Chapter 1 The Ash and the Teeth

The world didn't begin with a bang. It began with the taste of copper, the stench of rot, and the sound of my own bones grinding against each other.

I gasped, and a scream tore from my throat, raw and ragged. Pain—blinding, white-hot, and absolute—shot up my lower body. My legs. They were bent at angles that made my stomach heave.

Above me, a narrow slit of choking, purple-grey sky suffocated between two towering cliffs of jagged black stone. The Heavenspire waste ravine.

A flood of stolen memories crashed into my skull like battery acid. Kneeling on freezing stone. A heavy leather boot pressing my face into the dirt. The sneering face of Xu Shao—the sect's golden boy.

"A worm has no right to breathe the same air as dragons. Break his meridians. Throw him to the pit."

The memory of the executioner's strike hit me so hard my back arched. It felt like every vein in my body had been filled with molten lead and shattered glass. They had ripped away my cultivation. They had stolen my future.

"Xu... Shao..." I croaked, my fingernails digging into the razor-sharp gravel until they bled. The injustice burned hotter than the physical agony.

Thump.

A heavy vibration shuddered through the ravine floor. I went dead still.

Thump. Thump.

From the deep shadows of the canyon, something was moving. The air grew thick with the smell of old blood. A low, guttural growl vibrated through the stone beneath my cheek. A Corpse-Hound, drawn by the scent of fresh meat.

I couldn't run. I couldn't stand.

I dragged myself forward on my elbows. Jagged pieces of discarded spirit swords and cracked pill cauldrons tore through my robes, slicing into my chest. My broken legs dragged behind me like dead logs, sending waves of nauseating fire up my spine.

Suddenly, my right hand hit something small and metallic. A broken low-grade sword. The blade was snapped in half, the edge rusted and dull, but the hilt was solid. I gripped it, my knuckles turning white.

Two glowing, yellow eyes materialized from the darkness just twenty paces away. The Corpse-Hound was the size of a bull, its jaws dripping with acidic saliva. It locked onto me and bared teeth the size of daggers.

Then, deep inside the hollow cavity of my chest—right where my shattered meridians should have been—something sparked.

It wasn't golden Qi. It was a pitch-black, silent ember. The moment the beast took a step toward me, radiating raw, lethal intent, the ember went hungry. It pulsed, drawing in the heavy scent of decay and the sheer terror of my own situation.

The black flame flared, feeding on the brokenness of my body. A strange, cold power flooded my arms, turning my grip on the broken sword into a vice.

"Come on then," I whispered, coughing up a spray of dark blood. I raised the broken blade.

The beast lunged, a mass of muscle and teeth flying through the air straight for my throat.

SHLNXT.

A heavy, wooden pole crashed into the side of the hound's skull mid-air. The beast yelped, its massive body veering off course and crashing violently into a pile of shattered crates just three feet from me.

"Don't move! Or do move! I don't know, just don't get eaten!" a panicked voice shouted.

I snapped my head around. Stepping out from behind a pile of rubble was a round, frantic-looking young man covered completely in soot. He was holding a heavy formation flag like a club, his hands shaking violently.

The Corpse-Hound shook its massive head, its yellow eyes snapping toward the newcomer. A terrifying roar shook the ravine walls.

"Can you run?" I barked at the boy, channeling every ounce of that bizarre, icy black flame into my upper body.

"N-No!" the boy wailed, backing up as the hound bared its teeth at him. "They broke my arrays and threw me down here yesterday!"

The hound bunched its hind legs, preparing to tear him to pieces.

My eyes locked onto the irregular arrangement of broken formation flags the boy had placed along the wall behind him. It was a makeshift heat trap, humming with unstable, ambient energy.

"Trigger the third flag on your left!" I yelled. "Now!"

The boy blinked, paralyzed. "How did you—"

"Do it!"

The beast sprang.