Shanghai did not sleep. It didn't even nap. It was a beast of light and steel, breathing out exhaust and inhaling the dreams of twenty-six million people.
Elara Vance walked through the neon-drenched streets of the Huangpu District, shivering in a tank top that was rapidly becoming transparent in the warm rain. She looked like a drowned rat. A very determined, terrifyingly focused drowned rat.
Beside her, or rather, towering over her, was Aldren Valcour. The Vampire Lord looked less like a master of the night and more like a catastrophic hangover. His skin was the color of wet ash. He was supporting the unconscious body of Li Wusheng, whose feet dragged uselessly against the pavement.
"Left," Aldren wheezed, steering them away from a bustling night market where the smell of stinky tofu and roasted squid was thick enough to chew. "Too many people. The collective heartbeat is giving me a migraine."
"We need a roof, Aldren," Elara whispered, scanning the towering colonial buildings of the Bund that lined the river. "We can't just walk into a hotel. We have no passports, no money, and our friend looks like he was barbecued."
"I have... assets," Aldren muttered, stumbling. He adjusted his grip on Li. "Hidden caches. From the Opium Wars. I kept a townhouse in the French Concession. If it still stands."
"That was a hundred years ago!" Elara hissed. "It's probably a Starbucks now!"
"Have faith, my love. Real estate is the only true immortality."
They turned down a narrower street, away from the glittering skyline of Pudong across the river. The architecture shifted from modern glass to heavy, brooding stone. Art Deco facades loomed in the dark, their intricate carvings weeping rainwater.
"Here," Aldren stopped in front of a massive, iron-gated mansion. It was dark. Abandoned. Ivy choked the stone lions guarding the entrance. A sign in Chinese was plastered across the gate, faded and peeling.
"What does it say?" Elara asked.
Aldren squinted. "My Mandarin is rusty. It says... 'Condemned'. Or possibly 'Cursed'. The characters are similar."
"Great. A cursed murder house. Perfect."
"It keeps the squatters out," Aldren said. He approached the gate. He didn't have the strength to tear it open. He looked at Elara.
"Do your... thing," he gestured vaguely. " The Keystone thing."
Elara looked at the heavy chain locking the gate. She touched the cold metal. She tried to summon the silver light, the feeling of authority she had on the mountain.
Pause. Open.
Nothing happened. She was just a tired girl touching a wet chain.
"I can't," Elara whispered, panic fluttering in her chest. "It's gone. The adrenaline is gone."
"Then we do it the old-fashioned way," Aldren sighed. He grabbed the bars. He groaned, his muscles trembling, veins bulging in his neck. With a sound of grinding metal, he bent the iron bars just enough to create a gap.
"After you," he panted, leaning against the stone pillar, sweat dripping from his nose.
Elara squeezed through. Aldren dragged Li through, scraping the expensive fabric of his suit.
They were in.
Part I: The Dust of Empire
The interior of the mansion smelled of mildew, rot, and the ghosts of the 1920s.
Elara used her phone flashlight (8% battery) to guide them. The foyer was massive, dominated by a grand staircase that was missing half its steps. Dust sheets covered the furniture like shrouds.
"Upstairs," Aldren commanded. "The master bedroom. It has a view of the street. Defensible."
They hauled Li up the stairs, avoiding the rotten boards. They kicked open a set of double doors into a room that was surprisingly intact. A four-poster bed stood in the center, draped in heavy velvet that had been eaten by moths.
Aldren dumped Li onto the mattress. A cloud of dust exploded, making them all cough.
"Secure," Aldren gasped, collapsing into a dusty armchair. "We are... secure."
Elara didn't sit. She went straight to Li.
She pulled the flannel shirt off his face.
She gasped.
Li Wusheng looked... grey. Not the pale grey of a vampire, but the translucent, terrifying grey of a fading spirit. The veins in his neck were black. His breathing was a wet, rattling sound.
"Turn him over," Elara ordered.
She and Aldren rolled him onto his stomach.
The wound on his back was pulsing. It wasn't bleeding blood; it was bleeding light. Golden particles were drifting up from the charred flesh, dissolving into the air.
"He's leaking," Elara whispered, horrified. "He's leaking his soul."
"The Nine Heavens Cleave," Aldren said, his voice grim. "It severs the connection between the spirit and the body. If he runs out of Qi, he doesn't die. He dissipates. He becomes a shade."
"How do we fix it?" Elara looked at Aldren. "You're magic. Heal him."
