The wind was wrong.
Xin Ren smelled it before he saw anything…rot and iron, old blood soaked into soil that should have been pure.
The sky darkened without clouds. The earth groaned beneath his bare feet.
"They're here," Langya said, baring his teeth.
Baixue finished carving the last rune into the frozen cliffside, ice blooming from her fingertips. Zhenlong planted himself at the highest ridge, flames rippling along his arms, his aura sparking like a second sun.
Xin tightened his fists. His second tail flickered behind him…wilder now, harder to control. But he could feel its hunger. The tiger inside him was awake.
The snowline broke.
And the Drainers emerged.
They were worse than he imagined.
Long, twisted things that looked almost human from far away…but up close, their limbs were too long, their jaws cracked too wide. Their skin was stretched tight over hollow bones, and their eyes… their eyes were black pits leaking foul mist.
There were dozens.
No…hundreds.
Marching.
Slithering.
Clawing toward them in a tide of nightmare flesh.
Xin's stomach twisted.
He was ready.
Or so he thought.
"Form up!" Zhenlong barked. "Protect the boy's core!"
Langya cracked his knuckles. "Time to play."
Baixue rose into the air, mist swirling around her like a deadly dance.
Xin drew in one slow, shaking breath.
No more running.
The first Drainer lunged…and the battlefield exploded into blood and screams.
The world broke apart into violence.
Langya hit the first Drainer midair..his fist sinking into twisted flesh with a crack loud enough to shake the cliffs. Blood…thick, black, reeking…splattered the snow as the creature crumpled.
Zhenlong unleashed a roar of flame, his body spinning, molten whips lashing out in every direction. Wherever he struck, Drainers howled, limbs burning, flesh sloughing off bone.
Baixue floated like a phantom.
Where her hands passed, the air froze solid.
Drainers shattered into icicle corpses, broken before they even touched her robes.
Xin Ren didn't think.
He couldn't.
The tiger moved inside him now…guiding him, roaring in his veins.
The first Drainer lunged for his throat.
Xin dodged low, letting instinct rule. His fist slammed into the creature's ribs, sending it skidding back into the snow.
Another came.
And another.
He spun, ducked, slammed his knee into one's face…and when another clawed toward him, Xin caught the wrist, twisted it until it snapped, and drove his fist into its chest until ribs cracked like dry wood.
The second tail blazed at his back.
But it wasn't enough.
The Drainers kept coming.
For every one he crushed, three more surged forward.
Xin gasped, stumbling back.
A claw raked his arm. Another smashed into his shoulder.
He hit the ground hard, stars bursting behind his eyes.
The cold bit deep. Blood soaked the snow around him.
Above, Baixue and Zhenlong were being driven back too…separated by sheer numbers.
Xin felt it…that sickening pressure in the air.
The tide was shifting.
And if he didn't do something now, they would all be swallowed whole.
The ground shook beneath Xin Ren's body.
A Drainer's claw slashed down toward his head.
Instinct screamed louder than pain.
The tiger inside him snapped its chains.
A roar tore from Xin's throat…not human, not sane.
The second tail exploded behind him, triple its normal size, spiked with raw golden-black fury. The snow melted in a radius around him. The Drainer's claw never touched him…because Xin moved.
Faster than thought.
He grabbed the creature's wrist mid-swing…and crushed it.
Bone splintered under his fingers.
Before the Drainer could shriek, Xin drove his knee up into its chest…once, twice..then ripped its throat open with a punch that cracked the air.
Blood sprayed his face.
He didn't stop.
Xin lunged into the next pack like a living weapon.
Claws tore at his sides. He ignored them.
Fangs bit into his arm. He ripped the head clean off.
The tiger's rage filled him…hot, pure, endless.
Every strike was a kill.
Every move was a death sentence.
He broke skulls with his bare hands.
He snapped spines with his knees.
He grabbed one Drainer by the jaws and split its head apart in a fountain of black blood.
