The storm swallowed them whole.
Ling Tian's lungs burned with each gasping breath as he forced his way through the howling blizzard, the wind's icy fingers tearing at his exposed skin. The wound on his shoulder - where Xue Yao's claws had pierced deep - pulsed with a heat that mocked the freezing temperatures around them. Black blood seeped through Qing'er's makeshift bandages, each drop hissing as it struck the snow, eating tiny pockmarks into the frozen surface. The metallic stench of his corrupted blood mixed with the crisp, clean scent of pine and snow, creating a nauseating contrast that lingered in his nostrils.
Xiao Hei moved ahead like a ghost through the storm, her small form nearly swallowed by the swirling white. The child who had once skipped through battlefields now walked with eerie purpose, her bare feet leaving no impression in the deepening snowdrifts. Every few steps she would pause, head cocked as if listening to voices whispering just beyond human hearing, then adjust their path with unsettling certainty.
Qing'er's hand tightened around Ling Tian's arm, her blind eyes somehow tracking the girl's movements unerringly. "She's leading us somewhere specific," she murmured, her voice barely audible above the wind's scream. The jade amulet around Ling Tian's neck - her gift from what felt like a lifetime ago - glowed faintly against his chest, its warmth the only thing preventing his fingers from turning black with frostbite.
Ling Tian tried to respond, but the words turned to ice in his throat. Behind them, the distant echoes of hunting horns and shouted orders still pierced the storm's wail. The Violet Thunder Sect had fallen in fire and blood, but their enemies had not stopped pursuing the fugitives who fled its collapse. Every muscle in his body screamed for rest, but the memory of those dungeon walls and the truths they revealed kept his feet moving.
Xiao Hei suddenly stopped at the edge of a sheer cliff face, the mountain dropping away into nothingness before them. The blizzard's fury made it impossible to see more than a few feet ahead, but the child pointed with unwavering certainty. "Shifu's home," she said, her usual playful tone replaced by something ancient and solemn.
Then the impossible happened.
The storm parted like a curtain being drawn aside, the howling winds splitting to reveal a hidden alcove in the cliff face - a semicircle of weathered stone pillars standing sentinel around what remained of a collapsed roof. The sudden silence was deafening, the absence of wind leaving Ling Tian's ears ringing. Snowflakes hung suspended in the air around them, glittering like diamonds caught in amber.
At the center of the ruined shrine lay a sight that stole the breath from Ling Tian's lungs.
A phoenix - a true divine beast from the oldest legends - lay chained to an altar of black jade, its once magnificent plumage now dull and patchy. Great swaths of feathers had been brutally plucked, leaving raw, weeping flesh visible beneath. Its massive wings were pinned beneath heavy manacles that pulsed with the same violet light as the suppression cuffs in the Violet Thunder dungeon. The creature's beak, cracked and yellowed with age, hung slightly open, each labored breath sending tremors through its emaciated frame. The stench of infection and old blood hung thick in the enclosed space, mixing with the acrid tang of fading magic.
Qing'er's sword whispered from its sheath, her knuckles white around the hilt. "They've been harvesting it," she breathed, horror twisting her features. "Like livestock."
The phoenix's eye opened - a molten gold orb that fixed on Ling Tian with terrifying clarity. When it spoke, its voice was the sound of embers crumbling to ash, of ancient trees sighing their last breath. "Jailer's blood," it rasped. "You've come at last."
Xiao Hei skipped forward without fear, her small hand pressing against the phoenix's mangled wing. The great beast shuddered, a sound like a sob escaping its broken beak as it leaned into the child's touch. "Gege has to touch," Xiao Hei said, turning her unnerving gaze on Ling Tian. "Then he'll see."
Every instinct screamed at Ling Tian to flee, but the Fox's Paw embedded in his chest burned hotter with each step he took toward the dying creature. The heat spread through his veins, making his golden scales flare brighter in the shrine's dim light. When he finally pressed his palm to the phoenix's feverish brow, the world dissolved around him in a whirl of fire and memory.
He stood in a sky turned to flame, dragons locked in mortal combat above him, their massive forms blotting out the sun as they tore at each other with claws like scimitars. Below stretched a city unlike any mortal settlement - towers of crystalline light, bridges woven from solidified dawn, streets paved with molten gold. The Eclipse God's prison in its prime, before the fall.
The phoenix's voice echoed through the vision, each word resonating in his bones: "We were the wardens. The Nine-Heaven Dragons the guards. But the jailers... the jailers grew greedy."
The scene shifted violently, throwing Ling Tian into a memory not his own. Ling Clan elders in robes of midnight blue stood over the chained phoenix, their ceremonial knives carving into its living flesh, harvesting feathers that glowed with captured sunlight. The stench of burning flesh filled his nose as they cauterized each wound after plucking, ensuring their prize would live to be harvested again.
"They stole our feathers to make talismans," the phoenix's voice continued, thick with ancient pain. "Our blood to extend their lives. And when the dragons rebelled..."
The mural from the dungeon came alive around him - the nine mighty dragons bound in chains of living shadow, their power being siphoned into human vessels. Ling Tian watched in horror as his ancestors donned the stolen scales like crowns, their eyes gleaming with the same gold that now haunted his reflection.
The vision fractured like breaking glass, returning him to the freezing shrine with a gasp. The phoenix's breathing had grown even more labored, its great eye dimming like a guttering candle. "One feather remains," it whispered, beak trembling with the effort. "The last. Take it... and remember what you are."
With a final, shuddering breath, the phoenix's beak parted. A single feather - glowing like molten gold - drifted down into Ling Tian's waiting hand. The moment it touched his skin, white-hot agony lanced up his arm as the feather burned itself into his flesh, searing a permanent brand onto his palm. The pain stole his voice, his vision going black at the edges as the phoenix's final words followed him into unconsciousness:
"The Key isn't a tool. It's a trap - and you're the bait."
The shrine trembled violently as Ling Tian came back to himself, snow and stone dust raining from the ceiling as distant shouts echoed up the mountainside. Qing'er's sword was in her hand, her body positioned between him and the entrance. "They've found us," she hissed, the first real fear coloring her voice.
Ling Tian looked down at the feather-shaped brand now seared into his palm, the flesh still smoking slightly. The phoenix lay still in death, its massive body crumbling to ash now that its final task was complete, the chains that had bound it disintegrating into rust-red powder.
Xiao Hei tugged urgently at his sleeve, her small face uncharacteristically serious. "Gege has to run now," she whispered.
The first arrows struck the shrine's crumbling pillars as they fled back into the storm, the Blood Saber hunters' howls rising above the wind like wolves on the scent of blood. And deep in Ling Tian's chest, beneath the newly burning brand and the ever-present weight of the Fox's Paw, the Eclipse God's laughter echoed through his bones.
The hunt was on.
The real question was - who was truly the hunter, and who the prey?