The smell of camellias swirled through the air, entering through the window. Aurora finally awoke. Rosemary incense burned and filled the room.

In contrast to the dark wooden room where she used to live, a window overlooked a transparent lake; the walls were of a yellowish-brown that contrasted with the orange brick roof. There was only one window, by the bed, and the only door in the room was ajar.

Birds chirped outside, and a stream meandered around the rocks encircling the waterfall as it flowed.

Aurora's eyes remained half-closed like unopened blinds that let only a few rays of sunshine slip through between them. The incense burned out but the aroma lingered in the air. The girl's body was riddled with black marks and blemishes; evidence of the crime of which she had been both the victim and the perpetrator. She did not know it yet, but she would discover that such inscriptions were seen as sacrilege by the great majority of the people living on that continent. Her arms and legs now carried an extra weight, the dry and putrid chi that had yet to leave her body.

Why me? the girl thought, yet unable to move, still feeling useless.

The memory of everything that had happened, from the death of her adoptive parents to the undead she had awakened, was still fresh in her memory. She was immersed in her own thoughts when a pair of shoes strolling on the varnished wooden floor made themselves heard. The door crawled open to reveal a man of a tall stature, whose whitish hair that fell down to his shoulders spun in the air even though there was no wind.

"I see you're already awake," the man said. He had a strong, authoritative voice, as if he had spent a lifetime managing other people and always had to speak in high tones.

"Where am I? Who are you?" Aurora asked him. Her throat was still dry, and as she tried to get up her blood pressure dropped, and she almost tripped.

She barely had strength to stand still and the chi within her was slowly cleansing itself, hiding the traces of the existence of a latent power.

"Take it easy. Your body is still recovering,” the man answered, putting down a steaming cup of tea, with an herb afloat, on the bedside table. "Drink this. It'll help you," he added, as he sat down on the opposite corner of the bed.

From his upright posture and the way he moved—each movement calm and calculated—Aurora knew that the man before her was probably a soldier, or at least he had been one. The best thing to do was to comply and see where that led them.

She grabbed the cup and guided it into her mouth. The lemon flavor burned her throat as it went down. Soon after, her whole body writhed, moving in an unnatural way. The weaker ones, weak-hearted or associated with smaller peaceful religions, would have accused her of being a devil or of having been possessed by one if could have seen her.

Her arms bent until her shoulder was pointing toward her face and her legs unfolded in such a way that they now supported the girl's back. Her bones seemed to have crumbled and the girl's head was thrown back as her back rose from the mattress.

"Don't fight the pain. It's only through it that you'll achieve peace of mind," the man said, pulling the two-buttoned white sleeves of his mantle upward. "The liquid is cleansing your body of impurities. The eight main meridians will be cleansed in a few minutes, hours if you keep fighting yourself. Your core needs a revitalization. We have a lot to talk about. It's time for you to know the truth," the man said before standing up and heading to the door.

Aurora still tried to grab him, but her fingers slipped down the smooth fabric. She had never touched anything of such fine quality. Whoever the man was, money didn't seem to be a problem for him.

Invisible tethers tied the young girl to the bed, squeezing her arms and legs until she had trouble breathing. A constant smothering scratched down her throat and twisted her stomach. Her screams filled the room. The birds took off. A black goo ran down the corner of her mouth, the liquid flowing along her collarbones, clinging to her skin and staining her shirt, spreading itself through the thick threads it was made of.

Her forehead burned with a fever. Drops of sweat dripped down her face. She scratched the sheets and clenched her jaw. Her cheeks had taken on a red flush and her tongue had whitened. Anomalous shadows rose from the ground, their white eyes narrowed on Aurora. Black cloaks covered their bodies and their tilted faces.

They are illusions, Aurora thought, closing and opening her eyes to the rhythm of clock ticking in the upper right corner of the room. What did I do to deserve this? she wondered as she felt her face plastered to the pillow, a bubbling black miasma steadily removing the red from her lips.

The man's leather boots haunted the floor again. He approached the door once more. He opened it slowly and walked over to Aurora. She had no idea whether only a few minutes had gone by or if it was hours since she had woken up. The man stopped on the way and glanced at the place where the young girl was looking but saw absolutely nothing.

"You're hallucinating, right?" he asked like he already knew the answer. "This will help you. It shouldn't be long before the tea kicks in."

He leaned over and put a cold, wet towel on Aurora's forehead. He also used a handful of napkins to clean the girl's pillow and belly the best he could. Some of the black fluid had already solidified and clamped onto the girl's body; leeches were now sucking the putrid impurities lying on the surface. They fed on the darkness that Aurora had hidden in a proverbial nine-key safe but which now roamed throughout her body free at last.

That was how black energy worked. While the rest collaborated with the mana in the environment and the chi within the body, the black, demonic energy seized and fed on the user's body. It drew the surrounding environment’s life, making sure not to leave a trail of light behind.

All the schools had forbidden their members from pursuing a path of diabolical cultivation. It went against everything they believed in; the total control of a healthy body and mind.

And yet, once a year, sometimes taking as long as ten years, someone with an innate talent for the black arts emerged. It was nature's way of keeping the balance. The vital Yin-Yang balance for the mortal world. After all, there would be no light if darkness did not exist either.

"I didn't expect you to be so messed up within and yet still be so strong. I can feel your black chi wanting to expand. I haven't seen such an abundant natural power in a long time," the man said.

He removed a golden hook from one of his pockets and straightened his hair before making a ponytail with a calm and exquisite gesture. Not a hair was loose. There was not a second wasted, a flaw in his plan, he had absolute mastery of all his actions. "Open your mouth," he instructed, removing a dry towel from the mahogany bedside table. He folded it into four parts and stuffed it into the girl's mouth.

The man laid his hands on Aurora’s body and started chanting several harmonious syllables.

A blinding white light shrouded his hands until it operated like a ball of mirrors glistering in beams along the four walls. The index finger of his left hand made its way from her chest to her navel, unbuttoning the buttons along the path. He buried it in the girl's dantian, three fingers below the navel, devouring the blackness that remained in her guts. The girl clutched the sheets, her fingers already red and swollen, winded. It wasn't normal for such a fragile body to endure so much, let alone withstand it. Smoke seeped out of the room, leaving the girl's body, the leeches liquefying and becoming black ooze that slipped down the sides of her belly and muddied the bed.

Aurora’s back arched almost to the point of snapping and only when the spasm ceased did she close her eyes.