Chapter 14: Chapter 14

"Then what did I do?" Su Yun finished. His voice cracked on the last word. The cub pressed closer to his leg. The scrap of rope still hung loose between his fingers, and he found himself staring at it, as if it might explain itself.

The scarred man stopped a few paces away. The blue lantern swung gently at his side. The light it cast made the tunnel walls look like they were underwater. "That's the question, isn't it?"

What is it? You expect me to know magics I've never heard of?'

"No." The scarred man crouched. He was close enough that Su Yun could see the details of his scars now—old claw marks, three of them, raking from his left temple down to his jaw. The kind of wound that never fully heals. "I expect you to be honest, because I've been honest with you. As honest as I can be." He glanced at the cub. Something flickered in his eyes. Concern, maybe. Or calculation. "You smelled the Hollow Man before you saw him."

Su Yun blinked. "What?"

"The cub." The scarred man nodded at it. "It was screaming before the Hollow Man arrived. You thought it was afraid. It wasn't. It was warning you."

Su Yun looked down at the cub. It was still trembling, but its eyes had fixed on the scarred man with an intensity that didn't match its small body. "How do you know that?"

"Because I know what a Qiongqi sounds like when it senses danger." The scarred man's voice was quiet, almost reverent. "I've only heard it once before. It was the same sound. The same terror. And the same thing came for us afterward."

The tunnel fell silent. Even the dripping water seemed to pause.

"You faced a Hollow Man," Su Yun said slowly. "And lived."

"I faced a Hollow Man," the scarred man agreed. "And I lost something I'll never get back." He touched the scars on his face. "These aren't from a beast. They're from the Hollow Man's hand. The same hand you burned off tonight."

Su Yun's mouth went dry. "You're saying... it touched you?"

"I'm saying I got lucky." The scarred man stood. "It was toying with me because I was already beaten. It didn't expect me to have one trick left. I threw my lantern at its face and ran while it was blinded."

"You carry a lantern now."

"Insurance."

Su Yun forced himself to his feet. His legs shook. The cub pressed against his ankle, grounding him. "You said you've been following me since the cave. You said you wanted to see if I'd die." He took a breath. "Why?"

The scarred man's smile returned. It was less cruel this time—more like a teacher watching a student ask the question he'd been waiting for. "Because of what I saw in the crater. When the Xiezhi attacked us, you didn't run. You froze for a heartbeat, and then you did the stupidest thing I've ever seen." He shook his head. "You ran toward the beast, not away from it. You had nothing. No weapon. No cultivation. No contract. And you ran at a mythical beast with your bare hands to buy me time."

"You were going to die."

"Yes." The scarred man's voice was flat. "I was going to die. And you didn't care. Not because you're brave—bravery is the first thing to die when you see a Xiezhi up close. You did it because you didn't know any better."

Su Yun frowned. "That's not an insult?"

"It's not a compliment either." The scarred man turned and began walking down the tunnel. "Follow me. We have a long way to go before dawn, and the Hollow Man isn't the only thing in these tunnels."

Su Yun didn't move. The cub looked up at him, then at the retreating figure, then back at him.

"Trust him," the cub said. It wasn't words, not exactly. It was a feeling, pushed into Su Yun's mind like a warm stone pressed into his palm. But it was clearer than anything the cub had sent before. The bond was strengthening.

Su Yun took a step. Then another. He followed the blue light through the darkness, the cub padding silently at his heels. The tunnel wound deeper into the mountain. The air grew colder. The walls began to change—smooth stone giving way to something that looked almost carved, like the bones of some ancient creature had been shaped into a passageway.

"Where are we going?" Su Yun asked.

"Out." The scarred man didn't turn. "The tournament starts at dawn. The first challenge is announced at the main gate. If you're not there, you're disqualified."

"I don't even know your name."

The scarred man stopped. For a long moment, he didn't speak. Then he turned, the blue lantern illuminating half his face, the other half lost in shadow. "My name is Wei Chen. And I was a beast tamer of the Seventh Realm."

Su Yun felt his chest tighten. The Seventh Realm. The highest rank a beast tamer could achieve in the Nine Realms. There were barely a dozen of them in the entire world. "Was?"

