“We have to get out of here! Flee for your lives!”

The entire block was in a panic as the pyrotechnical display and the horrific confession in the air above made it clear that darkest machinations between opposing rulers was once more in play. And when the powerful fought, it was always the most fragile pieces that were first ground to dust. Most people instinctively knew that, save perhaps for foolish youths eager to chase mad dreams of ascension at bloodthirsty academies. But everyone else who had to live under the feat of scheming lords and ruthless cultivators understood just how precarious their existence was.

And when the skies lit with fire and flying wujen made declarations few would dare outside of storyteller’s row, anyone with a head on their shoulders knew to run. As did Svetlana, those thoughts ringing through her skull as she carefully held the sleepy little boy that had been her wake up call, pulling her from a decadent path that could have cost her everything, before motherhood’s call became her salvation. Now it was capturing the essence of a customer’s soul in pigments and paint that compelled her. That, and feeding her extended family of failed farmers and hidden gem masters, all of them having retreated back to the city that despised them, after a too rapid expansion had earned them the forest’s ire.

“Svetlana, the smoke is so thick, how can you even see? We have to get out of here while we still can!”

This from her panicked friend holding her own child tight as they made their way back to their apartments, along with a handful of others, Svetlana leading the way because however tumultuous her own life path had been, one thing she had always been able to count on were eyes that saw truths too often hidden, whether by smoke or artifice. She saw it all, sometimes more than she could bare.

Before coming to an abrupt halt when Senji bumped into her with a soft huff.

Her heart was pounding as she gazed upon a mist-filled alley holding so many dark secrets.

“Go, Senji. I know where we are. Take the others and go to my right. Our apartments are two alleys down.”

To her credit, Senji gathered the others and left without a word.

And all Svetlana could do was tremble and stare at the monstrous sight before her, captivated by the chilling weight of her portrait somehow coming to horrid life.

“Please, you don’t have to do this,” she whispered, before her eyes filled with terror, glimpsing things she knew she dare not look too closely upon, as the cold gaze of Death itself locked with her own. Hands covered in shimmering darkness, even now gripping a furiously struggling soul like her father might catch a fish.

The man she had thought a wondrous dream brought to life had just revealed the dark truths behind so many bedtimes stories. How many of WiFu’s tales starred a happy-go-lucky hero forever rescuing the underdog, and how many had ended with the absolute destruction of anyone who dared to cross the avatars of chaos and change?

The nightmare apparition flashed her a sad smile. “They are tainted. All four of them made infernal pacts of their own free will, with no infernal contracts in play that I can destroy on their behalf. And you really need to leave, Svetlana. For the sake of your child, if nothing else. Your feet, if you dare to look down, are just inches away from the River of Souls.”

Svetlana’s eyes bulged with sudden panic when her treacherous gaze did indeed dart down to peer at cloudy waters filled with wide-eyed spirit fish mouthing silent screams as she lurched back with a frightened cry, holding her too still baby who had only been sleeping in her panicked arms as she stumbled across the perfectly flat, perfectly safe, and perfectly dry cobblestones, now racing back to her mother’s hovel for all she was worth. Tears of panic filled Svetlana’s eyes as her child cried out with his mother’s terror.

Of course that was when she saw it, the strange door-sized opening in the wall before her leading down not another smoke-filled alley, but to a lush grassy field filled with warmth and sunshine and countless brilliant blossoms radiating such potent spiritual energy that the gatherers in her clan would be shedding tears of joy. And just beyond it, a magnificent palace of ivory, jade, and gold, with grand pagodas and graceful minarets soaring so high they seemed to kiss the heavens above.

She choked back a startled cry, sensing the incredible opportunity before her, a fairytale-like promise fulfilled.

Five minutes ago, she would have happily leaped through the otherworldly gate with tears of joy in her eyes. But after what she had just witnessed, seeing what truly lay beneath the gaze of a man she could so easily have fallen for… Svetlana lurched back with a frightened hiss, racing away from its promise as fast as her feet could take her. She decided right then and there that chasing glorious dreams and a sacred counselor’s destiny that she just knew like a character in a storybook could so easily become hers… absolutely paled in comparison to the desperate need to keep herself safe from hideous monsters far darker than any childhood tale.

***

Alex flashed a sad smile as he sensed the lost of what had been a bright spark of endless possibility. A friend, maybe one over countless lifetimes, who would now do all she could to avoid him at any cost.

