Jian crept through the darkness with the type of focus that could only be sustained by overwhelming panic.

If she let herself stop, if she let herself think, then she knew she would start shaking. If she started shaking, she knew she might never stop.

Instead, she focused.

A step exactly here, a hand precisely there. She practically crawled through the tunnel, her right hand steadying herself against the wall while her left gently caressed the floor to find the perfect places to walk; the spots without grit or rubble. Even when the slowly drying warmth on her hands stuck to the floor, she lifted them free without a sound. She was confident that she was being completely silent.

And yet, she was being followed anyway.

One of the other kids might not have noticed her pursuer. They might not have heard the silent brush of skin against stone, or felt the gentle movement of air behind her, but she was the best. She’d hadn’t always been, but she’d grown up in the dark, lived her whole life in it, since the day her father left her there. She’d had no choice, but to get better.

And whoever it was behind her, they were getting closer.

She forced her left hand to relax its death grip, the blood returning a numb burn to her fingers as they unclenched. Running into someone in the tunnels always carried risk, but if the wrong person realized what she was carrying, it would guarantee someone’s blood would paint the floor.

Her focus started to crumble as a memory hit her, but she pushed it aside. She didn’t have time to grieve, not yet.

There were only a few people stealthy enough to be behind her, even less now than there had been the day before, and she didn’t want any of them to find her yet. Not until she’d had time; time to think, to do something, anything.

With years of practice guiding her, she let her fingers explore the walls near her, softer than the person behind her, prodding and poking with the pads of her fingers to reveal what her eyes couldn’t.

It took a few agonizing seconds, but she found a crack hidden behind a springy cover of light-eating moss, just the right size to slip the crystal into. It wasn’t a particularly great hiding spot, but now she had a choice. Should she scuttle further down the tunnel and then purposefully draw the person’s attention? Set up an ambush? Or should she sit on the crack and cover it?

But as soon as she let go of the crystal, her hand started shaking.

She pulled it back, but she’d noticed too slowly, been too distracted. Her shaking fingers brushed against a pebble, knocking it to the tunnel floor. It landed with a small clack, and her decision was made for her.

Three sharp and deliberate taps of rock on rock rang out behind her as she sat against the wall, covering the patch of moss with her back.

She sighed, unsure if it was in relief or resignation. Her knees let out, and she sunk to the ground with her back against the wall. She loudly grabbed a rock, barely able to hold it without it shaking free of her trembling fingers, and tapped it twice on the stone beneath her before she pulled her knees up and hugged them close.

A familiar hand landed lightly on her shoulder and slid up to gently cup her face. She felt the alternating soft and calloused pads against her cheek, and leaned into it for a moment, before forcing herself to pull away.

“Jian?” Her sister asked. “That you?”

“I guess.” She mumbled, trying to hide her newest wave of panic behind a childish sulk. Mei was the worst person that could’ve found her. If it had been one of Jin’s cronies she could’ve at least fought, or run, but against Lin she was powerless.

Her sulking quickly stopped being just an act as the reality of the situation settled in and Lin sat down next to her. The older girl pulled her into a side hug, resting her head atop Jian’s, and Jian let herself lean into the embrace. She tried taking what little comfort she could from it, as it swirled and fought the tension inside her. At least the hug was nice.

“Sweetie, are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.” She lied. She was allowed to lie, if it made someone feel better. Lin did it all the time, so she couldn’t complain if Jian did it too.

“Good. That’s good. I was worried.” She said the word “good” like it was a talisman that could ward off evil all on its own. They both knew it couldn’t.

“Why? I’m fine.”

“The blood, Jian. I was following the smell of the blood and a trail of tiny wet footprints. It wasn’t very reassuring.”

“Oh.” She’d forgotten about the blood. She hadn’t been able to smell anything but the cloying iron scent for so long that she’d blocked it out.

“It’s not my blood.” She mumbled.

“Good. That’s good.”

Jian pressed her face into her knees, trying to overwhelm the heat stinging her eyes with pressure. She wanted to stay strong for Lin, but she could feel herself fraying, falling apart strand by strand, and she hated it.

