Ten years ago.

Southwest Desert.

Cyril put on his best smile and tapped the shaft of his spear against his neck. “We’ve already searched through the night. What if Elys is just beyond the next horizon and we stopped here?”

Of course, he had used this line of reasoning throughout the entire night. It was almost dawn, after all.

Elder Yeshan was a wrinkled old crone who had witnessed all-too-many generations of his family cast themselves into the fire out of an excess of passion. She regarded him for one long moment, then gagged up a wad of phlegm and spit it at his feet. “You’re not nearly as charming as you think you are, boy. The stars don’t detect a damn thing out in this wasteland. The idea that your sister wandered all the way out here in the middle of nowhere is a damned delusion.”

Cyril bit back his temper. “Well, instead of searching the same places over and over and wondering why she doesn’t appear out of nowhere, we have to check places like this.”

He realized he hadn’t actually bitten back his temper at all when she turned away from him and walked off.

Search parties like his own had scoured most of the desert since Elys had gone missing, leaving behind no traces or hints of her whereabouts. The only clue was a portentous omen from the heavens: upper-echelon cultivators throughout the world had reported mass sightings of the Phoenix Comet striking the world, though each of them named a different location where they claimed it landed. Shortly after these rumors had started--two days ago--his sister had disappeared in the middle of the night. Word had not even reached anyone in their relatively isolated tribe except their mother. She had only informed them about these immortal mumblings after they had learned Elys was missing.

The other members of their search party looked awkward at the two highest-ranking officials bickering with one another. More than a few probably agreed with Yeshan.

Cyril was the youngest--and weakest--of their seven-person group, and was acutely aware that all of his standing was a matter of pedigree. Only Yeshan had the gall to speak back to one of the scions. As a Peak Foundation Stage Cultivator, she was one of the most powerful members of the tribe, even if her skillset leaned more toward utility. Her weak affinity for the Dominion of Stars had given her the mystique of a seer, even if she was a bit of a charlatan in his humble opinion. The rest of their party ranged from Peak Condensation to Late Foundation.

A mutiny would not go well for him.

Cyril sighed and put his hands on his hips. Deep breaths. Try not to look like an impetuous, arrogant young master. “Sorry, Yesh. But it’s Elys.”

The old crone’s expression softened, though her words remained sharp. “That’s Elder Yeshan to you, boy, not ‘Yesh.’ One more hour. You realize we still have to march back to camp as well, yes?”

“We can rest here and send word back to the main camp,” said Cyril.

More glances were shared between the other members of their party. Yeshan's gon soft, they must have been thinking. Cyril bowed deeply in appreciation.

They continued on into the barren desert, across a monotonous sea of dunes. The area had been mapped out before, and little of interest had been found. For those willing to delve deep enough, the desert held many secrets, but even the ancient ruins around here weren’t particularly impressive.

Even Cyril was about to call it quits when one of the men leading the pack cursed and knelt to the ground. Elder Yeshan blinked, took a hesitant step forward, as if she had discovered something. A moment later, the man pulled a glistening quill out from the bottom of his boot; it was about the size of a man’s little finger, needle-thin, slick with blood and venom.

Everyone paused. Even the young children in the desert understood the significance of a manticore quill.

The man who had stepped on it let out a low groan. Then, the paralytic took root, and he toppled over, stiff as a board.

“Backs to backs, lads!” shouted Elder Yeshan, pale flames dancing in her outstretched hands.

Blurred shapes suddenly broke out of the sand, keeping low to the ground as they converged on Cyril’s group. Their leonine bodies blended in with the surroundings, making their humanoid faces and scorpion stingers seem to float eerily across the earth. An entire pack of them--at least thirty.

Manticores were one of the few mundane monsters native to the desert that posed any real threat to cultivators. Alone, the physical prowess of their bizarre chimeric bodies made them the equal to a Early Foundation Stage cultivator. The fact they hunted in large packs elevated them to a new level of threat.

They were ambush predators, leaving their venomous quills embedded in the ground around their territory. Since a member of their group had already stepped on one, it was safe to assume that they had already wandered past hundreds of others without anyone being unfortunate enough to step on one until now. Elder Yeshan’s detection techniques from the Dominion of Stars honed in on spirituality, ignoring mundane threats such as the manticores and their traps.

Despite their disadvantage in numbers, their group rained down fireballs and conjured infernal walls that burned without emitting a smoky haze. Numbness spread across Cyril’s body as he watched the manticores charge. He cursed at himself for being useless, then realized he was flinging globs of incandescent Sun qi without even realizing it. While his parents may not have let their children bond with spirits before they were ready, they had damn well made sure that Cyril wouldn’t embarrass himself on the battlefield.

Several manticores disintegrated under their onslaught, but more followed on their heels, slavering in anticipation.

Cyril slammed his spear into the sand deep enough for it to remain upright and twisted his hands into a basic mudra. His airborne fireball curved to intercept the closest manticore, slamming into it from above. The force of the explosion threw up a plume of sand.

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When the particulates settled, Cyril glimpsed the monster--its lower half obliterated, its mangy fur burnt away--crawling toward him, leaving a trail of offal. Its humanoid face was lit up with savage glee, as if it was determined to take a bite out of him before succumbing to its injuries.

More and more of the manticores surged forward. It must have been more than one pack. How were so many ravenous mouths even being fed out here? A voice in the back of Cyril’s mind analyzed these details as his body responded by instinct.

“Protect Prince Cyril!” Yeshan called out, her voice surprisingly strong and resolute. Wisps of starlight circled around her, shot outward in a sparkling field to drill multitudes of tiny holes through the incoming manticores.

Bodies pressed around him, forming a protective phalanx with Cyril in the center.

