1 Prologue - The Beginning of the End

It felt suffocating; like I'm breathing ashes instead of air. But I had seen black soot falling from the sky so it might as well have been. It was winter, the descending snow should have the colour of pure white but I felt a coldness run so deep that it penetrates the bones as my body strained in its haste, muscles flexed, as it continues to climb up the cave with persistence.

All I smelt was flesh setting ablaze. Not the good kind that makes you salivate like an afternoon with the apprentices roasting meat on an open field at the foothold of Red Hills, but the kind leaving you feel like gagging because you know exactly what was burning. Fellow brothers and sisters of the sect, the loyal ones left behind fighting a losing fight gave loud battle cries when they rush to their enemies and silent screams when they die.

I climbed without looking back only losing momentum once or twice when loose stones fell off from the tracks.

One of Ah Bai's three heads detected my presence before I made it all the way up. He gave a throaty growl and I could see glimmering drool trailing from the crevices of his teeth by the reflection from the setting sun.

I admit I wanted to do this for a long time now.

A whisper of incantation followed by the echoing sound of chains snapping was all it took before Ah Bai was released from the spell-bound chains. Ah Bai is a speed flying beast, and he flew fast, faraway - with me on his back.