“I don’t think you’re doing very well, my lord.”

Shin Ren ignores the voice.

“Perhaps we should stop to rest. A moment’s peace might serve you well, perchance. Surely you haven’t yet reached a point in your cultivation wherein you are free of all mortal concerns?”

Shin Ren pointedly ignores the voice.

“Hey,” she whispers in his ear, “you should listen to the other guy.”

He flinches so hard he jerks a bit, stumbling to the side and looking around as if he doesn’t already know that he won’t see anything there.

All around him is empty space above barren rock. All around him is the fact that he is alone, and that there is no one here to whisper to him.

“You’ve been traveling a very long time, my lord,” says the first voice. “I do think that-”

He flashes the area around him to glass with his Qi. It singes and tatters what’s left of his robes even further, but it also shuts out the voices a moment longer. It’s worth it, for that instant of peace.

It’s not like he can waste Qi anyways. Not when it so constantly floods into him, dragged into the knots he feels in himself. He feels bloated, glutted, the flow of his cultivation method slowed and heightened in equal measure as unequal pressure floods his Meridians. He can feel his Dantian, physically feel the metaphysical organ straining.

In an ideal world, this would be a boon without equal. In an ideal world, his cultivation would have skyrocketed, pushing him easily into the world of a Nascent Soul cultivator from the peak of Core Formation he stands atop.

Instead, he wakes up some mornings tasting burnt flesh in his mouth and the smell of burning hair.

He should have stayed at the sect. He knows that now. Surely they would have recognized that something was wrong eventually. Surely they’d be able to fix it.

Another part of himself seethes at the weakness of his mewling. He is a cultivator, an adept without peer outside the very edges of the second ring, and to retreat to the tit of a benefactor, no matter how familiar of one, rather than overcoming the challenge himself? The height of foolishness. No, he has to overcome this, to understand this on his own and come out the other side of this challenge. Even were that not true, it’s far too late for such meaningless regrets now, much too late to turn back. He has come too far, in distance and in tribulation, to return to where he left.

“But isn’t that the whole point?” the voice asks. “That you’ve gone too far? That you’ve fallen much too deep into all this? I can’t imagine they’d even want you back at this point, honored child of the sect. Falling to heart demons, at your age? Over such a meaningless defeat? Honestly, if you aren’t embarrassed, I can probably cover the bill for us both. I’m rolling in shame.”

“Shut up” he hisses. “You’re not me. You’re not.”

“And would that I were,” the voice grumbles. “I mean I barely exist and I’m pretty sure I could get us out of here in a week, tops. I mean, bare minimum, I’m not afraid of my own flames.”

He turns in the vague direction the voice floats to him from and floods the barren rock and sand with fire. He pushes, flexes, strained and exhausted parts of his very soul squeezing out every ounce of flame he can hold and burning everything it can touch.

It’s mostly stone, this far south, but even still, it burns. When he finally releases the flames, panting, staggering, teeth grit from the effort, the ground has turned cherry red and begun to crack and soften.

“A masterful display, young master. Worthy of the Academies most certainly. Do you think you could get them to accept us as you are? I think they might make a special exception to their dress code if you vomit up enough more flame, hmm?”

“I am not afraid of my flame,” Shin Ren snarls. “It is mine. It is my own soul, tuned and refined by the cultivation methods of the Purple Flame Burning Lotus sect. Its pattern is ingrained into my meridians, its hue molded into my mind, and its purpose mine to determine. I am not afraid.”

“Then why do you keep hurting?” she whispers in his ear.

He throws a sloppy backhand through the air beside him, stumbling back and nearly falling.

“She’d probably do that less if we didn’t respond like… well, that,” mumbles the first voice.

“Go to the Hells,” Shin Ren replies. “Neither of you are real. You are devils. My own mind, turned to haunt me, and I shall overcome you both.”

“So do it. I’m as bored of watching you stumble around the desert as she is. Or just keep wandering south, see if some of the Fourth Ring’s fortresses might take you in. As you are, perhaps you’d even get the honor of a leash and muzzle, to best use you without having to listen to you mumble to yourself as they send you out to burn that which lives in flame.”

Shin Ren breaths. Slow, deep, steady. Four seconds in, three seconds out.

Slowly, breath by breath, he feels the world recede. Old, familiar routine slowly filters through stress and strain, bit by bit, until he almost feels centered. He adjusts his stance, centers his balance, and just breathes.

He is his own. He is his own master. He must be, lest he fall to ruin here.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Heart Demons aren’t a common thing. He hears they once were, and that there were techniques to suppress them, ways to weave one’s Qi so that they became buried and starved. Then, almost three hundred years ago, the Research Division of the Holy Emperor discovered new ways to combat them, tools of the mind by which one could be healed or bettered, and passed those techniques down to the Academies and the Division of Health. There are still some sect elders which prefer the older ways, or who have heart demons so old that the pattern of binding them has become part of their cultivation and routine, but for most beneath the level of the Divergent Paths, and many within it, heart demons are old ailments, relegated to those who refuse help or are too far gone.

And he, arrogant ass that he is, decided that the best course of action after being brushed off was to go wander the woods until he magically fixed himself.

It took Shin Ren the better part of fifteen years to reach the peak of the Core Formation stage. He voluntarily took another four to refine himself, to ensure his foundation could not be matched and that his grasp on Sword technique, Qi usage and refinement, and martial forms couldn’t be any better.

It’s taken him five months to lose everything.

He tries to control the thought. Tries to give himself the grace he once gave to others. It’s not fair to blame himself when he was clearly overlooked in favor of scrabbling for an advantage against the Empire. He’s facing an issue he’s never experienced, and whether or not he chose to isolate himself, he is isolated, and surviving it on his own.

