The other ship cut through the sky like a knife.
Its hull was narrow and dark, carved with harsh, crooked lines that made the eye want to slide away. Chains hung from the underside, some ending in hooks, some in empty iron rings. The air around it tasted of old blood and sour metal.
A tattered banner snapped at the bow.
Three jagged characters crawled across it like claw marks.
Heavenly Devil Sect.
On the forward deck, an elder in black robes leaned on the rail and glared at the land below as if it offended him personally.
The country under them was dry and thin. Low hills. Small fields. A narrow river like a scar. A single walled town clinging to the road as if afraid to let go.
"Backwater," Elder Harrow said. "Absolute backwater."
He spoke the word like it was an insult, which, for him, it was.
"Thin qi," he went on. "No proper cities. No decent prey. And they ask me to waste time on whatever trinket rattled the stones this far out."
He drummed his fingers on the rail, each tap a little heavier than the last.
Behind him, eight disciples stood in two loose rows. They wore the same cut of dark robe as he did, but with more knives at their belts and less patience in their eyes. Some had fresh scars. One still had drying blood on his sleeve from their last "resource stop".
They watched him, very carefully not sighing.
Harrow turned to face them.
"Listen," he said. "We did not come out here for the scenery. Somewhere in this little stretch of dust, something pushed hard enough against the world that even the righteous cowards in their mountains flinched."
His mouth curled.
"Our stones screamed until the walls shook," he said. "The Sect Master wants to know what did that. If it is something we can use, we take it. If it is something no one should have, we break it. And if there is nothing at all…"
He shrugged.
"…then we do not go home empty handed."
That last line made a few of the younger disciples smile.
He pointed at one at random: a wiry man with a narrow face and eyes that never quite settled.
"You," Harrow said. "Kar. There's a village ahead. Take two with you. Drop down. Ask them if they have seen anything they shouldn't. Falling stars, strange stones, outsiders who fight like they shouldn't. If there's anything worth having, mark it and I'll look later."
He paused, then added, almost lazily:
"If there is nothing…"
His eyes went flat.
"…strip it. Blood, cores, fear. We have furnaces that still need feeding."
Kar's grin showed too many teeth.
"Yes, Elder," he said.
He jerked his chin at two others and vaulted the rail. The others followed. Wind whipped their robes as they dropped, slowed at the last moment as the ship's foul qi curled under them and helped them land where they pleased.
Harrow watched them fall toward the cluster of roofs and fields ahead. To the people below, they would be nothing but black specks descending from the sky.
He could already imagine the sound that would follow.
He rolled his shoulders once, as if shaking off a fly.
"Waste of talent," he muttered. "Counting haystacks."
The first village never had a chance.
From the deck, the remaining disciples watched three dark shapes hit the earth at the edge of the fields. Tiny figures in the distance—farmers, children—stopped and stared, shading their eyes.
They would not know the name Heavenly Devil Sect. To them, there were only stories: sky demons, mountain immortals, people who walked the clouds and brought either miracles or death.
These ones did not bring miracles.
A moment later, Kar and the others walked into the village street.
Harrow felt the faint ripple of their qi as they worked. A pulse to knock everyone off their feet. A twist to drag air from lungs. The sort of casual cruelty you learned after years in the Heavenly Devil courts.
Questions first. They would pick the strongest-looking villagers, or the ones old enough to have heard rumours. They would tear answers out of them—no polite conversation, just pressure, pain and the threat of something worse.
Any strange lights? Any tales of fire walking in the forest? Anyone come through with a stone they shouldn't have?
From up here, Harrow did not hear the words. Only the echoes.
He heard when the questions ended.
Black smoke began to rise, quick and thick, far too fast for any normal hearth. A small array flared at the edge of the village—a crude circle of bone and ink the disciples threw together in moments. The qi in the air twisted as blood ran into channels cut in the dirt.
A few bright pinpricks flickered and were pulled toward a waiting soul-lamp, shrieking just beyond ordinary hearing as they were caught.
Harrow's disciples did not leave witnesses. Villagers who had never learned the words "Heavenly Devil Sect" died without ever knowing who had killed them. To the world, it would be another story: demons from the sky, a tale that could never be properly checked because every voice in that place had been snuffed out.
Kar and his two companions came drifting back later, robes marked with soot, one of them still idly shaking blood from a hand.
Kar set a small bundle on the deck and tipped it open with a toe.
A handful of spirit beast cores rolled out—dull, low grade. A few cheap talismans. A cracked amulet that had probably hung over a doorway for twenty years.
"No sign of anything useful," he said. "No one had seen new stones, falling stars or wandering sages."
He nudged the bundle of cores.
"They did keep animals," he added. "We took what we could. The rest fed the formation."
