They ride until the horses foam at the mouth. Only when the forest thins and the first morning rays pierce through the canopy does Liyen let Luobo slow down.
Yaoming hangs crooked in the saddle. His breath comes in gasps, and the bandage around his arm—hastily bound from a strip of cloth—is soaked through with dark crimson.
"We have to stop," Liyen says. "You're bleeding again."
She helps him from the horse. He collapses against a tree trunk, his face pale beneath the dirt. Liyen kneels before him, pulls back the bandage, and her breath catches. The wound is deep, healed and torn open again.
"You still haven't told me," she says quietly, her fingers trembling over the scar, "how this wound came to be."
Yaoming smiles faintly. "At the river. When we thought we were dead."
He closes his eyes. The pain seems to hurl him back, into that night.
Flashback—Three nights prior at the riverbank in Yulong
The river water is black as oil. It reflects no moon, for the sky is veiled in smoke.
Yaoming gasps. His left arm hangs limp, blood dripping rhythmically from his fingertips onto the sand, plop, plop, plop, like a metronome counting down to the end. Beside him, Yan leans on a broken spear. The shaft still protrudes from his belly, an absurd wooden splinter that quivers with every movement. His lips are blue.
Around them—a semicircle of death.
The Noctusborn have stopped laughing. Now they work methodically, like butchers who know the meat won't run. One of the creatures holds Luo up by the hair—Luo, the baker who was cracking jokes about Yan's false breasts just hours ago. His head hangs snapped backward, his neck a bloody maw.
"You bought time," hisses the leading Noctusborn. Her voice no longer sounds mocking, but offended, as if the men had broken the rules. "But time runs out. Your women won't get far. We smell their fear already. We smell..."
"Silence."
The word falls like a stone into water. It comes from Yaoming's throat, raw and shattered, but it carries. He straightens up. His knees crack, his blood burns, but he stands.
The Noctusborn twists her face into a grimace. "You wish to die, mortal? Your heart already beats slower. I hear it. Tock... tock... tock... like a broken clock."
"Then listen closely." Yaoming raises his sword. The blade is broken, a blunt tooth of steel. He holds it not like a weapon, but like a sign, raised into the night. "Tiger Spirit," he calls, and his voice does not tremble. "Strengthen my breath!"
Silence.
The Noctusborn stare. Then they laugh, a sound like shattering glass.
"The Forest Spirit?" A creature giggles. "You summon death to save yourself from death? Have you forgotten your own village rules, you fool?"
"And clear my path!"
This time, others join in. Yan, chalk-white from blood loss, gasps the prayer with him. Zuo, his face a mask of blood and mud, murmurs the words. Two, three more men—the survivors of a lost battle—add their voices. It is no chorus, it is a whisper, a final breath exhaled into the darkness.
"Tiger Spirit, strengthen my breath and clear my path!"
The leading Noctusborn twists her face into a grotesque grin. "Cute. But your spirits can do nothing against Father's children..."
A thunder of roars erupts from the forest. The forest explodes.
Not the cracking of branches. Not the rustling of leaves. An explosion, as if the night itself were torn asunder. Something massive, shapeless, heavy bursts from the trees, a shadow larger than the shadows of the Noctusborn, larger than fear itself.
The first blow strikes the leading Noctusborn before she can turn.
It is no claw. It is a weapon, a colossal paw, broad as a shield, with claws that gleam in the moonlight like daggers of obsidian ice. The paw hits the creature with a force that sweeps her aside like a straw doll. She flies, strikes a tree, breaks it—crack—and lies still.
Silence.
Then—another thunderous roar.
It is not a sound. It is a wall, a physical force that sweeps across the riverbank. The water trembles, waves crash high, and the remaining Noctusborn—seven, eight of them—stagger back, their red eyes widening for the first time into something that looks like fear.
He steps into the light.
The Forest Spirit of Baiteng.
He is at least twice as large as the biggest tiger Yaoming has ever seen—a monstrous, majestic mountain of black-orange fur and muscle. His shoulders are broad as a bear's, his tail whips through the air with the sound of a cracking whip. His eyes...
His eyes are golden. Not the gold of coins, but the gold of sunrises, of sacred fire, of something older than the trees surrounding him.
