The rooftop wind sliced through him like broken glass.
Khương Triều Dạ stood in the cold, skin soaked in blood, spine trembling with each breath. The city beneath was alive—so alive it felt wrong. Neon signs blinked like twitching eyelids. Car lights flowed like arteries. People moved below, unaware of the thing standing above them.
Of the thing he was becoming.
His throat was raw. He didn't know how long he'd been screaming.
The symbol on his chest itched like infection. His fingers trembled when they traced the spiral. It felt hot, even though his skin was ice.
He dropped to his knees.
The ground didn't shake.
But something inside him did.
---
He found clothes in the rooftop storage—an old maintenance coat, gray and too large, but warm. He wrapped it tight, hiding the blood. Hiding the symbol.
On his way down the stairs, the lights flickered—once, then twice. On the third flicker, he caught his reflection in the stairwell mirror.
It smiled at him.
He didn't.
---
Back on the streets, no one noticed him. Not the blood crusted around his ears. Not the dried smears on his ankles. Not the eyes that glowed faintly under the city's flickering sodium lights.
No one looked.
No one ever looked.
Except one.
---
He saw her at a street vendor.
Rain drizzled gently from above, coating the world in a thin layer of sound. The vendor sold soup. Steam curled from pots of boiling bone broth and fishballs. He was about to walk past—until he noticed her hand.
It was backwards.
Fingers bent the wrong way. Like they'd been dislocated and reset by someone who didn't know what fingers were.
She turned.
Her face was almost human.
Almost.
Her eyes were missing—just empty, glistening sockets that reflected too much light. Her mouth smiled.
But her lips didn't move.
> "You're bleeding differently now," she said.
He froze.
> "Don't be afraid. I used to be you."
His voice cracked. "What are you?"
She looked at him, or through him.
> "I was the last one to survive the First Spiral. I failed at the Second."
Rain hissed against metal.
> "They left parts of me in all the wrong places. My name forgot me."
She leaned closer. Her voice turned quiet, cracked, reverent.
> "But you—they remember you. You should not be here yet."
Khương Triều Dạ backed away.
> "The mark will burn," she said, "when the second gate opens."
> "Run when it does. Or kneel. But do not speak."
He turned to run—
But the vendor was gone.
The street gone.
She was gone.
And in his hand—something wet.
He looked down.
It was her eye.
It blinked.
---
He ran for hours. Through alleys that led nowhere. Through doors that opened into the same room. Through people who didn't move when touched.
The city had shifted.
Or maybe he had.
By dawn, he collapsed beside the lake near Xihu Park. His breath came in shallow bursts. His reflection shimmered in the water—twitching. Glitching. Sometimes showing him. Sometimes showing the throne.
He wanted to vomit.
But instead—
He wept.
The lake didn't judge.
But it whispered:
> "Your soul is misfiled."
---
When the sun rose, Khương Triều Dạ sat alone in the wet grass.
His coat was soaked. The spiral on his chest throbbed.
He clenched his fists.
He was done running.
Whatever this was—this descent, this hunger, this broken god stirring inside—
He would see it to the end.
Even if it meant there would be nothing human left.