She didn’t want to talk, but she found herself opening her mouth anyway.

“I found Duyi.” She whispered.

Lin understood. She’d been down here for a long time too. Almost as long as Jian.

“Is that… his blood?”

“Some.” Jian whimpered.

“And the rest?”

“Jin’s.”

“Oh. Good.”

“Yeah.”

“He deserved it.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

Jian blinked the water away from her eyes. She wasn’t crying. She didn’t care. People died all the time. It was fine. She couldn’t cry, because crying was too loud. Even now, she had to be quiet, keep her voice strangled to a soft whisper. She knew how far sound could carry. She was too responsible to cry. She’d been down here a long time. She was the best at hiding.

Jian sobbed into her sister's arms, hating herself.

“I used the knife.” She choked out.

Lin’s grip tightened. “Good. That’s what it’s for.”

“He never heard me coming. They forgot I was even there.”

“Good. You did good.”

“I wasn’t supposed to be scared.”

“It’s okay. I’m proud of you honey.”

Jian barely heard her. It wasn’t okay. She wasn’t proud of herself. She’d waited too long, and Duyi had been the one to pay the price for it.

She didn’t know how long she stayed like that. She only knew that her sister’s arms were wrapped tight around her.

“It’s not your fault, Jian, my little sword. It’s not your fault, it’s theirs. They keep us trapped here in the dark, unable to see, unable to live. They keep the lid of the pot shut so tight that we end up fighting over scraps. We become consumed with empty promises, that we have no choice but to eat each other alive just to survive.”

The bitterness in Lin’s scared her, but it wasn’t new. Bitterness had always been Lin’s shield. Nothing ever came of confronting it, so instead she just leaned into her sister harder, taking comfort in the strength that bitterness gave her.

Lin pat her head gently, brushing her hair away from her face and wiping her snot with her sleeve. “It’s alright Jian. Let’s get back to Seventh Veil and rest. You don’t need to do anything else today, or tomorrow, or even the day after. I’ll give you enough Heartcore Moss and Oblivion Buds to cover your quotas, and we’ll get those bastards to let you sleep under the Light Root for a change.”

“No.” Jian said, surprising herself. She felt cold. Cold and strange. Strange enough that it took her a moment to place what was different.

Her fingers weren’t shaking anymore.

She felt the same resolve that had built with Duyi’s cries, and ended with her knife in Jin’s throat.

“We don’t need to care about quotas ever again.” She said quietly.

“What do you mean?” Lin asked slowly.

Jian ignored the suspicion in her sister’s voice and leaned away, groping at the rocks behind her until she found what she was looking for. Her fingers pushed past the soft moss cover and she slowly brought her hand back.

“Duyi found it.” She lied, because it was okay to lie if it made someone happy, even if that someone was herself.

She uncurled her fingers and she felt Lin stiffen and stop breathing.

It was so dark that neither one of them could see her hand in front of their faces. Dark enough that neither of them should have been able to see what she was holding.

But they could.

It was small enough to fit in the palm of her hand, a child’s hand, but it consumed their vision until it was all they could see. It was a only a fragment, but it was a fragment of something so dark that it stood out like a beacon in the pitch black of the tunnel. It was the entire reason they, and a hundred others, were trapped here in the first place.

A Resonant Stone.

An opportunity to become something greater.

Even now, it spoke to her, whispering a song in her ear so quietly that no one else could hear. Something like smoke slipped between her fingers, and the way it swirled and pooled on the stone floor painted a story just for her.

‘Eat me,’ it told her. ‘Eat me, and I’ll never leave you,’ it promised.

Jian wanted to listen to it. The dark had always favored her. It had shielded her from predators, covered her tracks, and even hidden her when she was lying in wait to ambush Jin. She knew it would protect her.

But it wouldn’t save her sister.

“This is our way out, Lin.” She said, not caring if the sound in her voice was desperation or conviction. “If we turn this in, they’ll finally let us leave! They’ll have to. We’ll finally cross the Hundred Veils. We’ll have enough money to move to the Third Ring, maybe even the second!”

