No matter what happened, Ning Yitao kept her face calm. She stayed focused on the thing in her hand.
Still, the coin betrayed her. Her fingers clenched around the old bronze, knuckles white. A cold sweat slicked her palm.
Up close with a black-clad watcher, she couldn't be sure of victory. She was ready to die.
She hadn’t said anything before, but the formation under their feet was more than a simple killing array. There were rebound sigils woven into it — small marks designed to amplify the array’s effect, to feed it and make it grow. Even if only part of the formation triggered at first, the sigils would keep widening the damage. Once the mechanism fully opened, the killing grid and the sigils would not stop. They would keep tearing at whatever they could, eating until there was nothing left.
And their enemy held the shadows. The black-clad figure observed them like a man watching ants behind glass. The less they revealed, the less the watcher could guess how much they understood.
Ning Yitao didn’t know why the man would use such a device. If the array activated, the pain would be more than physical; the recoil could brand a soul—marking it against rebirth. Fate would turn and come back in some other, cruel form. She frowned as a suspicion sprang up: whoever stood in the dark knew how to dodge Heaven’s judgment, otherwise he wouldn’t have survived until now. Ning Yitao herself had always been at odds with Heaven’s law, yet she’d felt no punishment descend upon her. Everything was tangled.
Judging by the coin in her palm, Ning Yitao chose a path and picked up her pace. She couldn’t let the watcher succeed.
At the rear of the group, Grinton moved.
There was something different in his eyes now. A streak of black flickered across them so fast it could have been a trick of light. The instant fear had flickered in his face, the watcher seized the crack and slipped something inside him.
“Ah!”
Grinton’s cry dragged everyone’s attention back. Eve, who was closest, was at his side first. “What’s wrong?” she asked, panic sharp in her voice.
Grinton breathed through the pain, collapsed to the ground, clutching his leg and wailing. Their commotion drew the others in; a ring of people formed around him to see what had happened. The mist that lay heavy over the clearing thickened as Ning Yitao turned, seeming to close ranks like a wall. Only by leaning close could anyone make out Grinton’s face.
Ning Yitao dropped down and examined the wound. Something had cut deep into his leg; blood flowed freely. She tore her own sleeve without hesitation and pressed it to the gash.
Grinton’s eyes shone with a complicated mix of pity and resolve. He wanted to live; he could not accept dying then and there. In his mind the death card he had predicted flashed again. This time he did not hesitate. He pushed himself up with his hands.
The mist gave him cover. The grass whispered as something moved through it, small noises swallowed under the rush of Grinton’s breathing. No one noticed his hand close over something hidden near his palm.
Before anyone could react, Grinton’s face shifted from pain to ferocity. He scattered the powder he had concealed into the ring around them.
“Run!” Ning Yitao started to shout, but the words caught in her throat. The powder did its work. One by one, the circle of people went limp and collapsed, slipping into a void of sleep.
Grinton stared at the small pile of powder on his palm as if disbelieving what he had done. He had only one role to play now—the villain. His voice cut through the quiet of the woods, thin and urgent.
“I did exactly what you asked,” he said, looking toward where the watcher lurked. “You promised—if I helped, you’d let me go. Let me leave.”
His nerves made his words shake. He didn’t know if the man would keep his word, but he had to try. Following Ning Yitao meant death. He would gamble even with their lives.
For a long, frozen moment nothing answered. Then the mist that had been choking the clearing thinned and dissolved, as though it had never existed. Grinton’s face brightened. He took it as permission and bolted, scrambling away in a panicked crawl.
He only ran a few strides before stopping. Something tugged at him inside, a memory. He turned back and looked down at Ning Yitao, fallen and peaceful in sleep.
He’d known about the golden blood since the old days in the castle. His family had passed down a tale like a fever dream: the blood of gold could cure any illness, could bring the dying back. Feed a dying person that blood, and the donor would die; the saved would awaken reborn, free of pain and disease — as if given an entirely new body.
Grinton had edged closer to Ning Yitao ever since. The thought consumed him: if he took a drop of her blood and swapped it for his child’s, his child would live. He told himself it would only be a little. “Just a drop. Just a little,” a voice in his head whispered until he believed it.
He crouched by Ning Yitao, a knife already drawn from its sheath. His face wore a map of madness and apology.
“If I bring the golden blood back, my child will have a healthy life,” he murmured to the sleeping girl as if bargaining with fate. “I won’t have to be crushed by debts. If she gives her life to save my child… I can finally be free.”
When the blade touched her skin, he staggered. Tears fell onto the grass. He sobbed in a raw, animal voice. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean for it to come to this. I’ll repay you a thousand times over. Just let this one thing be for me. Please.”
Then he did it.
Quietly, methodically, he nicked her palm. Blood welled and he squeezed it into a small bottle as if it burned him. The bottle sealed the warm, spinning color inside. He stood there a moment, looking at what he had stolen, then ran, escaping into the trees.
Grinton didn’t spare another thought for the people he had left behind. Their lives had become currency to him; he had spent them for his child’s future.