The world had become a symphony of screams, and the conductor was the fire.
Mei's hand was a vise around Li's wrist, her nails digging into his skin. It was the only real thing in a universe tilting on its axis. The sharp, painful pressure grounded him, yanking him from the paralyzing horror that had frozen him to the rocky outcrop.
"We have to go. Now!" Mei's voice was a raw, desperate whisper, stripped of its usual melody.
She pulled, and Li stumbled after her, his legs moving on an instinct he didn't know he possessed. They scrambled down the back of the outcrop, away from the view of the square, their movements clumsy with terror. The graceful path they had climbed minutes before was now a treacherous gauntlet. Every snap of a twig beneath their feet was a thunderclap; every rustle in the undergrowth was the sound of a pursuing soldier.
The thrumming they had heard was now a pervasive vibration in the air, a dissonant hum that seemed to emanate from the soldiers themselves, a sound of raw, oppressive power. It was the Dragon Master's Qi, a palpable aura of dominance that made the very air feel thick and heavy, difficult to breathe.
They crashed through a thicket of thorny bushes, the branches tearing at their clothes and skin. Li didn't feel the scratches. All he felt was the fire-hot brand of the image seared into his mind: his home, the house where he had been born, where his mother had sung him to sleep and his father had taught him the language of stone, was now a pyre. A column of black smoke, thick and greasy, rose to meet the clear blue sky.
A sob caught in Li's throat, a painful, choking thing. He wanted to run back. He wanted to find his parents, to grab a farming scythe, to do something. But Mei's grip was unyielding.
"They're gone, Li!" she hissed, her own tears carving clean paths through the dirt on her cheeks. "My father… your parents… they're gone! If we go back, we die too. Then no one will remember. No one will tell the world what happened here!"
Her words, spoken with a terrifying, grim certainty, were a bucket of ice water. They didn't extinguish the fire in his heart, but they banked it, turning his blind panic into a cold, sharp focus. Remember. The word echoed in the hollowed-out space where his life used to be.
They moved lower, using the terrain they knew like the backs of their hands. They slipped into the narrow, hidden crevice behind the waterfall that fed their stream—a secret place from their childhood games. The roar of the water was a blessing, drowning out the sounds of destruction from the village above.
In the damp, dark space, lit only by the shimmering light filtering through the curtain of water, they finally stopped. They collapsed against the cold stone, chests heaving, their breath pluming in the chilly air. The relative silence was a mockery. The waterfall's roar was now the sound of a world screaming.
Mei hugged her knees to her chest, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs. Li stood rigid, his fists clenched so tightly his knuckles were white. He stared at the shimmering veil of water, through which the world outside was a distorted, nightmare painting of orange and black.
"Why?" The word was torn from him, a ragged whisper.
"The legend," Mei choked out, wiping her face with a trembling hand. "The traders… they said he seeks the Dragon's Heart. I thought it was just a story. A treasure. But my father… he once told me our village was old. Older than the empire. That we were… guardians."
Guardians. The word resonated with something his own father had once said, not as a lesson, but as a sleepy murmur by the fire one night. "Our duty, A-Li, is not to possess, but to protect. The mountain sleeps, and we are its watchmen." Li had thought he was talking about protecting their flocks from wolves.
He fumbled in the leather pouch at his belt. His fingers closed around the half-polished jade sphere. He pulled it out. In the dim, refracted light, the cloudy green stone seemed to hold a faint, internal luminescence. It was cool and heavy in his palm, the one solid, familiar thing left in his universe. The last thing his father had entrusted to him.
Was this it? Was this simple piece of rock, his lesson in patience, the reason for all this?
The thought was a new kind of horror, so vast and devastating it made him dizzy. His family, his friends, Old Man Fen and his chickens… all gone for a rock?
A new sound cut through the waterfall's roar—the sharp, guttural bark of orders. The soldiers were spreading out, searching. They weren't just destroying; they were hunting. The dragon-helmed man had sensed them. He knew witnesses had escaped.
"We can't stay here," Mei whispered, her eyes wide with fresh fear. "They'll check the stream. They'll find this place."
Li nodded, his mind suddenly terrifyingly clear. The boy who had worried about polished jade and sweet berries was gone, washed away in the river of fire. In his place was someone else. Someone with a single, burning purpose.
"The High Pass," he said, his voice low and steady. "We go over the High Pass to the Western Valley."
It was a suicidal journey, a path used only by the hardiest hunters in the best of seasons. It was a labyrinth of sheer cliffs, treacherous scree, and unpredictable weather. But it was the only way out that wouldn't lead them straight into the Dragon Master's patrols.
Mei looked at him, seeing the change in his eyes. She gave a single, sharp nod.
As dusk began to bleed the color from the sky, turning the world to shades of grey and deepening the inferno's glow, they moved. They drank deeply from the icy pool, filled their waterskins, and stuffed their pockets with the few edible mosses and lichens they knew from the rocks around the waterfall.
Peering through the sheet of water, Li saw the village was now a field of glowing embers, punctuated by the moving shadows of the soldiers. The thrumming power was still there, a dark heartbeat beneath the crackle of dying flames. He saw the Dragon Master, still mounted, a statue of obsidian and malevolence in the center of the ruin, staring out into the darkening forest. He was waiting.
With a final, searing look that branded the image onto his soul—the ashes of his home, the silhouette of his enemy—Li turned away.
"I will remember," he whispered, not to Mei, but to the ghosts on the wind. "And I will return."
He tucked the jade sphere back into his pouch. It was no longer a lesson. It was a weapon. It was a promise.
Together, two shadows against the dying light, Li and Mei slipped into the deep, unforgiving embrace of the forest, beginning their climb toward the cold, distant stars, leaving the echoes of their old lives burning in the valley below.