A shooting star is falling to earth, leaving trails of cosmic plasma in the darkening skies. It looks slow at first, but its pace grows faster and faster with every passing second, until a thunderous roar pierces deep into the ears of the soldiers watching its approach.

  The girl with two fox ears but no tail doesn’t look up at the shooting star. She doesn’t notice the ear-shattering sonic booms that reverberate in her head. She doesn’t need to— the path of the star is reflected just as clearly in the pools of borisin blood soaking into the ground, in the battered visors of the soldiers.

  The star will descend upon the earth, razing everything touched by its impartial radiance.

  Every fiber of her being is focused on saving as many Yaoqing soldiers before that happens. She picks them up, carries them away from the battlefield before rushing back in. She and the star are in a world of their own, one where movement unfolds in flashes of light and breaths are taken between the pauses of the wind.

  Still, the star falls. In her mind, the girl begs the star to move just a heartbeat slower, all the while she moves faster and faster— and for once the beast in her blood isn’t working against her. It too rages against the futility brought by the star, infuriated that there is something her speed cannot catch.

  Still, she is too slow.

  People, weapons, their enemies, all these things are ground into dust and disintegrated. The light is merciless, and it is callous.

  Hand outstretched, she reaches toward her general. The one who saved her from a life under the rule of wolf-headed masters, whom she has always regarded as invincible.

  She watches their outline fade into the luminous backdrop, swallowed by the light.

  The shockwave throws her against the ground and the world fades. Tattered and scorched banners herald her awakening as she immediately searches for her fellow soldiers.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Some have survived. Many did not.

  The light did not spare even the corpses of the fallen for a proper burial. The path of The Hunt leaves nothing in its wake.

  The young woman, a girl no longer, wakes from her battle trance much like rising from a dream, separating her mind from remembrances of the past. Her eyes surveil the battlefield, of which she stands at the forefront.

  They call her Feixiao, the Vanquishing General, the Merlin’s Claw. Above, starskiffs stream through the air, laying rains of fiery arrows upon the hordes of abominations charging forward, borisins roasting to death in the onslaught. Below, soldiers engage with the borisin forces on foot, clashing in hand-to-hand combat. From her vantage point atop a mountain of corpses, her pale skin baptized with a bath of blood, she sees everything.

  Her gaze finds Moze and Jiaoqiu in the backlines, the former stepping from shadow to shadow as he calmly dispatches any enemies that come near with a single stab to the base of the neck, the latter assisting the army doctors in triage and medicine production.

  Tomorrow, she will reunite with them after the battle is concluded. She’ll tease Moze about his latest failure at assassinating her, and sate herself on Jiaoqiu’s assortment of spicy dishes.

  But tonight…tonight she will surrender herself to the sanguine moon in her blood, and flit on the edge between madness and lucidity.

  She takes her first step forward and vanishes in a blaze of blue lightning.

  To be a Pathstrider of The Hunt is to charge forward and enact vengeance, never looking back, heedless of the similarity between the salvation it offers and self-destruction.

  She takes her second step forward and the heads of a thousand abominations fall to the ground.

  To be one of the seven Arbiter-Generals of the Xianzhou is to assume responsibility for the lives of those who live on the Yaoqing.

  She takes her third step forward and the dome of ashen smoke over the battlefield is torn asunder, revealing a dark sky, exactly like that night.

  Only, this time, there is no shooting star falling to the ground.

  She is the shooting star.

  From the moment it is fired, the life of an arrow is destined to be but a brief blaze of glory and speed, til it falls and plants itself deep in the heart of an enemy.

  An arrow does not get to steer its own course, nor does it get to choose when its life ends.

  Feixiao knows this, yet still acts as the arrowhead of The Hunt anyway. Because…

  On this day, in this moment, her most fervent desire is simply to outspeed the God of the Skybow, to be faster than THEIR Lux Arrow, so that none on the Yaoqing will ever have to watch a shooting star fall again.