Ruyi woke to a slow boiling of pain, under the skin, searing her inside-out. She jerked awake, gasping. She couldn’t move her arms but she could feel bands of hot steel searing her wrists, locking her ankles in place. It felt like she was caught between two giants’ hands and they were bent on ripping her apart, slowly, slowly—

—they had torn a hole in her, in her belly, and she was leaking out, and something else flowed in, and it felt like a burning snake slithering through her gut, up her chest, up her throat—

It hurt so bad it was hard to know anything else. The world was a distant place, foreign to her; she was stuck in a vast desert where the pain lashed her like the rays of a pitiless sun.

She blacked out.

She woke. She was vaguely aware she was laid out on an altar, in her nightclothes, and there was darkness pricked with candlelight, and there was chanting. You couldn’t hear it very well. Someone was screaming, and not from a normal pain. It sounded like they were being mauled to death. Ruyi felt horrible for them—she wished she could help. Then she realized, with a dull shock, it was herself. It felt like it came from very far away.

There was a girl on an altar, thrashing. And there was her, in this distant place, watching. Through a haze of tears she saw her right arm. All the veins stuck out purple, stark against red skin, the hand clawing at nothing. Then there was her left arm, her Demon Limb—it seemed bigger than before. Why was that? The hand seemed bigger, the claws shorter, and were there pads on her palm?

The pain kept boiling hotter, hotter—

A crack ran through her mind.

Then another, a fault line, and pain leaked through. She cried out, horrified. It was too much; another crack; another shock of pain spiderwebbed across her, and she knew the real world had found her hiding-place.

She fell. She snapped into her body, and there she was struck by the worst pain she had ever felt. It was so bad it didn’t even feel like pain anymore; it it was her, all of her, all there was; it swallowed her world. Her bones fought to break free of her arms, her skull bulged, stretching against her skin, and she screamed, and she cried, and it didn’t help at all.

“She’s awake!”

Something was changing in her face. In her neck. In her arms. She was one bright star of pain. She thrashed and that hateful biting steel on her wrist snapped loose.

“HOLD HER!” a man’s voice, hoarse and deep. “HOLD—”

Rough hands, pinning down her arm; she snarled, fangs bared, and it came out as a deep-throated roar. She tried sitting up—

Her head was ringing, plastered sideways against cold metal.

Where was she? What—

She’d been struck, struck in the head. Something had—

The second blow knocked her out.

***

She lay in pain, a gray haze of pain that ran out to the horizons of her being. It was all there was, all there ever was. She couldn’t think. She woke, and the giants’ hands got ahold of her, seized the corners of her mind and pulled, pulled, pulled until a hot seam of pain split her down the middle, and she cried out, and it all went black. Pain toyed with her; it wouldn’t finish her off. It roused her, then broke her, then roused her again. She lapsed in and out of being. It just wouldn’t stop.

***

A face through the haze. A woman’s face, very beautiful. White hair, dark skin, white eyes. A smiling face. Was it here to save her?

“Why, hello,” said the woman. “My name is Nyx. What is your name?”

Ruyi opened her mouth but nothing came out.

“Ah. Yes. You seem rather indisposed.” The woman pursed her lips. “It hurts, doesn’t it?”

Ruyi nodded, sniffling. “Aww. Poor dear… do you know why it’s hurting so bad?”

Ruyi shook her head.

“It’s because of you.” The woman shook her head. “You’re fighting me oh-so-hard. You want the pain to end, don’t you?”

Ruyi nodded.

“Then you are going to have to let go, little one. Let go.”

But Ruyi didn’t want to. She didn’t know why; she couldn’t think; she just didn’t want to. It didn’t feel right.

“Don’t be difficult. If you let go, the pain will stop.”

But she didn’t.

“Go on, let go.” The warmth was leaving the woman’s face, and only then did Ruyi realize this woman was her enemy.

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She was here, in Ruyi’s mind. She wanted Ruyi’s body.

But she couldn’t have it.

“Let go,” said the woman, harder now, and she felt a sharp tug, a lance of pain. She bared her teeth. This time when she opened her mouth, a word came out.

“No,” she rasped.

“Let go!”

The pain was blinding now. But still she clung on.

“No!”

She woke screaming.

***

While Cassius marshaled his demons for the coming invasion, he stuck Gaia in the dungeons, since he was a loathsome cunt, and he could smell anguish the way some hounds could smell fear.

He knew there was nothing for Gaia to do but stand there and watch. Watch as the girl writhed, chained to the altar, as the pentacle which spanned the room pulsed with the qi of hundreds of peak-grade Spirit Stones.

It was ludicrously expensive to perform just one summoning. But for Marcus it was well worth it.

Soon a Calamity would be drawn from the Other Side, a being so powerful it could only exist in the mortal realm in spurts, a being which would burn through Ruyi Yang’s body in the span of hours. And with it, half the Upper City.

Necessary destruction, Marcus had named it.

Tears were leaking down Ruyi’s face. Her face was fanged, half blackened, as Nyx, Mistress of Endless Winter, forced her way into Ruyi’s body.

It should’ve taken mere minutes. Cassius had watched, tittering with excitement, as Ruyi bucked and thrashed and screamed. But the lodestone chains, newly fastened, held strong.

It would not do to step out. Gaia wouldn’t hand Cassius that knife. So she stood there and took it. She had led the girl to this fate; the least she could do was witness what she’d done.

