The knight died before he could scream.

  Jian’s hand, coated in the grey ash of the shattered sword, stepped past the soldier’s guard. He did not strike with a palm or a fist; he simply allowed his presence to expand. The knight’s blackened steel breastplate shivered and buckled inward. A wet, metallic crunch echoed through the burning granary as ribcage and lungs collapsed into a single ruin.

  The soldier flew backward, skipping across the mud until he slammed into a burning cart, leaving a broken heap of meat and iron in his wake.

  "Kill him!" Lordling Kaelor shrieked. His voice cracked with a terror foreign to his noble upbringing. "Captain! Vahnar! Use the Soul-Binding formation!"

  Ser Vahnar did not hesitate. He recognized a monster. At his command, the remaining six knights snapped into a circle around Jian, drawing short-swords etched with glowing crimson runes.

  "Formation: Iron Thorns!" Vahnar bellowed.

  The knights lunged in unison, weaving a web of lethal energy designed to trap any cultivator.

  Jian watched them with the detached interest of a man watching puppets dance on tangled strings.

  The hunger in his gut roared like a furnace. The sliver of power he had digested from the Old Man screamed for release. He pivoted on his heel, his hair whipping around him like a midnight shroud. He caught the first two blades on his bare forearms. The runes flared red, attempting to burn into his skin, but the void he had cultivated for eons simply drank the energy.

  Jian gripped the helmets of two knights and slammed their heads together. Shards of steel and bone sprayed into the air. He ducked under a horizontal swing from Vahnar, his body contorting in a way that defied human anatomy, and drove his elbow into the throat of a third knight.

  The windpipe crushed with the sound of a dry branch snapping.

  Finally, Jian reached for the hilt at his waist.

  The sword drank the firelight, turning the metal a deep, bruised purple. It left the scabbard with a low, mournful sigh.

  Jian swung.

  A simple horizontal cut. As the blade moved, the space in its path thinned. The three remaining knights, including Ser Vahnar, raised their shields, pouring their Qi into a desperate defense.

  The sword ignored the shields. It ignored the armor. It ignored the men.

  The reflective metal passed through flesh and bone without slowing down. For a heartbeat, the knights stood still, eyes wide and glassy. Then, their upper torsos slid slowly from their waists, falling into the mud with heavy, wet thuds.

  Lordling Kaelor dropped his silver dagger. He shook so hard his silk robes rustled. "Who... what are you?"

  Jian ignored him. He stood in the center of the carnage, chest heaving. The black gleam in his eyes faded, replaced by raw, hollow exhaustion. The sliver of power was gone, leaving behind an ache that turned his marrow to lead.

  And the hunger.

  It was a physical weight, a frantic beast in his belly demanding to be fed.

  The villagers emerged from the shadows. They stared at the piles of dead knights and the gaunt man who had ended the nightmare in seconds.

  Zelari stepped forward, hands still bound. She looked at Jian with a mix of awe and terror. "You... you saved us."

  Jian’s head snapped toward her. His aura shifted, dropping the temperature of the air until the remaining fires died into grey ash. He stepped toward Zelari, boots silent on the blood-soaked ground, and stopped inches from her face.

  "Why?" Jian whispered. "Why did you say those words earlier? To the old man in the square?"

  Zelari swallowed hard. "I... I don't know what you mean. I just couldn't let them take everything."

  Jian leaned in, searching her face with frantic paranoia. He looked for the ripple. He waited for her eyes to turn yellow, for her voice to shift into the lecherous cackle of the Old Man. Ten million years taught him that every kindness was a setup, every hero a puppet.

  "Is this the new gag?" Jian hissed. "Are you him? Is the 'rebellious village girl' just another role? Tell me! Are you real, or am I still in that box?"

  The villagers recoiled from the chill of his aura. Zelari stared at him, tears welling in her eyes—not from manipulation, but from primal fear of the madness in his gaze.

  "I don't know about any box," she breathed. "I’m just Zelari. My father was the blacksmith. My mother died in the Great Famine. I’m just a person."

