Somewhere between the crumbled stalls and broken stone, the silence was cut by a howl.

  It echoed—raw and jagged—through the hollowed marketplace, bouncing off broken walls and splintered wood. No noble cry, no hunger-song. Just a rip of noise that carried too much tension and not enough breath.

  They appeared seconds later. Four of them.

  Hyenas, mottled yellow and lean with starvation—or something worse. Their legs moved wrong, too elastic, like they weren’t built for flesh. Ribs too tight against skin. Their eyes gleamed with an unnatural brightness, like embers smothered just long enough to flare again. One sniffed the air and jerked its head toward them, snarling. Another’s claws skated against stone as it crouched low, ready to spring.

  Lei stepped forward and narrowed his eyes to watch around.

  There was something faint around them—trails in the dust, distortions in the air. Nothing he could name, but something familiar. Wind that curled without breeze. Footsteps that didn’t echo right. And there, in the shape of their motion—too fast, too light—he saw it.

  Wind Qi.

  Not in the way an instructor would teach it, not like Miri did in clean forms with laughing grace, but he remembered the feel of her Qi dancing through a training field. This wasn’t the same, not even close. But it carried the same sharpness. The same... absence of weight.

  “Wind aligned,” he said quietly, mostly to himself. “Low core.”

  “How low?” Xo asked, shifting his stance.

  "Rank one probably."

  The lead hyena’s ears snapped forward—and it lunged.

  There was no command. Four figures moved in practiced response.

  Xo stepped into the space between danger and squad, guandao rising with his body’s pivot. Liu mirrored him, grounded and ready, fire waiting behind his teeth. Nozomi vanished left, low and fast, her movement slipping through broken shadows. Lei fell back, bow rising with smooth intent, eyes already tracking targets.

  Three of the beasts came at once—angled claws and slavering teeth rushing Xo and Liu with reckless speed.

  The fourth peeled wide, fixating on Nozomi.

  The squad didn’t flinch, habits dutifully gained. They met the chaos with purpose.

  Liu stepped forward as the first hyena lunged. He didn’t brace. Instead, he inhaled, deep and slow, like pulling heat from the center of the world.

  Then he whispered, “Let fire be my armor when steel is not enough.”

  The air around him shimmered.The Qi came fast—hot, eager, the way it always did when it finally had purpose. It surged through his chest, coiled in his stomach, and when he let it rise, it didn’t flare out like fire. A ring of heat snapped outward from his core, and then—like smoke caught in glass—the flame wrapped and coiled around him.

  Armor made of fire, but not flickering, almost like water. It hugged the contours of his shoulders, wrapped down his arms like plated gauntlets, curled around his ribs and down his back in ghost-bright echoes of a breastplate. The flames shimmered in reds and golds, but held their shape like memory given weight. Transparent, but there. Real.

  Emberguard.

  “Hey, ugly,” Liu muttered, stepping slightly ahead of Xo. “Try me first.”

  Taunt.

  Qi burst from his core in a ripple—quick, hot, and direct. The taunt flared like a signal, tugging the attention of all three hyenas bearing down.

  They came without hesitation.

  The first collided with his shoulder, claws scrabbling against his flame-hardened chestplate. The second dove for his side, jaws wide, teeth sinking against the muscle of his forearm.

  The heat snapped back in response.

  A flash of scorched fur. A sharp yelp.

  Liu caught the first hyena by the neck with both hands and hauled it upward, lifting it like a misbehaving pup. It twisted and kicked, but his grip held steady.

  “Bad dog,” he grunted, shaking it once. “Didn’t your mother teach you not to bite?”

  “Liu!” Nozomi’s voice cut from across the square, sharp as her blade. “We’re not keeping one!”

  “I was just—!”

  “Focus!”

  He sighed and dropped the hyena, letting it land hard on its paws. “Fine. No fun.”

  Across the plaza, Nozomi was already moving. She’d cut a wide arc around the square, her steps light, deliberate, each one silent on the broken stone. The fourth hyena had separated from the others, pacing on its haunches, waiting for a mistake. It didn’t get one.

  Nozomi surged forward, one hand flicking to the side—blade drawn, low and poised.

  She whispered something he didn’t catch.

  The edge of her sword blurred, a soft dark shimmer crawling along the length of the steel like shadow turned liquid. Her body didn’t change. Her stance didn’t shift.

