of the road’s faint traffic.

  They emerged in a hollowed clearing, a place unnaturally neat. The ground was swept of leaves, branches stacked discreetly aside, as though someone had stripped the wildness from it with deliberate care. Hidden by bramble and canopy, it breathed secrecy.

  Xiao Lei turned at last, though his gaze slid not to her but back through the screen of foliage toward the road they had abandoned. His stillness suggested intent. This was no chance stop.

  From his pouch, he produced two small pills, their surface murky, almost dull. His hand brushed hers, steady, unshaking as he placed one in her palm without a word and swallowed the other himself.

  She did the same and the faint bitterness burned her tongue as she forced it down, and an odd sensation washed over her—a weightless shroud, as though a veil of air had been drawn between her and the world. Her heartbeat dulled in her own ears, warmth seemed to sink from her skin, even her breath passed soundless through her throat.

  Before she could form her question, Xiao Lei pressed two vials into her hands. The first rattled faintly, holding two more of the same murky pills. The other contained only a single green pellet, luminous even in the dim light. “Eat when I say,” he instructed. His tone left no room for doubt.

  Time seeped past like cooling wax. Hours wore thin, and the noise of the road thinned to nothing, until even the faintest echoes seemed swallowed by the leaves. At Xiao Lei’s signal, she consumed the second murky pill, again feeling that strange blanketing silence settle upon her body. Her eyes shifted often between him and the veiled gap in the brush, searching for any sign, any meaning in this tense vigil.

  Xiao Lei remained a statue, his breathing slow, his presence coiled inward. Yet when at last his eyes opened, something sharp glinted in their depth. The stillness broke like ice cracking over deep water.

  The hunt was beginning.

  Lian followed his gaze, but her eyes found nothing—only the stillness of grass heavy with moist and a line of crooked trees bowing under their own shadows. Yet his stare remained fixed, unblinking, as if the world beyond her sight carried a weight only he could feel.

  A few heartbeats stretched, taut and silent, before Xiao Lei’s voice slipped back to her, low and measured.

  “Stay here. Do not step out, no matter what happens. Take the green pill now. If the fight drags past two hours, swallow the other one too.”

  The word fight struck her chest like a thrown stone. Her breath caught. Then memory jolted awake—the words he’d spoken last night, vague but edged with unease: that his enemies were near, perhaps already circling.

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  Her gaze darted frantically across the undergrowth. Branches swayed in a breeze that wasn’t there. Every rustle of leaf seemed sharpened, hostile. But no figures revealed themselves, no steel glimmered in the light.

  By the time she turned back, Xiao Lei was already moving. His steps were weightless, deliberate, a shadow gliding forward into the brush. She clenched her hands until her nails bit her palms. Her throat tightened—she wanted to call out, to beg him to wait—but her voice died against his command.

  Then she heard it.

  Faint at first, carried on the shifting air: men’s voices. Laughter roughened by intent. The scrape of boots against stone. The rhythm of several bodies approaching at once. With every passing breath the sound swelled, pressing closer until her chest felt smothered beneath the certainty of it.

  An ambush. The realization cut clean through her panic. Her lips trembled, and yet beneath it a thread of resolve stiffened her spine. She could not run. She could not falter. He had given her his words, his trust—and she would not break them.

  Xiao Lei, meanwhile, gave no thought to what lingered in her mind. Her fears, her doubts—irrelevant. His world had narrowed to the aura of movement before him. The first group emerged from the veil of trees, Lei Morin and his men. They halted some paces away, eyes sweeping the clearing with wary precision.

  He remained still, concealed beneath the haze of the murky pills. Their concocted veil smothered the ripple of his presence, pressing it down into silence. They would not find him—not yet.

  But the air stirred again—heavier, denser. From the opposite side, three more emerged, their auras pressing against the clearing before their bodies came into view.

  His breath thinned, senses fanning outward. Adding Morin, two sixth-layer, one fifth. Troublesome. More than troublesome. Four Mortal Vein lackeys, three Qi Awakening experts—two stronger than him.

  The puppy’s voice slithered in, sharp and mocking.

  “Clever—dragging them here, cutting off their retreat. But in the end, you’re still a child. This weight will crush you. Endure a little. We’ll slaughter these pawns later.”

