The cavern reeked of death.

  Xu Tian knelt in the shadows, his fingers caked with cold dirt as he pried a jade coin from a skeleton’s clenched hand. The faint glow of his flickering lantern cast long shadows over the corpse-strewn ground, their broken forms a grim reminder of what happened to those who dared enter these ruins unprepared. Above him, the crumbled remnants of a great sect’s fortress loomed, half-buried under centuries of rubble. The stars outside glimmered faintly through cracks in the stone ceiling, mocking him with their distant light.

  Not for me, he thought bitterly. The heavens had rejected him long ago.

  The sound of distant footsteps snapped him back to reality. He shoved the jade coin into his tattered satchel and extinguished his lantern, plunging the cavern into darkness. He pressed himself against the jagged rock wall, every nerve on edge as his ears strained for the source of the noise.

  Clink. Clink. The rhythmic scrape of metal boots on stone echoed through the chamber, growing louder.

  Mercenaries.

  They weren’t the first scavengers to stumble upon these ruins, but they were better armed than most. Xu Tian clenched his fists, cursing his misfortune. He had no sword, no talismans, no allies—only a battered body that hadn’t known a proper meal in days. Fighting wasn’t an option, but running would only get him cornered.

  Then the voices came, low and gruff.

  “Looks like someone’s been here recently,” one of the mercenaries growled. “Check the bodies. If he’s alive, he can’t have gotten far.”

  Xu Tian bit back a curse. They were thorough, methodical. Worse, they were experienced enough to know the tricks of desperate scavengers like him. His mind raced, searching for an escape.

  The ruins answered him.

  A faint pulse—like the heartbeat of the earth itself—reverberated through the stone. Xu Tian froze, his breath caught in his throat. It wasn’t the first time he’d felt the strange, rhythmic vibration beneath these ruins, but this time it was stronger, almost urgent, as if the ground was calling to him.

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  His eyes darted to the nearby rubble. A faint glow emanated from beneath a collapsed archway, barely visible in the dark. He hadn’t noticed it before.

  The mercenaries’ footsteps grew louder.

  No choice.

  Xu Tian scrambled toward the light, squeezing through the narrow gap beneath the archway. The jagged stones tore at his ragged robes, and the weight of the rubble pressed down on him, but he pushed forward, driven by desperation. The glow grew brighter as he emerged into a cavern unlike any he’d seen before.

  It was vast, impossibly vast, with walls that seemed to stretch forever, their surfaces glimmering with faint, crystalline light. But it was the object at the center of the cavern that stole his breath.

  A star.

  It wasn’t like the stars in the sky, distant and untouchable. This one was broken, fractured into jagged pieces that floated in the air, spinning slowly around a dark core that pulsed with ominous energy. The light it emitted was strange, neither warm nor cold, and it seemed to seep into the very air, filling the cavern with an oppressive weight.

  Xu Tian’s heart pounded as he approached, drawn despite himself. The pulse he’d felt earlier was stronger now, resonating through his chest in time with the dark core’s rhythm. He reached out, his hand trembling, and the star’s light seemed to flare in response, as if recognizing him.

  “Don’t,” a voice rasped behind him.

  Xu Tian spun around to see one of the mercenaries standing at the cavern’s entrance, his sword drawn. The man’s eyes were wide with fear, his gaze locked on the broken star. “You don’t know what that thing is. Leave it, and maybe you’ll live long enough to regret being here.”

  Xu Tian’s lips curled into a bitter smile. “Live long enough? For what? To crawl in the dirt like a worm, begging for scraps?”

  The mercenary took a cautious step forward, his sword glinting in the dim light. “I don’t care what sob story you’ve got. Step away, or I’ll—”

  The star’s core pulsed violently, cutting the man off. A wave of darkness rippled out, slamming into the mercenary and sending him crashing into the cavern wall. Xu Tian stumbled back, shielding his eyes as the fragments of the star began to spin faster, their light growing blinding.

  And then it spoke.

  Its voice wasn’t a sound but a presence, filling his mind with a thousand whispers that felt like ice clawing through his thoughts.

  “I am the Fallen Star. I offer you power, mortal... but the price will be steep.”

  Xu Tian dropped to his knees, clutching his head as the whispers threatened to overwhelm him. But amid the chaos, one thought burned brighter than all the rest.

  This was his chance. His only chance.

  He reached out toward the star, his fingers brushing the edge of the dark core. Pain shot through him, searing and unbearable, but he didn’t pull back. He couldn’t.

  And then, everything went black.