The look in her eyes had struck him far deeper than the desperate pleading gaze of the final flailing spirit whose mouth he had just rammed his fist into, before tearing his prize free.

And before his final target could do anything but howl in despair, she too was wrapped in a dozen thorn-covered vines of sickly green hue, squeezing furiously tight about a mortal soul now completely bereft of its once priceless prize.

Spirit Crane Strike successfully tears free Rank 2 Silver Soul Stone!

Spirit Crane Strike successfully tears free 2 Rank 3 Silver Soul Stones!

Spirit Crane Strike Successfully tears free Rank 6 Silver Soul Stone.

Warning! Qi Perception detects previous lives of dignity and virtue embraced by all your victims!

Warning disregarded.

Soul stones claimed!

You have dared the forbidden! Your soul blackens with the karmic weight of Silver potential torn free of its rightful hosts for all time!

You are now considered one of the Fallen; the wings of your soul are now so corroded with karmic debt that purgatory can be your only reward!

Cleaved Fates card in effect.

All karmic ties have been severed.

Your karmic virtue has been reset to zero!

Foreign powers are less than pleased that you have dared to claim contested prizes.

You have given Infernal Bindings the middle finger!

Foreign powers have left the area.

Multiple modifiers are now in effect! You have effortlessly pulled yourself free of the River of Souls.

Alex took a deep breath as mercury waters flowed off his shivering form as the mist cleared to reveal the city block he had saved from becoming a roaring inferno. Even if all color was eerily washed out of the area, he saw no physical traces of the river itself left behind. Which was a relief, considering all the thousand of people who lived, worked, shopped, and played in this quarter every day. If he ended up leaving a live rift open…

He shuddered at the thought, even as he did his best to suppress the memory of a wide-eyed frightened girl who had once been a young idealist, dreaming of adventure and wonder as a YanTu farmer before chasing dreams of cultivation that had led her down dark, torturous paths where a trace of petty envy that might have gotten her a sharp reprimand and been kept in easy check in a loving community, in a school of cutthroat cultivators it had turned her dark, cold, and utterly ruthless.

Just as it had a half dozen times before.

But that did nothing to stop the ache in his chest, gazing at one of the very few souls that seemed to remember nothing of its own darkness, a child once more already, pleading for another chance. The irony of it was, Alex was almost sure she’d be one of the very few who might actually live a happier life as a mortal in a tightly knit community than as a bitter, power hungry cultivator. But even that option was forever denied her when demonic tendrils had come to claim what little they could.

Against them, there was absolutely nothing he could do.

And he had tried.

For the sake of the now mortal soul desperate for rebirth, he had tried. But his limbs could no more effect those tendrils than they could affect him. It was as if they were both one step removed from the other. And there was no tainted contract tied to an infernalist’s arts that he could sense, no easily understood infernal cords of spiritual energy he could readily break. Whatever bargain had been struck, it had been of the girl’s own free will, with no duress save her own desires. So he could do nothing at all as the desperate soul screamed and begged for succor that would never come, wrapped tight in pulsating eldritch tendrils before being yanked into the depths of the inky black waters.

Alex took a furious breath and focused his rage on the one foe he could put the days tragedies squarely at the feet of. A monster who had been more than happy to both sell out his city and attempt genocide twice over with a double purge.

Administrator Ruizhi.

Just as corrupt and spite-filled as the one who had ordered the initial purge that had cost Alex the lives of everyone he had loved in his very first life, and set him on a deadly spiral of vengeance over countless lives that would one day rock the heavens themselves.

He would make damned certain of that.

Just thinking of that disdainful administrator’s contemptuous gaze filled Alex with a bitter fury that not even the skill boosts he had enjoyed after forging himself upon the whetstone of his enemies’ killing hate could assuage.

He clenched his fists, filled with sudden grim purpose, caring nothing for the myriad intricate political games being played.

Ruizhi had declared war and made his move.

It was now Alex’s turn, and he was damn well going to finish what that asshole had started.

It was time for him to see just how strong a Silver he had become against the killing gazes of multiple opponents of at least his rank, so many of them eager to see him dead.

***

“Alex, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Alex spun, squinting against gloom and shadow before finally making out Lady Jidihu glaring his way. Nothing compared to the look of horrified disbelief Lady Ning Jing was favoring him with as she gazed about the mist-shrouded block. “I won’t even ask what the hell happened that left storyteller’s row feeling like death’s shadow had passed over it, but why the hell are you heading toward the palace? You should be running, boy, while Ruizhi’s pawns are busy rounding up all the Ruidians they can find!”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Lady Ning Jing.”

