He swept through the darkness, floating high above… something.

  He didn’t know where he was going, or even who he was. All he knew was that he was searching for something precious. The world around him was changing, fluctuating. One moment he was flying, the next running, the next burrowing.

  Each movement pulled him deeper into the darkness, the ground shifting beneath him like sand, like mist, like nothing at all. His breath came slow, measured, though he wasn’t sure he was breathing at all.

  Something was watching him.

  The weight of it pressed against his skin, vast and distant, an unseen gaze that lingered without blinking. He couldn’t see it, couldn’t hear it, but it was there, and it was waiting.

  He moved faster.

  — — —

  Something was slipping away from him. He didn’t know what, didn’t know why, only that it was important. He needed to reach it. If he hesitated, it would be gone forever. His legs burned with effort, his muscles screaming with exertion, but he wasn’t moving any faster. The distance between him and whatever he was chasing stretched further, pulling away like a shadow cast by the setting sun.

  He raged, fought, begged, surrendered.

  There was no one to hear it. There was no one to care.

  — — —

  Feathers.

  A flurry of black.

  They swarmed around him, filling the air, weightless and slow. They curled around his arms, slid against his throat, brushed his face like drifting snow. Soft. Silent. Endless.

  He tried to move through them, but they only thickened, folding over him like waves, pressing into his skin.

  Then he saw the blood.

  Thin lines, faint and precise, tracing his hands, his arms, his chest. The feathers moved like blades, slicing through him without pain, leaving trails of red he couldn’t feel. They clung to him, wrapped tighter, pulling him under.

  He struggled.

  The more he fought, the deeper they cut.

  — — —

  Something inside him was shifting, waking, burning.

  It was him and not-him, foreign and natural all at once.

  The feathers pushed past skin, past muscle. They moved deeper, deeper, reaching for something he couldn’t name. They slipped between his ribs, curled around his spine, filled his lungs. His heart pounded. The something inside him flared, wild and desperate, but it couldn’t stop them. It slipped through the gaps in the feathers, useless. Weak.

  The feathers weren’t just cutting him.

  They were changing him, altering, twisting.

  The moment stretched. His vision blurred. His body wasn’t his anymore, wasn’t anything anymore—

  A sound tore through the void, a single, massive wingbeat.

  The feathers scattered.

  The world collapsed.

  Darkness took him once more.

  — — —

  Cold.

  Jiang opened his eyes.

  The sky stretched above him, pale and empty. Breath curled from his lips, faint against the morning air. He stared for a moment, mind sluggish, body stiff.

  Snow clung to him in a thin layer, dusting his clothes, covering his hair. His fingers flexed against the ground, cracking the frost that had settled over his skin. He should be freezing. He wasn’t.

  Slowly, he pushed himself upright.

  The clearing was silent. White blanketed the earth, soft and undisturbed. No footprints, no sign of movement.

  His fire had gone out, leaving nothing but a darkened patch of ash beneath the snow.

  The feather was gone.

  Jiang stilled.

  He scanned the clearing, eyes sweeping across the ground, the trees, the sky. Nothing. No sign of a struggle, no broken branches, no tracks leading away. It hadn’t been dragged off, hadn’t been burned, hadn’t been buried under the snow.

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  It was simply gone.

  He exhaled through his nose, shaking the frost from his sleeves. The sensations were sharp in a way that was different, but everything was reassuringly real, not like…

  Jiang frowned. Not like what? He focused, trying to grasp at the thought. It was like trying to remember a dream after waking up, details quickly slipping away as his mind awoke. He didn’t remember falling asleep. Didn’t remember anything at all, except—

  A sound tore through the void, a single, massive wingbeat.

  The thought sent a shiver down his spine, too deep and instinctive to ignore. He reached for the memory, grasping at something just beyond his reach. It slipped through his fingers.

  Jiang frowned. What had he been thinking about?

  He shook himself, dismissing the oddity and refocusing on his current situation. Clearly, eating a piece of the feather had done something to him, enough to knock him unconscious for… some amount of time.

  He glanced up at the sky, gauging the time. It was… early morning? A few hours after sunrise, by the looks of things. Had he been unconscious all night? Something told him it had been longer, though he didn’t know why he thought that.

  He clenched and unclenched his hands. Clearly, the feather had had some kind of effect – his cloak was warm and his clothing well-suited for the cold, but that didn’t mean he could spend a night – or maybe more than one – exposed like this without feeling a lot worse than he currently did.

  And yet, he felt fine. Better than ever, really.

  Stronger. Lighter. The cold barely touched him. His limbs didn’t ache, his muscles didn’t burn. And beneath it all, something new.

  He shut his eyes, inhaling.

  Qi.

  It pulsed inside him, small but steady, nestled in his lower abdomen just behind his navel. Bright, clear, unmistakable. His dantian.

  Ignited.

  The realization settled over him, not in a rush of triumph, but as a quiet, inevitable fact. He had broken through. Reached the first stage of Qi Condensation. The energy hummed beneath his skin, more solid than before, no longer a formless current slipping through his fingers.

  He should be relieved. He should be excited. This was what he needed, the requirement for gaining access to the Azure Sky Sect and the resources they could give him.

  So why did it feel wrong?

