Chapter 4: To Bring an End


    Since being kidnapped by a horde of rats, freed from a prison cell by a talking snake, and gaining mythical powers, Xin thought he’d seen and heard it all.


    He stared at Suilin, whose white scales were rapidly losing their luster. The orb sat in his open hand.


    “Are you serious?” he pressed, shaking her alert. “If this is some poor attempt at a joke, I’m chucking this thing.”


    Suilin regarded him with the usual, unblinking eyes. Though, this time around, lucidity was fading. She opened her mouth, fangs crumbling. “You must,” she hissed. “The formations would pick up on my presence otherwise. It’s hardly any safer up there than here. I admit this is a gamble. I can’t foresee the results, servant, but it’s our only chance.”


    With her piece said, Suilin started disintegrating around his neck, fading away into black ash before being carried off by the frigid winds of the sewer shaft. What remained in his hand was the white orb.


    The lift shrieked in protest. Xin glanced up, his gaze latching onto a thick bar of warm, unmistakable sunlight above. His legs nearly gave out in relief, like a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding finally released.


    With little time to think, Xin popped the orb in his mouth and gulped it down as he reached the end of its predestined courses. All out of rails to ascend, the lift grinded to a shuddering halt. He glanced around, shielding his eyes from the blinding sunlight.


    For a moment, nothing happened. The orb went down as well as a whole egg would’ve, which to say, was hardly pleasant. To Xin, the stuff of formations had been nothing but the placebos for the easily-spooked, the illogical. But if a thirteen-year-old orphan could conjure ghosts from his fingertips to conduct his bidding, nothing, not even dragons, would seem out of place in his new, bold world.


    He took a deep breath of fresh air. If the Heavens still had a shred of mercy on his soul, he''d never have to see—or smell—the inside of a sewer again.


    Xin took his first step off the lift onto a rusted catwalk, but a sharp pain exploded in his chest, bringing the boy to his knees. His vision blurred from the agony, and with little more to guide him than his hands, he crawled to the end of the catwalk, barely managing to drag himself to solid ground.


    He tore open at his shirt, stifling a scream. If there was one thing he was good at—it was never letting the child bubble up to the surface. Screaming and sobbing could wait until he was safe within his tower back at the Orphanarium.


    Right where his heart should be, was warping, melting flesh. He took his eyes off it, breathing hard. Scurrying on his rear, he backed away into the wall of the abandoned lift station, at least it appeared to be one. It was difficult to focus with the pain, with whatever was happening to his body.


    He was a fool to trust a demon. She’d said it herself. The purpose of demons was to devour and slay humans. But the child in him wanted to think otherwise. Wanted to think that the talking snake was somehow a friend. Because the truth was he had none. Not amongst the other orphans or Madam Sparrow or anyone from the city. And if not even other humans wanted to be his friends, how foolish was he to assume a demon would.


    Xin’s eyes fluttered open and shut, and then his world went dark.


    The shoreline from which his father had left was hauntingly beautiful. It wasn’t a grand send-off at the docks, but a secluded stretch of the coast that was a stone’s throw from their family’s estate.


    His father had withheld the real reason, but Xin now knew discretion was key when running off to distant lands with what was left of your riches to escape your creditors. His family had been left behind as possible collateral. The sacrificial goat for his sins.


    Of course, it’d been phrased otherwise to the boy’s family. “A year,” his father told his teary-eyed mother. “Give me a year and I’ll return with so much silver we’ll never have to work another day in our lives. Xin will be raised like a prince. He’ll marry a noble girl from the Crown District, we’ll reclaim all of your old family titles.”


    His father then knelt down to Xin, ruffling his head as he’d always done when showing the rare display of rather un-Kunlun-like affection. “And you have to be strong,” he said. “You’re my little prince. My warrior. You’ve got both the soul of a merchant and a fighter. Look after your mother, Fang Xin.”


    And then he held Xin’s mother tight in his arms before boarding the little sailing ship—a dingy vessel with bright-red sails, but no balloons to lift it into the sky where it might soar with the other ships.


    Would it get lonely? Xin thought, clinging to his mother’s sleeves. Would father be lonely out amidst the waves? So far from home.