Her eyes widened with incredulity. “Instead you’ll, what, march to the administerial palace? Challenge an imperially appointed administrator to a martial duel for the sake of your people?”

Alex flashed a cold smile. So cold that even the JiangHu assassin flinched and stepped back.

“Something like that.”

“You’re being a fool, Alex Hammer!” Jidihu hissed from the shadows. “It is one thing to take out enemies in the cultivation world, but ancient treatises and martial codes are specifically in place to keep the realms of politics and cultivation from colliding. And should you be so foolish as to actually strike down an administrator, risking the wrath of the crown princess of the entire province...”

“A province in peril of being annexed by Prince Dongfang Hong himself as he infects all of QuiJing with his infernal lackeys attempting to overthrow cultivation academies from within, bind their hapless students to infernal contracts, and rob them utterly of all cultivation resources.”

His declaration gave both elders pause as Panheu himself made his presence known, nodding his approval. “So you will declare him compromised and seek to challenge him, is that it? There is some precedent, weak as it might be. If nothing else, this should get Princess Cui Zhe’s attention sufficient that she will at least consider the matter, and might just save you from a rather violent execution.”

“Not if he plays the absolute fool and marches right for the palace gates, where soldiers who might be ambivalent about herding minorities for culling will have no problems at all striking down an upstart Ruidian who dares offer challenge against his person!”

Panheu dipped his head. “My first-wife is correct, disciple. It would be in your best interest to avoid cutting down innocent soldiers in your quest for justice or retribution.”

Alex ground his teeth. “The bastard’s guilty as sin. Half the city must have heard that wujen’s confession right before I tore Dongfang Hong’s aerial strike team from the air while they were trying to set half the city ablaze!”

“Or at least the quarters that are home to your people and mine,” Jidihu noted.

“And well done, goading that confession from you prey, disciple!” Panheu commended. “If nothing else, it will weaken his position and make it that much easier for a contender of equal social rank to challenge him for administerial rights over Yidushi.”

“Greedy little worm that he is, he’s no fool,” Ning Jing noted, glaring Alex’s way. “You’d better believe he’s gathered every Silver available to him to bolster his own city troops during this ‘emergency crisis’ to serve as his personal bodyguard while he attempts to round up tribes he’ll find in mysteriously short supply before he grows bored and heads back to his well-fortified quarters.”

Alex shook his head. “That’s not enough. He still crossed a line I’m not willing to forgive, and absolutely nothing prevents him from attempting to round up Ruidians and Kitsune, or anyone that doesn’t look like a purebred Yidushian true-blood some other day. So how the hell do I give challenge without fighting my way through the emperor’s own troops?”

“You don’t,” Jidihu snapped. “And I’ve been spending the last hour cleaning up after your mess, Alex Hammer!”

Alex gazed at the irate looking head of the local JiangHu sect, wondering just how long that portrait had taken, before recalling a shadowy path taken through a gloomy forest that never was to escape the wrath of an alchemist who wanted him dead. He solemnly bowed his head. “This one thanks you for your grace and foresight, rescuing those left vulnerable by my own shortcomings.”

Jidihu flashed a bleak smile. “At least you can still apologize as well as any Dragon Academy student. That doesn’t change the fact that you still somehow managed to get the entire city council up in arms against you, or the fact that Ruizhi was looking for any reason he could find to initiate his purge. And you came along at the perfect time to serve as a scapegoat.”

“So, what do we do?”

Panheu flashed a jaded smile. “I think that should be obvious, disciple.”

Alex peered thoughtfully at the grinning elder for long moments before his eyes widened. Suddenly getting it. “You mean, instead of me trying to track him down...”

“We let him come to us.”

The headmaster nodded. “In the decade I’ve known him, the man has made absolutely no political moves to curtail the breadth and scope of Dragon Academy’s prestige, position, or privileges. He has, in fact, been suspiciously quiet. I had chosen to give him the benefit of the doubt before now, or to assume it rank cowardice on his part, which serves me just as well. But if he truly is in bed with the Red Prince of YanTu nation, a man who is, by all accounts, a competent tactician, then I will assume he merely bides his time and gathers his resources, and it’s only a matter of time before a coordinated strike is made to take me out either politically… or literally.”