"Was." Wei Chen's voice was flat. "The Hollow Man took more than my scars. It took my bond. My contract. My beast." He lifted the lantern. "Now I'm a lantern bearer. A wanderer. A man with knowledge no one wants to hear."

"I'm sorry." Su Yun didn't know why he said it. But he meant it.

Wei Chen's eyes widened slightly. Just for a moment. Then the mask slid back into place. "Save your sorrow. You'll need it for yourself." He turned and continued walking. "Each realm holds a challenge. Each challenge requires a beast. The first realm, the realm of the low mountains, requires you to capture a creature from a list of twenty. You'll be given three days. Capture the rarest beast you can find, and you'll advance to the second realm."

"What's the second realm?"

"The desert of echoes." Wei Chen's voice echoed off the walls. "Where the sand remembers everything, including the dead. The beasts there are not of this world."

Su Yun thought about the faceless thing. The Hollow Man. "What was it? The thing I burned?"

Wei Chen was quiet for a long time. The tunnel opened into a wider cavern, and Su Yun could see pale light ahead—moonlight, filtering through cracks in the stone. Dawn was close.

"The Hollow Men are what happens when beast tamers try to bond with something they shouldn't." Wei Chen's voice was barely above a whisper. "When a tamer reaches the Ninth Realm, they can attempt the final challenge. They enter the space between realms. They try to bond with the source of all beasts—the thing that existed before the first Qiongqi, before the first Xiezhi, before the first beast was ever named." He stopped at the edge of the light. "Most fail. The ones who survive failure come back broken. The ones who fail differently... they come back empty. Something else fills the space where their soul used to be."

Su Yun stared at him. "And that something is the Hollow Man?"

"That something is what a Hollow Man wears like a skin." Wei Chen turned to face him fully. "The creature you fought tonight is what remains of a beast tamer who reached too far. It wears his memories, his knowledge, his hunger. But it is not him. It hasn't been him for a thousand years."

The cub made a low sound in its throat. Su Yun reached down and touched its head. It was warm.

"Why is it after me?" Su Yun asked. "I'm nobody. I'm a stable boy."

"Are you?" Wei Chen tilted his head. "You bonded with a Qiongqi. A creature thought to be untamable. You survived a Xiezhi attack. You burned a Hollow Man with a rope that should have snapped the first time you pulled it." He stepped closer. "The first time you bonded with the cub, what did you see?"

Su Yun hesitated. Then he remembered. The dream. The endless void. The voice that had spoken without sound.

"I saw a mountain," he said slowly. "A mountain made of bones. And something was sleeping inside it. It woke up when the cub bonded with me. It looked at me."

Wei Chen's face went pale. The blue lantern flickered. "What did it say?"

Su Yun swallowed. His throat was dry. "It said... 'You're late.'"

The silence stretched. Dawn was coming. The first light crept through the cracks in the stone, pale and weak, like a child's first breath. The cub stirred. Its eyes flickered—black to gold and back again.

Then Wei Chen laughed. It was not a happy sound. It was the laugh of a man who had just discovered the ground beneath him was a lie.

"Seven years," he said. "Seven years I've been searching for the source of the corruption. Seven years I've tracked the Hollow Men, watching them spread like rot across the realms. And I thought..." He shook his head. "I thought it was something that could be stopped."

"Can't it?"

"It can be stopped." Wei Chen's eyes met his. "But not the way I thought." He pointed at Su Yun. "The mountain of bones is the first realm's heart. And the thing sleeping inside it is older than the Nine Realms themselves. Older than the beasts. Older than the tamers who hunt them." His voice dropped. "And it spoke to you."

The cub suddenly went rigid. Its eyes went wide. Black. Focused on something behind Su Yun.

Su Yun turned.

At the far end of the cavern, where the moonlight hit the wall, a shape was forming. It started as a shadow. Then it became something solid. Something massive. Something that should not exist in the low mountains.

It was a door.

A door carved from bone, and the bone was singing.

The cub began to scream.

Outside, the horn of the tournament sounded for the first time, and the ground shook beneath them as the door began to open from the inside.