Jin sprints through an alleyway, laughing as loud as he can as he ducks under a passerby’s basket, over a short barrel, and leaps up high enough that he almost entirely clears the wall at the end of the path. He can hear his pursuers slinging curses at them, can hear the sound the balls of mud or old fruits that whistle past his head and nearly throw him off balance, and he makes sure to look over his shoulder as he lands on the wall, one leg over and the other back, and sticks his tongue out at them.
He’s being chased by three people, one of them a full grown adult, heaving for breath as he runs and red in the face but old enough to have at least a few steps in the Qi-Gathering realm, and so managing to keep up in spite of it. The other two share a clear resemblance, their faces nearly as red, though more from anger than from physical exertion, but both the boys are yelling almost as loud as their dad, and are primarily responsible for throwing the missiles as they chase him.
“Get back here you little rat!” roars the man, his apron flapping in the wind as he shoves past the poor guy with the basket and nearly trips over the barrel blocking the way. “You didn’t pay for those you little shit!”
Jin sticks his tongue out further, waggling it even as he dodges a clump of mud thrown his way now that he’s stopped. “Money is for suckers and old men like you!” he laughs, taking one hand from his package to help make faces at the red-faced man. “Go suck some old eggs like proper pigs instead of running after the young and honorable!”
“Nothing honorable about a street rat!” yells one of the bigger piggy’s kids, his voice hitting an unfortunately high note as the same source of his advantages (puberty) betrays him. “Thief!”
“Ugly little pig-baby!” Jin yells back, cackling as he finally throws himself off the side of the short wall, hitting the ground running.
The man chasing him manages to make it over the wall, barely, huffing and puffing and causing the wooden wall to break in parts as he falls over it. Both his kids take one look at the splintered mess behind their father and, for all their bluster, decide to maybe not try to replicate his actions. In the end the older man is left face-down in the dirt, struggling to get one of his legs unstuck from the wall he badly jumped over, screaming obscenities and words wholly unsuited to the ears of children after Jin as he runs away laughing.
Cradled tight, the warm basket of steamed buns wafts out its smells to the boy, but he fights down the temptation, making sure he’s well and truly as far away from his encounter as he can manage. There’s still streets to go, and warm buns are less important than unbruised bones, no matter how tempting they may be.
Jin runs down the streets of Wuyan village, his bare feet skipping across bare earth and expertly dodging leftover bits of animal manure, discarded equipment and supplies from the fair, and more. There’s maybe a hundred stalls, maybe two, all of them preparing and getting things together for the big day. Even down in the southern rings, where the Cold Sun is so much smaller and so much less likely to cause moon-drops, most of the auroras are still plenty visible when the stars begin to weep, and if nothing else, it’s nice to have a party when you don’t die.
Jin has heard stories, especially on festival days or late at night when the old grannies are in their cups and trying to scare the little ones, about some of the older tales, before even the Empire stories. He likes the Empire stories plenty, the big ones where the heroes strike down the rogue sects, where the Emperor chains up the Daemon hordes that the evil Daemonic cultivators summon, or the ones where the Blades were born as the Sword Saints finally came together to fight back against the forever-beasts of the fifth ring. But at the end of the day, the older stories just seem to have more stuff going on. Action is all well and good, but only the really little kids like fighting all the time, and sometimes you just like a story that feels a little bit scary.
The eastern ring doesn’t have as many stories as most of the others. In the north, they have the days of first freezing, the myths of the sun rising to fight the deepest cold every day lest it overtake the world, and tales of frost wights and great star-born beasts. From travelers coming up from the south, Jin’s heard stories about where the sun breaks apart, about the endless lakes of fire and glass, about the great beast-mother that the sun wyrms pray to. Even the west has a bunch of stories, myths of the many traveling clans and the ancient ruins of the before-people. But late at night, when the fires are low and the stories get more interesting, they still talk about the first night of the Cold Sun.
Jin runs through the streets, letting the white banners with the sigils of squares within a circle flap behind him as he rushes past the end of the festival preparations. He’s well past the point where he’d worry about the cook and his sons finding him, especially not for something as simple as a basket of dumplings, but that doesn’t mean he’s safe. There’s plenty of people who might wonder about a shoeless kid sprinting through town, or ask where someone so disheveled got a whole basket, or, in the case of other kids, just take the food. Wuyan village isn’t big enough to have a population of urchins, really, it’s just Jin, but sometimes that just means he’s an easy target for other kids to pick on. He’s thirteen now, hardly a kid, practically grown, even if his body hasn’t caught up yet… but not eating very well means that even the eleven year olds can sometimes beat him in a fight if they gang up. Still, having little else to do, he’s got enough Qi to make up for short legs, and he uses both to run for his latest hiding spot. The dumplings will be cold by then, but that’s the price of doing business, as the pigs might say.
