The storm had passed, but the world was still trembling.
Ezra walked through a valley of broken stone, where frost clung to blackened roots and the wind carried voices that weren't quite echoes. His breath left pale trails behind him, vanishing into the violet mist. The serpent's blood still stained his sleeve—a reminder that this place had rules, and that ignorance here was death.
He moved carefully, every step deliberate. The ground was uneven, brittle in places. Beneath the frost, veins of faint gold light pulsed like blood. The air was alive, humming, restless.
He crouched beside a shallow pool that reflected the strange sky. His reflection looked back at him—tired, wary, but sharper somehow. The Mark of the Ascendant Path still glowed faintly at his chest, its light pulsing with his heartbeat.
He didn't understand what it was.
He only knew one thing: since it appeared, he could feel things. Not just see or hear them—feel them.
The air's vibration.
The slow pulse of energy beneath the ground.
The faint rhythm of something ancient, distant, and watching.
"Qi flow," he murmured, remembering the words from countless novels. "This must be… the flow of Qi."
He reached out a hand toward the pool, and the surface rippled even though his fingers hadn't touched it. A faint pressure pushed back—gentle but undeniable, like a tide rejecting a stranger.
Ezra's lips thinned. "So even the world itself knows I don't belong."
He stood, brushing frost from his jeans. He missed his world—the noise, the clutter, even the flicker of his laptop's blue light—but that was gone. Here, hesitation meant extinction.
The sound of something moving made him turn.
A figure stumbled out from behind a cluster of dead trees—cloaked, limping, blood on the snow. Ezra froze, instinctively lowering into a guarded stance. The figure saw him and tried to speak, but only managed a hoarse whisper.
Then came the others.
Three of them, moving fast—faces hidden beneath cracked wooden masks painted in ash and blood. Each carried a curved blade shaped like a crescent moon. Their Qi radiated faintly, dull gray—cold, disciplined, lethal.
Ezra didn't need an explanation.
They were hunters, and the wounded man was prey.
He stepped back, thinking.
He could run. Hide. Stay alive.
But then the lead hunter raised his blade and cut the wounded man down before he could beg for mercy. The strike was clean, almost surgical. The man collapsed, his blood turning black against the frost.
Ezra's stomach twisted—not from fear, but fury.
The hunter turned toward him, mask tilting slightly.
"You shouldn't be here, outsider," the man said, his voice calm and cruel. "This is the Concord's land. Trespassers die in silence."
Ezra didn't answer. His mind was already calculating distance, movement, angle of terrain. The three were spread apart—too confident, assuming he was just another wanderer.
The Mark on his chest burned suddenly—hot, insistent. The air around him shifted.
The hunter took a step forward. "Answer, or bleed."
Ezra's lips curved faintly. "Bleeding's not my habit."
The man lunged. The strike came fast, but Ezra's world slowed—each movement suspended, each line of force visible in the air as faint threads of light. His body moved almost on instinct, guided by a logic his mind didn't yet understand.
He sidestepped, grabbed the hunter's wrist, twisted, and drove his knee upward. The sound of bone snapping echoed sharp against the valley walls. The man's scream cut short as Ezra used his own blade against him—a clean, deliberate slash across the throat.
Blood hit the frost like ink.
Ezra froze, breathing hard.
The other two hesitated just long enough for him to realize something terrifying:
He had no formal training. No Qi control. But his body… had adapted.
The Mark pulsed again, stronger this time. The threads of light around him thickened, guiding his next move.
They attacked together—one high, one low. Ezra dropped to a crouch, swept a leg out, and let momentum carry him into the other's chest. The clash was messy, desperate, but efficient. He wasn't graceful—he was ruthless.
When it was done, all three lay motionless in the frost.
Ezra stood amid the bodies, heart pounding, lungs burning with cold air. He wanted to feel guilt. Maybe even fear. But instead… there was only silence. And something beneath it.
A faint whisper, curling up from the blood-soaked ground.
Three hearts. Three fragments. Claim them.
He hesitated. Then knelt.
When his fingers brushed the dead hunters' chests, faint motes of crimson light rose from their bodies and sank into his own. Pain bloomed in his spine—hot, electric, alive.
Ezra gasped. The world around him sharpened.
He could see farther, hear more clearly. The Mark glowed brighter than before.
It wasn't mercy that would keep him alive here.
It was evolution.
He stared toward the faint glow of a city far in the distance—a spire piercing the fog like a spear.
"I need to reach them," he whispered. "The sects, the clans, whatever they are… I need to understand this world before it consumes me."
He began walking, the corpses cooling behind him. The wind howled low, like laughter.
Above him, the bruised sky cracked with gold lightning—brief, radiant, and cruel.