Alex flashed a fierce smile. “If assholes attempt to strike in the dark, I get the feeling they’ll serve as a wonderful source of killing intent to hone our arts against.”

All three former JiangHu assassins flashed cold smiles at that.

“And if he attempts a legal coup questioning the legitimacy of your own rule over dragon academy...” Alex tossed a quartet of enchanted boots, one or two still filled with the feet of their original owners, and four shattered YanTu talismans. “We counter with proof that Yidushi was attacked by a foreign power, with the flight boots so popular among Dongfang Hong’s air strike teams, to go along with the declaration of our enemies that I’m betting thousands of people already heard echoing from the skies above.”

Headmaster Panheu flashed a pleased smile, nodding Jidihu’s way. “Since at least one of us did, in fact, here every word of that confession, I believe that will work out quite well, disciple.”

Ning Jing chuckled, lips curling in a dark grin. “And that corrupt bastard will find himself fighting for stakes far beyond Dragon Academy, should he actually be stupid enough to move against us.”

Alex frowned. “And what if he doesn’t challenge us at all?”

“Then we leave it be, disciple,” Jidihu said. “Rule one of power and politics. Always give potential opponents a way out. Should they be wise enough to take it, you achieve your aims without any risk to yourself, or weakening of your own forces at all.”

Alex’s lips pursed in a frown. He nodded, in respect to his mentors, even if it galled him, the thought of letting that treacherous bastard go. But still… he had to admit that Jidihu made a damn good point, especially as the head of the local Jidihu Sect. If measures weren’t in place to prevent escalation on all sorts of political and military fronts, the entire world would be in a constant hot war.

“Alright. But what about the Ruidians and kitsune?”

Jidihu glowered. “Burdening my resources in ways I doubt you could…” she frowned thoughtfully. “Or perhaps you could understand.” She flashed a hard smile. “I suspect a handful of the most vocal nobles who had been eagerly seeking to rile the local population up will come down with something rather nasty in the next day or two. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if calls for temperance and moderation soon make the rounds once more… as they always have before.”

Ning Jing snorted. “And Ruizhi will have one more reason to be grateful and curb his own damned overextending claws when he realizes that Black Death could have come for him just as easily as the most corrupt and disgusting members of his council.” She then turned to glare Alex’s way. He stepped back under the weight of her killing gaze.

“Now perhaps you’d be so kind as to tell me where our daughter is, entrusted into your care before you danced with the fox yet again?”

“Safe,” Alex assured. “Hao Chan took her back home.”

Jidihu frowned. “Come, Alex. Walk by our side so that the shadows may hide the death you wreak so strongly of, no matter that karma itself paints you as the most insignificant of souls. Now how about you explain to me how exactly they got back home, and why aren’t you with them?”

Alex sighed, though he was grateful that the distant cries of riled soldiers had been replaced by the whispery rustle of shadowy branches as he found himself strolling along an unusually wild tree-lined boulevard, bows heavy with branches that hadn’t been trimmed in years. A tunnel of Wood and Shadow that countless disorganized bands of soldiers and mobs of easily incensed rabble passed by without a second glance. “Would you believe we really were just hoping for a relaxing day exploring Yidushi with fresh eyes and a bit of nostalgia?”

Ning Jing snorted. “Clearly that went exactly as planned.”

Alex smirked. “Save for picking a fight with one Feng Yu, claiming to be Administrator Rhuizhi’s favorite consort, and running into some old friends along Storyteller’s Row while looking for a portraitist, it pretty much did.”

Jidihu raised a bemused eyebrow at this. “I’m familiar with one Feng Yu. A basic cultivator who never quite managed to break through to Bronze, but seemed content enough with her lot when her unorthodox path allows her to keep the features of a woman in her prime until her candle finishes burning out at both ends and she drops as a withered crone after her seventh decade.”

Ning Jing nodded. “Thirty more years to savor, forever pestering the JiangHu sect for even more forbidden paths that can extend her life. I had to personally tell off that bitch that any other path would claim a price she’d regret for the next dozen lifetimes, and she finally let us be.” She flashed a cold smile Alex’s way. “And she really is Ruizhi’s favorite consort, or at least knows how to please him with twenty years experience, having popped out at least half a dozen of his whelps.”

Jidihu sighed. “What perfect timing you have, Alex. No wonder Ruizhi was out for blood today.”

