I find my grandmother collapsed on our kitchen floor when I return home from school.
She lies crumpled beside the stove, her gray hair spilled across the worn linoleum like spilled water. The pot of rice she was preparing has boiled over, filling our small apartment with the acrid smell of burning grain. Her breathing comes in shallow, rattling gasps that make my heart stop.
"Nai Nai!" I drop my backpack and rush to her side, gathering her fragile body into my arms. She weighs almost nothing, as if the stress and poison in her system have been slowly consuming her from the inside out.
Her eyes flutter open at my touch, unfocused and glassy with fever. When she tries to speak, only a whisper emerges.
"Feng... I'm sorry... dinner..."
"Don't worry about dinner." I lift her as gently as I can, carrying her to her narrow bed in the corner of our main room. She feels like a bird in my arms, all hollow bones and fading warmth. "What happened? How long have you been lying there?"
"Just... just a few minutes." But the way she says it tells me she's been unconscious much longer. The rice has burned down to black char, which takes at least an hour. "I felt dizzy when I got home from work, and then..."
She doesn't finish the sentence, but she doesn't need to. I can see the gray pallor of her skin, the way her hands shake with more than just weakness. The magical poisoning that's been slowly killing her for years has accelerated, probably triggered by the stress of recent events.
I pull our threadbare blanket up to her chin and check her forehead with the back of my hand. She's burning with fever, her skin hot and dry to the touch. We need medicine, but the good stuff, the kind that actually helps with magical poisoning, costs more money than we've seen in months.
"I'll get you some water," I tell her, moving to the kitchen to clean up the mess and salvage what I can of our dinner.
The pot is ruined, the rice burned beyond salvation. I scrape the charred remains into our tiny trash can and wash the pot in our single sink, trying not to think about the fact that this was probably our last handful of rice until my grandmother's next paycheck.
When I return with a glass of water, she's fallen back asleep, her breathing still labored but slightly more regular. I sit beside her bed and watch the rise and fall of her chest, counting each breath like a prayer.
This is what Yu Chen's "harmless" lie has cost us. Not just money or reputation, but my grandmother's health. The stress of being falsely accused, of having her integrity questioned, of working twice as hard for half the pay, it's killing her as surely as any poison.
I stay by her side until well past midnight, checking her temperature and making sure she keeps breathing. When I finally drift off in the chair beside her bed, my dreams are filled with images of Yu Chen's laughing face and promises of revenge I have no power to keep.
I wake to silence.
The terrible, absolute silence of held breath.
My grandmother lies perfectly still beneath her blanket, her face peaceful in a way I've never seen before. The lines of pain and worry that have marked her features for years have smoothed away, leaving behind something that looks almost like contentment.
But her chest isn't moving.
"Nai Nai?" I reach for her hand, and the coldness of her skin tells me everything I need to know.
She's gone.
The woman who raised me, who sacrificed everything for my future, who believed in goodness and justice even when the world gave her every reason not to, she's gone, and I wasn't even awake to say goodbye.
I sit there holding her cold hand for a long time, waiting for the tears to come. But there's nothing. No crushing grief, no dramatic breakdown. Just a hollow emptiness where my heart used to be, and beneath that, something else growing.
Something dark and patient and utterly without mercy.
The funeral is three days later.
We can't afford a proper ceremony in one of the magical districts where the dead are honored with light shows and floating flowers. Instead, we hold the service in the communal hall of our apartment building, a cramped room that smells of industrial cleaning fluid and broken dreams.
A handful of people attend. Mrs. Liu from next door, who brought soup during my grandmother's final illness. Mr. Zhou, who helped me carry the coffin up from the street level. A few other residents who knew her as the quiet woman who always said good morning in the hallways.
No one from her work comes. Not the Chen family, not the other servants who worked alongside her. She gave three years of her life to those people, and they couldn't spare an hour to honor her death.
The local priest, a tired man who serves the spiritual needs of Lower Wuhan's forgotten, says the traditional words about souls finding peace and good deeds being rewarded in the next life. His voice echoes strangely in the small room, as if even he doesn't quite believe what he's saying.
I stand at the front of the room beside the simple wooden coffin, accepting condolences from neighbors who whisper about what a good woman she was, how unfair life can be, how she's better off now that she's not suffering anymore.
Their words wash over me without meaning. My grandmother isn't better off. She's dead, killed by a system that crushes the innocent while protecting the guilty. She's dead because Yu Chen thought it would be amusing to destroy someone's life for entertainment.
She's dead because I was too weak to protect her.
After the service, I walk home alone through streets that feel different now, emptier somehow. The apartment greets me with silence and the lingering smell of the medicine I couldn't afford to buy in time. Her chair at the kitchen table sits empty, the cushion still bearing the impression of her slight weight.
I sit in that chair and stare at the wall, feeling the weight of absolute solitude settle around me like a shroud. For the first time in my life, I am truly alone. No family, no friends, no one who cares whether I live or die.
The realization should terrify me, but instead it brings a strange sort of clarity. With no one left to protect, no one whose safety depends on my good behavior, I'm finally free to stop pretending that being good matters in this world.
The rent on our apartment is due in two weeks. Without my grandmother's income, I have no way to pay it. The Academy will probably offer some form of financial aid for orphaned students, but it won't be enough to cover both tuition and living expenses. I'll have to choose between education and shelter.