Harrow glanced at the meagre pile and snorted.
"Barely worth the effort," he said. "But it will keep the furnaces honest."
He did not ask if anyone had been left alive.
There was no point. That was not how they worked.
"Back on course," he said, turning from the rail. "We follow the pull. Helmsman."
A pale-faced man at the rear of the deck gripped a ring of bone and metal set into a control pillar. At Harrow's word, he twisted it a fraction. The dark ship adjusted its angle in the sky and slid forward, chains beneath it chattering softly.
They crossed more empty land.
Here and there, Harrow felt faint pricks of qi below—a lonely practitioner huddled over a field, a cheap ward stone half asleep over a crossroads shrine. Nothing strong enough to match the diviners' reports, nothing that dragged at his attention the way a proper treasure would.
His irritation grew.
"Another town ahead," the helmsman said once, voice careful.
Harrow leaned to look.
A larger cluster this time. A proper wall. Smoke from more than a dozen chimneys. A road that actually looked used.
"Better," he said. "Maybe these peasants have heard anything beyond their own pig squeals."
He turned back to the disciples.
"Different approach," he said. "I am bored. Risa, Den. Take the front this time. Four more with you."
He let his gaze sweep over them.
"Same rules," he said. "Questions first. Anything about falling stars, strange fire, outsiders who do not fit. I want details. If there is no sign of what we are chasing…"
His smile was thin and without humour.
"…then turn the place inside out. Blood, bones, fear, souls. Do not leave a mouth alive to lie about what they saw."
"Gladly, Elder," Risa said.
She and Den vaulted the rail with their chosen four at their heels. To the people below, they would be dark shapes dropping out of nowhere—sky demons come to test their stories.
Harrow felt the town's mood shift even from this height.
A few local cultivators—thin, half-trained things—stiffened and looked up, feeling the wrongness in the air before they saw the source. Someone shouted. A bell clanged. Doors slammed.
None of it mattered.
By the time the first crude wards tried to flare, Risa's group was already inside the walls.
It took longer than the village. There were more houses to tear through, more people to drag into the open. Once, Harrow felt a little spike—a local with just enough talent to try something stupid. It snapped out a breath later under Den's hand.
In the end, the pattern was the same.
Smoke. The sick twist of a blood array drawing everything down into it. The thin, almost delicate feel of souls being pulled loose and bottled.
Later, Risa's group came back up, stripped of patience and heavier with "resources": a small sack that clinked with coins and cores, a pouch that sloshed with something thicker than water, a set of crude talismans ripped from a shrine that no longer had worshippers.
Risa dropped the sack onto the deck.
"Anything worth the Sect Master's attention?" Harrow asked.
"Not in that town," she said. "They knew nothing about stones or fallen stars. But they had been hearing talk from caravans."
She wiped a streak of soot from her cheek with the back of her hand.
"Bandits in the forest," she said. "A girl with strange fire. That part was recent. The stories agreed on that much."
Harrow's eyes sharpened.
"A girl with strange fire," he repeated. "Details."
"Slavers losing a caravan," Risa said. "Chains broken, wagons burned. Their men said the air hurt to breathe when she looked at them. They called her a curse, not a treasure. They were too angry to be impressed."
"No name?" Harrow asked.
"Not one they remembered," Risa said. "Just curses. Demon girl. Forest witch. That fire bitch, if you like exact words."
Harrow considered that.
"Bandits with a talent," he said. "In the same direction as the pull."
His annoyance eased a fraction.
"Back on course," he told the helmsman. "If nothing else, we can scrape that little nest clean on our way home."
The helmsman adjusted the bone ring again. The ship angled slightly and slid onward.
They repeated the pattern twice more as they followed the diviners' tug.
A hamlet with little to offer but still burned to ash and bone. A waystation on the road where an innkeeper had heard wilder talk from caravans about "Fire Starters" in the forest and a girl who made lungs seize with a look.
None of the people they questioned had ever heard the names of sects. To them, all cultivators were simply immortals or demons depending on whether they brought gifts or blades.
The Heavenly Devil Sect brought blades.
Each place ended the same way: circles of dark ink and bone carved into the ground, blood running through channels, pale lights torn from bodies and drawn into waiting receptacles. No survivors. No stories that could travel anywhere on their own legs.
The rumours still rose, of course. A trader who had passed through a town before it died. A caravan man who recognised smoke on the horizon and ordered his driver to turn. But they were fragments, drifting, never enough to carry names.
On the dark ship, Elder Harrow leaned on the rail, feeling the pull ahead grow stronger.
"We are close," he said.
The air had that stretched, thin quality he recognised from other hunts. Like the echo of a heavy stone dropped in a pond, still moving just under the surface.
He shut his eyes for a moment and sent his own spiritual sense outward—not far, just enough to taste the horizon.
