By the time Li Yao reached the edge of Green Pine Village, the moon had cleared the ridgeline and floated high above the distant peaks, a pale, indifferent eye that offered no warmth to the boy dragging death behind him.
The makeshift sled bumped and groaned behind him, laden with the lynx's body—its weight far more than its flesh alone could explain. Coils of rope cut into Li Yao's hands, wet with old blood and new blisters, and though his shoulders burned with every step, he refused to let the pain slow him. It was not pride that drove him forward, nor fear of the thing he'd slain, but something heavier, something that clung to his back like the beast itself: the knowledge that the world beyond the trees had shifted, and that he, for better or worse, had stepped into the current of that change.
He had killed a spirit beast.
He had not meant to. He had gone to train, to sweat and bleed quietly beneath the boughs, to strengthen his bones and still his breath until the qi within him learned to listen. But the lynx had found him, and he had fought, and now he dragged its broken body through the village gates while the stars watched with the kind of cold curiosity that reminded him just how small his name still was in the eyes of Heaven.
At the old watch post, two hunters lounged near a guttering oil lantern, passing a clay cup of millet wine back and forth between idle rolls of the dice. One of them—Jun, the older of the two, lean and dark-eyed—glanced up first, his brows drawing together as he squinted into the gloom.
"Yao?" he called, disbelief tugging at his voice like an unexpected gust of wind. "That you?"
The other man turned and blinked, then stepped forward slowly, as though some part of him expected the vision to vanish upon closer inspection.
"What in the name of Blackmother's womb..."
The sled scraped forward into the lantern's circle of light, and the hunters recoiled—not in fear, but in something closer to confusion.
The creature's fur caught the firelight in streaks of red and black. Blood crusted its flanks, its throat torn where the rope had bitten deep. One glassy eye stared skyward, its pupil blown wide and ringed with a faint silver sheen—evidence of its spirit-touched nature. Its fangs, though dulled with death, still looked capable of tearing flesh from bone.
Jun crouched beside the sled and touched one claw with the tip of his blade. It did not bend.
"Shadowmaw Lynx," he muttered, almost reverently. "I've seen one once. Deep in the north ridge pass. Fast. Vicious. Thought they didn't hunt this far south."
"They don't," Li Yao said, the words rough from disuse. "Not normally."
"You set a trap?"
"No."
"You weren't alone, were you?"
"I was."
Jun looked up sharply. "You expect me to believe that?"
"I don't expect anything."
There was a silence—not hostile, not yet—but heavy with the friction of two worlds meeting. The boy who swept shrines and fetched firewood. The hunter who knew the old trails and had seen friends gutted by creatures half this size.
The second man, a shorter fellow with a wide scar across his cheek, cleared his throat. "Spirit beast core?"
Li Yao hesitated, too long by half.
"No," he said finally, voice quieter. "Shattered in the fight."
Neither man pressed him. Perhaps they didn't believe him, or perhaps they simply understood that the rules of possession blurred when survival was involved. In either case, they stepped back and let him pass, though Jun offered a parting word without mockery.
"Take the claws to Auntie Mu. She knows how to cure 'em. Hide's half ruined, but maybe she can salvage something. Blood and marrow might be worth more than the meat."
"I will," Li Yao said, and after a moment's pause, Jun added, "You did well."
It wasn't praise so much as recognition, but it struck deeper than it should have. He gave a shallow nod and walked on, the sled dragging lines behind him in the dirt like scars.
The village, such as it was, lay quiet. Most of the oil lamps had burned low, their flickering light casting long shadows across shuttered windows and crooked thresholds. A few dogs barked in the distance but quieted quickly, sensing something in the scent Li Yao brought with him. Children who might once have mocked him now watched from behind curtains, their small faces pale and round in the lantern-glow.
He passed the cracked stone well where the old storytellers used to whisper tales of demon kings and river ghosts. He passed the shrines carved into the cliffside, each housing incense older than his bones. He passed the low walls that once felt like the edge of his world.
And no one stopped him.
Not in mockery. Not in pity.
Not even in welcome.
He reached the shed behind his hut and opened it slowly, the old hinges groaning in complaint. Inside, he unfastened the sled with deliberate hands, lifting the lynx's body onto the workbench he'd used to butcher pigs and dry root vegetables. It was too narrow, too crude, but it would have to do.
From a pouch at his waist, he unwrapped the spirit beast core.
The light inside it moved.
Not flickered. Moved.
Violet and pale gold, spiraling like smoke in water, the qi within the core pulsed with a rhythm that felt both familiar and wrong. Not a heartbeat. Not quite. But something living, something waiting. He didn't know how to use it. The scroll had offered no instructions—only vague phrases about resonance, refining anchors, and spiritual attunement. Words written by a man who had either known too much or not enough.
Li Yao stared at the core until his eyes watered. A dozen plans warred in his mind. He could trade it. Hoard it. Try to use it himself during the next phase of body refining—if he made it that far. Or perhaps, if the right alchemist passed through the province, he could learn to distill it into something usable. But alchemists didn't come to places like Green Pine. Not unless something terrible had happened.
He set the core aside and began to clean the beast's body, stripping the hide with shaking hands, collecting sinew and bone and blood in separate jars. He would smoke what he could, dry the marrow, and offer the claws to Auntie Mu. The fangs, he kept.
Not out of pride.
But because they might matter later.
And when the work was done and the core was sealed beneath a loose floorboard in his hut, wrapped in wool and silence, he lay down on his mat with a body too tired to ache.
The wind had changed again.
It no longer wandered the pines like a restless spirit, but moved with purpose, brushing through the trees in slow, deliberate gusts that carried the scent of wet soil and something older—something he had no name for.
Lying there in the dim dark, he could feel it in his blood now: the weight of the forest pressing inward, the trembling tension in the air that even the village dogs had begun to notice, the wrongness beneath the quiet.
Something was coming.
Something vast.
And if he stayed as he was, it would crush him like an ant beneath a falling boot.
He didn't know how long he had. Days. Weeks. Maybe less.
But that didn't matter.
He would rise before it reached him. He would prepare. He would train.
Because whatever moved beyond the trees, it would not find him sleeping.
It would find him ready.