The orphanage roof leaked. Again.
Cold winter rain dripped through the cracks, each drop a needle pricking Cheon's skin. He curled tighter on his straw mat, knees drawn to his chest, breath fogging in the dark. Somewhere in the dormitory, a child whimpered. Heavy boots thudded down the hallway, followed by Master Hwan's voice—a graveled snarl. "Silence, maggots! Or I'll sell the lot of you to the sulfur mines!"
Cheon's fingers dug into his palms. Ten years. Ten years of swallowing gruel thin as dishwater. Ten years of lying still while Master Hwan's cane split the backs of older boys for "stealing" crusts of bread. Ten years of listening to the wind scream beyond the orphanage's iron gates. It called to him even now—a low, keening wail that made his ribs ache, as if his bones were tuning forks vibrating to some hidden song.
He'd been left on the orphanage steps as a squalling infant, swaddled in a cloak embroidered with a serpent swallowing its tail. Master Hwan had burned the cloth—"Bad omens," he'd spat—but Cheon had salvaged a singed scrap. He kept it hidden beneath his mat, its threads frayed but still whispering of a past he couldn't remember.
Now, at twelve summers, he was too old for adoption, too young for the mines. But not too young for Master Hwan's patrons.
That afternoon, a man in jade-green silk arrived.
Cheon scrubbed the courtyard stones on his knees, the icy water numbing his hands. The patron's boots stopped in front of him—polished leather, stitched with silver thread.
"Look up, boy."
Cheon obeyed. The man's face was smooth as wax, his eyes the color of weak tea. A gold ring glinted on his thumb, etched with a coiled dragon. Behind him, Master Hwan grinned, his teeth yellowed and crooked.
"This one's clever," Master Hwan said. "Quick hands. Quiet."
The patron crouched, his silk robe pooling like poison. "How old?"
"Twelve, sir. Strong for his age."
The man's gaze lingered on Cheon's face, then dropped to his hands. "Scars?"
"None that matter."
The patron stood, flicking dust from his sleeve. "We'll take him."
Master Hwan's grin widened. "A wise choice, Lord Xu."
Cheon's gut twisted. Last winter, Lord Xu had taken a girl named Mei. She'd screamed when they dragged her to his carriage. A week later, Cheon found her hair ribbon in the woods behind the orphanage, speckled with rust-brown stains.
"You're mad," Lian whispered that night.
They huddled in the kitchen pantry, their breath mingling in the dark. Lian's hands, chapped from scrubbing pots, clutched the rope Cheon had woven from stolen hemp. At fourteen, she was all sharp angles and haunted eyes, her voice frayed from years of swallowing screams.
"The mountains are cursed," she said. "Even the hunters come back with frostbite and empty traps."
Cheon glared at the pantry door, where the muffled clink of Lord Xu's coins echoed from Master Hwan's office. "Better cursed than butchered."
Lian flinched. Two years ago, her younger brother had been sold to a "merchant" from the south. He'd waved goodbye with a wooden toy horse clutched in his fist. They'd found the horse in a ditch, its head snapped off.
"They'll catch you," she said. "They always do."
Cheon touched the scrap of burnt cloak tucked in his tunic. "Not this time."
Midnight.
The dormitory reeked of unwashed bodies and fear. Cheon lay rigid on his mat, counting snores. Thirty breaths. Thirty heartbeats. Now.
He slid from his mat, the rope coiled beneath his tunic like a second spine. The floorboards groaned. A boy stirred—Jin, the youngest, barely six. Cheon froze, pulse roaring in his ears. Jin sighed and rolled over.
Creeeak. The dormitory door opened a sliver, frost-kissed air slicing through the room. Cheon slipped into the courtyard, his bare feet burning against the snow. The outer wall loomed ahead, its stones slick with ice.
Three breaths. Just three breaths.
He scrambled up the well, rope lashed to its mossy stones. The hemp tore his palms, blood smearing the ice. A guard's laughter echoed nearby—closer—and Cheon flung himself over the wall.
He landed hard, pain shooting up his ankles. The forest waited, a tangle of shadows.
The trees were alive.
Pines clawed at his face as he ran, branches whipping his cheeks raw. His threadbare tunic ripped, the cold gnawing through to his ribs. Behind him, the orphanage bell clanged—they'd found his empty mat—but the storm swallowed the sound.
Rain became ice. Cheon stumbled, knees skidding on rocks. Blood slicked his shins. He crawled, nails breaking against frozen earth.
"Stupid…stupid…" he choked, tears freezing on his lashes.
A howl cut through the wind.
Hounds.
Cheon lurched to his feet. His lungs burned. The mountainside rose ahead, a jagged black spine against the sky. He climbed, fingers numb, boots slipping on scree. The howls grew closer, frenzied.
There—
A crevice in the rock, veiled by ice. Cheon wedged himself inside, heart hammering. The hounds' barks echoed below, their handlers cursing.
"Lost the brat's trail!"
"Forget it! The cold'll kill 'im by dawn."
Cheon pressed deeper into the crevice, his breath ragged. The ice glowed faintly, as if lit from within. He crawled forward, the narrow passage widening until—
Open air.
He tumbled into a moonlit grove, the storm suddenly muted. Before him, the mountain yawned, its peaks shrouded in cloud. And there, etched against the skyline…
A shadow. A cave.
But Cheon didn't move. Not yet. He collapsed against a boulder, shivering, blood crusting his skin. The wind howled again, but now it carried a new note—a low, resonant hum that made the quartz in the rocks tremble.
Somewhere in the dark, the cave waited.
Cheon closed his eyes. For the first time in ten years, he smiled.