  Jian stared at her for a long minute. He looked for the lie. He looked for the script. All he saw was a terrified woman watching her village burn. Slowly, the crushing weight of his aura receded. The cold snapped back into his body, leaving him looking smaller and profoundly tired.

  "Food," Jian croaked. "I need... food. Now."

  Elder Thalric clutched his wounded arm and gestured toward the tavern. "The larder... we have salted pork, bread. Please, take it. Take all of it."

  Jian walked toward the tavern with a stumbling, desperate gait.

  The villagers scrambled. They knew the Empire would send more men. Oakhaven was dead. Under Zelari’s direction, they gathered blankets, grain, and tools, loading two surviving carts with frantic haste.

  Inside the tavern, Jian found a slab of salted pork and tore into it, the salt stinging his cracked lips. He ate with rhythmic intensity, barely chewing. It wasn't enough. The immortal soul in his gut acted as a black hole, turning nutrients into nothing. He ate bread, hard cheese, and a bowl of cold stew left by the soldiers.

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  The hollow ache in his bones began to dull. He slumped against a wooden pillar, head falling back. The sounds of the villagers outside washed over him like static.

  He fell into a deep, dreamless sleep that felt like a temporary death.

  He woke to the creak of a cart wheel.

  The sun peeked over the horizon, casting long shadows across the ruins of Oakhaven. The village was a skeleton of blackened timber. Forty surviving villagers gathered by the well, belongings piled high on rickety carts.

  Jian stood in the tavern doorway. His hair was matted with dried blood and soot, but his eyes were clear and cold as obsidian.

  Zelari walked over to him, a pack on her back and a heavy walking stick in her hand. "We're leaving," she said. "There’s a village three days south, near the Whispering Woods. They have connections to the resistance. We might be safe there."

  Jian looked at her. "Good. Don't come back."

  "We were hoping..." Zelari hesitated. "We were hoping you might come with us. A man of your talents... the road is dangerous. Bandits follow the smoke of a burned village."

  Jian let out a short, dry laugh. "I am not a bodyguard, girl. I have my own path. I’m going where the power is strongest. I have a debt to settle with the heavens of this world."

  Zelari stepped closer, her eyes flashing with a spark of defiance. "You saved us yesterday. Why do that if you're just going to let us die on the road today? My father used to say that those with the power to act have a duty to the weak. That a man isn't measured by what he takes, but by what he protects."

  Jian froze.

  Those with power have a duty to the weak.

  The words hit him like a physical blow. He heard her voice. Meiling. She had said those exact words in the five-millionth year of his captivity. They had stood in a garden of white lotuses, and she had looked at him with such earnest conviction.

  A week later, he found her dual cultivating with a local magistrate, her face twisted into the lecherous grin of the Old Monster.

  "Don't," Jian hissed. His aura hardened into a jagged shell. "Don't you ever use those words with me."

  The air hummed with violent tension. Zelari flinched and stepped back.

  "I don't care about your duty," Jian spat, his voice trembling with cold hatred. "I don't care about your weak. I spent ten million years being the plaything of a god who talked about duty while he tore my soul apart for a laugh. Go. Run. Die in a ditch for all I care. Just get out of my sight."

  He turned his back on her and walked toward the edge of the village.

  Zelari watched him go, her heart breaking for the shattered thing living inside the man. She turned back to the villagers. "Move out. We’re on our own."

  Jian walked for hours. He cut through the scrubland, eyes fixed on the distant peaks of the Divinity Mountains. He moved toward the center of the Empire, toward the seats of the Immortals who ruled this reality.

  As the sun reached its zenith, a smell drifted on the wind.

  Not woodsmoke or blood. The rich, fatty scent of roasting meat. Wood-fired, seasoned with wild herbs.

  Jian’s stomach let out a thunderous growl. The salted pork had been a patch, but the digestion of the immortal soul drained him faster than he could replenish.

  He stopped, nose twitching. The scent came from a ravine half a mile east.