  Jiang flexed his fingers. His Qi responded immediately, stirring like an extension of himself. No hesitation. No resistance.

  The unease didn’t fade.

  He forced the thought away and pushed himself fully to his feet. His body moved smoothly, no stiffness, no lingering exhaustion. He swept the clearing one last time, gaze lingering on the cold remains of his fire. He didn’t know how long he had been unconscious, but it had been long enough for everything to freeze over.

  His stomach twisted, hunger making itself known. He turned toward his pack, crouched beside it, and reached for what little food he had left. The moment he unwrapped the bundle of meat, he grimaced.

  Rotten.

  The smell hit him first, thick and sour. He dropped it back into the cloth, frowning. The cold should have kept it fresh for at least a couple of days. He’d had the meat for most of a day before he’d come across the feather, so that meant he’d probably been knocked out for at least a day, probably two. If too much time had passed, if the entrance exams were already over—

  He pushed the thought aside. It wasn’t productive to focus on something out of his control – the best he could do was head directly towards the Sect at his best speed.

  Before he could gather his items and set off, a rustling from above drew his attention. Jiang turned, gaze snapping to the tree line.

  There was a raven watching him.

  It sat perched on a low branch, feathers ruffled against the cold, watching him. The silent swarm that had filled the trees around him when he’d first arrived were gone, but this one had stayed.

  The bird tilted its head at him before dropping from its perch and landing lightly on the snow.

  Jiang watched it for a moment.

  The raven didn’t move closer, didn’t caw, didn’t make any noise at all. It just stood there, watching. Its feathers were sleek, untouched by frost, eyes dark and sharp. Not interested in the meat he had discarded. Not waiting for anything, as far as he could tell.

  Jiang stepped toward it.

  The raven hopped back. Not far, just enough to stay out of reach.

  He took another step.

  It hopped again.

  Not afraid. Just keeping its distance.

  Jiang exhaled through his nose and turned away. He had better things to do than waste time on a bird. If it wanted to sit there and watch him, fine. It wasn’t stopping him from leaving.

  He slung his pack over his shoulder and stepped out of the clearing, heading towards the Qingyun mountains in as direct a manner as possible.

  The change was immediately noticeable.

  His body moved smoother, lighter. The cold didn’t bite at his skin the way it should. The air felt sharper, clearer, every breath filling his lungs with crisp energy. His footing was more certain, his balance more natural. His limbs didn’t ache, his muscles didn’t burn.

  He picked up the pace.

  The slow, steady jog he normally used for travel came without effort, his strides longer, his movements more fluid. His boots met the ground with certainty, no hesitation in his steps.

  Faster.

  A pace that should have been a strain, something he could only hold for short bursts, felt easy. His body kept up without protest, his breathing steady. He could feel his Qi moving steadily beneath his skin, cycling endlessly around his body. It was strange, but not unnatural.

  This didn’t feel like something forced onto him, something foreign pressing against his body.

  It felt like something he had always been capable of.

  He adjusted his pace again, just to test it. Faster still. The edges of the trees blurred past him, his speed carrying him through the snow-packed terrain without pause. He wasn’t sprinting, but this—this was what a full run would have been for him before. Something he could only hold for minutes at a time.

  This was what it meant to be a cultivator. To carry and wield the power of the immortals, even if he only had the merest scrap of it.

  For the first time, he could see why so many cultivators in stories were arrogant. And for the first time, he wondered what sort of power the stronger cultivators wielded. How fast could Elder Lu move?

  When he’d irritated Elder Yan and the man had struck him, he hadn’t seen the movement at all. He wondered if it would be different now, or if the ceiling for what was possible was as distant as ever, and he’d merely caught a glimpse of the stars high above.

  Jiang exhaled a little harder, the exertion starting to get noticeable. He slowed a little to a more comfortable pace, one that he felt was sustainable.

  A flutter of wingbeats behind him caught his attention, and when he glanced over his shoulder he saw that the raven was still following him.

  Jiang watched it out of the corner of his eye, waiting for it to lose interest and turn back toward wherever it had come from.

  It didn’t.

  He frowned but kept moving.

  He had spent years in the forest. He knew the way animals acted. Birds didn’t follow people like this—not without a reason. But the raven wasn’t behaving like it was expecting food, or like it was guarding territory. It wasn’t acting injured, or scared, or aggressive.

  It was just watching him.

  Jiang rolled his shoulders and looked forward again.

  Some of the other hunters in the village had told him that ravens were among the most intelligent birds, able to remember faces and hold grudges for years. But then, he’d never killed a raven before – not much point, really, they were too small for a meal and too difficult to strike out of the air – so he doubted it was anything to do with that.

  A part of him knew it was likely related to the massive feather he’d used to ignite his dantian, but he carefully ignored that part. Something about the thought felt… dangerous. Not the danger of a predator, but the danger of standing on top of a steep cliff in a storm, the threat of a night with no moon. Less tangible, perhaps, but no less deadly.

  They weren’t the kind of thoughts he should be exploring out in the woods alone. And as strange as it was, it wasn’t attacking him. It wasn’t doing anything at all.

  Jiang huffed through his nose and kept running.

  It would get tired eventually.

  Probably.

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