“And you gained two tails?”
Mingxi hesitated and then nodded.
Minghua shrieked. “Tell us how!”
Mingjun groaned. “Ancestor, help us.”
Lysandra stuck both hands in the air. “Iknewit. Big fox-simp energy.”
“Lysandra,” Poppy begged, “stop.”
“Nope,” she cheerfully declared. “I’m in my prophetic delusional era.” She flopped back onto her bed. “Also, the next threat arrives before sundown, FYI.”
Silence.
Mingxi grabbed Poppy’s hand and then said, “We’re not leaving Huoyáo Jìng. Not until you’re safe.”
Poppy squeezed back.
Lysandra whispered, “Oh, you’llneedto stay. Because the thing coming next? It’s not here for her.”
Her eyes rolled back, her voice hollow. “It’s here for you.”
Then, Lysandra snapped upright so violently that the healers startled. Her pupils blew wide—one bright blue, one ink-dark—her voice splitting into two voices that scraped the air.
“Oh no,” she whispered. “It found him.”
Caelan gripped her shoulder. “Found who?”
The floor vibrated.
Once.
Twice.
A deep, bone-heavy thrumming rolled through the hall like a heartbeat made of thunder. Mingxi went rigid. His tails flared, trembling at the tips. Then, a long, ripping, throat-torn shriek—not wolf, not spirit, not beast—ripped through the ancestral wards.
Poppy’s hand shot into Mingxi’s sleeve. “What is that?”
Mingxi’s breath hitched. “Yaoguai-Lang.”
Everything in the hall froze.
Outside, fox warriors shouted warnings. Bells clanged. The air warped as ancient wards trembled under the force of the creature approaching the clan grounds.
Lysandra cackled, unhinged. “Bro, you aresoscrewed.”
Mingxi surged to his feet, but a firm hand seized his arm.
“Stay behind me,” Shen Mingzhao commanded.
Mingxi snarled. “I can fight—”
“You have unstable qi,” his father snapped. “It will target you first.”
The doors of the inner hall exploded inward. A gale tore through the room—wind, dust, the stench of moon-scorched rot.
And then the creature stepped in.
