Heaven's Bound: The Rise Of The Infernal Sage

Chapter 3

Jian Lei's POV

"There's someone out there," Sun Hao whispered, and his grip on my wrist tightened enough to hurt.

I followed his gaze to the tree line, where the shadows sat wrong, too solid, too still for branches moving in the wind. For a long moment nothing happened. Then a shape detached itself from the dark and walked toward the firelight, hands raised, palms open, the universal gesture of someone who wanted to be seen as harmless.

It was Old Peng's grandson, Tao, barely fourteen, out of breath like he'd run the whole way from the eastern pass.

"Elder Sun," he gasped, "there are men at the checkpoint. Three of them. They stopped my uncle on the road and asked him questions."

"What kind of questions," Sun Hao said, releasing my wrist but not relaxing.

"About a boy," Tao said. "They asked if anyone in the village had a son born with a mark on his shoulder. A red mark shaped like a flame."

The fire seemed to get very loud in my ears.

I had a mark like that. I'd had it since birth, tucked high on my left shoulder where my mother used to say it looked like a little candle flame someone had pressed into my skin before I was born. I'd never thought much of it. Half the children in the village had some birthmark or another, moles shaped like animals, patches of pale skin, the kind of thing mothers liked to find meaning in.

"What did your uncle tell them," Sun Hao asked, and I noticed his voice had gone carefully flat, the way a man's voice goes flat when he's trying not to let fear leak into it.

"He said he didn't know of anyone," Tao said. "But Elder Fang was standing right there and you know how he talks when strangers offer coin. He said maybe, maybe there was a boy like that, and started asking around before my uncle could stop him."

I stood up so fast the stool tipped over behind me.

"Elder Sun," I said, "Elder Fang tested my root today. He tested every boy in the village today. He knows exactly who has what marks on their skin. All he has to do is remember."

Sun Hao was already moving, pulling his cloak tighter around his shoulders despite the mild night. "Then we don't have until morning like I thought. We might not have until midnight."

"You said run before," I said. "Run where? To the next village? They'll have riders on every road by dawn if they're already asking questions at the pass."

"Not to the next village," Sun Hao said. "Higher. Into the caves above the falls. Nobody but you and I and a handful of children stupid enough to dare each other know those paths well enough to move through them at night."

"What about Mei Lin'er," I said. "What about her grandmother, her whole household, if these men come asking questions and someone points a finger at her for keeping close to me all these years?"

Sun Hao's jaw tightened. "Get her. Get her only, if you insist, we don't have time to gather the whole village. Meet me at the base of the falls before the moon crests the ridge. If I'm not there—"

"You will be," I said, more firmly than I felt.

He almost smiled at that, the ghost of something proud flickering behind the fear. "Go, Jian Lei. Now."

I ran.

The village was already stirring by the time I reached Mei Lin'er's house, lanterns lighting in windows, low voices carrying through thin walls as word of the strangers at the checkpoint spread faster than any of us could outrun it. I didn't bother knocking. I threw pebbles at her shutter the way I had since we were children sneaking off to fish before dawn, and she opened it within seconds, already half dressed like she'd known something was wrong before I even arrived.

"They're asking about the flame mark," I said, before she could ask. "My mark. Someone's going to tell them it's me."

Her face went through fear and then something harder, something decided. "Give me a moment."

"There's no moment to give," I said. "Elder Sun said the falls. Now, Mei Lin'er, please."

She didn't argue. She pulled on her shoes, grabbed a small bundle she must have kept ready for exactly this kind of night without ever telling me why, and followed me out into the dark without waking her grandmother.

We hadn't gone thirty steps down the path before Elder Fang's voice cut through the night behind us, too loud, too pleased with himself.

"That's him," he was saying to someone I couldn't see yet. "That's the boy. Jian Lei. Failed his root test six times, but he's got the mark you're asking about, plain as day on his left shoulder. I saw it myself just this afternoon."

I froze. Mei Lin'er's hand found mine in the dark and squeezed once, hard, a silent order to keep moving.

But it was already too late. A second voice answered Elder Fang's, calm and unhurried in a way that made my skin crawl worse than any shout could have.

"Good," the voice said. "Bring him to us. Alive, if it's convenient. If it isn't, the flame doesn't need the rest of him to be useful."