Smoke still clings to the rooftops when the last wagons thunder through the eastern gate. Wheels shriek against the uneven road, accompanied by sobs and the frightened whinnying of horses. Most of the women and children made it — thank the gods — but the air tastes of ash and farewells.
A small girl, perhaps five years old, clings to her mother's saddle horn. Her voice trembles: "Where is Papa?"
The mother — Wang Lihua, Liyen recognizes her as they ride past — sets her jaw. Her eyes are red-rimmed, but she forces a smile that hurts more than any tear. "Papa is safe." Her voice cracks. She clears her throat, kisses her daughter's black hair. "He'll follow soon. I promise."
Is she lying? Liyen watches how the woman presses the child closer, as if she could protect her from the truth by smothering her.
The refuge is a neighboring village called Little Blossom, three li away — a cluster of thatched huts that suddenly mean everything. Liyen helps her mother down from the horse. Mother Lan's hands tremble as she grips the fence.
"You're safe now, Ma." Liyen speaks quickly, too quickly. She doesn't want to hear anything that might hold her back. "I'm going to find Yaoming."
"Wait." Mother Lan's fingers claw around her wrist. "Didn't you want to give Mara an honorable burial?"
Liyen pauses, though she wants to leave. But she must. Something inside forces her to stand still, even as time presses.
"Iter tuum in lumine finitur," she whispers. The words taste wrong in her mouth, foreign, too late. She had needed a noon sun. Instead she has only this black sky, this smoldering horizon.
Liyen and her mother lay Mara's body upon the raft alongside other villagers, their hands working in grim silence as the dead girl's pale form settles among the kindling like a broken doll. Sets it alight — from which fire, she no longer knows — and pushes the raft into the river that flows from her village to this place. The stench is terrible. Sweet. Wrong.
"Your path ends in light." Her voice breaks. "I'm sorry, Mara. I'm so sorry."
"Your Qi will return to the great path. I promise you that. Qi always flows on, it flows everywhere, Mara. It is the mother of everything."
The ash is carried away by the wind. No light. Only darkness that devours everything.
She wants to mount. She wants to ride. She wants to leave grief behind like a dead star in the sky — visible, but long extinguished.
Liyen wants only to ride. To her Yaoming.
"Wait." Mother Lan's fingers claw around her wrist again. But this time tighter than before. The nails leave white crescents on her skin. "You can't just — who will care for me if you don't return? Who then, Liyen? Who?"
The words strike Liyen like a slap. She stares at her mother, sees the calculation in the reddened eyes — and beneath it, the panic.
"That's unfair, Ma." Liyen's voice turns hard, then breaks. "I know what you're doing. So I won't fall for your guilt-trip. I can't... I can't sit here and wait while he —" She swallows. "While he might be dying."
She kneels, takes her mother's trembling hands in her own. They are small, these hands. Marked by hard labor and yet so gentle when Liyen was a child.
"You yourself said Yaoming is my fate." Liyen laughs, a raw, broken sound. "If that's true — if that's really true — then I cannot run away. Then I would regret it my whole life. Every day. Every night."
Mother Lan closes her eyes. A tear runs down the furrow between nose and mouth. "Very well." The word comes from far away. "But promise me —" She opens her eyes, and something wild, resolute lies within. "Promise me you won't needlessly put yourself in danger. That you'll come back, my little Li. Can you promise me that?"
Liyen opens her mouth. The lie sits ready on her tongue — a simple yes, a nod, an embrace. But then she truly sees her mother. Sees the woman who lost her husband, who lost her sister, who now releases her daughter into the smoke.
"I promise, Ma." She whispers it, and it sounds like a prayer. "I will return."
They embrace. Mother Lan's shoulders shake, but she weeps silently — an ability acquired through all those years of marriage to a soldier. Liyen smells the lavender oil in her hair, the strangely familiar perfume of her childhood. She wants to tear herself away, but cannot. One more second. One more heartbeat.
Then she turns, before she can regret it.
Luobo snorts as Liyen swings into the saddle. She has hung her father's bow over her shoulder — the heavy yew wood he would never have given her, had he known what she needs it for. The quiver with the feathered arrows clatters against her back.
Where? The question hammers in her skull. Where do you search for him, you fool? In the burning village? In the woods?
She bites her lip, closes her eyes. Tries to hear his voice, feel his warmth. Yaoming, where are you?
And then —
A spark. No: a flame, small as a firefly, but blazing white. It materializes from nothing, flickers once, twice — and shoots westward.
Luobo shies, whinnies in panic. Liyen must cling to the mane to avoid being thrown.
"Fate is with you, my little Li."
Mother Lan's voice carries over, thin as cobwebs. She still stands at the fence, hands folded as if in prayer. "They only appear when one is in greatest need. Your grandmother told me of them, when I was young. I never believed..."