“For how long?” she whispers in his ear.

He doesn’t flail, but even still his concentration breaks, his body going rigid.

The worst part is that she isn’t Raika’s voice.

The cripple, or mutant, or one in a million lucky cultivator he was placed against didn’t sound like her. She was confident, brash, but smart beneath it, clever and brave and willing to stand up even in the face of death. Whatever she became, whatever his flames turned her into, Raika the unfairly judged, whom he had shown grace to and regretted confronting, didn't sound like her.

She hadn't spoken at all while his flames had... hurt her. Certainly not like the horrific thing that won't leave him alone.

“You’ll hurt my feelings like that.” This time he flinches, his breathing exercise stuttering.

He hears the way that her voice crumbles, at the way that ruined vocal cords and wet, burnt flesh flex beneath every word. He hears the sound of her and she is ruin.

“Flatterer,” she whispers.

He opens his eyes. Much longer and he’ll start to crack again. He needs to keep moving.

His flame may have turned from him, it may now be a strange thing that he cannot freely control, but it still responds to his call. He pulls Qi from his system, wincing at how dangerous it feels to do so, how close to bursting his Dantian feels, and he pushes it into his legs, his lungs, and into his hands as he projects the flame behind him.

He moves like this until he cannot anymore, a jet-stream of flame behind him, until he cannot stand to pull even a drop more Qi out of himself.

Such an act, months ago, would have been enough to exhaust him. He’d have been able to make precise, blue-and-purple intensity flames, and shoot himself across the world on a trail of perfect heat and divine mystery, and collapsed in joyous exhaustion at the end of it.

As it is, he moves perhaps half as far as he might have, and he leaves an unrestrained crimson flood behind him that is miles long.

“A hell of a cry for help,” the voice tells him. “If I saw that, I’d come running right over, yes indeed. Sword in hand, ready to put down whatever mad spirit beasts is pissing flames all about.”

“You’re getting worse,” she whispers, crackling as she speaks.

“I am,” he says.

And is met by silence.

“I am,” he says. “I am getting worse. I’m getting weak.”

“You’ve done well so far,” the voice tells him. “I mean, two at once? If that is what’s happening, anyways. I dare say most young masters of your level might well have found themselves dead already. I mean we’ve been greedy, haven’t we? Drinking deep. So much to taste, and so much of you. Surprised you haven’t popped like a balloon or shriveled up already.”

“And where would you be then?” he snarls. “As dead as I am. As-”

“Ah, I caught that slip. You ain’t dead yet, young master, don’t you worry. The Hells are patient. But for all you know, I’m not even alive. Maybe I’m just your fevered little brain begging you to kill us both before it gets worse. Maybe I am a heart demon, and I’m too stupid to realize what’s happening or what I’m doing, just plucking words out of your grey matter. Maybe none of this matters, because knowing you’re mad, knowing you’ve made of yourself a shell for your sins to live in, doesn’t mean that you can fix it.”

He snarls, but he’s done. Exhausted. His Core still feels full, his dantian still brimming, his meridians still taut and struggling to expand or adapt to the pressure, but his body and mind ache with the damage he did.

“Oh yes,” says the voice. “Yeah, you’re stuck with us now young master. You’re powerless, we’re powerful, so we get to do what we want, isn’t that how it goes? Isn’t that how you used to like it? How many of your fellow cultivators did you bring low in your climb because of exactly that? Less than others, maybe. Pat yourself on the back for your magnanimous occasional sparing. Did you think that you wouldn’t be called to account, that your violence wouldn’t be used against someone you didn’t think was “deserving”? Because you were wise enough to always tell who deserved your wrath, I’m sure.”

“It was a task,” he says, voice cracking as he struggles to breathe. “I knew what it was, but am I to scream and whine at the world for everything I am called to do that I do not like? Is it my place to question those with centuries of experience over every decision in which someone might suffer? Fuck you. Let me rest. If it hadn’t been me, it would’ve been someone else!”

“Maybe someone else would have burned her better,” she crackles and sizzles next to him, so close he can feel her pressing in.

He whirls, stumbling and falling down as he swings at nothing. “Shut up! SHUT UP! She was abnormal! She had some sort of ability! I couldn’t have known she was tough enough to survive the flames! If I’d known I’d have turned her to ash or cut her head cleanly. It wasn’t my fault!”

“But it was your flame. It was you. Your Soul, tuned and refined. Made up in pretty colors just the right temperature to make her scream.”

“That’s not what it was!” he pleads. “That’s not what- it’s not what it’s supposed to be!”

“Fire is fire, princeling,” she whispers, so close he can feel scorched breath against his cheek.

He realizes he has begun to cry.

“No need for tears, young master,” the voice tells him. “We’re all friends here, after all.”

He screams, shaking, trembling, and suddenly full of flame.

The fire erupts, one last time as he feels something break inside him, some dam in his Qi. He can feel the deviations, the trail of blockages and strange fluctuations that his heart demons have left inside him. Living Qi, infected by his madness, his own soul-spawned parasites crawling through him. Mindless insanity, guilt and fear and self-loathing so deep the feelings crawled into his very soul and turned his own cultivation against him, like starving maggots made of the world's lifeblood and his own sin.

The twilight sky turns bloody and bright as he lights up the clouds for miles in every direction.

And then he falls, at last, to sleep.

He does not hear. He does not see. He pushed himself so far that he finally fell apart, and lies there, weak and unconscious and covered in ash and pain.

So it is that he does not hear the sound of footsteps on freshly-made glass as someone approaches.