The blood was still warm on Mo Lianyin's hands when the voice first spoke to her.
"Interesting. So the lotus finally blooms in crimson waters."
She pressed herself against the cold stone pillar of the Temple of Last Mercy, trying to become one with the shadows. Her breath came in short, sharp gasps that she struggled to muffle. Outside the shattered sanctuary doors, she could hear them Dawn light Sect disciples methodically searching through the carnage they'd created, their spirit lamps casting dancing shadows through the smoke.
The temple had been her home for three years. Not much of one, perhaps just a ruin where orphans and outcasts gathered, where Master Chen taught letters to children the world had forgotten, where the half-blind cook made thin congee stretch to feed twenty mouths. Now Master Chen lay crumpled near the altar, his kind eyes forever vacant. Little Tam, barely eight years old, had tried to hide beneath the offering table. It hadn't saved him.
The memory of his small hand reaching for her, the light fading from his eyes, made bile rise in her throat. She'd been fetching water from the well when the Dawnlight Sect arrived. By the time she'd heard the screams and dropped the bucket, it was already too late. She'd crept back through the kitchen entrance to find a massacre.
"They're getting closer, little lotus. Your heartbeat thunders like war drums."
The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, sliding through her consciousness like silk over steel. Mo Lianyin pressed her palm against the jade pendant at her throat her only inheritance from parents she couldn't remember. The stone was ice-cold despite the warm blood coating her fingers.
"Please," she whispered, not sure if she was praying to ancestors or begging her own madness to stop. "Not now."
"Twenty steps. Maybe less. There's a stone in the wall to your left third from the floor, carved with the character for 'mercy.' Push it."
She wanted to ignore the voice. Wanted to curl into a ball and wait for the inevitable. But seventeen years of surviving had carved different instincts into her bones. The orphanage fire when she was seven. The winter when she was twelve, begging on frozen streets. The fever that had nearly killed her at fifteen, with no medicine and no one who cared if she lived or died. Each time, she'd survived by listening to her instincts.
Her fingers found the stone, traced the familiar character that Master Chen had taught her to write just last month. 'Mercy' what bitter irony. When she pressed, a section of wall swung inward on silent hinges.
"Quickly now. Unless you prefer to join your friends in their silence."
The passage beyond was narrow and black as ink. Mo Lianyin squeezed through just as footsteps echoed in the chamber behind her. The hidden door swung shut, sealing her in absolute darkness.
"Spread the search!" a cultivator commanded, his voice sharp with authority. "The spirit compass is screaming. There's demonic taint here strong enough to corrupt the readings."
"Senior Brother Zhang," a younger voice replied, "the readings show it's concentrated near the altar. But all the bodies are accounted for."
"Then someone escaped. Find them."
In the suffocating dark, Mo Lianyin felt the jade pendant pulse against her chest. Not with warmth, but with a cold so intense it burned. Frost spread from the stone, tracing her veins with winter's touch. Her teeth chattered as ice crystals formed on her eyelashes.
"Ah, there it is. The seal weakens at last. Seventeen years I've waited, watching you grow in these ruins. Watching you survive what would break others. You're ready now."
"Ready for what?" Her whisper barely disturbed the stale air.
"To become what you were born to be. What your bloodline was crafted for across centuries of careful selection."
The pendant cracked.
Not a small fracture, but a complete shattering, as if the jade had been holding back an ocean and could contain it no longer. Something poured into her not liquid, not light, but memory itself. A thousand years of existence flooded her mind: battles beneath red moons, empires rising and falling, love that transcended death, betrayal that poisoned generations. She saw herself through ancient eyes not Mo Lianyin the orphan, but a carefully crafted vessel, a bloodline cultivated across centuries for this single moment.
She saw her parents, faces she'd never known. Her mother, beautiful and fierce, standing before a man in black armor. "She will be perfect," her mother said. "The lotus that blooms in darkness, strong enough to carry your essence without breaking."
"And if she refuses?" the armored man asked.
"She won't. We'll make sure she has nothing else to live for."
The vision shattered as pain lanced through every meridian in her body. Pathways she'd never been able to open despite years of attempting cultivation burst wide like dams breaking. Power flooded through not the clean, bright qi of orthodox cultivation, but something older, darker, carrying the weight of ages.
