The sand demon’s roar shook the ground beneath as itcollapsed under the might of a Demon God the way paper caved beneath steel. The Silver Dragon was silent as its body, long enough to coil across the entirety of the horizon, wrapped around the sand demon’s form.
Squeezed.
Demonic qì exploded. Lan held on to Dilaya as the sand beneath them writhed and the world rocked like an ocean in a storm.
Slowly, all quieted.
Lan opened her eyes. Clear violet skies, rimmed by the corals of sunset. Clouds the blush color of magnolias, which rushed over the darkening skyline like a celestial river. The sandstorm was gone, the sandsong silent. Up ahead were specks between the dunes: the Jade Trail caravanners derailed by the demon, slowly stirring.
Alive.
Lan’s head pounded. Dilaya lay still but for the rise and fall of her chest. Her qì was faint but steady. She would live—though she would need to see a healer, and soon.
Lan drew several long breaths before pushing herself up. She picked up her ocarina, which lay in the sand nearby, and slipped it into the pouch at her hip, feeling her breathing come more easily.
That was when she saw it.
A shimmering figure stood before her, long silken skirt and sashes billowing in an invisible breeze. A crescent-shaped sapphire glinted on her forehead, and the bangles on her wrists and brooches at her waist glittered gold.
Lan lifted her face and stopped breathing.
Hovering over the figure, as faint as a stream of coiled moonlight, was the form of the Silver Dragon. It faced the figure, utterly still but for its whiskers and mane, which rippled in the same invisible wind that rustled the figure’s raiment.
Lan watched in trepidation as the Demon God bent its head to the figure’s outstretched hand. They touched and, just like that, vanished. She sensed the Silver Dragon returning to where its core nestled inside her, dormant once again.
“Yuè.”
Lan jumped. Tai had come to kneel by her side. The Spirit Summoner’s brows were furrowed as he gazed at the spot where the figure had lingered.
“Did you see that?” she stammered.
“Yes. Yuè,” Tai repeated. “She was Yuè. The soul at the sand demon’s core.” His spirit bell hung at his waist, silent, though he kept his hand on it as if in reassurance.
A demon’s core was akin to a human’s heart, and at its center was a soul: the original soul of the being it had been before becoming corrupted by malevolent qì and before it had begun consuming other souls to strengthen its power.
Lan stared at Tai. “You saw nothing else?”
“I heard. I heard.” Tai looked solemn. “Such grief.”
There was nothing to indicate that the Spirit Summoner had seen the strange sight of that Yuè soul touching the form of the Silver Dragon. Lan had come to realize that though she could see the Demon God bound to her, it remained invisible to all others around her. That was how she preferred it. Demonic practitioning was dangerous and forbidden for good reason: practitioners often lost control of their demons’ power. It was a reviled form of practitioning across most clans, and the implicit agreement between Lan and her friends had been for her to never use her Demon God’s power, knowing its dangers.
Lan did not want to imagine what Yeshin Noro Dilaya would say if she found out that the Silver Dragon’s power had broken loose just now.
Her thoughts flitted back to the Yuè soul. Why would ithave greeted something as innately malevolent as a Demon God? There had seemed to be reverence in the soul’s stance. Reverence, yet also melancholy, an ancient sadness lining her face. Lan wondered how someone so beautiful might have come to such a tragic pass, evolving into a wrathful demon and feeding on souls for thousands of cycles.
Lan did not have long to dwell on this.
Through the arid desert breeze came a new qì, one that pressed at Lan’s throat and filled her lungs with the scent of copper. She would recognize that anywhere: the signature of those who haunted her nightmares.
Elantians. Nearby.
Lan drew her dagger, That Which Cuts Stars. It was small, and at first glance, appeared not to be of much use in hand-to-hand combat. But the blade’s true value lay in its special ability to temporarily cut through demonic qì.
You aim for the demon’s core of qì—the equivalent to our hearts. Then you pierce.
A voice like velvet midnight. A gaze like black steel aflame. She remembered the way Zen’s fingers had felt, cool and steady, as they’d wrapped around hers. Guided the blade of the dagger to his heart.
Lan swallowed, furiously blinking away the memory. A shadow appeared over the edge of the horizon, less a silhouette than an absence of the stars that had begun to speckle the indigo sky. Lan froze as the figure seemed to turn; she thought she saw the gleam of an Elantian magician’s metal bands and armor, thought she felt an icy gaze find her in the midst of that vast desert.