They would never have to spend another second in the dark if they didn’t want to, though Jian knew she would come back anyway. She couldn’t fully turn her back on it after all it had done for her, but at least it would be a choice, one on her own terms. One she didn’t need to pull her sister into.

After a second, Jian noticed Lin still wasn’t breathing, and she began to feel panic swelling inside her.

“Lin? Say something. Please?”

Her sister finally let out a huff of air, and Jian sagged in relief. Until Lin spoke.

“We can’t do that.”

“What? Why not?” Jian felt whiplash as the panic returned in force.

“They’ll never let us leave if we do. They’ll just take it and claim they found it themselves. We’d be lucky if they left us alive at all.”

“What? No! They can’t do that! They’re not supposed to! The sect said-”

“I KNOW what the sect said!” Her sister yelled, the sound booming through the tunnel like an avalanche.

“Lin!” Jian hissed, terrified by the sound.

Her sister took a deep breath.

“This is real.” She whispered, her voice shaky. She reached out, and Jian let her gingerly lift the gem from her palm. She followed the hole in the world as her sister held it up to her eye. She examined it closely, moving it around and scattering the trails of almost-fog.

Could Lin see the smoke? She wasn’t sure, and for some reason the thought made her heart clench.

“We can’t sell it,” Lin said. “but I could use it. The outer disciples at the Hundredth Veil will notice immediately, but that’s okay. That’s fine. It has to be what they expect, what they want. I’d be too valuable for them to kill. This is- this would make me one of them. The sect would have to take me in if I had a Resonance. I could get the fuck out of here, make a real life for myself. Three meals a day. No more banging my head into walls. No more hiding. No more squeezing through holes in the rock just to scrape away at glowing fucking moss, just to make this shithole even darker than it already is!”

“Lin.” Jian pleaded. “Please. You can’t.”

“What?” Lin said, surprised, as Jian grabbed her wrist, as if she had forgotten Jian was even there and only her touch had reminded her. “Oh, honey, it’s okay. I’ll come back for you. Once I work my way up and become Inner Disciple in the sect, nobody will complain if I take you from here. Maybe I could even make it work as an Outer Disciple.”

Jian could hear the guilt in Lin’s voice. She could hear the darkness wrapped around her whispering ‘liar’. She let it guide her hand down into the scraps of cloth she wore as robes, until it wrapped around something hard and thin and crusted with blood.

“Please, don’t leave me Lin. You’re all I have left. Let’s just sell it. They have to honor it. It’s the rules. They have to.”

Her grip tightened, afraid.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

“The rules don’t mean shit Jian, but this will make me strong enough that I can start making the rules instead of following them. Just be patient for me, okay? Just a year, maybe two, and I’ll be back for you. I promise.”

‘Liar.’

“Lin, please, wait. I’m scared.”

Could Lin see the smoke? Jian’s mind kept flashing to every rumor about Resonant Stones she’d ever heard. What they could do for a person who was compatible with their Resonance.

And what could go wrong if they weren’t.

“Please.” She begged, her eyes hot with tears. “What if you’re not-”

But Lin didn’t wait. Jian saw the shard of darkness move towards where Lin’s face had to be. When it disappeared, she knew it was in her mouth, the effect blocked by her body.

She didn’t think; she couldn’t think. All she could do was react.

She swung the knife she was holding.

She screamed, the sound echoing loudly in the tunnel. Like a transgression.

She felt the impact as it slammed into Lin’s neck.

She felt something warm seep into the rags wrapped around her feet.

She felt the scrape of Lin’s teeth, as she pushed her arm down her throat.

She felt the sting of something sharp bite into her hands.

She tasted blood and darkness as she put the crystal in her mouth.

She huddled there, her entire body shaking, unable to stop or move.

“I had to.” She murmured, “She would’ve left me.”

‘It’s okay.’ The shadows lied.

“I had to.” She pleaded, “She would’ve left me.”