  But the hyena flinched.

  And when she struck, the air itself seemed to fold.

  The blade met bone. Then passed through it.

  The hyena staggered, its front legs folding beneath it as a thick line of black carved across its side, bleeding not just blood, but something quieter. Like pain that hadn’t yet reached the nerves.

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  It didn’t howl. It just collapsed.

  Nozomi turned slightly, eyes already tracking the next threat. “Liu, I said focus.”

  “I am focused,” he called back. “Just also charismatic.”

  The third hyena hadn’t paused.

  It darted around Liu’s flame-wreathed form and drove straight at Xo, jaws snapping.

  But Xo was waiting.

  His guandao came up in a clean arc, the shaft sweeping to redirect the bite. The blade caught the hyena’s flank—not deep, but enough to turn it. The beast hissed and whirled, claws raking for a second strike.

  Xo lowered into stance. Feet grounded. Core steady.

  Above them, Lei vaulted onto the remains of a crumbling stall, then leapt lightly to the tiled roof beyond. His eyes never left the fight. His bow was already half drawn.

  Xo dropped low, one foot sliding wide across the fractured stone. His free hand shot out, catching Liu across the chest with just enough force to shove him aside.

  “Move.”

  Liu didn’t argue. He stepped back, pivoting in a tight half-turn as Xo stepped into the empty space.

  The guandao came around in a wide arc—not to strike, but to clear. The hyenas flinched back, snarling, claws scraping against rubble as they rebalanced.

  Xo’s boots found solid footing.

  He exhaled once—low and steady—and let the Qi drop.

  It didn’t rise like fire. It sank, heavy and deliberate, spiraling down his legs, deeper into the ground, drawing tension with it. A heartbeat passed, and the air thickened around him.

  Then he slammed his foot into the earth.

  Seismic slam.

  The sound was like iron meeting mountain.

  A shockwave pulsed outward from the point of impact. The dirt buckled. Cracks spidered in every direction. Broken tiles heaved upward. Stone split, rising and falling in jagged bursts. Stalls shuddered and collapsed in their frames. Dust billowed into the air in a sudden upward column. But the worst of the shockwave was even the first thre meters.

  The hyenas didn’t even cry out.

  The first two took the force at close range. Bones cracked audibly—legs folding under bodies, ribs caving from the concussive blast. One was hurled sideways, crashing through the remains of a cart. The second just dropped where it stood, legs twitching once before going still.

  The third—

  It leapt. Not away. Through.

  Straight at Liu.

  Liu saw the flicker in its eyes this time—purple, too vivid to be natural, too focused to be instinct.

  But the beast was too close now.

  Liu stepped into it.

  He caught the hyena mid-lunge, one forearm braced under its jaw, the other wrapping behind the neck. His stance shifted— grounded. When the beast thrashed, he let it.

  Then he twisted.

  A sharp crack split the air.

  The hyena dropped limp in his grip, heavy and silent.

  Breathing hard, Liu let it fall.

  Behind him, the rubble shifted.

  A fifth shape burst from the shadows near the old fruit stalls—fangs gleaming, already mid-air.

  Before anyone could shout, a bowstring thrummed.

  Lei’s arrow caught the beast clean through the eye.

  It dropped like a sack of grain, skidding across the broken ground until it stopped in a heap of dust and blood.

  Liu looked down at the corpse at his feet, then up at Lei. “Thanks.”

  Lei didn’t answer. He was already scanning the rooftops for more.

  Xo turned his head toward the two dead hyenas still smoldering in the wake of his strike. The ground around them was still warm, faint lines of glowing Qi fading into the cracked stone.

  Nozomi arrived a heartbeat later, blade lowered now, her breath tight but even.

  “That all of them?” she asked.

  No one answered right away.

  Only the sound of distant wind passed through the broken stalls and ruined stone.

  Then Lei spoke, quietly.

  “For now.”

  The squad held position—eyes sharp, breath slowing. The tension hadn’t lifted, not fully.

  For a moment, the marketplace was quiet again.

  Only the wind moved, dragging dust through the blood-streaked square, past broken stalls and cracked tiles. The scent of charred fur hung thick in the air, curling with the lingering smoke from Liu’s armor.

  Nozomi wiped her blade clean against a splintered canvas flap. She sheathed it with a quiet, practiced motion. “That wasn’t natural.”

