The winds that night whispered of something ancient.
The mountains did not sleep.
Birds had abandoned their trees. The bamboo forest swayed without sound. Even the waterfall that usually sang against the rocks held its breath.
Something was coming.
And Baixue knew it.
She stood atop the roof of the eastern wing of the sanctuary, her pale robes dancing like mist in the moonlight. Her white hair flowed around her in tendrils, not a strand ever settling. Her eyes…silver, glinting with a moon's calm madness…watched the courtyard below, where a boy with horns and dormant glory tossed and turned in his sleep.
Xin Ren.
He was dreaming again. And not the harmless ones.
She felt the pulse in the spiritual field the moment the Dragon stirred. The heat from that first tail…the tail that held Zhenlong's divine fury..had already begun to break through the seal. The charm she had placed last week was barely holding.
Below, the boy twisted beneath the sheets.
Baixue whispered to the wind.
"Not yet."
But fate, as always, did not listen.
Xin Ren jolted upright, a strangled cry in his throat.
His chest heaved.
He couldn't breathe.
His skin burned. His vision blurred. And something…something alive…was moving inside him.
He stumbled from his room. The lanterns dimmed as he passed, even though the wind didn't reach them. The air grew heavier with each step. His bare feet slapped against cold stone as he reached the main courtyard.
And then he dropped to his knees.
Pain unlike anything he'd ever known ripped through his spine, lightning clawing up his back as his body arched violently. His skin glowed in cracks of gold. His sealed tails thrashed beneath him, flashing into brief visibility…just shadows, just echoes.
But one tail glowed brighter than the rest.
The first.
The dragon.
Baixue appeared in an instant, no louder than a breath.
She didn't touch him. She didn't kneel. She only watched…eyes sharp, unreadable…as the boy convulsed, choking on his own power.
She had seen gods break like this.
She had watched entire stars collapse under divine pressure.
But here was a child…no, a young boy…screaming into the night, torn between what he was and what the heavens had cursed him to become.
And he was surviving it.
That… impressed her.
Inside Xin Ren's mind, a gate cracked open.
Light flooded in.
He stood in a void, barefoot, surrounded by swirling ash and molten air. Before him, rising like a mountain, was the spirit of the dragon…Zhenlong. His horns stretched into the void. His golden eyes pierced every lie. His claws dug into clouds of fire, and his voice was the roar of the world being born.
"You are not ready," the Dragon said.
Xin Ren clenched his fists. "Then why am I here?"
"Because your body called to me. Because the world already senses what is coming."
The boy looked up. "Then give me your power."
Zhenlong leaned forward, smoke curling from his nostrils. "And if I do… will you remain a boy?"
Xin Ren didn't answer.
His voice trembled.
"I don't know what I am."
The dragon narrowed his eyes. "Then find out. Survive. Earn me."
And with that…he opened his jaws.
Golden fire surged forward, engulfing Xin Ren's spirit.
In the waking world…
His body arched. His first tail snapped free of its seal.
A glowing golden arc of flame twisted behind him, spiraling into the night sky like a phoenix's scream.
Baixue didn't move.
She couldn't.
She wouldn't.
Not yet.
The fire swirled around Xin Ren's body, scorching the stone in spirals. His eyes glowed. His bones shifted. For a moment, he hovered…weightless, suspended in energy as his soul realigned to its celestial truth.
Then he fell.
But Baixue caught him.
Of course she did.
She held his unconscious body gently, as if he were a snowflake balancing between life and oblivion. Her fingers trembled only slightly. Her eyes studied the mark now glowing faintly on his collarbone…the dragon's sigil.
"I warned you," she whispered to the air.
Behind her, a shadow stepped forward from nothing.
Liang Wu.
He didn't speak. He only looked down at the boy, and then at her.
"I tried to hold it back," she said softly.
Liang nodded once. "But fate is impatient."
Baixue stared into the boy's face.
"He's awakening faster than he should. Faster than any of us planned."
"Because the world is burning faster than we feared."
They carried him back to his room in silence.