‘You had no choice.’ The shadows lied.

“I had to.” She cried, “She would’ve-”

***

Jian woke up in a panic as memories flashed past her. For a moment, she was a little girl again, crying in the dark, and then her memories hit her, flowing in reverse.

The coral forest, and the creature at its heart. Renfei’s head rolling across the floor. A flood of red, rushing up and over her in a wave. Her body, burning as something tore through her veins like a knife. Elijah, lying on the ground, clothes stained red.

She didn’t know where she was.

She tried to open her eyes, but even before she could, light flooded through her shut eyelids and blinded her. The skin on her arm brushed against something and she felt a thousand needles scraping it off her bones. The sound of a waterfall made of sandpaper crashed and echoed through her head like a crescendo that never stopped.

Her last memory surfaced. A memory of being dragged through a hole in the world. This was an attack.

Jian screamed, a small part of her noting it as a transgression.

Her skin parted as spears of blood shot out of every vein and erupted from every shadow. She barely had time to catch flashes of white before the room was filled with a forest of crimson thorns. Blood kept pouring out of her, more blood than could possibly fit in a human body, and still she felt her soul thrum with power. More power than she’d ever felt in her life.

Her scream morphed into a cackle of catharsis as she lashed out, turning anything in the room into a pin cushion. She’d finally made it to the starting line. She’d finally straddled the line between mortality and infinity. Nothing could stop her now.

Then everything stopped.

She tried to scream again, but the sound disappeared in her throat. The blood in her veins stilled, her lungs burned, and her heart froze between two beats.

A hand was placed over her mouth. She didn’t know when it had gotten there.

Jian finally saw the woman. Everywhere the spears had touched her skin they had bent and broken, leaving her unblemished. She moved her hand through the forest of thorns and they snapped like brittle cobwebs.

“Shhh.” She said, “You’ll upset her if you’re too noisy.”

Her voice was the only sound in a world of oppressive silence. It had barely been a whisper, but the sound crashed through her, the loudest thing she’d ever heard. It covered everything, asserting itself over reality and forcing the world to obey. For a moment, no other sound was allowed to exist and she felt herself breaking under the strain, unable to scream in pain.

Every red spear in the room vibrated in place before sinking back into the shadows they’d sprouted from, pushed down by an implacable force. Fear finally overcame panic, and Jian struggled as blood rushed through her veins in reverse. It tore lines of agony through her as her veins were filled with thrice the amount of blood a human body should hold. As the last spear slipped into her skin, and the wound closed behind it, she felt an overwhelming pressure settle against her like a membrane smothering her soul.

It was cloying and claustrophobic, but she felt like she would burst without it.

“That’s better.” The woman said, eerily cheery. “I know formative memories are often traumatizing, but stay calm and this will be easier for you.”

Jian felt the power holding her in place fade, and her hands finally fell limp to her sides. Chains clanged against each other and she finally noticed the golden manacles locking her wrists to the table she was lying on. The sound boomed through her skull, louder than it should be, but nothing could ever seem truly loud again after the sound of the woman’s voice.

She tried to focus.

The thing scraping against her skin like needles was just her clothes, somehow feeling rougher than stone. The light was normal, dim even. The room was practically silent, without even the wind pressing against its walls. She wasn’t being attacked, or tortured. It was only her senses that had gone out of control. Everything was normal.

But that wasn’t quite true.

Both the slab she was chained to, and the chains themselves, were gold. Not even Celestial Bronze, but True Gold. The wealth alone was staggering.

Perhaps ‘normal’ was the wrong word to use here.

“Nothing you can do will scratch those chains, so don’t bother wasting your energy.” The woman said, a note of amusement in her voice.

Jian instantly believed it. There was some force she didn’t recognize running through the chains. Something beyond qi. Something she couldn’t touch, or even see directly. Instead, she could only feel the effects it had on things. Like gravity pulling something down.

