A lone wild goose cut across the clouds, its silhouette stark against the ashen sky. The setting sun bled into the horizon, its fading light mirroring the shuttered storefronts along the street.
Ming Xuan stood on Nanting Street, the hour well past mid-afternoon. Most market stalls had packed up, and early-closing shops were already barred. Passersby brushed past him—some chattering incessantly, others scowling or beaming, their faces vivid with mortal preoccupations.
To his eyes, their fleeting lifespans—measured in mere decades—rendered their worries insignificant. Whether petty domestic squabbles or the rise and fall of dynasties, all were but grains of sand in the hourglass of time, scarcely worth noting. The rapid shifts in their expressions felt alien; a year of his emotional tides might pale against a single day of their capricious moods. Trapped in this dissonance, the loneliness of his otherness enveloped him like a second skin. The sorrows of humans and demons never intersect. For a wild moment, he considered snatching the liquor from a patrolling guard's hand, if only to taste the reckless oblivion mortals so cherished.
He wandered aimlessly until the city's outskirts swallowed him. A handful of stars pricked the twilight, and a cold wind bit through his robes. Here, the bustle of the marketplace gave way to desolation.
The scent of grave soil teased his nostrils—a demon's keen senses warned of the cemetery ahead, its mounds and tombstones faintly visible in the gloom.
But before the graves stood an unfinished structure, its signboard proclaiming it "The Astral Pavilion." Gilded railings and tiered eaves marked it as an opulent anomaly, like a pearl dropped in the dirt or a fallen star lodged in the earth.
All day, I've listened to humans fret over trifles and coins, he mused, circling the pavilion. Yet someone built this marvel in wasteland—someone powerful. Aligning with such a patron might ease his survival.
The pavilion lived up to its name: a perfect observatory. The afternoon's trivial human concerns now struck him as laughably simple. With his magic, he could unravel their fears and desires in moments. Three centuries of life hadn't made him a sage, but gazing down at mortals was like observing ants. Their minds were blank pages, yet the patterns inked upon them were tediously alike.
A night breeze carried the caw of crows. As he pondered his next move, raucous laughter erupted from a tavern across the road. Five drunken brutes staggered out, their breath thick with liquor.
Spotting Ming Xuan beneath the pavilion, they paused. Even through their haze, his demeanor stood apart—composed yet unyielding, his poise as steady as a sea-worn crag, though his frayed robes and shadowed eyes betrayed hardship.
To their crude minds, restraint equaled weakness. And in their world, weakness was an invitation.
"Hey, pretty boy!" The lead brute, his face a slab of meat, swaggered forward. "You lost? This here's—hic—Lord Yang's turf. Ain't no place for gutter trash."
Ming Xuan almost laughed. These blustering fools reminded him of the minor demons he'd once dealt with—all bark and no bite, collapsing at the first real strike. Unlike the Witch-Priest, whose mere presence had radiated suffocating power.
His smirk was all the provocation they needed.
A fist crashed toward his shoulder. He sidestepped, but the glancing blow still burned. Fury surged—he grabbed the attacker's collar and slammed him down. Yet as he moved to counter the next strike, a punch to his ribs stole his breath.
This body… so fragile. He rallied his magic, but the brawl's sheer physicality overwhelmed him.
Fists and boots rained down. The men crowed with each hit, their drunken euphoria peaking as they pummeled this living effigy of their own inadequacies.
When consciousness returned, the stars overhead were his only witnesses. Blood and dirt crusted his robes; fresh wounds striped his face.
He stood mechanically, ignoring the pain. His body moved like a clockwork doll on its last winding. A grim assessment followed: no money (stolen), severe injuries (likely fatal if untreated), and no destination (nowhere to go).
For the first time in three hundred years, fate had him by the throat.
This world offered no mercy, no reprieve—just like the Witch-Priest's spell, which had cast him into hell without a map. Darkness begot darkness; violence dissolved into void. And in that void, his fire would sputter out with his last breath.
Nothing deadens the soul like despair.
Blood bubbled at his lips as he staggered onward, a puppet with severed strings. When the blackness at the edges of his vision swallowed the world, dawn's first light tinged the sky. As he collapsed, a distant sound teased his ears—the whisper of flowing water.