  Xiao Lei’s lips curved, but there was no warmth in it. His gaze never left the approaching figures, cold light flickering in his eyes.

  “Later?” His whisper was calm, almost detached, yet it carried a steel edge.

  “If I must bow and endure even before such scraps, what use is cultivation? If I cannot kill their dogs, how will I ever sink my blade into their master’s throat?”

  His gaze hardened, edges honed like a blade. For a heartbeat, the clearing held its breath. Then his hand moved.

  From his pouch, he drew a strange object—soft, bulging, its surface patched with the sheen of beast-skin. It sagged damp in his grip, reeking faintly of blood and herbs. He weighed it once in his palm, then hurled it in a smooth arc toward the open ground between the two groups.

  Even before it landed, his bowstring whispered. An arrow streaked after it, piercing clean through.

  The skin balloon burst with a muted crack. At once, a bluish vapor billowed out, curling and thickening, clinging to the earth like a rising mist. It spread swiftly, swallowing the distance between friend and foe, painting the air with a shifting veil of smoke that shimmered faintly in the morning sun.

  The haze swallowed sight and sound alike—within it, there was no escape. Only slaughter.

  ?? — ? — ??

  Lei Morin’s mood had curdled long before he reached the meeting point. The night air pressed heavy on his skin, damp with the faint scent of river-mist, yet his irritation ran deeper than the chill. A letter had been left in his quarters—brazen, sharp as a dagger point—bearing his name and the names of those who were beside him, claiming to know about two years of dealings best left in shadow.

  He had turned the city upside down trying to uncover the hand that had written it, yet found nothing. Whoever it was, the man had eyes in the dark and roots deep in Duskwillow. That alone gnawed at him.

  And so here he was, forced to choose this forsaken stretch of road, half-swallowed by trees and silence, where no traveller or curious drunk would wander at night. Behind him, Lei San and the other three strutted without a care, their laughter crude, the words circling around tavern girls and imagined pleasures. The contrast grated against Morin’s taut nerves. Fools, the lot of them—blind to the tension that thickened the air.

  The crunch of feet on gravel announced the arrival of the other party. Their leader was a broad-bellied man whose silk robes strained against his girth, his fleshy face gleaming with sweat even in the cool night. Wu Qing.

  Morin forced a smile, bowing low, his tone honeyed.

  “Big Brother Qing… how fortunate, to meet you here in person.”

  But Wu Qing’s expression remained sour, his jowls quivering as he lifted a hand in dismissal.

  “Spare me your courtesies. Why the change of venue?”

  Morin opened his mouth, searching for a soothing reply—

  —and then the night split.

  Something hit the ground with a wet thud. A bulging sack of beast-skin rolled to their feet, seams straining, a foul stench of blood and rot spilling out as it quivered in the moonlight. Wu Qing recoiled, dragging his sleeve over his nose. His cousin Wu Xianyi staggered back. Morin too leapt away, heart hammering.

  Before he could draw breath, the object quivered.

  An arrow hissed through the dark. It struck true, shattering the foul orb, and from its wound a bluish vapor surged outward. It clung to the ground like smoke made heavy, seeping into every breath, curling into every crease of cloth and skin.

  “Poison—!” The word cracked through every mind at once.

  They lunged for open air, but the haze curled faster, dragging at their legs. A scream tore through the dark, followed by another, cut short by a wet crack. Then silence—save for the whisper of mist.

  When the mist thinned, two bodies lay sprawled and still. Only five figures remained standing, scattered like prey startled from cover.

  And between them, bathed in the wan light of a veiled moon, a single silhouette stood unmoving.

  A boy.

  For a moment, the survivors squinted, uncertain, the image incongruous with the slaughter around them. Then the Lei clansmen glimpsed his face—sharp-boned, pale under the shadows—and recognition struck like lightning.

  “You—!” All three spat the word together, disbelief ringing like a shared curse.

  Xiao Lei raised his head.

  His eyes were not a child’s. They glinted, feral, the gaze of a predator that had already chosen its prey.

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  Destiny Reckoning. It’s set in the same universe, and you definitely don’t want to miss it, because the stories will eventually crossover.