"I am Lord Kareth, last of the Demon Kings. And you, my dear lotus, are my chosen inheritor. Your parents gave their lives to ensure you would be born with the perfect constitution to carry my essence without burning to ash."
Through the stone, she heard the hidden door grinding open.
"Found it! There's a passage here!"
Mo Lianyin tried to run, but her legs wouldn't cooperate. She was drowning in memories not her own standing atop a black tower as armies clashed below, holding a dying woman whose face looked disturbingly like her own, signing a treaty in blood that would doom his empire to save his people. She saw the rise of the righteous sects, built on the bones of those they called demons. Saw children burned for the crime of being born with the wrong bloodline.
"Focus, Yinyin. Push my memories aside for now. Move your feet. Left, right, left. Good girl."
Yinyin. No one had called her that since the fire at the state orphanage, since her first home burned and scattered her into the streets. The familiar nickname from this ancient voice should have terrified her. Instead, it anchored her to the present.
She stumbled forward through the darkness, one hand trailing along the damp wall. Behind her, light bloomed as cultivators poured into the passage.
"There! I see movement!"
"Left hand against the wall. Feel for the draft—there. Duck."
She dropped just as a blade of condensed qi whistled over her head, carving a groove in the stone. The attack illuminated the passage for an instant, showing a fork ahead.
"Right path. Trust me."
What choice did she have? Mo Lianyin plunged right, her body moving with a grace that wasn't entirely her own. Knowledge bloomed in her muscles how to place her feet for silence, how to control her breathing, how to wrap shadows around herself like a cloak.
The passage opened into a natural cave system, and she could hear water rushing somewhere below. Moonlight filtered through cracks in the ceiling, revealing a narrow ledge above an underground river.
"Demon! Surrender yourself to Heaven's justice!"
A young disciple burst from the passage, sword blazing with righteous qi. He couldn't have been much older than her, face still soft with youth beneath the Dawnlight Sect's white and gold robes. His eyes widened when he saw her clearly just a girl in torn servant's clothes, blood on her hands and tears on her cheeks.
For a heartbeat, he hesitated.
"Now. Touch the shadow at his feet."
Mo Lianyin's hand moved without conscious thought. Where her fingers brushed the darkness cast by his spirit lamp, something responded. The shadow came alive, wrapping around the disciple's ankles like living rope. His shocked cry cut off as the darkness yanked him sideways, slamming him into the cave wall with a wet crack.
He slumped to the ground, unconscious or dead. Mo Lianyin stared at her hand in horror. The shadows still danced between her fingers, eager and obedient.
"What did you do to me?" she whispered.
"I gave you the power to survive. Nothing more, nothing less. Now jump the river below is deep enough."
More cultivators were coming, their spirit lights turning the passage into a constellation of approaching stars. Mo Lianyin looked at the unconscious disciple, at the blood on her hands—his or Master Chen's, she couldn't tell anymore, and made her choice.
She jumped.
The water was shockingly cold, driving all breath from her lungs. The current caught her immediately, dragging her through absolute darkness. Rocks battered her body, and her lungs screamed for air. Just when she thought she would drown, the river spat her out into a moonlit pool.
Mo Lianyin dragged herself onto a muddy bank, coughing up water and what might have been blood. Every part of her hurt, but she was alive. Above, she could see the glow of spirit lamps searching the cliff face.
"Well done, little lotus. Your first lesson is complete."
"Lesson?" She laughed, but it came out as more of a sob. "People are dead. I killed"
"You survived. In this world, that's the only lesson that matters. Now get up. We have far to go before dawn, and the Dawnlight Sect doesn't forgive those who spill their blood."
Mo Lianyin wanted to argue, wanted to scream at the ancient consciousness sharing her head. But the sound of pursuit echoed from the caves, and seventeen years of survival instincts won over shock. She forced herself to her feet, wringing water from her robes.
"Where do we go?" she asked, surprised by how steady her voice sounded.
"North. Through the Whispering Woods. There's someone we need to find someone who might help us both."
As she stumbled into the forest, shadows trailing behind her like loyal hounds, Mo Lianyin couldn't help but look back one last time. The Temple of Last Mercy burned on the distant hill, sending smoke signals to a heaven that had never answered her prayers.
The lotus had bloomed in dark waters, and there was no going back.