"I am a creature of blood!" Aldren snapped, though his eyes were full of fear. "I can knit flesh. I can mend bone. I cannot stitch a soul! This is Daoist sorcery. I don't know the meridians!"
"He needs a doctor," Elara said, pacing the room. "We need to find a TCM clinic. Acupuncture. Herbs. Something."
"If we move him, he falls apart," Aldren warned. "And if we go out there, Lei finds us. Her Shades are already combing the city. I can hear their skittering in the alleyways."
Elara looked at Li. The man who had waited for her for a thousand years. The man who had taken a lightning bolt to the spine to save her.
"We can't just watch him fade," she said, tears prickling her eyes.
"We need supplies," Aldren said. "I need blood. If I am at full strength, I can perhaps... stabilize his physical form. Share my vitality. It is forbidden, and gross, but it might buy him time."
"Blood," Elara nodded. "Okay. Where do we get blood?"
Aldren stood up. He walked to the window and peered out through the grime.
"There is a butcher shop three streets over. I can smell the iron. Pig blood. It is... undignified. It tastes like mud. But it will suffice."
"Go," Elara said. "Get the blood. Get food. Get water. I'll stay with him."
Aldren hesitated. He looked at her. "You are defenseless here."
"I have a broom," Elara tried to joke, but her voice cracked. "Just go, Aldren. Hurry."
Aldren nodded. He climbed out the window, descending the ivy-covered wall like a spider.
Elara was alone in the dark house with a dying god.
Part II: The Memory of the Silver Needle
Elara sat on the edge of the bed. The room was silent except for the rain drumming on the roof and Li's ragged breathing.
She put her hand on his forehead. It was burning hot.
"Li," she whispered. "Don't you dare leave me. You promised to explain the universe to me."
He didn't move.
She looked at the wound on his back. The black corruption was spreading, looking like ink traversing wet paper. It was moving toward his neck. toward his brain.
If it reaches his head, he's gone.
Elara felt a surge of helplessness so profound it made her nauseous. She was a data analyst. She knew Excel. She knew how to organize files. She did not know how to treat magical necrosis.
She closed her eyes, trying to calm her breathing.
Roots. Earth. Wind. Sky.
She tried to remember the training. The emptiness.
But she didn't find emptiness. She found a smell.
It wasn't the smell of the dusty room. It was the smell of mugwort. Burnt herbs. Vinegar. Sickness.
The sound of rain changed. It became the sound of wind flapping against heavy canvas.
Elara opened her eyes.
She wasn't in Shanghai.
The Flashback: 618 AD — The Tang Dynasty Frontier
She was Elara the Healer (Life #3).
She was standing in a tent. The air was thick with the smoke of incense coils used to ward off the Plague Demon. Rows of straw mats lined the dirt floor, each occupied by a groaning soldier.
She wore plain hemp robes, stained with herbal pastes. Her hair was tied back with a wooden stick. Her hands were rough, stained yellow from turmeric.
"Physician!" a voice called out.
A man was carried into the tent on a stretcher. He was dressed in the armor of the Imperial Guard, but the armor was rent open, exposing his chest.
It was Aldren.
But this Aldren was human. A mortal general. He had taken an arrow to the lung. He was drowning in his own blood.
"Save him!" the soldier crying out was a monk. A young, fierce monk with a shaved head and eyes that burned with intensity.
Li Wusheng.
"He stepped in front of the arrow meant for me," Li said, gripping Elara's arm. "You must save him. The spirits say his thread is cut."
"The spirits do not command this tent," Elara snapped, shaking him off. "I do."
She knelt beside Aldren. He was pale, his lips blue. He couldn't breathe.
"Hold him down," Elara commanded Li.
"He is dying," Li whispered. "His Qi is scattering."
"Then we bind it back," Elara said. She reached for her kit. A roll of leather. She unrolled it, revealing rows of silver needles.
She didn't look at the wound. She looked at the flow.
In this life, she couldn't fly. She couldn't pause time. But she could see the river of life inside a body. She could see the blockages.
"The arrow severed the Lung Meridian," Elara diagnosed aloud. "The energy is leaking into the void. We must bridge the gap."
She took a long, thin needle.
"This will hurt," she told the unconscious Aldren.
She inserted the needle not into the wound, but into his neck. Then another in his wrist. Then another in his ankle.
She wasn't treating the anatomy. She was treating the map.
"Channel your energy," she ordered Li. "Pour your Qi into the needle at his heart. I will guide it."
Li hesitated. "I am but a novice. My energy is wild."