Unless I find another way.
I spend the next few days going through my grandmother's things, sorting through a lifetime of careful thrift and quiet dignity. Her clothes are few but clean, mended and re-mended until the original fabric is barely visible. Her jewelry consists of a simple wedding ring and a pair of earrings my grandfather gave her when they were young.
In the bottom of her small jewelry box, wrapped in tissue paper, I find something unexpected. A photograph of my mother, taken when she was about my age. I've never seen this picture before, all the others were destroyed in the fire that killed her.
My mother looks exactly like I remember, but younger, more hopeful. She's standing in front of the Academy, wearing a student uniform that's identical to the one I wear now. According to my grandmother's stories, my mother was brilliant but Cursed, just like me. She spent four years studying magical theory without ever being able to put it into practice.
On the back of the photograph, in my grandmother's careful handwriting, are the words: "Some lights burn brightest in the darkness."
I stare at those words for a long time, wondering what she meant. Was it hope? Encouragement? Or something else entirely, a recognition that sometimes good people are forced to become something darker in order to survive?
That night, I dream of fire.
In the dream, I stand in a vast library filled with books that write themselves, their pages turning without wind while words appear and disappear in languages I don't recognize. At the center of the library sits a desk made of black wood, and on that desk rests a single brush with a handle that gleams like polished bone.
A voice speaks from everywhere and nowhere, resonating through the dream with the weight of absolute authority.
"You have been chosen."
I turn, looking for the source of the voice, but see only shadows that move independently of any light source.
"Chosen for what?"
"To balance the scales. To give the powerless the means to claim what has been denied them. To show this world what happens when the meek decide to inherit the earth through force rather than faith."
The brush on the desk begins to glow with soft, dark light that shouldn't exist but somehow does. As I watch, it rises into the air and drifts toward me, rotating slowly as if examining me from every angle.
"The previous order has failed," the voice continues. "Justice through patience, reward through virtue, peace through submission, these are the lies told to keep sheep content in their pens. But you have seen the truth, haven't you, Liang Feng?"
I have. The truth that kindness is rewarded with cruelty, that innocence is punished while guilt thrives, that the only difference between victim and victor is power.
"What do you want from me?"
"Nothing you do not already desire. The chance to make those who have hurt you pay for their crimes. The ability to reshape a world that values strength above all else. The power to ensure that never again will the innocent suffer while the guilty laugh."
The brush settles into my hand, and the moment it touches my skin, I feel something I've never experienced before. Power. Real, tangible power that flows through my veins like liquid lightning. For the first time in my life, I am not empty.
"What's the price?"
The voice's laughter echoes through the impossible library. "Price? You misunderstand the nature of this gift. There is no price, only purpose. Use this power to claim what has been denied you. Show this world the folly of creating a system where the strong prey upon the weak without consequence."
I want to ask more questions, to understand what I'm agreeing to, but the dream is already fading around the edges. The library dissolves into shadow, the voice grows distant, and the brush in my hand becomes lighter and lighter until.
I wake in my narrow bed, morning light streaming through the single window.
But the brush is still in my hand.
It's beautiful in a way that makes my breath catch. The handle is carved from some kind of dark wood that seems to absorb light rather than reflect it, inlaid with silver characters that shift and change when I'm not looking directly at them. The bristles are pure white, so fine they might have come from a cloud.
As I watch, words begin to appear in the air above the brush, written in elegant script that glows with soft golden light:
*CANVAS OF THE ABYSS*
*LEVEL: AWAKENED*
*BONDED WIELDER: LIANG FENG*
*FIRST SEAL: RELEASED*
*Welcome to your rebirth.*
More text scrolls past, explaining functions and abilities that sound impossible even by the standards of our magical world. Soul binding. Reality inscription. The power to turn living beings into willing servants. The ability to rewrite the fundamental rules that govern existence itself.
I should be afraid. Any sane person would be terrified to find themselves holding an artifact of such obvious power and questionable origin. But all I feel is a deep, satisfied certainty that everything has changed.
The game that Yu Chen thinks she's winning, the system that crushed my grandmother, the world that treats people like me as less than human, all of it is about to learn a very important lesson.
Power doesn't care about birthright or social standing or magical aptitude.
Power only cares about will.
And mine has been tempered in the furnace of loss until it's harder than diamond and twice as sharp.
I climb out of bed and walk to the small mirror hanging beside our kitchen sink. The face that looks back at me is the same as always, young, unremarkable, marked by the gray pallor that comes from living in the toxic air of Lower Wuhan.
But my eyes are different now. There's something in them that wasn't there before, a cold intelligence that sees the world not as it should be, but as it truly is.
I raise the brush, and for the first time in my life, I feel the flow of energy responding to my will. Not the chaotic magical currents that power this city, but something older and infinitely more dangerous.
The mirror's reflection shimmers, and for just a moment, I see something else looking back at me. Something with my face but not my limitations, my memories but not my mercy.
Something that knows exactly what needs to be done.
I smile at my reflection, and it smiles back with teeth that seem sharper than they should be.
Today is the first day of the rest of the world's life.
And I'm going to make sure it's memorable.