She hesitantly let herself look around. The opulence of her chains stood in stark contrast to the plainness of the room she found herself in. It was a dimly lit octagon with no doors. Instead, every wall was filled to capacity with wooden shelves arranged in a crossing pattern, each diamond-shaped hole holding rolled scrolls that stretched above her. It was almost normal, until she looked up and noticed.

The walls didn’t end.

She tried to look at the vanishing point above her, to see where the walls might eventually converge, but her vision started swimming and she looked away.

The floor was littered with abandoned masterpieces. Discarded reams of paper covered in gorgeous black and white landscapes covered the floor thickly enough that she almost couldn’t see the woven mat underneath. Each one had been deliberately crumpled, torn, or stepped on. Sometimes all three.

A tiny flicker of movement drew her eye, and she noticed a small mound of paper in one of the octagon’s corners had a person buried underneath it. The woman lay collapsed over a low desk, her body contorted over an open scroll, with her face pressed into the wood and one hand idly moving a brush across the page. She was covered by so many shreds of paper that Jian could barely make out any features beyond long black hair.

Another prisoner perhaps? One forced to paint over and over again? With the successes archived on the shelves of this infinite room while the failures were discarded? She was a variable to keep track of. Perhaps even an ally in making an escape. If she’d been here a while, she may have an idea of where they were.

The first woman, the one who had manhandled her like a child having a tantrum, was still standing over her. She was dressed in a sleeveless dress of black and red that she wore casually, with loose folds draping over her body. Long white hair ended in red tips, and jagged red horns sprouted from her temples, resembling crystallized blood. A red scaled tail lashed aggressively behind her, its tip coated in a flame that threatened to ignite the failed paintings with every brushstroke.

Then Jian made the mistake of looking into the woman’s eyes.

Black pupils and red irises broke their rings and spread through her sclera in loops and arcs of molten and ever-shifting colors that expanded and swelled until they swept over her and revealed pillars of bone sticking out of a sea of black and red that swelled and rose over her head-

“And that’s enough of that.” A hand covered her eyes and she gasped, suddenly able to breathe again.

Jian heard a dismissive ‘tsk’ from the corner.

“Now, now.” The red woman chided her. “I know our soul’s a bit volatile at the moment, but you can’t even handle looking a woman in the eyes? Honestly, what are they even teaching kids in Ao’Xian these days.”

She brought her hand away and Jian felt something wet dribble down her face. She’d originally thought the woman was wearing red gloves, but now she could see that her fingers were covered with layered swirls of red and black ink. The liquid clung to her like a second skin and climbed up her arms until stopping just below her elbows.

“What’s- what’s going on?” Jian heard herself say, struggling to keep up. No, she was keeping up, her mind was making connections, but they were connections she didn’t want to accept. A terrifyingly strong Immortal with Resonances of Blood and Ink? She’d only heard of one Immortal with both. She kept looking at the Woman in Red and seeing her overlap with another silhouette. A figure of legend. A figure that had been dead for thirty years.

“You’re supposed to be dead.” She pleaded, her mouth betraying her faster than her mind could strangle it. “We saw your Echo of Longing in our own eyes. We killed it ourselves! How can you leave behind a ghost and not be dead? It’s not possible. It’s not-”

She was rambling. Her heart felt like it was still frozen between beats, a great weight gripping her chest, but she couldn’t stop. She was dreaming. This was a nightmare. Or maybe even a Nightmare. Maybe the Echo had survived and evolved? It couldn’t be real. Why couldn’t she stop talking? Stop thinking? She was spewing word vomit on a being that could kill her with a thought. She needed to stop.

The Woman in Red laughed. Had she used the same laugh when she’d slain gods?

“Never assume something is impossible for an Immortal, girl. That should be the first lesson you internalize when you become one of us. Every Immortal who’s ever lived became exceptional by defying what the Heavens deemed should be possible.”

“When?” She’d almost missed it, but that one word was enough to bring Jian’s thoughts to a screeching halt. Maybe she wouldn’t die today after all.

The Woman in Red smiled, looking pleased.

“Yes. When. You’re already at the threshold, girl. I intend to push you over it.”

