The rain had been falling for three days.
Not the gentle kind that nourished fields, but the cold, needling rain that soaked through clothes, flesh, and resolve alike. It clung to the stone paths of Black Ash City, pooled in cracked gutters, and turned the air into something that tasted of rust and old blood.
Li Yaochen crouched beneath the eaves of a collapsed shrine, his back pressed to damp stone, breath held shallow. Each inhale burned his lungs. Each exhale felt too loud.
Don't move.
A shout echoed from the street beyond the broken wall.
"Check the alleys again! He couldn't have gone far!"
Boots splashed through water. Armor clinked. Someone laughed, careless and sharp.
Li Yaochen lowered his gaze to his hands. They were trembling.
They always did, when it mattered.
He clenched them into fists and pressed them into the mud, grounding himself in the ache. Fear was useful only if it didn't paralyze you. That was the first lesson his mother had taught him, long before disease took her and the world took everything else.
He had not planned to steal.
But hunger was a patient teacher, and the outer granary of the Iron River Sect had been poorly guarded. Poorly guarded for disciples, at least. Not for someone like him.
A nobody.
A grain thief.
A life worth less than the rainwater seeping into the cracks.
The footsteps drew closer. A shadow passed the gap in the wall. Li Yaochen felt his heartbeat climb into his throat.
Left or right, he calculated, mind racing despite the fear. If I run now, they'll see me. If I wait—
A blade slammed into the stone pillar beside him.
Stone exploded. Pain tore through his shoulder as fragments cut into flesh. Li Yaochen cried out before he could stop himself.
"Found him!"
There was no time.
Li Yaochen surged to his feet and ran.
The alley spat him out into the lower district, where crooked buildings leaned together like conspirators and the rain turned the ground into a slick trap. He slipped once, barely catching himself on a rotten post, and the delay cost him dearly.
A cultivator landed in front of him.
The man wore the gray-and-red robes of the Iron River outer guard. His expression was bored, eyes dull with practiced superiority. Spiritual energy rolled faintly around him, invisible but heavy, like pressure before a storm.
"Another rat," the guard said. "Didn't your parents teach you where you belong?"
Li Yaochen's mouth opened. Words rose—apologies, pleas, promises—but he swallowed them.
Begging only worked when the listener still remembered what mercy was.
He turned and bolted sideways.
The guard snorted and flicked his wrist.
Pain like lightning tore through Li Yaochen's leg. He crashed to the ground, water splashing up around him. His breath left him in a broken gasp.
Boots crunched closer.
"Relax," the guard said. "It won't hurt long."
A blade rose.
At that moment, Li Yaochen understood something with terrifying clarity.
There was no fate here. No hidden master watching from afar. No ancient bloodline awakening at the brink of death. Just rain, mud, and a blade descending because it could.
The sword fell.
And the world… did not end.
Instead, something shifted.
It was not light. Not sound. Not power.
It was the sudden, absolute certainty that something had noticed.
Time stretched, thinning like fragile glass. The rain froze mid-fall. The guard's expression locked into a sneer that would never quite complete.
Li Yaochen felt his thoughts pulled inward, collapsing toward a point deep within his chest.
This is death, he thought, strangely calm. So this is—
A pressure wrapped around him.
Not warmth. Not comfort.
Preservation.
Like an unseen hand cupping a dying ember, refusing to let it go out.
The blade passed through where his neck had been—
—and struck stone.
The frozen world snapped back into motion. Rain slammed down. Sound returned in a deafening rush. The guard stumbled, eyes widening in confusion as his strike met nothing.
Li Yaochen lay several paces away, gasping, his body screaming in protest.
"How—" the guard began.
Li Yaochen didn't wait.
He rolled, crawled, and then staggered to his feet, ignoring the agony in his leg. Cowardice lent him strength. Desperation sharpened his focus. He ran without direction, without dignity, without looking back.
He did not stop until the city walls were far behind him and the forest swallowed the road.
Only then did he collapse.
Mud coated his face. Rain washed blood from his shoulder. His heart hammered as if trying to escape his chest.
He laughed.
It came out broken and hoarse, half-sob, half-madness.
"I'm alive," he whispered.
The forest did not answer.
But something inside him… remained.
Li Yaochen closed his eyes and felt it then—an absence that was not empty, a silence that was not void. It did not speak. It did not move.
It simply was.
Watching.
Waiting.
And far above the clouds, beyond sects and thrones and false gods, the heavens remained unchanged.
Unaware.
Uninterested.
They did not record the survival of a starving youth in the rain.
They did not remember his fear.
They did not know his name.
And for the first time, Li Yaochen understood that surviving in such a world would require something far crueler than hope.
It would require endurance.
The rain continued to fall.