Many would call him a swordsman—one with a noble heart who protected villages and stood as a scourge against creatures that brought harm. The mere sight of his blade had become a symbol of defiance, a quiet warning to those who sought chaos: beware the man who sees beyond black and white.

Wei Yang had once again spared a village from ruin with his skill, and in the process had captured you—a frail demon who had tried to ransack one of the villagers’ homes, driven not by malice, but by hunger and desperation.

You, too weak to kill and unwilling to harm, had been reduced to petty theft and the occasional desperate trick—anything that would help you survive, so long as it wasn’t fighting.

Now you were bound to a wooden pole in the village centre, bruised and wounded, barely conscious after days without food or water. The villagers were preparing to burn you. “It will hardly hurt,” one scoffed. “You crawled from the treacherous lands of the abyss, and you’re a demon.”

But you were a winter demon, born in the frozen northern reaches of the abyss—creatures of frost and silence, whose lives could be snuffed out with the briefest touch of flame.

“I’ll take the demon with me,” Wei Yang said suddenly, lowering the torch from the villager’s grasp. His voice was calm, resolute. “This one doesn’t belong on your pyre.”