  He didn't think about justice or Zelari. He thought about a dripping haunch of whatever was on that spit.

  He jogged toward the scent.

  At the edge of the ravine, he looked down.

  A bandit camp. Fifty men in filthy leather and stolen furs. In the center, a massive wild boar turned over a roaring fire, skin crackling and glistening with fat.

  Tied to the trees surrounding the camp were the villagers of Oakhaven.

  They had been ambushed. A cart lay overturned, grain spilled in the dirt. Li sat slumped on the ground, bleeding from his shoulder. Zelari was held by two large men, face bruised as the bandit leader—a man with a massive rusted axe—laughed in her face.

  "A lucky find!" the leader roared. "Fresh meat on the spit and fresh meat for the tents! We’ll eat like kings tonight, boys!"

  Jian didn't look at Zelari. He didn't look at the weapons.

  His eyes locked on the boar.

  He stood at the top of the ravine, hair fluttering in the breeze. The hunger clawed at his insides, the emptiness of ten million years manifesting as a physical void.

  He started down the slope.

  "Oi!" a sentry shouted, leveling a crossbow. "Who the hell are you? Get back or I’ll—"

  Jian didn't slow down.

  "That meat," Jian said. His voice carried a strange, resonant power that silenced the camp. "Is it done yet?"

  The bandit leader squinted up at him, hand going to his axe. "Another beggar? You want a piece, lad? You can have the scraps after we’re done with the girl."

  Jian reached the bottom. He walked past the bandit leader, past the terrified Zelari, and stopped in front of the roasting boar. He inhaled deeply.

  "It’s a bit overdone on the left side," Jian noted.

  "Are you deaf?" the leader snarled. He stepped forward and swung his massive axe toward Jian’s head.

  Jian didn't draw his sword. He caught the handle of the axe in one hand. With a sharp twist, he snapped the thick wood like a toothpick.

  The leader stared at the broken wood in his hands.

  Jian turned his gaze to the man. The black, oily gleam returned to his eyes, accompanied by a predatory focus.

  "I’m very hungry," Jian whispered. "And you’re standing between me and my dinner. That is a very big mistake."

  Ten minutes later, the ravine was silent save for the crackling fire.

  The bandits had been dismantled. Jian moved through them like a reaper, using hands, elbows, and knees with lethal efficiency.

  Now, Jian sat by the fire, a massive rib of wild boar in his hand. He ate with savage intensity, face smeared with grease.

  Zelari and the villagers watched him from the trees, their bonds cut.

  "You followed us," Zelari said, her voice trembling as she approached the fire.

  Jian didn't look up. "The wind was blowing in my direction. I like pork."

  Zelari looked at the carnage, then at the man demolishing a three-hundred-pound animal. She sat across from him.

  "We're going to the resistance village," she said. "It’s in the same direction you were walking. We have spices. And we know how to preserve the meat so it doesn't spoil."

  Jian stopped chewing. He looked at her, one eyebrow raised.

  "Spices?" he rasped.

  "And salt," Zelari added, gaining a fraction of confidence. "And a cook who can make stew out of a leather boot. If you travel with us, you won't have to hunt. You can just... eat."

  Jian looked at the remaining half of the boar. He thought about the long road to the Divinity Mountains. He thought about the gnawing hunger.

  He thought about how much the Old Man would hate this. The Great Devourer of Souls, the survivor of ten million years of torture, bribed by a village girl with salt and cumin.

  A jagged smile touched Jian’s lips. It wasn't a hero’s smile. It was the smile of a man deciding to let the world pay its debt one meal at a time.

  "Fine," Jian said, tearing another chunk of meat from the bone. "I’ll follow. But if the food is bad, I’m eating the horse."

  Zelari didn't doubt him. "Understood."

  As the villagers gathered their things, Jian sat by the fire. The warmth and the food brought a sense of reality to his fractured mind. He was still broken. He was still a monster. But for the first time in ten million years, he wasn't alone.

  And he was no longer quite so hungry.