Liyen stares at the Qi-flame. It pulses, waits, two dozen paces away. West, she thinks. Back into the village?
"But Yaoming said we should ride east." She speaks to the flame, feels foolish and desperate at once. "West. Not east. Are you sure, little flame?"
The answer comes immediately, decisive: "Chiu chiu!"
A sound that reminds of birdsong and bells and something older than both. The flame dances impatiently, stretches, shrinks — Come on, come on.
Liyen bites her lower lip. West, she thinks. Back into hell.
"Very well." She gathers the reins. "If you lead me into a trap, little flame, I will never forgive you."
Luobo whinnies, as if understanding the jest. Liyen gives him his head, and they gallop.
The Qi-flame is fast. Faster than Liyen expected. It flickers through the trees, crosses a stream without hesitation, shoots up a slope that makes Luobo groan.
And then — nothing.
Liyen yanks the reins. Luobo shies, comes to a halt with neck arched high. "Where are you?" Liyen twists in the saddle, searches the forest, the undergrowth, the sky. "Come back!"
Panic rises in her throat like bile. What if it was only a delusion? What if I lost it? What if —
"Chiu!"
The flame appears directly before Luobo's nostrils. The horse shies again, and this time Liyen must summon all her strength to master him. The flame dances, seems to laugh — if flames can laugh.
"You're doing this on purpose." Liyen's voice trembles with relief and rage. "You want to test if I can keep up?"
"Chiu chiu." Confirmation? Challenge?
Liyen wipes her eyes with her sleeve. They are wet. When did she start crying? "Good." She leans forward, whispers into Luobo's ear. "Let's show her, yes? Let's show this little light-what-we're capable of."
Luobo snorts, stamps his hoof. Ready.
"Then go!"
They gallop. The Qi-flame accelerates, extends its leaps — ten paces, twenty, fifty. It no longer flickers, but draws a luminous trail through the darkness, a comet in the undergrowth.
Liyen presses her knees against the horse's flanks. The wind lashes her face, tears her eyes, blinds her to everything except the red light before her. Branches whip across her arms, leave burning welts. She doesn't feel them.
Don't die, she thinks, and the words curdle into a mantra, a desperate prayer, a heartbeat that screams against the silence. Don't die, don't die, don't die.
She sees him before her, how he smiled when he thought her asleep. How he took her hand when the first smoke rose. How he said: East, Liyen. Promise me.
"I lied," she whispers into the wind. "I'm sorry, Yaoming. I couldn't. I can't."
The tears run hot down her cheeks, cold in the rushing wind. She swallows, swallows again, but the lump in her throat grows. I love you, she thinks, and it's the first time she admits it, truly admits it, not only in half-sleep, not only in the safe darkrooms of her dreams. I love you, and you must not die before I've consciously told you. Before I've shown you.
The Qi-flame accelerates further. Liyen follows, blind, deaf, filled with a single thought.
Wait for me. Please. Wait.
The forest grows denser. The village — her village — must be near. Liyen can smell the smoke, burnt wood, scorched earth, ash, something sweet that she doesn't want to name.
The flame stops abruptly. Hovers, pulses, waits.
Liyen reins in Luobo. Her heart hammers so loud she believes it must frighten the horse. "What is it?" She whispers it, though no one can hear her. "Why do you stop?"
The Qi-flame expands, grows larger, brighter. Whiter. Forms something — a figure, a path, a door?
"Chiu," it whispers, and for the first time it sounds gentle. Almost sad.
Liyen feels icy-cold in her chest. "No," she says. "No, not now. We're almost there. Tell me we're almost there."
The flame doesn't answer. It flickers, dances — and points downward.
Into the earth.
Into the darkness.
Liyen stares at the spot where the ground breaks open, where roots become a gap, an entrance, a maw. She hears something — water? Breath? Voices?
"Yaoming?"
Her voice trembles. No answer.
She reaches for her father's bow. The wood is warm, almost breathing beneath her fingers. The promise to her mother rises unbidden — I will return — and she knows, with the cold certainty of one who has already descended too far, that she will not.
"Then so be it," she whispers, and jumps from the horse.
The Qi-flame circles her once, twice — and dives into the darkness.
Liyen follows. And as she descends, she says: "I'm coming, my beloved."
While darkness envelops her like heavy fog.
The Alchemist—no: the Dark King—strokes his white beard. The Qi-flow control pulses through his veins, alien yet familiar. He does not master it—he merely borrows it.
He lifts his gaze. Something called to him. Not loud. A whisper in the Qi-flow that did not come from him. Lysandra's spirit? Liyen's Qi? Or something older still?
He tilts his head. The movement remains wrong, not yet fully his own body. The old man's hand twitches. He forces it still.
"Who," he says to the darkness, "are you?"
No answer. Just silence. Then: a heartbeat not his own —and behind it, the sense of being watched by something that does not fear him.