The morning air was thin and sharp.
Frost gleamed along the branches like veins of silver, and the faint hum of something alive lingered just beneath the silence.
Mei Lian walked ahead of the others, her hood drawn low. The fox's power stirred beneath her ribs — restless, murmuring.
Every time her heartbeat slowed, she could feel its pulse echoing beneath her skin: gold beneath red, temptation beneath control.
She was learning to contain it.
But not to silence it.
When she looked at the world now, it shimmered — faint outlines flickering behind every living thing, like echoes of their hidden dreams.
Liang Hu's shadow burned faintly blue — a memory of his lost throne, his brother's crown, his bitterness like a bruise that never healed.
And Zhen Yu…
She hesitated when her gaze fell on him.
For an instant, she saw it — a vision not of war or death, but peace.
A home by the river, soft laughter, her reflection beside his.
Her heart lurched, and she turned away.
That wasn't her desire.
That was his.
The fox laughed softly in her mind, a voice like silk.
"You see it now, don't you? The hunger in all of them. So fragile. So easy to touch."
"Be silent," she thought sharply, pushing it back.
The laughter faded, but its echo clung to her pulse.
By dusk, they camped near a field of frostbitten reeds.
Zhen Yu gathered wood while Mei Lian traced sigils into the snow, her crimson magic seeping faintly into the ground — wards of control, meant to anchor her soul.
He approached her quietly.
"You haven't slept," he said.
She looked up — the faintest smile tugging at her lips.
"I can't," she signed. "Too many voices."
"The fox?"
She nodded once.
He knelt beside her. The firelight caught the scar beneath his jaw — a mark she hadn't noticed before.
"You said you could bind it," he murmured. "But it's still inside you. How do you know it won't win?"
She hesitated — then wrote slowly in the snow, Because I want to live.
Their eyes met.
Something unspoken passed between them — a fragile understanding carved from everything unhealed.
Later that night, as the others slept, Mei Lian sat alone facing the east.
The wind carried a strange chill — not of winter, but of something older, something moving.
The fox stirred again.
"You feel it too. Another presence."
She opened her eyes.
Far beyond the horizon, the mist shimmered faintly with a dull, metallic glow — like gold tainted with ash.
She felt it in her bones: a hunger different from the fox's.
Cold. Heavy. Patient.
"The next monster," she whispered.
"North-east."
Her crimson veins dimmed to gold for a moment — then steadied again.
At her back, Zhen Yu stirred in his sleep, his hand resting near his sword.
She looked at him once, long enough for her heart to ache — then turned her eyes toward the waiting horizon.
The fox within her purred quietly,
"Desire was only the beginning."