Jian swallowed. Her throat was dry.

“It’s supposed to be impossible to make someone else an Immortal.”

“You use those words a lot, don’t you? ‘Supposed to’ and ‘impossible.’”

“I- I suppose I do. Maybe it’s time I stopped.”

“That’s the spirit! Some childish notions can be held dear to your heart, but not the ones that limit you, that make you doubt. Isn’t that right, lazybones!?” She had turned and shouted that last part at the woman huddled in the corner.

An unintelligible mutter rose from the pile of scraps.

“What was that? You have to speak up if you want people to hear you!”

“Noisy.”

“I’m sure I have some fireworks around here if you want things to get noisy.”

“Just, shut up!” The woman screamed. Her hand blurred and something shot across the room fast enough to shatter the stagnant air. Jian flinched at the sound hard enough for the golden shackles to cut in her wrists, sending off a flair of pain that overwhelmed her again. When she had finally blinked the tears from her eyes, she expected the room to be destroyed.

She was wrong.

The Woman in Red stood there like nothing had happened, a thin paint brush held between two fingers. The woman in the corner was groaning. Jade coloured gloves held over her head as she pressed it deeper into the table. Nothing else had changed beyond a few scraps of paper tearing and floating up into the air, floating gently back down like flower petals.

The Woman in Red leaned towards her, holding up a hand as if she were whispering, but clearly keeping her voice at the same volume she’d always used.

“Don’t worry about her. She’s just depressed. It’s very tragic, really.”

“I’m not depressed!” The other woman yelled, her voice trailing back into a groan.

“See, that’s exactly what a depressed person would say.” She tossed the paint brush over her shoulder without looking at it. “It’s all quite stereotypical really. She probably just wants attention.”

“I hate you.” The woman muttered.

Jian held her breath. The woman wasn’t just depressed, she was outright suicidal if she was speaking to the Slayer of Gods that way. They still told children horror stories about her in the Outer Rings to scare them into behaving. She was asking to be killed.

Instead, the Woman in Red just laughed. She turned back to Jian. “Don’t worry, she says that all the time. It’s adorable, really.”

For a second Jian was confused. Was this a comedy routine? Then, she saw the cruel glint in the Woman’s eyes. She almost missed it, unwilling as she was to risk locking eyes and matching souls again, but it was there. These women hated each other. The Woman in Red was deliberately tormenting her at the very least. Yet, why bother instead of just killing her? Were the paintings she could make that valuable?

Her head snapped back and slammed into the golden table, buffeted by a wave of force. The pain stopped her from thinking for a moment, overwhelming any stray thoughts. She lifted her head again, her ears still ringing in sync with the vibrations of the table, and saw the source of her distress.

The Woman in Red had snapped her fingers.

“Yup!” She said cheerily. “Your advancement was definitely too quick. Your senses will probably stay overloaded like that for a little longer. Just wanted to confirm where you were at.”

Jian bit back her first reply. She didn’t believe that for a second. The old monster was clearly messing with her, but it would take more than that for anger to push past her fear. Though it did make her feel more confident that she apparently wanted her alive.

Alive and Immortal.

That was worth playing things safe.

“Thank you, honored elder.”

“Oh. Gross. Never call me that again.”

Jian nearly bit her tongue. That may be a new record for putting her foot in her mouth.

“Of course, honored one.”

The Woman in Red sighed. “Good enough. Anyway, my real point is that you’re wasting time. This isn’t a show. You’re like some street bumpkin so fascinated by street lights that you’re missing the fireworks overhead.”

Jian frowned.

“What do you mean, honored one?”

“Your soul, girl. You haven’t even looked at your soul yet. You absorbed so much Blood qi from your little ritual that you pushed far past your saturation point. Your soul already started forming a Hollow Core all on its own. Focus on getting familiar with it while I convince the resident room fixture over there into helping you, before that unstable Core kills you.”

With a sick feeling in her stomach, Jian closed her eyes. She looked inwards, and visualized her soul.