He runs all the way out of the village, past the houses on the outskirts, past the small farms that ring the outer walls where the beast can’t get them, all the way out the gates. Out here, so close to the fourth ring, beasts are still an occasional occurrence, but there’s almost nothing in the village they’d care about. The guards are relaxed, barely even noting him as he runs right past them before anyone can catch him, and he’s off to the trees.
He weaves in and out between the branches. The trees near Wuyan are strange, he’s told, different to trees in other places. They’re a bit taller, for one, but they grow their leaves like moss along their bark, so whichever side faces the sun is painted a rich, deep-dark green while from the other side, the trees look barren. He knows how to use the shape and color of the trees to track where he’s going, and he’s not stupid enough to go too far away from the village, so it’s maybe two to three minutes after he left the gates that he finds himself in his “home”.
The older folk that have nowhere to go tend to stay in town, but children can be vicious, and Jin doesn’t like to risk it. Instead, he has a few scraps of cloth here. A bedroll he stole from a traveling merchant makes up the centerpiece, tucked back against a rock in a small alcove only just large enough to fit itself and Jin together and providing cover from the rain. In a little cleared area in front of it, the remnants of a poorly made fire pit are visible, plenty of ash and soot cluttering the bottom of it, but Jin uses it rarely so as not to draw attention. It is for winters only most days, and while he’s been told that the winters down south are warmer than in the far north, that’s little help to a poorly dressed child in the woods. Beside the campfire are a few rags, for bandages and the larger ones for clothing, a small bag full of seeds and dried nuts for emergencies, and a small wooden horse, poorly carved and rather misshapen, but smoothed by time and touch.
Jin sits himself down next to the firepit, in a little section that seems to have been cleared for precisely that purpose, the moss on the ground patted mostly flat into a semi-comfortable seat, and opens the basket. As predicted, the dumplings have cooled, but the basket held the heat and he ran fast enough that while they are no longer steaming, they are still warm to the touch.
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Despite the hunger gnawing in his belly, he takes his time. Each dumpling is eaten in three bites instead of one as he chews deliberately, enjoying the flavors. Pork, a bit of green onion, a bit of soy sauce and a bit of sweetness… it’s not much, but he rarely gets to eat this well, and he lets himself enjoy every bite.
His belly closer to full than it’s been in a while, Jin leans back against the mossy stone of his seat and looks up at the sky.
It’s not safe outside of town at night, they say. Especially on a night of the Cold Sun. It hasn’t been since the first one, they say.
Once, before it was a moon, the Cold Sun was a star.
All the stars in the sky are glimpses of a greater world above, the eyes of the Heavens digging through the dark of space to look down upon their children. Some people say the stars are probably balls of fire wyrms, like the sun, while others say they are something else, but all agree that they are magical in their own way, lighting the night, their brightness eclipsed by the sun. They’re seen as good luck almost as much as bad, and to be watched by the stars, it is said, is to be cursed to live in interesting times.
But one day, one of the stars got bigger.
Its color went from the white and glittering rainbow of colors of every star to something colder. It curdled, there in the sky, like milk to moldy cheese, like meat to mold, until it was almost ten times as big as its sibling stars and turning dark, like a hole without the light of the Heavens.
And then the watcher in the sky had looked through it. People say different things about it. Some say it was a rogue god, wandering the space between the Heavens, while others say it was a Daemon of terrible power that had escaped a divine prison above the world. Every story says something different about what it looks like, or what it did, but all agree that in the light of the Cold Sun, wraiths and spirits and daemons were riled, moved to violence and actively hunting the people of the world. The sects and tribes and lone warriors of the world fought against the ravenous dead, even as the world grew colder, the plants dying and turning strange after.
And then… someone put the Cold Sun into the hole where the star had been. No one seems to agree on what, though. Some say ancient cultivators did it, crafting divine tools and artifacts that created the strange cubes and pyramids and cylinders that make up the Cold Sun. Others say the thing behind the star did it, plugging the hole it created like putting a lid on a jar, to watch for longer, so its newest toy wouldn’t die out. Some say the Will of Heaven reached into the world, twisting and turning its Qi and the will of the land itself to send up a part of itself to forever add a new, stranger moon to the sky, only for it to be shaped by the thing behind the stars into what it is now.
It’s why Jin likes the story. It’s not a safe story, not a story of the good guys winning in the end just by being big and strong. It’s a scary story, meant to remind children that there is so much that people don’t know, and that sometimes terrible things happen and that there’s no real answer, except that whatever answer is chosen doesn’t make things the way they were before.
Jin looks up at the Cold Sun above, so much brighter on its yearly night, and wonders if there will be hungry spirits tonight. He wonders if he will recognize any faces he remembers if he sees them.
He does as best he can to go over those faces in his mind as the skies turn darker, the stars blink awake, and the Cold Sun shines bright above.