Five minutes passed, then ten. Even his perfectly manicured smile had begun to wither. “She’s a fighter,” Cassius had mused. He was still amused then. Half an hour later even he couldn’t pretend anymore.

He stalked around the floor, pacing like a caged predator. “Is something the matter with the array?”

The artificers assured him the array was drawn perfectly.

“What of the chants? The spell?” But those were flawless too.

“Then what the Hell is taking so long?”

“Her,” said Gaia. Cassius rounded on her. “And what, pray tell, is that supposed to mean?”

Gaia shrugged. “I’ve studied her and her brother. They are of the same make. It is said the Hero is endowed with an indomitable will, a will which defies the Heavens. Well…”

Ruyi thrashed. She screamed. But she would not break, she refused to break, and Gaia felt a perverse pride.

“We’ll see about that. How far along is she?” snapped Cassius. One of his pet Artificers checked a tubelike instrument.

“…Mid Feral.”

“Mid—! She’s got Late Feral, all of Core, all of King, and whatever yet lies beyond! At this rate it’ll take, what, three hours?”

“Our best estimates indicate four-and-a-half,” whispered the Artificer. He cringed, as though expecting a slap.

“Heavens.” Cassius’s eyes slid over Gaia’s face, and she froze. She was quite certain she’d made no expression, but Cassius must’ve caught something, a tremor, a hint, and he was on her like a hound.

“And what are you so happy about? She will break. She is breaking, even now, just annoyingly slowly. This only means your precious little protege will suffer longer.”

“She is nothing to me.”

“Oh, she means very little, I’ll grant you that. You’ve chosen to do this to her, after all—” His words were punctuated by a particularly strangled cry. “But you are not as stone-hearted as you like to pretend, dearest Gaia. You care. It’s only natural. You’ve raised her nine years.”

“What is your point?” said Gaia quietly.

“My point is that we ought to appreciate this for what it is.” He gestured to the creature that used to be Ruyi, bloodied beyond recognition, spasming uncontrollably. “What does it mean to possess a sturdy will? It means you can take far more before you crack. And your dear Ruyi has, it seems, a will uncommon among uncommon wills! So this little thing is about to be subjected to something truly special. If most mens’ minds shatter after just minutes… and she’ll last hours… I wonder what it does to a person? Mortal minds are not meant to bear this kind of stress, oh, no. They are not meant to take a tenth of it. I expect she’ll bend in intriguing ways before she breaks.”

Gaia was careful not to let her feeling show, but Cassius, hound that he was, must’ve picked it off her face, since he laughed and clapped her over the back. He might as well have driven a knife into her back. A knife she’d handed him. “Stand guard for me, will you? I must prepare for the coming dawn. Don’t worry, I’ll be back to catch the finale.”

***

Gaia was grateful when the girl burned out her throat. It took an hour. She could turn away from the sight but the sound kept haunting her, echoing about the dungeon walls.

After an hour and a half, Ruyi stopped moving. She lay there in a puddle of her own blood, facedown, breathing so shallowly one of the Artificers had to check if she was dead. Her eyes were still open when the man timidly rolled her over; it’d given him such a fright he’d nearly stumbled into one of the Ritualists.

Half her body was beastly, and her lower jaw was already that of a lioness, but Ruyi’s eyes were what scared Gaia most. They were half-lidded. She stared like a corpse. Gaia had believed she’d died at first—she’d known the girl nearly a decade, and she’d always been the most energetic little thing. She was spunk incarnate. She’d sparkled with life. She fought, she snarled, she screamed, no matter what she came up against. What was this thing lying there flat, staring dully? There was no light in those eyes. Pain had hollowed her out. She scarcely seemed human.

Gaia hadn’t truly believed Cassius until then. She’d held out some foolish hope the girl would outlast him. That they’d have to swap her out for someone else—that maybe she could be saved.

Only now did Gaia realize they really were breaking her.

Two hours in, and Ruyi began to cry. Not tears of water but blood. Gaia had hoped that the hurting part of the girl had broken. That it had burnt out. That she would spend these last two hours in a kind of numb coma.

They locked eyes, and Gaia saw that, too, was a vain hope.

Ruyi was still lucid. She could still feel. Gaia could tell, since she could see the hurt in the girl’s dulled eyes. There was the pain, yes, but there was something else, too, a special kind of hurt whenever she saw Gaia—whenever she saw her Gao. Her eyes would water with fresh tears.

Gaia had learned, over the years, that there was very little Ruyi Yang could not do if she set her mind to it. Gaia’s remembered her first shock when she’d come across the little thing, hardly seven, sprawled on the ground with her shock puzzles in hand; when she’d picked herself off the ground, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, and showed Gaia six formulae for healing elixirs that would’ve stumped most new Alchemists. It should’ve been impossible.

Gaia still held onto some absurd faith in the girl. Heavens knew why, but she was rooting for her. Just one more miracle. Pick yourself up as you did then. Come on! Rise, girl! Be the Hero I know you are.

But Ruyi did not stir. This was no Hero. Limp on the altar were the shattered pieces of what had once been a girl named Ruyi Yang. A scared, hurt little girl whose mentor had failed her for the very last time. There was no putting her back together again. That was plain enough to see.

Gaia was too old for childish hopes.

“Excuse me,” said Gaia, standing, curling her hands into fists to stop her fingers from shaking. She walked out.