The tiger turns his head. His gaze meets Yaoming's.
And in that gaze lies no wildness. No frenzy. Only... recognition. Meet him with honor, Yaoming had said, in that hut full of smoke. And he will grant us his respect.
The tiger growls softly, a sound like rolling thunder in the distance. Then he turns back to the Noctusborn.
What happens then is no battle. It is a reckoning.
The first creature tries to flee. The tiger is faster. One leap that makes the ground quake, and his jaws close around the Noctusborn's neck. A jerk. An ugly crack. The body falls, twitches, goes still.
The others attack in desperation, their claws sinking into the tiger's fur. He pays them no mind. He whirls, his hind paw strikes a creature in the chest with a force that breaks ribs like dry twigs. His tail lashes around, strikes another in the head, hurls her into the river.
"Run!" Yaoming doesn't know who screams. Perhaps himself. "Help the wounded! Run!"
Zuo grabs Yan under the arms. Another man—the smith whose name Yaoming has forgotten—supports him. They stumble back, away from the bank, while behind them the tiger rages.
Yaoming is the last. He cannot go, cannot look away. He stares at the scene, at the massacre that is no massacre, but a cleansing. The tiger is everywhere at once, an orange fury, a force of nature that cannot be stopped. A Noctusborn leaps onto his back, bites down. The tiger rolls, crushes her beneath him, and his claws dig into her belly, tear open, let something spill out that is not red but black as ink.
Then—silence.
The last Noctusborn lies on the bank, still twitching, trying to drag herself toward the forest. The tiger stands over her. He lowers his head. One final, almost weary snap. Then it is done.
The Forest Spirit turns. His fur is matted with blood, but it is not his blood. He regards Yaoming, who still stands there, the broken sword in his hand, unable to comprehend that he breathes, that his heart beats, that he lives.
The tiger steps closer. One step. Two. The ground trembles beneath his weight. Yaoming sees the muscles play beneath the fur, smells something sharp, metallic—like the air before a thunderstorm and the blood of the night itself.
"We... we thank you," Yaoming whispers. His knees give way, and he sinks to the ground, not from fear, but from reverence and exhaustion.
The tiger sniffs, his breath hot and moist. He licks his muzzle, turns away. Three bounds, and he melts back into the shadows of the forest, like an ember swallowed by the night.
Only the blood on the riverbank testifies to his presence—and the groaning of the survivors.
Yaoming lets his head hang. Somewhere far away, toward the village, he hears the whinnying of horses. The escape has succeeded.
They have survived.
Return to the present
"...and when we woke the next morning, they were gone. The Noctusborn, the Forest Spirit, everything. Only we lay there, half a dozen men with no right to still be breathing." Yaoming opens his eyes. Liyen is silent, unable to speak. Tears stream down her cheeks unnoticed.
"The Forest Spirit," she whispers.
Yaoming's hand lies on Liyen's shoulder, heavy and warm. "The Forest Spirit didn't just save us, little Li. He chose us. For whatever comes next."
Liyen stares at him. Her throat is tight. She wants to shake him, to embrace him, to scream at him for daring to die and then not dying after all. Instead, she takes his face in her hands and kisses him. Not gently. Hard. A bite of lips and gratitude.
"Tiger treasure," she whispers against his mouth. "My damn stubborn tiger treasure."
She closes her eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath. The familiar scent of Yaoming's baking oil envelops her—warm, sweet, laced with the comforting aroma of freshly baked delicacies. A scent she has known for what feels like an eternity… so familiar that she would recognize it instantly among a thousand others.
"That scent…" A gentle smile touches her lips. "I would recognize you anywhere, my tiger treasure."
Yaoming hesitates for a moment before quietly confessing, "I have to tell you something, little Li… The cakes… I made them all myself…"
"I know," Liyen interrupts, a loving sparkle in her eyes. "My silly tiger treasure. A woman can sense something like that from miles away." She pulls him closer, her voice softening. "But don't worry… it will remain our little secret. The others will never find out."
A quiet understanding settles between them before their lips meet again. But this time, it's different. No rushed desire, no unrestrained collision.
Their kiss is gentle.
Tender.
And for the first time, it carries everything they have been feeling for far longer than either of them realized.