The smoke hit first.
Mo Lianyin jolted awake to the acrid stench of burning wood and... something else. Something that made her stomach turn. Flesh. The dormitory, no, the entire east wing of Whitecrane Orphanage was on fire.
"Meilin!" She shook the small form in the bed next to hers. Nothing. Her hand came away wet and sticky in the orange glow filtering through the smoke. Not sweat. Blood.
No, no, no—
The jade pendant at her throat pulsed hot against her skin. A family heirloom, Matron Wu had said. The only thing her parents left behind before dumping her here seventeen years ago. Now it burned like a coal from the spreading flames.
Lianyin stumbled from bed, bare feet hitting wooden floors already warm to the touch. The smoke was thicker here, crawling down her throat with every breath. Around her, the other beds lay still. Too still. She reached for another child—little Feng, only seven—and jerked back at the cold touch of his skin.
They were all dead. Every last one of them except—
"Such a pity."
The voice came from the doorway. Lianyin squinted through the smoke to see a figure in white robes untouched by ash or flame. Senior Sister Qin stood there like a painting, her beautiful face serene as the building burned around them.
"Yaoyao?" Lianyin's voice cracked. They'd grown up together, braided each other's hair, shared stolen sweet buns from the kitchen. "What are you, help me get them out!"
"Oh, Lianyin." Yaoyao's smile was soft, almost sad. "They're already gone. The poison in their evening tea saw to that. You would be too, if you hadn't skipped dinner again to practice your calligraphy."
The words didn't make sense. Couldn't make sense. Lianyin's legs trembled, and not from the heat pressing in from all sides. "You... you killed them?"
"The Celestial Dawn Sect killed them." Yaoyao stepped into the room, her sword singing as she drew it from its sheath. The blade gleamed with holy light, inscriptions dancing along its length. "Well, technically I killed them, but I'm acting under orders. There's a difference."
"Why?" The word tore from Lianyin's throat.
"Because of you, dear sister." Yaoyao's eyes, when had they become so cold?, fixed on the jade pendant. "That pretty trinket you wear? It's a seal. A prison. And the masters say it's weakening."
The pendant pulsed again, harder this time. Cracks spider-webbed across its surface, and Lianyin gasped as something shifted inside her chest. Like ice water flooding her veins, if ice water could whisper.
Finally.
"There we go." Yaoyao raised her sword. "The demon stirs. Better to kill you now, before..."
The jade shattered.
Lianyin screamed as fragments of green stone burst outward, each shard trailing shadow like ink in water. The darkness didn't disperse, it rushed back, slamming into her chest with the force of a thunderbolt. Her knees hit the floor hard, but she barely felt it over the sensation of something vast and ancient pouring into her soul.
Hello, little vessel.
The voice wasn't in her ears. It was in her bones, in her blood, in the spaces between her thoughts. Male, amused, and old. So very old.
"No!" Yaoyao's blade descended in a perfect arc, holy light blazing.
Lianyin's hand moved without her permission. Shadows erupted from her palm, catching the sword mid-strike. The blessed steel screamed as darkness crawled up its length like hungry vines. Yaoyao jerked back, but not before the corruption reached her hand. She cried out, dropping the weapon as her fingers blackened.
"Demon." Yaoyao clutched her injured hand to her chest, real fear flickering across her face for the first time. "You're already..."
"I'm not a demon." Lianyin struggled to her feet, fighting the foreign presence spreading through her mind like spilled wine. "Yaoyao, please, I'm still me. I'm still..."
"You're an abomination." Yaoyao pulled a signal flare from her robes with her good hand. "But don't worry. The sect will make your death quick. Quicker than you deserve."
The flare shot through the burning roof, exploding in a shower of golden sparks. A summoning. In minutes, every cultivator within fifty li would descend upon them.
Run, the voice urged. Or let me take control and paint these walls with her blood. Your choice, little lotus.
Lianyin looked at Yaoyao—her sister, her best friend, her would-be executioner—and made her choice. She ran.
Behind her, the orphanage collapsed in a roar of flames and screaming timber. Everything she'd ever known, everyone she'd ever loved, reduced to ash and memory. The jade pendant was gone, but its burden remained, coiled around her heart like a serpent.
She was Mo Lianyin, orphan of Whitecrane.
She was Mo Lianyin, vessel of the Demon King.
She was Mo Lianyin, and she was going to survive this.
Even if it damned her.