It was a sughter that night.

  It had not been anything like the training exercises I'd imagined no stage directions, no soaring speeches or dramatic heroics. It was mere chaos. The bandits, no, the beast-men, were nothing like any enemy I had ever faced. They didn't fight the way humans fought. They fought like beasts, savage and brutal, and in that moment, I realized how fragile my life was.

  I wasn't a hero. I didn't have the training and the strength to fight back. I wasn't Lan, Zhao, or any of them. They were seasoned fighters, hardened by battle. I was just a kid, in the wrong pce at the wrong time, thrust into a world where I had no pce being.

  The camp had been overrun in minutes. I had just reached the rim of the campfire when the first of the beast men tore through our ranks. Screaming filled the air, the cshing ring of metal on meat, the sound of wet, nauseating impacts as bodies smmed into the ground.

  I looked around, my chest pounding with fear, but I was too te. There was no safety, no escape. The beast men were everywhere, on top of the guards, shredding them apart like ragdolls. I stood there, frozen with terror, as my guards fell one by one.

  Zhao's massive body was torn asunder by the wolf-headed beast-man, his body sck as its jaws cmped down on his throat. Liu tried to strike back, but his sword was slow, and his attacks were weak. The bear-headed beast-men beat him down, crushing his skull in a single savage stroke.

  Panic. I needed to escape. But nowhere to escape. The beastmen were moving in. No other option. I dropped to the ground, taking cover behind the bodies of my guards and servants, hoping that I would be spared.

  I buried my face in the earth, trying to slow my breathing, my heart racing inside my chest. It wasn't enough to survive the fight. It wasn't enough to hide.

  The beast-men moved stealthily around the camp, hunting among the corpses, their gruff ughter as they mutited what was left of my people. My family's guards, the servants who had cared for me, and even my childhood friend were gone in an instant. Their cries still echoed in my mind, ringing in my ears long after they had ceased.

  And then, as suddenly as it began, it was over.

  The beast-men had finished their sughter.

  They drug the bodies, shoving them indiscriminately into a bottomless, dark hole as if they were refuse. I stood there, pinned beneath the bnket of dead bodies, too immobilized with fright to move, too afraid even to breathe. My body wracked uncontrolbly. It couldn't occur. It didn't occur. They were dead. All those I had grown up with, all those that had guarded me, were dead.

  The air was heavy with the stench of death and blood as the beast men attacked the camp. I listened to them speaking in deep, guttural tones words that were nearly not words at all. Their ughter was disgusting, a twisted noise that bit at the periphery of my brain. They didn't care. They didn't consider us human. We were mere meat.

  The death smell was overwhelming. It clung to me, on whatever I looked at, as the beast-men continued to drag the corpses to the den. Dead bodies weighed against me, covering me with shadows. I sensed the lifeless eyes of my friends staring into the void, but I was unable to look. I could not because I knew that when I did so, I would break.

  Hours passed. Or maybe days? Time meant nothing to me as I just sat there in the darkness, not moving, not willing to do anything but wait. Wait for them to leave. Wait for something to get a chance to slip away.

  But when I was finally able to shove myself out of the pile of corpses and stand up on shaky legs, I found myself in a cave. Its walls were dripping wet, the air filled with the stench of rot and death. The beast men had thrown us into a pit like garbage, but I wasn't the first to nd there.

  Looking around the cave my eyes fell upon the corpses strewn across the ground. Some of them were unrecognizable, their faces twisted into an unrecognizable shape. There were others. Others that were still fresh. There were some corpses that stood out a few familiar faces from the Mo Sect. Were they part of a caravan as well? Had they suffered the same fate?

  My stomach churned, a hunger-familiar, queasy hunger bubbling up within me. It had been days since the attack. I hadn't eaten since the massacre. And now, surrounded by the stench of death, I could feel my body weakening. My mind was starting to break, too.

  The hunger ate at me, pushing me into madness. I did not wish to do it. I did not wish to, but I had no other option. I had to survive. I closed my eyes, sobbing as I reached for the nearest body to me.