“No!” He attempted to shove them aside, to glimpse the incoming enemy to lend his support. “This is my fault. Keep to your battle formations!”

“We all knew the risks, boy,” Yeshan snapped back. “This is the desert. Could’ve happened to anyone.”

Then the surviving manticores crashed into them. The world devolved into frantic violence, the crush of bodies, glimpses of armor and sky and sweating flesh. A manticore’s face, disturbingly human, snapped its pointed teeth at him, craning over the shoulder of one of the warriors, only to be shoved back. The manticore squealed as spears sank into its leonine body. Before it succumbed to its injuries, the scorpion tail flashed out, pierced the throat of the man in front of Cyril.

“No!” Cyril forced himself past the man, lashing out with his spear blindly. Tears blurred his vision as he drained most of his core, wobbly fireballs wooshing into monsters and sand.

An eternity of violence passed. Hot blood and ichor splashed across Cyril’s face. The clangor eventually died down; now it was only the snarling and excited yapping of monsters. Gruesome sounds of human flesh being torn apart--and manticores, as well, cannibalized by their own pack.

Yeshan moaned from her spot on the ground, eyes glazed over, shifting enough to offer him one last toothless smile before a trio of manticores trampled over her.

In the end, only Cyril was left, propping himself up against his spear. Splashes of scarlet and sizzling black ichor painted the ground around him.

At least two manticores had fallen for every cultivator, but over a dozen of them still prowled about. They circled about Cyril, huffing and licking their jowls, a bestial intelligence glinting in their eyes. As if they knew he was the ultimate prize, the one that the humans had attempted to protect at all cost.

Cyril attempted to control his breathing, to gather his thoughts. His palms were slick with sweat and blood as he observed the manticores. Mocking; disdainful; playing with their food. Cyril slowly backed away, careful not to desecrate the body of his tribesmen.

They were parting to let him through their perimeter, he realized, though for every step he took backward, they maintained a close distance. Their scent, mixed with the miasma from the carnage, was sickening. Wet fur. Rancid breath. Rot and decay.

Grimacing, Cyril gathered the death energy from the area into his soul. At first, he avoided the lingering energy from his tribesmen, honoring the traditional taboo of benefiting from death. But in such situations, those restrictions were loosened--why die, and let their essence fade away into entropy, when he could be saved? He fed it into his Dominion of the Sun.

One of the adjacent manticores, its hunger winning out over its cruelty, lunged forward, its maw unhinging. Cyril channeled Sun qi into the head of his spear and buried the blade into its right eye. Hundreds of pounds of momentum carried him backward, falling onto his back with the monster’s twitching corpse atop of him. He shoved it aside, crawled out from underneath it.

A quick glance confirmed that the superheated blade had snapped off within the manticore’s skull. He stumbled to his feet, wielding the remainder of the weapon like a staff.

After that, he ran.

Coward, he cursed himself as he listening to the pleased yelps of the manticores on his trail. They could have run him down at any point, but they preferred to nip at his heels. After less than thirty seconds, a sharp pain pierced through his right foot--one of the quill traps, no doubt. Agony quickly spread throughout the surrounding tissue, climbing up his ankle and into his calf. In moments, his foot swelled up until it bulged grotesquely out of his slipper.

Maintaining his composure as much as possible, Cyril harkened back to his lessons. Venomous creatures prowled all throughout the desert. From a young age, he had been taught how to infuse Sun qi into his blood, to burn away the toxins. Before the paralytic could take root, he let his spiritual channels leak into his mundane circulatory system, willing it to target the foreign poison surging up through his leg.

It worked, just barely. The paralytic had already taken hold of his lower leg, reducing it to little more than a hunk of numb flesh. Incinerating agony flowed throughout his body, rogue Sun qi scorching from the inside. He ignored it as much as possible.

Another eternity passed. The yelping from the manticores was constant, the only sound beside his labored breathing and the whistling winds that stole swirls of sand from the surrounding desert.

Unable to go on any longer, Cyril collapsed against a sandstone outcropping. Blood and snot trickled down his chin. With grim determination, he turned to face the manticores, broken weapon in hand. The remaining dregs of his qi flowed sluggishly through his channel.

Thank you for your sacrifice, he thought toward the phantoms of his tribesmen. In his delirium, he could imagine them all around him, their faces solemn but proud. Yeshan’s ethereal silhouette nodded in acknowledgement.

He tightened his grip and, summoning the last of his strength and will, howled back at the manticores. A few of them took a step back, though through his fatigue he couldn’t tell if they were truly surprised or just continuing their mockery. It didn’t matter. His heart pounded in his chest, in his ears.

Then, more of the manticores began to pace backward. The world rumbled. The monsters stumbled over themselves, whirled about, fled. The largest of them, with a streak of black fur along its crown, snarled at Cyril before taking off in pursuit of the others.

What? Cyril refused to fall to his knees, holding himself up against the staff. What?

The world rumbled once more.

He slowly lifted his head. The sun was setting, bathing the world in soft, ephemeral hues. How was that possible? It had almost been dawn when all this started, and he couldn’t believe that the pursuit had lasted that long.

A shadow fell over the world. There, on the horizon, a figure walked. It distorted all perspective, warped reality about it. One step, it was like a simple human traversing the dunes, then the next it was a colossus of radiant stone towering high into the heavens.

Behemoth was approaching.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND? the world rumbled.

Cyril knew he must be hallucinating. Death must be close. He had heard that many people had visions before the end--real or imagined, the last struggling vestige of consciousness before one’s soul departed the material plane. But why was he imagining the TItan of Earth? It didn’t matter, really.

Still, he managed to summon up a bit of moisture into his mouth, enough to respond. “No. But I want to.”

Somehow, he sensed approval within the tremors that shook the world.