Li Wei rode at the head of the column.

  The journey to the Qianlong Valley was long, winding through forested ridges and narrow mountain passes. Yet they moved quickly. Their horses were swift, their supplies well organized, and their leadership capable. They made better time than expected.

  As the valley opened before them, Li Wei felt a strange mix of emotions. The land was stunning in its untouched beauty. The air was cool and crisp, filled with the scent of pine and wildflowers. Peaks rose like ancient guardians in the distance, their crowns dusted with snow. A stream ran alongside the road, clear and bright, the water dancing over smooth stone.

  But the beauty was deceptive.

  Poverty clung to the region like a second skin. Li Wei saw it in the crumbling huts, in the patchwork clothing, in the faces worn down not by labor, but by despair. Qianlong was far from any trade routes. No caravans came through. No silk, no spices, no fine goods. Only sheep and yak. The valley's only export was wool, and even that was meager.

  Li Baotian had ignored this place for decades. There was nothing here he desired. No fine wine, no exotic concubines, no gold to plunder. And so the valley had withered in silence.

  Li Wei and his company stopped in a village near the center of the valley. Its name was Tserkang. The dialect here was older, the people speaking with thick accents that twisted the sounds of Jinlong into something earthier, more rooted in the soil.

  The villagers greeted them with wary eyes. Their clothes were roughspun, their children barefoot and silent.

  "Yes, many man-eating monsters," an elder said. His voice was hoarse, and he squinted at the soldiers with suspicion. "They come from mountain. Take women. Eat men. Gods no longer answer."

  The dialect was strange but not impossible to understand. A few words different, a cadence that reminded Li Wei of ancient folk songs. It felt like they had ridden not just across mountains, but across centuries.

  Later that evening, Mei Ling returned from scouting the surrounding settlements and gathering information from the locals.

  "From what I gathered," she said, dismounting and pulling down her scarf, "the Rakshasas here appear to be fewer in number than the clan that attacked Yanshan. Their raids are rarer. Less destruction, more precision. Instead of burning entire villages, they prefer quick strikes. Kill the men. Take the women."

  Li Wei grimaced. His knuckles whitened around the reins. He had a strong sense of what happened to the abducted women. It was a fate far worse than death.

  "They strike at night," Mei Ling continued. "Always from the forested slopes. No one has followed them and returned. But the villagers believe their den is inside a cave system further up the valley, near a cluster of hot springs and jagged cliffs. They call it the Maw."

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  "The Maw," Li Wei repeated quietly.

  The name felt right. Dark. Hungry. The kind of place where light went in and never came out.

  He gazed toward the north, where the hills began to rise into cliffs. Even from a distance, the valley narrowed there, closing in like a throat. If he squinted, he could almost see the gaping shadow of a cave entrance beneath the overhanging rock.

  They would go there.

  They would cleanse it.

  "Let the troops rest tonight," Li Wei ordered. "Double the night watch. No fires after sundown. We move at first light."

  "Understood, General," Thalassa replied. Her tone was hard, all playfulness gone. She flirted, teased, and laughed during training, so it was easy to forget. But she was a hardened killer. Virexian to her core. Just as ruthless as her husband. She had burned cities, cut throats, and smashed skulls. She had been bred for war.

  Drakon said nothing. He simply placed a hand on Lian Yu’s shoulder and guided the boy toward their tent. The soft, feminine youth followed silently, his movements obedient, almost reverent. A young, submissive eromenos who all but worshiped his older, dominant erastes. It made Li Wei uneasy. The power imbalance in such an arrangement stirred something uncomfortable within him.

  A part of him, the part that remembered being Alex Carter, still struggled with such things. A grown man and a fourteen-year-old boy should not share such a relationship. He knew the world he lived in now was not the one he had come from. This world followed its own rules. But some part of him still felt sickened. Still remembered a different kind of morality. Still saw wrong where the Virexians saw tradition.

  Every time he felt like he was adapting to this world, something would slap him back. It reminded him that this was a broken world, grim and dark, where atrocities were commonplace, and where consent and power imbalance were ignored.

  With these thoughts clouding his mind, Li Wei wandered the village of Tserkang before nightfall. He was approached by two peasant boys, hesitant but determined. They introduced themselves as Tenzin and Chodak.

  "Are you really going into the Maw, young master?" Tenzin asked.

  "Yes. At first light," Li Wei replied.

  "We would like to come with you," Chodak said. "Tenzin’s older sister, Pema, was taken by the Rakshasas a few years ago. Our friend, Dolma, was taken just a few months ago. If there's any chance to save them, we want to help."

  "It will not be easy. It will not be safe," Li Wei said with a sigh. "My men are trained soldiers. They might survive a Rakshasa den. But two village boys, in a pitch-black cave where light cannot reach? That is another matter."

  "We know," Chodak said. "But we still want to go. When Pema was taken, we were only twelve. Too young to do anything. And now Dolma is gone. I love her. I wanted to go, both of us did, but our families stopped us. They told us no one comes back from the Maw. That two boys like us would only die. But now that you're here, we want to try. We want to fight."

  Li Wei studied their faces. They were young, far from trained soldiers, but their eyes were steady. Fire burned in them, the kind born from grief and helplessness.

  "All right," he said at last. "You may come. But you must understand. It has been months for one girl, years for the other. The chances that either of them is still alive are almost nonexistent."

  "We understand, young master," Tenzin said. "But we still want to go. We want to help. And if we die, it will be by our own choice."

  Li Wei could not help but wonder if he was leading these peasant boys to their deaths. If he was leading his soldiers, even himself, to death. But then he remembered the lives ruined by the Rakshasas. Men killed and eaten. Women and girls taken screaming into the dark caves. Someone had to stop these monsters. Someone had to hunt them. Kill them. Someone had to bring light into the darkness of the Maw.

  And as fate had it, that someone was Li Wei. Tomorrow, at first light, he would enter the Maw, descend underground to the Rakshasa den, a place where no light entered, where only darkness remained. And he would bring fire and steel.