    The ship never returned. With the remaining silver gone, forfeited to creditors and servants clamoring for lost wages, they downsized to a cramped apartment in the Lower Passes. His mother didn’t take it well.


    As a former noble lady of the Yellow Court—Xin’s maternal grandfather had been a hanger-on of the last Yellow Emperor to grace the throne of the Restored Dynasty, she’d always been accustomed to a certain lifestyle. With the silver and servants gone, she turned to Blister Ash.


    Xin’s life crumbled in the next year.


    With his mother spending entire days in Ash parlours, Xin learned to adapt. No, he was forced to adapt. Survival rode on it.


    Xin got used to working errands on the street, finding ways to earn silver to pay off the neverending list of creditors that came knocking at their door. Jewelry, family heirlooms, his old silken baby robes and his mother’s dresses, all disappeared into the mottled hands of pawnshops for a pittance of silver coins.


    Every morning he returned to the deserted shore, watching the horizon of the Eastern Endless Sea. He was hopeful at first, but soon enough, it became more ritual than any genuine attempt to find his father. Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.


    At night, he’d dream of his father’s return from Alteron or Hyperia or even the distant Falkgarde. And every morning spent at the shore killed the hope nurtured in the crucible of his dreams.


    Xin sat with his knees drawn up to his chest.


    The air smelled of salt. Waves lapped at the shore gently, pushing in and receding in cyclical patterns. As usual, the shoreline was empty except for the occasional steel-clad ship chugging along toward the port, leaving trails of wispy smoke in their wake. No wooden sailing boats. Only a lunatic would resort to trusting such antiques to carry them across entire oceans.


    Footsteps crunched in the sand behind him.


    Xin glanced behind to see a beautiful woman approaching him. She was dressed in pale mourning robes, the voluminous billowing like the sails of a ship. Her hair was long and white, parted at her forehead. Delicate scales lined the regions around her eyes, just above her tall cheekbones, each amber pupil slitted like a serpent’s.


    The woman smiled. “Hello, servant.”


    Recognition flashed behind Xin’s eyes. Even if her voice was older, and she was shaped as a human, with two beautiful eyes, a slender nose, and full, red lips, he somehow just knew.


    “What did you do to me?” he asked. “Is this the afterlife?”


    “Hardly,” Suilin scoffed. She gazed out toward the horizon. The sun was setting, streaks of orange burning above the waves and filling out the sky. “I’ve come to possess your body. You will forfeit it to me.”


    “That sounds like a rather poor deal for me,” Xin said. “I like my body.”


    Suilin blinked. “Demons don’t typically ask for what they want,” she admitted, sleeves billowing with the coastal winds. “But you’ve been remarkably loyal and steadfast. I’ll cut you a deal, servant. I can offer you freedom from pain. It won’t be death, but a state close to it. A dream-filled existence where you’ll never have to hurt again. Not by other humans or the city or… even by family.”


    “Is that what you think I want?” Xin asked, pouting. “I’m not some child who’ll be pacified by sweet platitudes. What do you want? Is possessing me some bid for survival?”


    Suilin smirked. “What I want is simple,” she said. “I want to bring this city down to the ground. I want to watch that Emperor of yours weep as I burn it all down. His palace, his pleasure labyrinths, the industry that chokes the natural world beneath it.”


    Xin watched, words dying in his throat. She wasn''t changing, per se—but unveiling something primal. The ends of her long, white hair began to rise as if they were underwater.


    “We nourished the first of your kind,” she said listlessly, tearing her gaze from the sea. “My sisters blessed and purified the Yellow Axis for the first of your kings. The waters flowed true and clean under our watch. They lavished us with gifts and empty promises of worship. How silly were we to trust the words of humans.” Her long, delicate fingers clenched into fists at her sides. “When they erected their mills, we thought nothing of it. When they dumped waste and bodies into our waters, we merely did as we’d done for centuries. And when they created their terrible factories and refineries, their filth slowly choking the life from my sisters, I turned my back on the Yellow Axis.”


    “Is that what happened to you?” Xin asked, finally finding the right words. “Is that how you became a demon?”


    “For my refusal to become a sacrificial pig,” Suilin spat, “I was branded a renegade. Now, my sisters have all perished, or live on as unthinking slaves within the skeletons of your city’s precious constructs. How else do you think the Crown District is kept so clean? Kunlun was built on the backs of us demons, so it only makes sense it’s ours to do with as we please.”


