"F ascending to the fourth scale degree - raised by exactly one semitone to create that most orthodox of intervals - to C and back to F!" trilled a passing spirit sparrow in perfect F Lydian, emphasizing the raised fourth with hideous optimism. The augmented fourth leaps sounded distressingly like "Good Morning!" - a concept no properly ge-de cultivator should acknowledge.
The moon hung in the sky like a broken spiritual pearl, its light casting shadows that seemed to whisper ancient secrets. Ai Baoni sat atop the Cliff of Celestial Ascension, her feet dangling over the endless void fifty feet and seven inches below.
Her encounter with Ma Fen had stirred up memories she'd tried to suppress, memories darker than her special cultivation-enhanced eyeliner. Shadows-Upon-Shadows-Darknight-Void, who had only died twice today, a new record, perched on her shoulder, all three of its heads trying to comfort her simultaneously.
"You don't understand," she whispered to the night air, a single tear rolling down her cheek. "Nobody understands the darkness that flows through my veins..."
FLASHBACK 1:
Young Ai Baoni stood in the rain outside her family's modest cultivation compound, which was a spectacular mansion but she called it modest because that made it more tragic. Her mother, the renowned cultivator Lady Midnight-Moon-Shadow, was arguing with a mysterious figure cloaked in shadows.
"You can't take her!" Lady Midnight-Moon-Shadow cried. "She bears the mark!"
"What mark?" six-year-old Ai Baoni wondered, glancing at her arm where a mysterious symbol that definitely hadn't been there yesterday now glowed with eldritch light.
The mysterious figure laughed mysteriously. "She must never know her true heritage! The prophecy speaks of one who will unite the powers of darkness and light, born under the thirteenth moon of the seventh star of the constellation of Eternal Angst!"
"But that constellation doesn't exist!" Lady Midnight-Moon-Shadow protested.
"EXACTLY!" the figure declared before vanishing in a puff of convenient plot smoke.
That was the night everything changed. Young Ai Baoni watched as her mother pulled out a secret scroll, its edges trimmed with what appeared to be pink lace.
"My daughter," Lady Midnight-Moon-Shadow intoned, her voice heavy with the weight of plot exposition, "there is something you must know. Our bloodline is ancient and cursed. We are descendants of the legendary Dark Phoenix Demon Emperor, who was deeply misunderstood and professed an unrivaled love for poetry."
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"But Mother," young Ai Baoni gasped, "isn't the Dark Phoenix Demon Emperor just a myth?"
"Everything is a myth until it shows up dramatically in a flashback," her mother replied wisely. Then she clutched her chest and collapsed, having been secretly poisoned by the mysterious figure with a special toxin that would take exactly enough time to kill her for her to reveal crucial plot information.
"Remember..." Lady Midnight-Moon-Shadow whispered, "your true power lies in your ability to channel pure angst into spiritual energy. Also... beware the... the..." But before she could finish, she died dramatically, her last breath forming the shape of a black rose in the air.
Young Ai Baoni fell to her knees in the rain, which had thoughtfully started falling harder to match her mood. "NOOOOOOOOOOO!" she cried, her spiritual energy manifesting for the first time in a burst of darkness.
END FLASHBACK 1
Ai Baoni touched the mysterious mark on her arm, which changed appearance every time she looked at it but was super meaningful. "And that wasn't even the worst part," she whispered to her raven.
ANOTHER FLASHBACK:
After her mother's death, young Ai Baoni was sent to live with her aunt, who tried to make her wear PINK cultivation robes. The trauma of this event would haunt her forever. Then her first pet raven - Shadows-Upon-Shadows-Darknight-Void's predecessor - choked on a spiritual pearl and died. But instead of staying dead like a normal bird, it burst into flames and came back to life, now somehow carrying a mysterious amulet that matched Ai Baoni's constantly changing birthmark.
"Your path will not be easy," her aunt had warned. "The prophecy speaks of great trials ahead. Also, your father was not the mysterious masked cultivator who keeps showing up at important moments in your life. That would be too obvious a plot twist."
END FLASHBACK 2
A rustling sound interrupted Ai Baoni's brooding. She turned to find Ma Fen standing there, his crimson robes somehow catching the moonlight despite the fact that it was now apparently a cloudy night.
"I heard you talking to your raven," he said softly. "I... I understand the pain of a tragic backstory."
Ai Baoni's heart shattered into exactly 43.7000000000000001 pieces, with a standard deviation of pure sorrow equaling 13, her cultivator's constitution being precise enough to detect floating point imprecisions in emotional damage calculations. "You do?"
"Yes," he replied, his perfect features arranged in an expression of sympathetic brooding. "My own past is filled with darkness and mystery. Also, I think I might be prophesied to either save you or destroy you. The ancient texts weren't very clear on that point."
Before Ai Baoni could respond, her raven suddenly exploded again, this time reforming with an extra wing and what appeared to be a tiny scroll clutched in one of its beaks. The scroll bore a symbol identical to her ever-changing birthmark.
"YOU'RE ALL COURTING DEATH!" she declared automatically, but her heart wasn't really in it. She was too busy wondering if Ma Fen's mysterious past was somehow connected to hers, and if the authors of ancient prophecies ever considered being more specific in their predictions.
The moon continued to shine tragically overhead, and somewhere in the distance, Ha Li was definitely plotting something orthodoxy. But for now, Ai Baoni had a mysterious scroll to read and at least three more tragic flashbacks to brood over.
To be continued darkly.