The Drainers faltered.
For the first time… they hesitated.
Because they realized…
He wasn't prey anymore.
He was predator.
Baixue hovered above the battlefield, her violet eyes wide with something close to awe.
"He's... changing," she whispered.
Zhenlong drove his flaming fist through a demon's chest and looked over his shoulder.
"No. He's awakening."
Langya laughed like a madman from the cliffs above, watching Xin carve through the Drainers like a wildfire.
"That's my boy!"
But power comes with a price.
Xin's vision blurred.
The rage inside him was endless…but so was the exhaustion creeping behind it.
The tiger didn't know mercy.
It didn't know when to stop.
And if he couldn't tame it soon…
It would consume him too.
Xin Ren barely registered the battlefield anymore.
The blood, the broken bodies..it blurred into a crimson haze.
His heart thundered against his ribs. The second tail lashed the air behind him like a live wire, slashing gouges into stone and snow.
The tiger was winning.
And Xin was drowning inside it.
He tore through another Drainer, his claws…no, his hands…shredding through flesh like paper.
He roared again, a sound that rattled the mountains.
Langya's laughter echoed somewhere far above.
Baixue hovered cautiously, her hands glowing cold at her sides, ready…but hesitating.
Zhenlong's eyes narrowed.
"He's losing himself."
Baixue nodded grimly. "If we don't stop him…"
"He'll stop being human."
Xin lunged.
But this time… there was no Drainer in front of him.
It was Baixue.
His claws slashed the air toward her, blinded by the bloodlust.
She barely dodged, spiraling back with a flash of ice under her feet.
Xin's golden eyes burned wild and savage, no recognition left.
Langya's grin vanished.
Zhenlong moved.
He hit Xin Ren like a meteor.
Fire slammed into Xin's chest, blasting him backward into a boulder. The impact cracked the stone, shattered the ice. Xin roared, thrashing wildly, but Zhenlong was already there, pressing a burning palm into his shoulder, pinning him down.
"ENOUGH!" Zhenlong bellowed, his voice rippling the very air.
Xin fought.
For a heartbeat, the second tail flared brighter…hot, massive.
But then..
Zhenlong's other hand drove a searing sigil into Xin's forehead.
A brand of dragonfire.
Xin screamed.
The tail bucked…and collapsed.
Xin's body sagged, panting, his head lolling to the side.
The rage ebbed.
The tiger retreated.
And Xin Ren..bruised, bloodied, and broken…finally wept.
Silence reigned where chaos once screamed.
The battlefield was a graveyard now…jagged corpses of Drainers strewn across the snow, black blood seeping into the frozen earth.
The air was thick with the stench of death, scorched flesh, and something older... darker... rising unseen into the wind.
Xin Ren lay motionless against a shattered boulder, his body broken in more places than he could count. His breaths came in slow, rattling gasps, every inhale scraping against fractured ribs. His hands twitched, coated in dried blood…some his, most not.
Above him, the second tail flickered weakly.
Golden-black. Feral. Flickering like a dying flame.
The mark Zhenlong had burned into his forehead still sizzled faintly, smoke curling from the seared skin.
Xin pressed trembling fingers to it.
It burned even now.
A brand.
A shackle.
A reminder that he had almost crossed the line between man and monster…and never come back.
Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes, freezing instantly against his bruised cheeks.
He had failed.
No.
He had become exactly what they all feared.
Footsteps crunched in the bloodied snow.
Langya was the first to approach, barefoot and bare-chested, spattered in demon gore, carrying a jagged Drainer skull in one hand like it weighed nothing.
He crouched beside Xin and dropped the skull with a heavy thud.
"Well," he said after a long silence. "You lived."
Xin let out a hoarse, bitter laugh.
"Barely," he rasped.
Langya tilted his head, studying him…not with pity, but the cold, pragmatic gaze of a predator examining wounded prey.