"Do it!" Elara roared. "Or he dies!"
Li placed his finger on the silver needle. He closed his eyes. A faint golden glow transferred from his hand to the metal.
Elara grabbed the other needles. She became the conductor. She felt the surge of Li's raw power. She twisted the needles, manipulating the flow, forcing the energy to bypass the ruined lung and reconnect the circuit of life.
It was like threading a needle in a storm.
Twist. Push. Anchor.
Aldren gasped. His eyes flew open. He took a breath—a ragged, wet breath, but a breath.
The blue tint faded from his lips.
"He lives," Li whispered, awestruck. "You stitched his ghost back to his bones."
Elara wiped the sweat from her forehead. She looked at Li.
"I didn't stitch it," she said. "I just reminded his body how to flow."
Part III: The Silver Hairpin
Elara gasped, coming back to the present.
She was in the dusty mansion. Li was dying on the bed.
But the knowledge was there. Sharp. Crystalline.
The Lung Meridian. The Spirit Gate. The Anchor Point.
She knew what to do.
"Needles," she whispered. frantically patting her pockets. "I need needles."
She didn't have a medical kit. She had a phone and a piece of lint.
She looked around the room.
The vanity table.
She ran to it. She yanked open the drawers. Old makeup. Rotting paper.
A sewing kit? No.
But there, in a small jewelry box, left behind by the family that fled a century ago.
A hairpin. A long, silver hairpin with a pearl at the end.
And a brooch. With a sharp pin.
"It has to work," Elara muttered.
She grabbed them. She ran back to the bed.
"Okay, Li. This is going to suck. And it's incredibly unsanitary. But you're immortal, so hopefully, you don't get tetanus."
She needed to sterilize them.
She looked at the bedside table. An old oil lamp. Empty.
She remembered the lighter Aldren had swiped from the convenience store earlier (before the jump). She dug it out of her pocket.
She flicked it on. She held the silver hairpin in the flame until it turned black, then red.
"Okay."
She climbed onto the bed, straddling Li's legs to get a better angle.
She looked at the black wound.
She closed her eyes for a second, summoning the memory of the Medic. She needed to see the flow.
She opened her eyes.
She didn't see the glowing map like in the memory. But she felt it. She felt the cold spots where the energy was dead. She felt the hot spots where it was leaking.
"Bridge the gap," she whispered.
She took the hot hairpin.
She aimed for a spot at the base of his neck—the Dazhui point. The meeting of all Yang meridians.
She jammed it in.
Li's body jerked violently. He let out a groan of agony.
"I know, I know," Elara soothed, holding him down with her weight. "Stay with me."
She took the brooch pin. She aimed for the center of the corruption on his back. The Mingmen. The Gate of Life.
She pushed it deep into the charred flesh.
Li screamed. It was a raw, terrible sound.
"Now," Elara whispered. "I need energy."
In the memory, Li had poured his Qi into the needle. But Li was empty. And Aldren was gone.
Elara was the only battery left.
I am the Keystone.
She placed her hands on the two improvised needles.
"Take it," she commanded.
She pushed.
She didn't push silver light this time. She pushed her own life force. Her warmth. Her stubbornness. Her memories of coffee and rain and spreadsheets.
She felt a pull—a terrifying suction. Li's dying core was a black hole, and it was drinking her dry.
Her vision blurred. Her arms shook. She felt cold, colder than she had ever been.
It's too much. It's going to kill me.
Let it, a voice said. Better me than him.
She pushed harder.
The silver hairpin began to glow. Not red from heat, but white from spirit.
The black corruption on Li's back stopped spreading. The ink-like veins began to retreat, sizzling as they hit the barrier of Elara's energy.
"Flow," Elara gritted her teeth. "Flow, dammit!"
A shockwave of energy blasted out from the bed. It blew the dust off the floor. It rattled the windows.
Li Wusheng gasped—a huge, desperate inhalation, like a drowning man breaking the surface.
The golden light on his back flared, bright and steady. The wound began to close—not healing, but sealing. The leak was plugged.
Elara pulled her hands away.
She collapsed backward, falling off the bed and hitting the floor with a thud.
She stared up at the ceiling. The room was spinning.
"Did I... did I do it?" she whispered.
From the bed, the rasping breathing had stopped. It was replaced by a slow, steady rhythm.
Elara smiled.
Then everything went black.
Part IV: Blood and Rice
Elara woke up to the smell of copper and salt.
She blinked. She was on the floor, but her head was resting on a pillow (a rolled-up velvet curtain).
