Jiang Qian was dead.
Lin Qiye watched her die in its entirety.
A creature dropped from the sky, shearing her throat as neatly as slicing tofu, then tore in with ecstatic hunger. Terror and despair filled her eyes until their final dimming.
Every grisly detail struck Lin's mind with surgical clarity; bile surged and nearly escaped him. Though hardship had long tempered his spirit, never had he faced such gore—yet this was no moment to retch.
While the monster gnawed her corpse, he pivoted and sprinted toward the alley's far end. Its descent had sealed his former route; he could only flee the other way, toward the place where Wang Shao had fallen. The thing, more enamoured of carrion than living prey, did not pursue, and Lin drew a thin breath of relief.
He could not name the beast—neither human nor any known animal. Call it a radiation-twisted ape and he might half believe; its size, strength and speed lay far beyond mortal reach. Yet in this mist-shrouded world, a boy who once beheld a Seraph knew science was not the only truth: mystery also reigned. And something about the creature's form stirred half-forgotten tales.
His reverie shattered as a new presence entered his mind-sense. He skidded to a halt. Ten metres ahead loomed another monster—hideous, yet unmistakably not the first. Proof lay in the corpse it cradled: Wang Shao, face devoured to a blur of raw flesh. Without the man's distinctive clothes Lin would scarcely have known him.
A second beast—the one that slew Wang Shao. Two fiends in one alley, blocking every escape.
Pallor drained Lin's face; despair, long absent, returned. In seventeen years he had felt this only twice: once, a decade past, when he saw the eyes upon the moon; and now.
The creature flung Wang's body aside like rubbish, licked blood from its crimson tongue, and fixed him with a predator's gaze. Lin cursed in silence—why must doom find him again? As a child he had glimpsed a Seraph, gone blind and fallen from the roof, been misjudged insane and shut away for a year; now, just as he prepared for entrance exams and a new life, fate flung two monsters into his path. Absurd!
The pressure of death ignited years of smothered rage; fear shrank to a spark as fierce resolve surged. Gripping his white cane, he faced the crouching beast, chest heaving—not merely a man-eater before him, but the sum of a decade's wounds. No one knew the fury hidden in this boy's silent heart.
He would not surrender.
Stirred by wrath, his eyelids—sealed these ten years—quivered. The monster shrieked like a lecher spotting prey and sprang.
"I'm not afraid of you!" Lin roared, charging. Distance collapsed; a talon slashed for his throat. He twisted aside by a hair's breadth; it scored his temple, cutting a shallow line. The black ribbon over his eyes fell away, swept off by the wind.
Seizing the instant, he drove the cane into the creature's abdomen—crack! The brittle shaft broke, and a tail-whip hurled him aside. He rolled, rose through pain, sensing the cane split in two. Never forged for war, it could not endure that iron flesh.
"Damn!" He flung the broken piece away. The shattering rod was a fuse; anger detonated. Fists clenched until nails drew blood, he roared, "I will not yield!"
In that outcry, a strange current welled inside him: like spring rain dissolving ice, a coolness flowed from heart to mind, touched a hidden knot—and the veil tore.
A sun burst within him; heat flooded every vein; his sealed eyes burned beneath the lids—then opened, naturally, after ten silent years.
And the last thing those eyes had seen was another pair—the eyes of a Seraph.
A pillar of blazing light erupted from the alley's edge, spearing the heavens. Night shone like noon.