The cave exhaled.
Warm, metallic air brushed Cheon's face as he crawled deeper into the crevice, the ice-glazed walls narrowing until they scraped his shoulders. His breath came in ragged puffs, each exhale shimmering with an odd, violet luminescence. The stone here wasn't right. It pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat under his palms.
*Turn back*, a voice in his skull whispered—not the wind, but his own, frayed by years of survival. Yet the orphanage's hounds still bayed in the distance, their cries threading through the storm. Master Hwan's men would be armed with hooks and chains. Cheon crawled onward.
The crevice opened suddenly, spilling him into a cavern vast enough to swallow the orphanage whole. Moonlight filtered through cracks in the ceiling, painting the walls in silver and shadow. But it wasn't the size that stole Cheon's breath.
It was the *writing*.
Symbols coiled across every surface, etched so deep the stone seemed to bleed darkness. They squirmed when he looked directly at them, as though alive. At the cavern's heart rose a dais—jagged obsidian, its edges fused with veins of glowing quartz. Atop it sat a circlet of blackened metal, cradling a single stone.
No. Not a stone.
An *eye*.
Void-black, its edges swimming with violet fire, it stared unblinking at the ceiling. Cheon's stomach lurched. He'd seen eyes like that before, in the stray dogs that sometimes wandered the orphanage gates—clouded and dead. But this… this was different. It *saw* him.
"**Late visitor.**"
Cheon froze. The voice wasn't in the cavern. It was *inside* him, oily and resonant, vibrating his teeth.
"Who's there?" he demanded, fists raised. His reflection glared back from the obsidian dais—a gaunt boy in rags, hair matted with blood and ice.
Laughter echoed, shaking pebbles from the ceiling. "**No one. Everyone. The last sigh of the Divine Demon.**"
Cheon's pulse quickened. The words meant nothing to him, but the title prickled his memory. Old Tawny, the drunken storyteller who sometimes traded tales for bread at the orphanage, had spoken of a god who'd torn the heavens apart. *"The Divine Demon,"* he'd slurred, *"not good, not evil. Just hungry."*
The eye's violet light deepened. "**You stink of fear, boy. And hunger. Why have you come?**"
Cheon forced himself closer, each step crunching brittle frost. "I didn't come. I… I just needed to hide."
"**Liar.**" The word slithered into his skull. "**You followed the wind. You've always heard it, haven't you? The song in your marrow?**"
Memories flickered—the orphanage gates shuddering in a gale, the wind's howl harmonizing with his nightmares. Cheon swallowed. "What is it?"
"**A dirge. My dirge.**" The dais trembled as the voice swelled. "**I am the last breath of the Heavenly Demon Divine God. My art, my power—all trapped here, in this tomb. In this eye.**"
Cheon halted an arm's length from the dais. The eye's pupil seemed to dilate, drinking in the moonlight. "Why tell me?"
"**Because you're already dead.**" The voice sharpened. "**The cold will claim you by dawn. Your masters will drag your corpse back, and that silk-robed vulture will carve the defiance from your bones.**"
A vision flashed—Lord Xu's wax-pale face leaning over him, a scalpel glinting. Cheon flinched. "No!"
"**Then take it.**" The eye's fire flared, casting the cavern in bruise-colored light. "**Claim the Void Eye. Let my hunger become yours.**"
"What… what does it do?"
"**It sees.**" The voice dropped to a whisper. "**The threads of qi that weave the world. The rot in men's souls. The future, the past—all unravel before it. But first…**" The dais cracked, fissures snaking toward Cheon's feet. "**First, it unmakes.**"
Another vision: the orphanage's courtyard, but *wrong*. Black veins throbbed under the stones, and the children's faces flickered between flesh and skull. Master Hwan's shadow stretched, clawed and grinning.
Cheon staggered. "I don't understand."
"**The Void Eye shows truth,**" the voice hissed. "**Your truth. Look.**"
The cavern dissolved.
*Cheon stands in a field of ash. The sky bleeds. Before him towers the Divine Demon—a colossus of storm and sinew, his face a shifting void. Armies lie shattered at his feet, their banners burning.*
*"You think power is a sword? A flame?"* The Demon's voice splits the earth. *"Power is hunger. To want something so deeply, you'd let the world burn."*
*The scene shifts. Cheon's own hands, slick with blood. Master Hwan's corpse at his feet. Lord Xu choking on his own gold. Lian, whole and laughing, her brother's toy horse mended in her hands.*
*"Yes…"* The Demon's eye floats before him, pulsing. *"This is your hunger. Take it. Feed it."*
Cheon gasped, back in the cavern, his cheeks wet. The eye loomed closer, though he hadn't moved.
"**What is your answer, little rat?**"
He saw Mei's ribbon again, frayed and bloodied. Saw Lian's hollow cheeks. Felt the scrap of burnt cloak against his chest, its serpent sigil writhing.
*Hunger is power.*
Cheon reached for the eye.
Pain.
White-hot needles bored into his skull as his fingers brushed the stone. The circlet shattered, and the Void Eye *lunged*—a black comet searing into his right socket. Cheon screamed. His bones crackled, violet light bleeding from his pores. Visions erupted:
*—A thousand eyes opening in the dark.*
*—The Divine Demon's laugh, shaking stars loose from the sky.*
*—Lian screaming his name as the orphanage burns.*
"**Survive the night,**" the voice faded, "**and the path begins…**"
Cheon collapsed, clawing at his face. His right eye was gone. In its place, the Void Eye pulsed, its veins knitting into his flesh. Outside, the storm raged.
Somewhere, a wolf howled.
Or maybe it was him.