Baixue stayed beside him as he slept. She pressed a hand to his brow, cooling it with a moon charm. She repaired the broken seals around the other eleven tails…barely. They would not last long. His body was already adapting, his soul shifting, absorbing divine weight faster than most mortals could comprehend.
She leaned closer and whispered so only his spirit would hear.
"I will guide you… but I will not save you."
Because saving him would mean robbing him of the very trials that could make him strong enough to survive the war to come.
Before dawn, she stepped out onto the roof again.
Her real form shimmered now…tall, elegant, ageless. Her ears were long and pointed. Her eyes glowed faintly. A soft mist clung to her skin.
She looked up at the sky.
The constellations flickered.
Three stars had dimmed.
That meant only one thing…
Three gates in the lower realm had opened.
Demons would start leaking through the mortal veil soon.
And Xin Ren?
He had awakened just in time to die.
Unless he began the Trials.
Unless he found the next guardian.
Unless he learned how to fight like a god…and bleed like a man.
Inside the sanctuary, the boy stirred.
And somewhere in the far north, where ice and steel ruled the land, another tail flickered.
The Tiger Guardian was awakening.
And he was angry.
Far beneath the surface of the mortal realm…deeper than any mortal could dig, below the layers of earth, soul, and memory…there existed a realm that Heaven refused to speak of.
The Ninth Hell, known as Ku'ruan.
The Kingdom of Forgotten Fire.
Here, the air itself moaned.
Ash rained from skies that bled black.
And the screams of lost gods echoed through molten canyons like hymns.
At the center of this cursed land stood a tower of bone, spiraling endlessly, pierced by chains that kept it moored to the boiling core of the world. The tower pulsed with ancient breath…alive, breathing, dreaming.
And within its highest chamber, surrounded by skeletal pillars and walls that wept shadow, sat Rakuzen.
The Fallen General of Heaven.
Once draped in white and glory, now entombed in scorched armor and bound by sin older than any name.
His body sat still, cross-legged atop a throne carved from the spines of celestial beasts, his arms outstretched in meditation. Flames curled around his fingers like serpents. His face was hidden beneath a cracked mask…half god, half demon.
He had not moved in two hundred years.
Until now.
The moment Xin Ren's first tail awakened, the fires of Ku'ruan shifted. A single ember turned gold.
Rakuzen's fingers twitched.
Then his head lifted, slow and deliberate, as if breaking through time itself.
He inhaled deeply.
"He's breathing now," he rasped.
His voice was deep, echoing, like an avalanche of chains.
From the shadows, several twisted figures emerged…demon courtiers, hunched and beautiful in the way rot becomes art. They wore bones like silk, teeth like jewelry, eyes too wide to be sane.
One knelt. "You felt him, my lord?"
Rakuzen tilted his head. "The dragon stirred. His flame cracked the mortal veil. I felt it… here." He touched the center of his chest with one clawed finger. "After all these years, the gods still play with fire."
Another demon slithered forward, her body made entirely of ink and smiles. "Shall we send the Wretches, then? The cursed ones from the Third Gate?"
"No."
His voice was cold.
"They are not ready for him. Not yet. The boy still weeps like a child in his soul."
He rose from his throne, and the entire tower groaned beneath him. Each step he took sent tremors into the ground. Flames coiled around his limbs, fed by his rage and the echo of ancient betrayal.
"Let him awaken," Rakuzen said. "Let him grow teeth."
"And when he's learned how to bite?" a demon asked, licking her blade.
Rakuzen turned toward the cracked wall behind his throne.
With a slow, deliberate gesture, he raised his hand…and the wall of bone melted into a window of shadow, revealing the mortal realm above.
He saw Mount Qianlan.
He saw the sanctuary hidden among bamboo.
He saw the boy.
"Then," he whispered, "I'll break his fangs."
In the deepest pit of the tower, something moved.
A chained creature, made of smoke and horn, howled silently.
One of Rakuzen's courtiers stiffened. "The beast grows restless. It tastes the light."
"Let it hunger," Rakuzen murmured. "We will feed it soon."
He walked back to his throne. Sat.
The mask on his face cracked further…just a sliver.
And behind it, his eyes were human.
Flickering.
Familiar.
He closed them again.
But not before whispering the name…
"Xin Ren…"