    “By the Yellow Heaven,” Xin muttered softly. “You''re telling me the spirits are trapped within the constructs? This whole time I thought they were…”


    “Dead?” Suilin finished, laughing bitterly. “Would that have made things any better? Would that ease your conscience, servant? To know that you’ve created tools from their corpses rather than eternal slaves?”


    “My life was ruined because of constructs,” Xin said, standing up. He brushed sand from his trousers. And for the first time since the beginning of their conversion, he turned his gaze from the horizon and looked up at the Suilin, who stood a head taller than him. “My father made a gamble. It’s not very merchant-like, but he couldn’t just lay off all his workers, not while they had families to provide for.”


    Suilin arched a thin, nobly-shaped brow. “I suppose we’re sharing sob stories now,” she said, a faint smile on her lips. “Let me guess, the other factories on the row held no such qualms?”


    Xin shook his head. “Everyone starved anyway. We lost everything.”


    “An interesting insinuation, servant,” Suilin said, staring at him as if he suddenly started laying golden eggs. “You presume to assist me on my quest to return the Kunlun Mountains to their original state? Is that all you stake your plea on? Do you consider yourself worthy of the task, pitiful as you are.”


    “You said it yourself,” Xin said. “I’ve proved an exceedingly fine servant. Sure, you could take over my body. I wouldn’t even know how to resist something like that. But I don’t want to exist solely within some fake dream while my dreams go unaccomplished.”


    Suilin scoffed, but a part of her seemed receptive, as if beckoning Xin to go on—to say what he’d kept suppressed for three years. “And what do you want to do?” she asked. “What’s so important that I can’t claim your body for my own?”


    “I haven’t stuck it to them yet,” Xin said, turning in the direction of the city. He performed a rather rude gesture, dragging his thumb across his neck. “I want those rich pricks who treat human lives like constructs to fall just as much as you do. The city, and all its stupid towers should just burn.”


    Xin saluted Suilin, his fists clasped together in respect. “I don’t think I can settle for just being your servant anymore,” he said. “Make me stronger. Make me your partner in crime. Make it so we can stand on equal footing.”


    “A child dares to speak of arrangements with me?” Suilin muttered. “You haven’t lived or seen nearly enough. However, I can make you my official disciple. You will continue to do as I command, but I will neither possess your body or deliberately bring harm to you. That is all I’m willing to extend. I wouldn’t push my luck any further, if I were you, servant.”


    Xin dropped to his knees and kowtowed, bringing his forehead to the ground thrice. It was Kunlun custom, not that Suilin likely followed it. Still, he wanted to show some measure of sincerity. “This humble disciple greets his master,” he said. “Please take care of me on our journey to destroy Kunlun City.”


    Suilin appeared bemused; flashing a rare smile. She knelt down and with her finger, lifted Xin’s gaze up by his chin. Her slitted eyes flashed with a golden glow, piercing deep within his soul.


    “Very well,” Suilin said, letting Xin free. “I, a demonic being of the Sixth Cycle, accept you as my disciple. If you ever betray me, you’ll burn to a crisp in a fiery blaze, and your soul will be damned to the Nine Hells. Not that it’ll make a difference. Don’t expect to die as a human anymore.”


    Xin nodded eagerly. “I will accompany you to the very end, master.”


    “Don’t bother with honorifics,” Suilin said, lips curling in distaste. “What is your name, disciple?”


    “Fang Xin.”


    “I see,” Suilin mused. She tapped her finger against Xin’s forehead. “I shall see you on the other side, Disciple Xin.”


    For a moment, Suilin’s form flickered. She wasn’t the tall, stately woman of the present, but a scared little girl in rags, scorch marks covering splotches of her skin. Her eyes were angry, molten-gold tears trailing down her gaunt face. The scales above her cheekbones peeled painfully from her pale, sickly flesh.


    Xin understood then. His dream world, the shoreline, came apart like a burning painting. He took one last look at the empty horizon, and turned back toward the city. Walking back toward the dark, monstrous outline of Kunlun City as the world fell apart around him, disintegrating into a haze of smoke.