Five years earlier...
The first thing Kia Min felt when she slid away from sleep was that nothing was right.
Her eyes burned, and she rubbed them firmly once before forcing them open. The sun's rays shot past the hills and reflected a brilliant white light from the river below, causing her to nearly shut her eyes again. Her bamboo staff was nestled in her crossed arms and her head rested on the rough bark of the tree beside her.
She lifted her head, an ache creeping across her temple, and she tried to remember why she had come to the outlook so early she had fallen asleep waiting for Ni Joh. Or maybe she and stayed out here too late last evening. In that case, where was Joh, and was she in for a world of trouble! Could Si Pat be bribed into keeping his silence as he let her back into the school?
She stabbed her staff into the soft soil and slowly lifted herself to her feet. A drumming pain crawled up her leg. The wound still wasn't completely healed. At least the senior student had gotten her that poultice, otherwise...
Kia Min froze.
"Keep going! There are others still in the school!"
Otherwise she would be dead.
"Oh, by the Great Dragon, no," she murmured as she closed her eyes. Now she remembered coughing and staggering out of the black smoke and ash, squinting as her eyes burned. The wide-eyed faces of the villagers had passed through her steps as she maneuvered around and over them, fighting her way to higher ground for any semblance of untainted air. At the top of this hill, she had collapsed, and she had taken in as much air as she could as she closed her eyes to banish away the red sky and crashed flyers from her sight.
Her gaze shifted to the hills that blocked the full glory of the sun. The hills were covered in black grass and splintered wood and scraps of metal. A faint brown haze drifted between the outlook and the hills, just over the beach, and Kia Min took a deep breath as she dared to peek below.
By the heavens, she had expected this, and she still had to force her eyes away. Old Ming had bowed his last to the great Emperor Sun Hai, his broom lying dutifully by his side. Scattered along the shore were bodies of men, women, and children, all bloodied by swords, spears, and axes midway through their escape. Kia Min caught sight of one woman with a bundle in her arms, and she strained her ears to listen for a baby's wail. Nothing. Not even the slightest whistle of a breeze.
When the men in black raced through the school, she, and the other students, had no time to ask questions or look for an explanation. Wen had exclaimed, "Assassins!" and Jing Woo had immediately sent the students into the village before he quickly realized that the students were targets as the villagers were, and that they must all fight for their own lives now.
Fight for their own lives, so that they could protect the younger students who could barely raise a fist to defend themselves. Fight for their own lives, so that they could come to the aid of the villagers who surely stood no chance. Fight for their own lives, because they were no use to anyone dead.
Kia Min scoffed. Turned out she was no use to anyone alive, either.
"I'll look to the villagers and save as many as I can."
The beach below was a testament to her failure. How could she ever face the senior student now? But perhaps Wu, and Dawn Star, had succeeded where she had not. Kia Min had not gone back to the school after searching the village for survivors. And maybe some of the survivors had remained hidden, unsure if she was friend or foe or if she was being followed, and refused to take the chance for a rescue unless it was Wu the Lotus Blossom herself.
And if Wu and Dawn Star were still around, surely they must have stayed in the school. The farmlands were decimated, and the southern circle of houses was impossible to reach what with a huge cylindrical wooden and metal structure blocking the gateway. There was nowhere else but the outlook, and there was no place to hide here.
Kia Min knew in her heart that the chances were slim, but she had to take it. She had no other options. So she hesitantly put one foot in front of the other, using her staff for balance. The path down from the outlook was never easy, and an aggravated injury with a few new ones only made the trek worse. At the foot of the hill, she forced herself not to look directly at any of the villagers. As she made her way into the town square, however, that feat became more and more difficult, to the point of impossible as soon as she stepped foot within the square.
Bloodied and burnt bodies littered the streets--fellow students, the first, and only, wave sent into the village by Jing Woo; the seamstress, farmers picking up supplies, traveling merchants, Fen Do; and them. The monsters who tore through the town. Not the first group, who all managed to leave barely touched, hardly harmed, except for the one Kia Min faced. That dark man had taken an unfortunate misstep, overconfident that he could easily defeat her, and she found that small opening that led to his fall. He had cracked his skull on a boulder behind him. He was the only assassin to perish by the hands of a "no-good peasant."
