Li Wei was focused.

  He rode at the head of the column, his body moving in rhythm with the black horse beneath him, eyes scanning the horizon for any sign of danger. The wind tugged at his cloak, carrying dust and the scent of distant earth.

  Behind him came the thunder of three hundred hooves. His father’s best soldiers, handpicked veterans clad in steel and leather, rode with grim faces and weapons at the ready. They moved with purpose, bound for the village of Yanshan.

  Though urgency burned in his blood, Li Wei refused to let it cloud his judgment. The horses were the finest in Li Baotian’s stables, but speed meant nothing if a hard ride killed them. He set a steady pace, fast, but measured. They paused when needed. Time to water the mounts. Time to let muscles rest. He would not reach Yanshan only to face Rakshasas on foot, panting and dismounted.

  Drakon rode at his right, ever alert. A soldier to his core. Ruthless but loyal. Every command Li Wei gave, Drakon relayed with quiet authority. He was the hammer, blunt but effective.

  Thalassa flanked the other side. Where Drakon was force, she was precision. Her eyes never stopped moving. Her posture remained coiled, ready to strike. If Drakon was the hammer, Thalassa was the knife, sharp and efficient.

  Mei Lin kept pace effortlessly on a lean chestnut mare. Her figure was slight, almost boyish, but there was strength in the way she held the reins. She had ridden hard the day before, delivering the message that set all of this in motion. Still, she did not falter.

  "The village is surrounded by a wooden wall," she told Li Wei as they rode, her voice steady despite the exhaustion in her face. "Most of the villagers made it inside when the Rakshasas appeared. They barred the gates. Locked them out."

  She paused.

  "But some were outside when they came."

  She did not elaborate. She did not need to.

  Li Wei pictured it anyway. Farmers caught in the fields, left outside the walls, fists pounding against wood that would not open. Women screaming. Children dragged from hiding places.

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  A sickness settled in his gut. He tightened his grip on the reins.

  A clean death would have been mercy. But the Rakshasas did not kill cleanly. They played with their food. They raped. They skinned. They feasted while their victims screamed. They tortured for the sound alone.

  Bones crushed beneath claws. Eyes torn from sockets. Tongues severed from throats.

  "How long will the wall hold?" he asked.

  Thalassa snorted, the sound sharp and humorless. "It’s old wood, young master. No stone. No bracing. A day or two, if they’re lucky. Depends how fast the Rakshasas work. If they're clever enough to make rams, it could already be gone."

  Li Wei did not answer. He stared ahead, jaw clenched.

  He prayed they were not too late.

  As the sun dipped lower in the sky, the terrain began to shift. The wilderness grew quieter. Even the wind seemed hesitant. The farmland surrounding Yanshan came into view, and with it, the first signs of horror.

  Fields lay empty. Tools were scattered in the dirt, abandoned mid-task. A scarecrow slumped in the distance, headless. Crows pecked at something in the soil.

  A single house stood by the roadside, roof charred and partially collapsed. Its door hung open, swinging lazily in the breeze. Beside it, an overturned cookpot sat in the ashes of an old fire, its bottom blackened and filled with a dark, sticky residue. Something had been cooked there. The smell clung to the air, cloying and sweet.

  Something that used to be human.

  Blood stained the ground in front of the house, dried into dark crusts. Drag marks led away from the door, smearing through the dirt and into the trees beyond. Flies buzzed lazily above them, bloated and slow.

  Mei Lin turned her face away.

  Drakon only shrugged. The massive mercenary looked indifferent. He had seen it before. He had done it before. Maybe not the cannibalism, but the killing, the raping, the burning. He had done it all for coin. This was just another battlefield.

  Thalassa was no different. She was cold and focused like her husband. Though she did pause for a moment. Among the burned debris of the house, she picked up a charred toy. A small carved rabbit, its ears melted and body blackened. She turned it over in her hand, then set it gently down before standing once more.

  Li Wei dismounted.

  He walked through the remains in silence, taking it all in. Every mark. Every trace. These were not beasts. Not animals acting on instinct. The Rakshasas did not kill for survival.

  They killed because they enjoyed it.

  He felt no fear. Only heat. It started in his chest and spread through his limbs, a quiet fire stoked by fury and sharpened by memory. He had known violence in his past life. He had seen cruelty in many forms. But this was something older. Something worse. Something rotten.

  He would not turn away.

  He would not flinch.

  "Track them," he said at last, mounting his horse again. His voice was steady. Cold. "I want to know where they are. I want to know where they sleep. Then we kill them."

  The column moved forward once more, hooves striking the earth like war drums.

  The village of Yanshan waited ahead.

  And so did the horde.