Feng Ren was the first to speak.

  “You shouldn’t be standing.”

  Zhao Wei blinked, and the world refocused. Light swam where shadows should’ve lived. The air still tasted like scorched stone and burning memories. Her skin pulsed each breath felt like her lungs borrowed someone else’s air.

  The mark on her wrist was gone.

  No, not gone. It had moved, spiraled now across her ribs in coiling runes that shimmered when she breathed.

  Bai inched forward, holding a scroll like a shield. “You okay?”

  She nodded, slow.

  He flinched.

  That’s when she noticed it: her presence was wrong. Off. The room vibrated with unease not from danger, but her. The ruins had recognized her, welcomed her, reshaped for her.

  But her companions?

  They hadn’t.

  Feng Ren didn’t reach for her, didn’t speak again. And Bai… Bai was studying her like she was something to be cataloged. Contained.

  Zhao Wei sheathed her blade with care. “We leave before dusk.”

  Bai cleared his throat. “Actually… we might have a problem with that.”

  He pointed to the entrance.

  There, blocking the path, stood Yin Qiren, a former elite tactician under the House of Zhen, presumed executed for war crimes. Cloaked in Creed black, his white hair hung loose like bone silk. A twin-bladed spear rested lazily across his shoulder, as if he were waiting in line for tea instead of staring down the girl he once tried to burn alive.

  “Well,” Qiren said, smiling like a blade’s edge. “If it isn’t the Ghost General reborn.”

  Feng Ren reacted instantly dagger out, stance lowered.

  Zhao Wei stepped forward. “I thought you died in the siege.”

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  “I did.” Qiren tapped his chest. “Then I crawled out from hell when they whispered your name again.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Did you think claiming the Shard wouldn’t echo? That the Creed wouldn’t feel it?”

  Bai tried to retreat quietly. A root wrapped around his ankle and dragged him to the floor.

  “Oh for NOT AGAIN” he yelped, scribbling a ward mid-fall.

  Zhao Wei didn’t flinch. Her new power curled in her bones, clawing to be unleashed. The temptation was raw tear him apart, end him, silence the past. But Qiren wasn’t just baiting her.

  He was watching.

  Studying.

  Testing if she’d lost her humanity.

  “You’re not here to fight me,” she said evenly.

  “No,” he replied. “I’m here to see if the Void made you stronger or hollow.”

  He flicked a charm toward her. It sliced through the air, glowing with Creed-forged binding energy.

  Feng Ren knocked it aside mid-flight. “You’ll test her over my corpse.”

  “Tempting,” Qiren muttered, and vanished.

  Zhao Wei’s blade was out before he fully disappeared.

  The fight didn’t start it erupted.

  Qiren was faster than anyone had a right to be. His strikes came from impossible angles, dancing like broken rhythm. Feng Ren parried twice before being flung across the chamber.

  Bai screamed something about sacrificial wards and promptly hid behind a collapsed altar.

  Zhao Wei met Qiren’s blade with hers. Metal sang.

  “You’re afraid,” he whispered. “You know what it means to hold that kind of power.”

  She pushed him back, eyes glowing void-black. “And you’re here to prove I shouldn’t.”

  He grinned. “Exactly.”

  She surged forward.

  Their blades collided spirit against spirit, memory against memory.

  Qiren gasped. “You still remember me, don’t you?”

  She did.

  He was the one who led the unit that executed her strategist in the war. The man who stood laughing when Wei Ning’s city burned. He knew her patterns. Knew her rage.

  But he didn’t know Zhao Wei.

  Her footwork changed mid-strike, new angles, unpredictable flows. She broke from old rhythms. Became something he couldn’t read.

  One strike.

  Two.

  A third nearly took his hand.

  Qiren stumbled. “You’ve evolved.”

  She smiled grimly. “No. I’ve moved on.”

  She knocked him down.

  But before she could land the final blow

  “Zhao Wei, STOP!”

  Feng Ren’s voice broke through.

  She paused. Blade inches from Qiren’s throat.

  He wasn’t moving.

  But neither was she.

  Her body shook.

  Not from exhaustion.

  From holding it back.

  The Shard wanted to finish it. The voice in her blood whispered for violence. For finality.

  “Don’t lose yourself,” Feng Ren said, breath ragged. “Please.”

  She took a step back.

  The darkness in her dimmed—but didn’t vanish.

  They bound Qiren in sigil-threaded cords. He laughed even as the magic scorched his skin.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he rasped. “You think the Creed won’t come next? They’ve seen you.

  They’ll carve your name into every black altar they find. They want you, child. Not to kill you.

  To make you their queen.”

  Bai’s jaw dropped. “Did he just say?”

  Zhao Wei turned away. “Let him rot.”

  But that night, long after they camped beyond the ruins and Qiren’s taunts faded to silence, Zhao Wei stood watch alone. The moon hung heavy.

  And the wind whispered.

  “Queen of nothing, unless you rise.

  Unshackle your hunger.

  The world must learn to fear you again.”

  She didn’t sleep.

  But the Void did.

  It dreamed of fire.