  Xo crouched near one of the bodies, frowning. He pushed it over with the butt of his guandao. The corpse flopped heavily, one limb bent at a wrong angle, jaws slack.

  “Look at this,” he said.

  Liu stepped closer, rubbing at the burn marks across his bracers where the beast had tried to bite through the fire. “It’s got black in the veins.”

  Thick, branching lines ran beneath the hyena’s skin—dark, like oil laced with violet, tracing out from its chest and crawling along its limbs. The lines pulsed faintly, like something still alive inside.

  Nozomi crouched, eyes narrowing. “It’s not blood. Not rot either.”

  Lei joined them, bow still in hand. “It’s Qi.” His voice was low, thoughtful. “Subtle, but it’s there. I felt the flicker during the fight. Same signature as Wind at first, but tangled with something else. Something wrong. Maybe that's why they didn't flee. Scavengers are usually cowards, fighting to death is unlike them.”

  Liu squinted at the lines. “It’s like tainted fire. Like heat that doesn’t burn. It feels… angry. Confused.”

  No one answered right away.

  Nozomi rose. “Wu Lang.”

  Xo looked up at her.

  She explained, “He was the local cultivator. If I recall, the journal in the storehouse mentioned that he has a fire affinity.”

  Liu straightened, still frowning. “A fire cultivator doesn’t turn against the people they protect. Not like this. Not unless something broke him.”

  Xo’s mouth twitched.

  “Or unless he was already broken,” he said. “You don't always see it before they fall. Doesn't mean they weren’t already burning from the inside.”

  The air felt heavier again. Not from heat—but from implication.

  Lei nodded once, curt. “Then we keep moving. Find out what happened to Wu Lang. And find out who—or what—is poisoning beasts in his name. Check for hints and marks that would lead toward survivors.”

  The squad glanced once more at the bodies. Still. Twisted. Wrong. Then they turned toward the deeper parts of the village, leaving the blood to cool behind them.

  They passed the last row of crumbling homes where the jungle pressed close against the edge of the village, vines curling like fingers around broken stone. The path turned to churned mud, dotted with fallen branches and old drag marks. Each step into the treeline felt like walking into something that didn’t want them there.

  Black smoke still rose from deeper inland, thick and steady. It didn’t sway with the breeze. It climbed.

  “Here,” Lei called, crouching low.

  The others gathered around him.

  The prints in the mud were fresh enough to hold shape—bare feet, sandal treads, some smeared beyond recognition. Few days old. One set had a limp, the left foot dragging slightly deeper. Another set showed someone crawling. Or being pulled.

  Nozomi leaned in. “They didn’t move together.”

  “They scattered,” Xo said. “Or were scattered.”

  Liu didn’t say anything. He stared at a small set of prints veering off the main path. They ran fast—then stopped.

  “Kid,” he muttered. “Ran alone. But there’s no exit trail.”

  No one filled the silence that followed.

  A few paces off the path, Lei pointed again. “There.”

  Tucked between a pair of leaning trees, half-covered in leaves, sat a squat wooden structure no taller than a child’s waist. A simple stone basin lay in front, split down the middle. Coins, broken incense sticks, and scattered petals were strewn in the dirt around it.

  “An offering shrine,” Xo said, stepping closer. “For the element. Fire, probably. Common in small villages.”

  Nozomi hung back.

  “It’s nothing,” she said. “Just superstition. But…”

  Her eyes flicked to the stone, then away. Her arms crossed tight over her chest. “It’s off. Like the place doesn’t want us looking at it.”

  Xo touched the edge of the offering plate. It was warm.

  Not from sun. From something else.

  “The villagers probably came here to beg for protection,” he said. “Or forgiveness.”

  Liu tilted his head. “From what?”

  No one answered.

  The trees around them shifted with the wind, but the breeze never touched the shrine. Not even a rustle.

  Lei rose to his feet. “We need a better view of the island.”

  “There’s a watchtower,” Nozomi said, her voice steady again. “I saw it on the map Captain Han gave us. It’s just east of the village edge. Maybe two hundred meters out toward the jungle.”

  “If it’s still standing,” Liu added.

  “Then we’ll see what it sees,” Xo said, already turning toward the trees.

  They followed and left the shrine behind, its cracked stone watching as they stepped off the path and into the jungle.