Another presence brushed back.
Not from the ground.
From the sky.
Harrow's eyes snapped open.
"Elder," the helmsman said, almost at the same time. "There's—"
"I see it," Harrow said.
Far off, like a grey splinter against the light, another vessel hung in the air. Wider hull. Cleaner lines. The taste of its presence was annoyingly clear—disciplined power shaped into something neat and balanced.
Righteous sect work.
Harrow's expression went from irritation to cold amusement.
"Well, well," he said. "We are not the only ones following this little thread."
He let his spiritual sense brush against the distant ship, just enough to catch flavour. It came back tasting of mountain stone, wind and tightly leashed pride.
He recognised the pattern.
"Mountain Sect," he said with a snort. "Of course they stuck their noses in."
A few disciples shifted uneasily.
"Righteous dogs beat us here?" Kar muttered.
"Not beat us," Harrow said. "Arrived by a different road."
He watched the other ship for a long breath.
"Still," he added. "Competition is competition."
He straightened and clapped his hands once, sharply.
"Change of plan," he told the helmsman. "Turn us. We will go and pay our dear friends a visit."
The helmsman hesitated.
"With respect, Elder," he said carefully. "Our instructions—"
"Our instructions were to find what shook the stones," Harrow cut in. "If the Mountain Sect has already blundered into it, it would be rude not to introduce ourselves."
His smile did not reach his eyes.
"Besides," he said, "if there is anything worth taking, I would rather take it from them than from peasants."
The helmsman swallowed and twisted the bone ring under his hands.
The Heavenly Devil Sect ship banked in the air, chains rattling. Its nose swung toward the distant speck of the Mountain Sect's spirit boat.
On the other vessel, Elder Shan felt the change like a cold wind through a closed room.
He broke off mid-sentence and turned toward the western horizon.
Power moved out there. Not subtle, not gentle. A ship, yes, but wrapped in qi that tasted of soured blood and old grudges.
Elder Lin's eyes narrowed.
"You feel it as well," she said.
"Devil sect," Shan said. "Heavenly Devil, unless I have forgotten the stink of their ships."
Bo set his cup down very carefully.
"Wonderful," he said. "The day was going too quietly."
Yao and Lin Huai stood nearby, listening while the elders discussed, in broad strokes, what to do with Cynthia and whatever lay on the ground below. Now both disciples turned to stare at the dark speck growing in the distance.
Cynthia stood a little apart on the deck, hands loosely clasped, watching the elders more than the sky. She did not yet know the taste of devil sect qi the way they did, but she felt the mood shift like a rope pulled taut.
"What is it?" she asked.
Shan didn't answer her directly at first.
"Prepare," he said instead, voice low but carrying. "All disciples. We have company."
Yao moved at once, calling orders. Mountain Sect disciples scattered to their positions—some to the rail, some inward to check the boat's core and warding plates, some to fetch spare talismans and armour.
Only when that was moving did Shan turn fully toward Cynthia.
"Heavenly Devil Sect," he said. "Their ship is coming straight for us. They have no business this far east unless they felt the same resonance we did."
Cynthia's jaw tightened.
"Devil sect," she repeated. "Here."
"Devils go where there is blood to drink and bargains to twist," Lin said. "They will have felt the same thing the Anomaly Stone did. They'll be looking for whoever caused it—some wandering cultivator, or an idiot who picked up a stray artefact and lived."
She glanced at Cynthia.
"If they ever learn a Marak survived, that will only make things worse," she added. "For now, all they need to see is that we are here first."
Cynthia's spine stiffened.
"So I am a prize to steal now?" she said.
"You have always been a prize," Bo said. "That is part of the problem."
He pointed toward the interior of the ship.
"Below, girl," he said. "Into the inner cabin. No peeking over the rail, no wandering the deck until we tell you. If Heavenly Devil sees you standing here, they will assume you are tied to whatever they're hunting, and we'll be fighting over you before anyone has said a word."
Cynthia opened her mouth to argue, then shut it again.
She was not used to hiding. Not anymore.
"How long?" she asked.
"Until we know what they want," Shan said. "Or until they are gone."
He met her gaze evenly.
"We did not pull you out of your fort just to hand you to a devil ship on the first day," he said. "But we would also prefer not to throw disciples' lives away over you on a backwater horizon."
Cynthia held his eyes for a breath.
Then she nodded once, curt.
"Fine," she said. "I will stay out of sight. For now."
She turned and headed toward the inner corridor, footsteps steady on the planks.
Behind her, the deck hummed louder as the Mountain Sect spirit boat braced itself in the sky.
In the west, the dark ship of the Heavenly Devil Sect grew larger, its torn banner whipping in the wind as it came to "visit" its old friends.