Through the swirling mists of morning, two eagles flew along the peaks of Clear Water Mountain. Together they raced across the sky, the larger eagle gliding gracefully on invisible currents, while the smaller one flew lower to the ground, playing a game of her own invention. She would hold her wings close to her body and dive down, only to spread them and catch an updraft that, with some labored flapping, would carry her back to her father.

Xingxi the half-eagle laughed as she flew and fell, tracing peaks and valleys with her trajectory. She was becoming a talented flier, her father had said, and now she wanted to prove it. He had taken her out hunting—just her—and she wanted to make him proud.

At seventeen years old she already felt like an adult. After all, she stood taller than nearly half of the adults in the Qiao Village, including Auntie Tangyou and her own mother. It was an odd feeling, realizing that the people she had looked up to all her life were actually quite small.

It reminded her of the first time she flew past Clear Water Mountain and saw what a true town full of hundreds of mortal humans looked like. It had shocked her, how crowded everyone was in small buildings, moving along streets with their wares on their backs and in their wagons like lines of ants. She had never seen so many souls in one place. It made Qiao Village seem so small in comparison. Filled with the numinous experience of expanded horizons, she circled the town for two hours, watching the citizens below move in a dance only birds could appreciate from up high. Thousands of hearts beating in asynchrony became the heartbeat of the city.

Returning to Clear Water Mountain had been a revelation. As Xingxi held still despite her impatience, she could hear the rustling of the leaves as the spring wind blew past the mountain’s ancient pines and poplars. There was a heartbeat in the mountain itself, slower and softer than that of the town, but also steadier, more permanent. The way a mouse’s heart fluttered while an elephant’s beat slowly.

She felt greater respect for the bumbling Tudigongs, then, as they tended to slow growing things. As fun as it was to pluck them from the earth and toss them into the air.

It was a surprise, then, when she heard the tinny voice of a Tudigong so high in the air. Snapped out of her daydreaming, Xingxi looked down to find one of the shriveled old men balancing precariously atop a pine tree, waving his staff back and forth.

“Feiyi! Lord Feiyi! Young Xingxi, please hear me.”

Xingxi turned and signaled to her father. “There’s a Tudigong trying to get our attention!”

The two of them descended and met the Tudigong at the base of the tree. “Quickly,” yelled the Tudigong, tugging on Feiyi’s sleeves despite his previous threats to stir-fry him. “Heaven…Heaven is bringing their army down on the Qiao!”

Father and daughter looked upwards, and sure enough the sky was beginning to glow orange and radiate with divine light. It would have been a beautiful sunset.

Though Heaven’s armies had scoured the mountain ranges before, this did not look like a scouting party. Even in the distance he could see the banners of Heaven’s army, squadrons and platoons stretching out across the horizon, marching slowly but surely like the advance of a storm cloud.

Luo Feiyi felt fear unlike any he had felt before. For so long he concerned himself with slow deaths: starvation, cold, or disease, perhaps expedited by the jaws of a predator. Unlike the princes and poets of the Qiao, he cared little for political or metaphysical threats. Those horrors would come long after he died, he had assumed.

But here made manifest were the nightmares dreamt of those who led greater lives than him. He wondered if he should have heeded Bixian’s warnings all those years ago.

How silly, to think that he had left Qiao Village earlier today thinking only of the southern wind. It was supposed to be a leisurely hunt with his daughter, an opportunity to catch up one-on-one before Xingbei joined them on their flights.

What was the last thing he had said to Xingbei? To Yildun? There was a likelihood that this morning was the last time he ever saw his wife and son. As he looked upon the army that threatened complete annihilation to his family and his way of life, time slowed. Every breath was precious now, every second the difference between survival and utter demise.

This would be the chance to run. Take his daughter far away and hope his wife and son flee in time. By the time Qiao Village spied Heaven’s army, there would be no hope for escape. Luo Feiyi held no delusions as to the intentions of the army. To bring such a large legion meant only one thing: the annihilation of the Qiao.

He had left his home before. Once as a fledgling leaving his nest; another time with Yildun as they spared her family two hungry mouths to feed. Leaving had always felt bittersweet. But in the moment when he should have chosen to flee and preserve his own life, he realized that he did not want to.

“Xingxi, go and warn the others.”

“Father—”

“Xingxi, go!”

Like her father, Xingxi’s chest tightened as a sense of dread passed over her, so monumental she could not describe the full force of the feeling. Fortune had been kind to her; she had rarely experienced true loss, the closest being Qiping’s vanished mother.

Something was about to come to head. Something was about to break. Just in case she never saw her father again, she wanted to make sure her last words to him mattered: “I love you father.”

Luo Feiyi hugged his daughter tightly. “Fly swift,” he whispered. As she took to the skies Feiyi considered his options. Unlike his wife and children he did not hunt with a bow, preferring to use his talons to capture prey. All he had was a hunting knife; hardly a weapon against swords and spears.

He looked to the pine tree the Tudigong had climbed to get their attention. “Forgive me,” he said to the earth spirit. “I’m about to do some landscaping to your mountain.”

Things are about to go sour...