  I did not know how much time I spent chewing on the flesh of the dead minutes, hours, or perhaps days. Time did not matter anymore. I needed to survive, no matter what it would take to make me something I would hate.

  With every mouthful, a fragment of my humanity disappeared. The blood was warm, still alive. I struggled to maintain my mind, to battle the guilt that cwed at my chest, but it was useless. The hunger was overpowering, and so I ate.

  The taste was not what I had anticipated. It was not just flesh. It was death itself, consuming me from the inside out. I could sense the taste of despair, of hopelessness as I tore into the flesh. I felt as though I was drinking pieces of my soul, burning my very existence with each swallow.

  And then, when I felt I could bear no more, something strange happened. My gaze nded on a body that stood apart from the rest. A cultivator. His attire bore the sign of the Mo Sect, and his battered and bruised face was faintly recognizable. By the time I approached the body, I noticed a sword beside him a pale blue bde, glowing gently in the dim light of the cave.

  I hesitated. But then I noticed something else: a worn, frayed book stuck into the folds of his robes. My hands trembled as I opened the book, scanning the pages of intricate symbols and charts. The text was written in a nguage I barely knew, but there was something. Familiar with it. As I read, my mind began to decipher the symbols. It was a cultivation technique. The cultivation technique of the Mo Sect.

  I had heard rumors of its the Light Sword Technique a method of compressing energy into a sword of light, focusing power into one vessel. It was said that the method allowed cultivators to move power with their swordpy, to strike with crushing force. But it wasn't just about skill; it was about discipline, focus, and an unbreakable will. And I had none of them. Or at least, I hadn't thought so.

  I began to read more, my mind slowly absorbing words. The process wasn't easy, and the book itself wasn't complete. But it was something. It was a start.

  My shaking fingers closed around the sword. The icy metal hummed in my hand as if it approved of my presence. It felt heavy in my hand and sensed a low thrum of power coming from within it. Here was power—power to liberate me, power to provide me with a degree of survival.

  I couldn't resist. I began to practice, mimicking the stances and the forms outlined in the book. My movements were clumsy and slow at first. The sword felt heavy in my hands. But as the days went by, I began to feel something deeper. A spark of power within me, something that was stirred by the sword. It was weak and delicate, but it was there.

  Days turned into weeks. I was training with the sword, according to the book, trying to get the hang of the method. It was not easy. The air inside the cave was stale, and my physical state was compromised as a result of the ck of food and the ordeal I had endured. And then there was something new now, something which propelled me onward: the urge to live.

  But the more years passed, the more I was overcome with guilt. I devoured the corpses of my friends and my comrades. I had committed things that could not be uttered to live, to keep the fme of hope burning inside me. And every time I shut my eyes, their faces came to mind.

  I was losing myself. I knew it. The hunger, the desperation, the madness was too much. My head was unraveling, and I had no idea where to go.

  And then, as my mind spun wild, I heard something. A fluttering, delicate sound like the beat of a bird's wings. I gnced and saw a shadow dashing through the air, and my heart skidded to a halt.

  A bck butterfly.

  It was beautiful, its wings glimmering with a faint, ethereal light. It flitted before me, its presence evoking in me a strange sense of calm as if it had waited for me eternally. The butterfly nded on my shoulder, its small body gentle against my flesh.

  And then, inside my mind, a voice was heard not with words, but with feeling. It was like the butterfly was talking to my very soul itself.

  "You have lived. But your price has been paid."

  The world altered.

  I was cold. Remote. Those emotions that had engulfed me—the fear, the guilt, the shame began to recede. I was transmuting, changing into something other. Less human. Senses grew keener. World around me seemed more defined, more acute. The hunger bothered me less now, and I could feel the power of the cave itself pulsing in unison with mine.

  A pure bck butterfly came from out of my body the spirit who had picked me was my companion. It had brought me there. But in exchange for its power, I had paid something. My name. My identity. My emotions.

  But I would survive. And that was all that mattered now.