In the distance, he begins to hear the sounds of the festival. They’re a bit faint, but he’s not exactly very far away. Some of the villagers shoot off fireworks or even handheld guns to match the lights as fires and the sounds of music and singing start to echo out of the festival.
They’d probably let him stay. If he went over to the village, blended in, amidst the festivities, everyone would be too busy to pick a fight and too happy to mind him running around while they pretend that they care about him. But the thought of going back, and seeing all the happy faces, and having them make an exception to just let him be-
He realizes his hands hurt from how hard he’s clenching them. He takes a long, slow breath, focusing on his Qi and the sensation of it moving through him, and forces himself to calm down. Being angry is a waste of energy he can’t always afford, and-
Something rustles in the dark.
Instantly Jin has retreated into the stone burrow he found, putting the bedroll in it between himself and the only entryway. As defenses go it’s meager but it blocks air from escaping, hopefully blocking his scent from attracting whatever it is that came so close. If it’s a spirit beast, then he can’t run anyways, and can only pray that the stone is enough to dissuade it, but even if it’s a regular animal… he’s thirteen and underfed. Even the villagers fear wolves or vicious wandering turtles, nevermind actual true spirit beasts.
He senses it before he sees it.
His hands throb where his nails dug in as the world gets a little colder. The temperature doesn’t drop, his breath doesn’t suddenly fog, but still he starts to shiver as the world just shifts around him, ever so slightly towards something empty and cold. He clenches his teeth, so that they don’t give him away with their chatter. He hears something start to whisper, the air beginning to shift the ashes in his firepit like something is sifting through it…
A burst of wind strikes, and he hears something physical hit the ground. It takes all he has not to flinch deeper into the alcove, not to draw attention, but his eyes get wide as he sees the ash stir from the impact. It bursts up like a cloud, moved by the wind and as it does, it touches something that simply was not there before. An arm, then hints of a shoulder, then hints of another arm… on the same side as the first, twisted and gnarled and growing from a rib. There’s not enough ash to fully coat the thing, but what’s left hints at more still unseen. A third arm, maybe, behind the first but higher up, and an indication of a neck and jaw…
And teeth. Gnawing in the air, non-stop, always biting, chomping, gnashing, so the ash is stuck to it even faster than the rest.
Jin is very, very aware of how far away from the colors and bright lights of town he is.
For a moment, he wonders if dying will hurt, once the bleeding stops.
As if sensing the thought, the gnashing teeth lurch to face his hiding spot, the angle of the neck and jawline all wrong, the shape of it all wrong, and he hears the slightest sound. Like whispers, like far off screaming, like something crying, and then he sees the arms move towards him and the ash swirls and touches more and more misshapen form and-
There is a crunching noise. It takes him a moment to realize that the sound came from behind his alcove, where he cannot see, and sounded like a rock breaking.
The specter is gone. There is a small patch of torn wood and only-now falling branches that indicate a direction it might have left to.
And then the crunching noises start again, but louder. Messier.
Now they sound like biting. And then like chewing.
Jin stays very, very still, and desperately tries to hold his bladder as every part of his body clenches in fear.
And then… he hears a sigh. Like someone is bored. Or stressed about something. A perfectly normal, strangely familiar sigh of someone who has found something that needs to be done, but doesn’t want to do it.
And a woman steps out from the broken gap in the trees.
He doesn’t realize it’s a woman at first. She’s taller than any person he’s ever seen, and shaped to match, though most of it is muscle, her form strong and strangely balanced between visible strength and hidden, more predatory design. His gaze goes up, from bare feet to simple robes and a set of pants beneath, up and up to broad shoulders. One of her arms is missing at the bicep- no, not missing, but so dark it’s almost invisible, like its made of night, like her left arm is made of shadow and it feels so wrong and so hungry… and he looks higher still. Jin sees the ash on her lips, the glint of sharp teeth behind them, the eyes, bright and burning like the sun as it rises…
And sees that they are looking right at him.
The night-black arm of the brown skinned figure moves as if to drop something, and Jin sees an imprint land on the ground, stirring up ash again… but the place where the jaw, the neck, and the torso were don’t seem to have any ash land on them. The ash goes right through. Like the pieces aren’t there anymore.
He hears a clicking noise, and a hiss of fire, which doesn’t change the temperature but somehow wipes away that same violent, end-bringing cold feeling he had in his bones. The woman is holding a pipe, packed tight with something he can’t see, and from her night-black arm a small spark of the clearest, strangest Flame he has ever seen is lighting it.
She takes a long, slow pull, exhales even slower, to the point that he’s not sure she should be able to do that… and then squats down so she’s only about two feet taller than his little alcove, instead of seven or more.
“So,” says the impossible entity in front of him. “Got a name?”