They did not call him a villain.
They called him Master Qí Yán, Keeper of the Ninth Diagram, Last Abbot of the Hollow Sky Pavilion. In the annals of the Upper Realms, his name was written with the same brushstroke reserved for saints who had lived too long and sages who had outlived mercy.
Qí Yán had once halted a dying sun with a single talisman.
He had once repaired a shattered meridian of the world itself.
And now, he stood before Anna like a man preparing a machine.
Anna was suspended at the center of the Pavilion—not bound, not restrained, but held by an absence. The air around her refused to move. Sound bent away from her body. Even thought felt cautious in her presence, as if the universe itself were waiting to see what she would decide.
Qí Yán circled her slowly, hands folded