A third river of qi had made its home in her body, and she followed it through her veins and into her heart. She brushed past the rocky exterior of the Lithic Realm. She descended through the supple supporting layer of the Asthenic Realm. She reveled in the molten sea of the Liminal Realm, the new pressure it provided to the shell around her soul a much needed addition.

And then she found something she wouldn’t have expected without the Woman’s forewarning.

A small sphere at the center of her soul that she didn’t recognize. It was formed by all three types of qi she Resonated with, but crushed so densely that it was barely recognizeable. It was so dense that it stood out and somehow felt more real than anything around it. She touched it and felt it ring, like a hollow sphere. She’d really formed a Hollow Core. She pushed deeper, peered inside, and found-

A gap, an absence, pulling, gnawing, grasping, tearing, and eroding everything around it. It hurt just looking at it. It hurt where it touched her, but she couldn’t pull away from it. It was inside her, part of her. Inescapable.

She pulled up with a gasp, breathing heavily.

Now that she knew the feeling, it was unmissable. It was in her heart. In her bones. She was Hungry. So hungry that her soul was devouring itself, sucking everything in to try to fill that void.

Trying in vain.

She teetered on the edge, breathing faster and faster. Too fast. She was hyperventilating.

She slipped.

Not much, but just enough. The Core pulled her back under, slipping into her soul involuntarily.

That wasn’t supposed to happen.

She was finding a lot of things that weren’t supposed to happen.

She wrapped her hands around the golden chains holding her down, reveling in the sensation of the cuffs digging into her wrists. She needed something, anything, to ground her. To remind her what was real.

It didn’t matter if something wasn’t supposed to happen. It was happening and she needed to adjust before it killed her.

The pull intensified.

She screamed-

And sound disappeared again with a ‘tsk’ of impatience.

“Noisy.” The woman in the corner muttered, still face down, still covering her head with her arms.

The Woman in Red kicked her.

“Oh don’t make her wait any longer. The poor thing’s in pain. She’s dying. Have some compassion.”

Jian’s mouth stayed open, silently screaming.

“Just let her self-destruct. There’s no point.”

“But her Domain could be the key we need! I can feel the Hunger in her from here!”

“Unlikely.”

“Sure, but it costs you nothing to roll those dice.”

“There’s no point. The vain hope you’re holding onto is a mistake.”

“Then make a mistake! Making a mistake just means you were brave enough to make a decision. Now get up and help, you damn shut-in.”

“Fine.” The woman said.

She stood, scraps of paper streaming off of her, and Jian realized her mistake.

The woman had been shattered, but she had never been a prisoner, never been a victim. Jade horns swept up from her temples, one snapped at the root yet still regal. Her black hair faded into jade tips and jade scales coated a sinuous tail that swept aside the table she’d once hunched over. She was a mirror image to the Woman in Red, one with the colors inverted. Black swapped with white. Red swapped with jade. But someone had taken a hammer to that mirror, and her entire body was covered in cracks. Some cracks were gossamer thin, while others were two fingers wide, and inside was nothing but a white void of nothingness.

The Woman in Red had just been a distraction, another Echo. This was the original. The transgressor that Heaven’s Warden had cast down. The sinner that had somehow survived Divine Judgement. The Immortal who slew gods.

And she was moving.

On her first step, she bent in a direction outside of space.

On her second step, she left the world behind.

On her third step, she returned.

And she brought something back with her.

Reality began to warp and crack under its weight, trying in vain to make sense of it. Its enormity dwarfed comprehension. A mantle of souls wrapped around her, flowing up and around her like a holy raiment before stretching into an endless infinity. A shattered skull overlapped with the right half of her face. Jian felt her heart stop beating as the corpse of a Titan stared through her.

A curtain of red began to color the room as every blood vessel in Jian’s eyes burst. The Woman lifted her hand and a skeletal claw reached out to gently wrap Jian in its grip.

“We’ll do this your way,” the Deicide said, “but it won’t be pleasant.”

The skeletal hand squeezed, passing through her body like a ghost, until it touched her soul.