The stronghold rose from the ruins of what was once a metropolis, its walls forged from the carcasses of skyscrapers melted and reforged into jagged battlements. Liu Jian stood atop a skeletal highway overpass, the wind carrying the stench of charred flesh and ozone. Below, the remnants of the city pulsed with desperation—makeshift shelters cobbled from rubble, trenches dug by clawed hands, and the ceaseless glow of artillery fire on the horizon.
Kyra stood beside him, her quartz eyes reflecting the distant flames. "Your people… build tombs with pride."
"They're fighting," Liu Jian said, his voice steady, though the fire in his palms flickered. Three months of Hollowing had stripped his anomalies away, leaving him deceptively human. Only his eyes betrayed him—embers smoldering in the pupils, ash gathering in the corners when he clenched his fists.
The others fanned out behind him, their presence a quiet storm. Aisha's hair, once streaked with bioluminescence, now shimmered like liquid obsidian, tendrils of shadow curling at her feet. Ravi's laughter had gone silent, his serpentine reflexes honed into a predator's stillness. Meili's wings were memory, but the air bent around her, heavy with latent thunder.
They descended.
——
The stronghold's gates parted grudgingly. Soldiers in patched exosuits leveled pulse rifles, their muzzles trembling. A colonel emerged, his face a patchwork of scars and subdermal armor. "The Wolf General," he sneered, eyeing Liu Jian's unmarked hands. "We've heard the stories. Demigods in children's skin."
Liu Jian let the flames dance once across his knuckles—a controlled burn, hot enough to warp the steel at his boots. "We're here for the eastern front. The leviathan-class beast tearing through your grid."
The colonel stiffened. "That thing's already leveled two strongholds. You think you're—"
Kyra stepped forward, her clawed hand rippling the air with a hologram—the beast's thermal signature, its core pulsing like a dying star. "It is… *evolving*. Your weapons feed it. We… will starve it."
The soldiers exchanged glances. A whisper slithered through the ranks: *"The Ghost Princess. She's real."*
——
They moved at twilight, the horizon bleeding into the battlefield. The government's forces flanked them—a ragged convoy of tanks retrofitted with chi cannons, their barrels still smoking from failed volleys. Civilians-turned-militia clutched rudimentary blades glowing with unstable spirit energy, their 1st Realm training evident in their unsteady stances.
"They'll die," Yumi muttered, her voice layered with the *baihou*'s residual growl. She carried no weapon; her hands were claws in all but form.
"Yes," Liu Jian said. "But not today."
The earth trembled.
It emerged from the smoke—a mountain of sinew and scales, its body a grotesque mosaic of absorbed DNA: serpent tails, raptor talons, a dozen eyes burning with stolen bioluminescence. The beast's roar unraveled into a chorus of screams, echoes of the creatures it had consumed.
The soldiers broke first, their cannons firing wildly. The beast *inhaled*, the chi blasts dissolving into its maw like smoke. Its hide pulsed brighter.
"Now," Liu Jian said.
The group *moved*.
Aisha's shadows erupted, tethering the beast's limbs to the earth. Ravi struck like a viper, his fists shattering scales with precise, crystalline blows. Meili's storm followed—pressure waves crushing the creature's spined tail. Hiroto, silent as ever, tore into its underbelly, molten tusks searing through regenerating flesh.
But the beast adapted.
Eyes liquefied and reformed into chi-reflective armor. Talons morphed into plasma blades. It learned.
Liu Jian leapt into the inferno, fire spiraling from his core. Flames aren't chi—they're *hunger*. He let it feast.
The beast's core dimmed, its stolen energy siphoned. Yumi struck the killing blow, her hand phasing through scales as if they were mist, and *pulled*.
The core shattered.
Silence fell.
——
The stronghold erupted in disbelieving cheers. The colonel stared at the smoldering carcass, then at Liu Jian's unblemished hands. "What *are* you?"
"A container," he said, ash drifting from his eyes.
Kyra watched from the shadows, her claws weaving data from the battle. "They adapt… faster than projected. The vanguard's awakening… accelerates them."
Aisha knelt beside a fallen soldier, her shadows staunching his wounds. "We can't be everywhere."
"No," Liu Jian said. "But we can forge more containers."
That night, they broadcasted a new manual—no breathwork or katas. A single lesson, etched in fire and blood:
*To hollow is to endure. To endure is to feast.*
——
In the stronghold's depths, a child with cracked lips and glowing veins approached Yumi. "Can you teach me… to burn?"
Yumi placed her hand on the girl's chest, feeling the fragile heartbeat. "No. But I can teach you to starve."
Above, unnoticed, the stars began to blink out—one by one—as the void's feast drew near.