Aldren was sitting next to her on the floor. He looked... better. His skin was no longer grey; it was a healthy, alabaster white. His eyes were bright red. He was wiping his mouth with a handkerchief.
"You are awake," Aldren said softly.
Elara tried to sit up. Her head pounded. "Li?"
Aldren gestured to the bed.
Li Wusheng was sleeping. Deeply. The color had returned to his face. The grey pallor was gone.
"He is stable," Aldren said, his voice filled with a strange mixture of awe and jealousy. "You performed the Spirit Stitch. It is a lost art. Even the Jade Emperor's physicians struggle with it."
"I used a hairpin," Elara croaked. "And a brooch."
"You used your soul," Aldren corrected. He reached out and touched her cheek. His hand was warm. "You were almost translucent when I returned. You gave him too much."
"He needed it."
"You are reckless," Aldren scolded, but his thumb caressed her cheekbone tenderly. "Brave. And incredibly stupid."
"Did you get the blood?"
Aldren grimaced. "Yes. Two liters of porcine hemoglobin. I drank it in the alley behind the butcher shop. I feel... dirty. Pigs have very simple thoughts. I now have a sudden urge to roll in mud."
Elara laughed. It hurt her ribs. "And food?"
"I raided a convenience store," Aldren pointed to a plastic bag. "Bottled water. Rice cakes. And something called 'Spicy Duck Neck'. I do not know why one would eat the neck, but it was popular."
Elara grabbed a bottle of water and downed half of it in one go.
"So," she said, wiping her mouth. "We're alive. We're in a haunted house in Shanghai. And General Lei is still hunting us."
"Yes," Aldren said. "But we have bought time. Li will sleep for a day, perhaps two. When he wakes, he will be weak, but his core is intact."
Aldren stood up and walked to the window. He peered through a crack in the boards.
"The rain has stopped," he observed. "The city is quiet."
He turned back to her.
"Elara. What happened? When you healed him? Did you see... something?"
Elara nodded slowly. "I saw Life Number Three. The Medic. You were the patient that time. Li was the monk who brought you in."
Aldren's expression softened. A look of distant memory crossed his face.
"Ah," he whispered. "General Valcour. I remember him. He was a fool. He charged a barbarian horde alone because he wanted a promotion."
"He stepped in front of an arrow for Li," Elara corrected.
Aldren paused. He looked at Li sleeping on the bed.
"Did I?" Aldren murmured. "I suppose... history is easily rewritten by the ego."
He walked back and sat down beside her. He leaned his head back against the bed frame.
"We are a mess, aren't we?" Aldren said. "A vampire, an immortal, and a girl with a hairpin."
"We're a team," Elara said. She opened the package of Spicy Duck Neck. She took a bite. It was incredibly spicy. It burned her tongue, waking her up completely.
"We need a plan," she said, chewing. "We can't stay here forever."
"No," Aldren agreed. "But tonight, we rest. I have warded the room. My blood is full. I will keep watch."
"You sure?"
"Sleep, Elara," Aldren commanded gently. "You saved the Immortal. Let the Monster save you for a few hours."
Elara didn't argue. She was exhausted. She curled up on the rug, pulling Aldren's suit jacket over her as a blanket (he had taken it off to avoid getting pig blood on it).
As she drifted off, she watched Aldren. He sat perfectly still, his red eyes scanning the darkness, a predator guarding his pack.
She felt safe.
For now.
Meanwhile, across the city...
General Lei stood on the observation deck of the Shanghai Tower, the tallest building in China.
She was not wet. The rain avoided her.
She held a device in her hand—a compass made of black jade. The needle was spinning wildly.
"They are cloaked," a Shade hissed, emerging from the floorboards. "The trail is cold."
Lei crushed the compass in her hand. Dust trickled through her fingers.
"They are not cloaked," she said coldly. "They are... dormant. The Key has expended her energy. She is recharging."
Lei looked out over the glittering expanse of the city. Millions of lights. Millions of hiding places.
"But she cannot hide forever," Lei whispered. "The Keystone must shine. And when she does..."
She opened her steel fan.
"Burn the district," she commanded the Shade. "Start with the Old City. Flush them out."
"But General," the Shade hesitated. "The mortals... the collateral damage..."
"Did I stutter?" Lei asked. Lightning crackled around her eyes.
"No, General."
"Go. Set Shanghai on fire. Let us see how long the savior can watch her city burn before she steps into the light."
Lei smiled. It was a smile of absolute cruelty.
"Your move, little mouse."