Alex furrowed his brow. “That’s hardly fair. We met her outside a fancy high class shop and the first thing she did was insult Hao Chan and Yinzi, ultimately threatening to sell them to a brothel if they didn’t kowtow before her and beg for her mercy.”

Ning Jing’s eyes widened with outrage. “That she would dare!”

“She had no idea who Yinzi or Hao Chan were,” Jidihu noted. “Only that they accompanied our favorite Ruidian who has an absolute knack for catalyzing absolute chaos wherever he goes.”

“Not actually a Ruidian,” Alex smirked. “But definitely guilty on the catalyst part. But it’s not like I wasn’t going to act when I spotted Lai Wei and Hao Hai tearing up the stall of the very artist I was going to hire for a portrait… before attempting to snap a slave collar around her neck.”

Jidihu froze, glaring intently Alex’s way. “That those foolish boys would dare, in broad daylight!”

Alex nodded. “Apparently her crimes were painting a picture Lai Wei didn’t like and, of course, being a Ruidian. So he had the counsel retroactively write laws that made it a crime to paint anything nobles don’t like and to levy a thousand silver fee against her stall.”

Jidihu and Ning Jing exchanged a long look. “I suspect Black Death has her work cut out for her, sister-wife,” said Ning Jing with a cold smile.

Jidihu gave an angry shake of her head. “We’re wasting time. Let’s get back to Dragon Academy before my ultimate sire’s favorite catalyst causes the whole city to erupt in flame.”

“That’s hardly fair,” Alex grumbled as the tree-lined blocks seemed to fly by as fast as running across terrain did in his favorite RPG series of a lifetime ago. “I’m the one who put out the flames.”

His friends gave him looks that left his cheeks blazing and almost before he knew it he was sitting in the lotus position outside the tool shed that had become his home away from home, or at least the innocent entrance to his palatial retreat that he dare not enter until dawn’s first light.

At present he was practicing stillness, focusing on his breathing and the most gentle cycling imaginable for the first time in what he realized was far too long, still feeling humbled by Jidihu’s hard gaze and Panheu’s chiding words as he went off to take care of Headmaster duties delayed for far too long.

“Perhaps its best you focus on the most basic of cultivation disciplines, my wayward and forever fascinating disciple. Focus on your breathing, on calm stillness that never comes easy to your type. On feeling the gentle flow of Qi without the fury of battle or the glorious dark arts you alone might safely embrace, utterly flooding you with so much power that you forget the most basic tenants of cultivation.

Ning Jing had snorted her agreement. “So keenly sharp in battle savvy and forging himself in the crucible of conflict, and an absolute cripple of a cultivator in every other way.”

“That’s a bit of an exaggeration,” Alex said in his own defense. “I spent two whole months training under Master Panheu following that very Path of Tranquility.”

This had earned a bemused eyebrow from the beautiful, deadly woman. “And did you advance at all as a cultivator in that time, come to know yourself any better?”

Alex frowned, gazing Panheu’s way.

The man smiled. “He did gain some proficiency in White Crane Kung Fu.”

Ning Jing grinned. “Did he advance at all as a cultivator?”

“Not in the slightest,” Panheu conceded with a bemused nod.

Alex winced.

“And have you bothered to meditate or to practice stillness in any form since you last sat cross-legged in this garden?” Ning Jing pointedly asked, Alex’s flush and lowered gaze being all the answer any of them needed.

Because of course he had… even if he could count the number of times he had recently done so on one hand.

It was Jidihu, with her calm smile, far more forgiving of Alex, now that she knew her daughter was safely resting in a place no foe could reach her. “You’re the opposite of most cultivators, Alex. You rush into conflict and the most perilous paths to power imaginable. Yet you avoid stillness, peace, and serenity like the plague. A flaw inherent in your character, I suspect, and a flaw you’d best correct for the sake of your own path forward.”

It was with those words still ringing in his ears that Alex found himself embracing the earliest breathing exercises his first mentors Liu Li and her father Liu Jian had shown him, and it was all he could do to put aside all worry, and castigation for not following up on Liu Jian’s whereabouts which he kept promising himself he’d do… and focus on nothing more than breathing in and out, becoming one with the garden he sat in the middle of, one with the salty tang of the breeze gently rustling his hair, one with the crashing waves of the sea and the magnificent view of the sunset setting the ocean ablaze.

One with the sound of soft footsteps filled with killing intent, stepping so carefully across the lush grassy yard of Panheu’s property overlooking the sea.

Perception Check Made: You spot death approaching!