"You fought like a beast. You killed like a god. But you also nearly butchered your own."
Xin squeezed his eyes shut.
The memory of Baixue's startled face as he'd lunged at her…it was carved into his soul now.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
Langya snorted. "Don't apologize. Just get stronger."
Another figure appeared…silent, slow.
Baixue drifted down from the broken cliffs, her robes torn, her left sleeve stained red where a lucky Drainer had grazed her.
Her steps were light, but her eyes were heavy.
Heavy with something Xin couldn't name.
She stopped a few paces away, watching him.
Xin struggled to sit up, but Langya shoved him back down with a grunt.
"Stay down. You're no good to anyone standing like a drunken calf."
Xin swallowed thickly, his throat raw. He forced his gaze up to meet Baixue's.
"I didn't mean to…"
Her hand lifted…silent.
She didn't speak.
But slowly, deliberately, she reached up and touched her own chest, just over her heart.
And then pointed at him.
The message was clear.
It wasn't your fists that almost killed us. It was your heart. Your weakness.
Zhenlong came last.
He was covered in burns…self-inflicted, from forcing his dragonfire beyond mortal limits to sear Xin's rage down.
His footsteps were heavier than usual. Every step carved deep impressions into the snow.
He stood above Xin, towering and merciless, flames still leaking from his arms.
When he spoke, his voice was iron wrapped in thunder.
"You are not ready."
Xin bit his lip until he tasted blood.
"I tried…"
"You lost."
The words hit harder than any Drainer's claws.
Xin's fists clenched so tightly blood dripped from his palms.
"I'll control it next time," he said, though the tremble in his voice betrayed the lie.
Zhenlong crouched, fire curling off his shoulders like wings.
"There won't be a next time if you fail again."
The dragon mark on Xin's forehead glowed faintly under Zhenlong's glare.
"Next time you lose yourself," Zhenlong said, voice deathly calm, "I will kill you."
Not a threat.
A promise.
Xin met his gaze..and for the first time, truly understood the weight of the world he carried.
The wind shifted.
Baixue's head snapped up.
Langya bared his teeth in a snarl.
Zhenlong's fire intensified without a word.
Xin forced himself to his feet, swaying, his muscles screaming.
Something was coming.
Not another wave of Drainers.
Something worse.
Something ancient.
The air tasted like iron and rot again..but this time it carried whispers. Voices not born of flesh.
Whispers that promised ruin.
A shadow moved across the sun.
And for the briefest moment, the bloodstained battlefield darkened, as if a hand had passed over the sky.
Baixue spoke first, her voice low.
"They felt it."
Xin's throat tightened. "Felt what?"
"You."
Langya cracked his knuckles. "The gods."
Zhenlong turned, staring out over the broken horizon.
"No," he said. "Not just the gods."
Far in the distance, black clouds gathered.
Shapes moved within them.
Twisted.
Colossal.
Endless.
Xin shivered…not from cold, but from something older.
Fear.
Real fear.
Baixue walked closer, so close Xin could smell the ice on her skin.
She leaned in, her breath brushing his ear.
"The blood you spilled today has called them. The fallen ones. The ancient ones. The broken gods."
She pulled back, her eyes like twin shards of the moon.
"They're coming."
Xin stared at her, his heart hammering.
"For me?"
"For what's inside you."
Langya grinned savagely, slinging the broken Drainer skull onto his belt.
"Good," he growled. "About time we had a real war."
Xin Ren stood among the bodies, the snow stained black and red at his feet, the frozen wind tearing at his bloodied robes.
He felt weak.
Small.
Utterly, painfully human.
But inside him…
Deeper than the tiger, beyond the seals, past even the scars of battle…
Something else was stirring.
Something that hadn't been part of him before.
Something old.
Something hungry.
He touched the dragonbrand burning on his forehead.
He looked at his blood-soaked hands.
And he smiled.
A broken smile. A dangerous one.
Because he knew.
This was only the beginning.