No, these men were Gao's, who she had seen in the village a few times before whenever the Lesser threw a temper tantrum over Master Li's discipline and favoritism. She recognized a few as ones who were already dead when she came through yesterday. At the entrance to the school, however, she saw the men who had blocked her path into the village after running into Wu and Dawn Star.
Had they been after the senior student like the dark men had been after Master Li? Or had they finished with the villagers and had been off to help finish off the students? Kia Min never asked, and Gao's men would not have answered. The instant their eyes met, they had been locked in a death match Kia Min had quickly grown too familiar with. It was a pity that the mercenaries had not taken the match seriously at all.
That thought startled Kia Min. A pity? A pity why? Because she lived? Because they found everyone and everything in the village beneath them? Or perhaps--
No. She shook her head. She was not like that. She was not like Gao the Lesser, to scoff at the loss of a good challenge. And she was alive, a blessing, not a curse, and she knew she had to trust the heavens that there was a reason she breathed and no one else did.
Kia Min turned her head toward the great stone stairs leading to the farmhouses and the weapon master's workshop. Gujin rested there now, with an ornate spear in hand and blood pouring from his gut onto the steps of his home. He never had a chance to go to the aid of the farmers, who had all burned in their homes.
Last night, Kia Min had fervently searched for an untouched home, for mothers and children fearfully taking shelter in nooks that no mercenary would think to look. Her path had led her straight to the Ni home, her final destination before she fled the village, and...
Kia Min shook the memory away. She needed to get into the school.
She checked the garden first. Only the village children Dawn Star sometimes entertained and spoiled were there, broken on the flower bed she had always carefully tended to. Nowhere among the fallen planks of the collapsed gazebo and small house were any signs of life. Anyone within would have been crushed, and Kia Min saw all that there was outside. So she pushed further into the school.
One glance down the pathway into the student quarters told all she needed to know. Everything that way was destroyed. The roofs had caved in and flattened the tiny huts, and no one could have taken shelter there. To her right, she could barely see past the fuselages and fallen trees, and the only survivors that way, she knew, had to have been there before the attack. Nobody could get past there now.
Kia Min approached the wooden gate, or what was left of it, and she was unnerved by the gentle quiet beyond. Dawn Star always hummed a soft song, especially when Wu was around fuming over the latest of Gao's antics. Wu herself was not often a quiet student, as much as she kept to herself, especially when Dawn Star or Jing Woo were around. If there were other students, or villagers, certainly she would hear some mumbling or weeping or something.
But there was not even a soft crackling of a burning campfire. No wind buried any stray noise. It was all silent.
She entered the main area of the school and carefully took in the sight around her. The library, the kitchen, and Master Li's house were all in the same state as the student quarters. The air of charred wood stung her nose, poisoned with that of burnt flesh, of blood a few hours exposed to air. She remembered the students in the town square, and she remembered Si Pat, and she named all the students lying here now.
In the middle of the ring, she saw a body she did not want to name. That body told her everything she needed to know about any survivors, about whether or not Wu the Lotus Blossom would have stayed, and Kia Min clenched her fists and snarled as she stormed over to him.
"You fool!" she hissed as she stood over the body of Jing Woo. "I told you, didn't I? I told you to take it easy, to go find some shelter somewhere in the school, didn't I? But no, you had to continue the fight, you had to send yourself to your own death. And for what purpose? What could you hope to accomplish by dying?"
Kia Min turned away from her friend and tears burned her eyes. "You idiot," she murmured again. "You, of all of us, were meant to survive. You had to. For her sake."
She would not receive a response, and now she knew for certain that Wu was gone, and Dawn Star with her. She had no more reason to be here, and therefore neither did Dawn Star. Kia Min was the only one left.
She looked up at the sky and watched the white wisps of clouds curl in the sky like a rare patterned cloth the seamstress had kept in her shop once, before her son drowned in the river. To think that just yesterday she had contemplated the same thing before the sky darkened and exploding casks fell. It was after word came through the school that Gao the Lesser had murdered Student Si Pat, and Kia Min had wondered who would tell his mother.
Her mind flew to her own mother, defending the family goods with a staff in one hand and a shoe in the other. A weapon to fend off bandits and another for street urchins. Kia Min touched one of the many buns upon her head, stray strands curling softly out of the knots. What would her mother do if word reached her that Min had died?
Home, she realized, she had to go home. There was nothing for her here now.
Kia Min took one last glance around the school, and headed for the gates.