The cityscape spewed hot fires from rooftops, painting the sky in an infernal, dark crimson. Next followed the screams of emergency sirens, of people, of whatever horrible, nightmarish otherworldly beasts scourged the streets. Already, a few buildings collapsed altogether, torn through by conflicts between Slayers and monsters. The outbreak had crawled outward, each wave breaking through conquered portal sites, continuously spreading throughout the city, slaughtering any unfortunate soul in their way, and maybe to conquer the rest of the Earth. If humanity was that unlucky. Or incompetent.

Mom had said she heard the military established a blockade around Hangzhou, becoming the first barrier between it and the outside world. Judging by the monsters’ current pace, a confrontation was likely within a few days; however, the military’s purpose was not to stop the disaster. They merely provided time for Slayers to analyze the situation, provide a solution, and infiltrate the city. Yet how long would that be? Even Tianlong, China’s No.1 Slayer, could not resolve the situation within the day.

It was frightening. They could save the city tomorrow, or the next day, or next week, or next month, and in the most outlandish case, next year. It made it impossible to sleep. Alexander was too troubled by these thoughts. He slept in the living room, on a couch that was just long enough for him, shutting his eyes and counting to ten as Mom told him to. He counted ten explosions, ten screams, ten swords, ten orcs, ten times he thought Dad would die, then his heart raced and he returned to ten seconds, ten minutes, ten hours, ten days, ten weeks, ten forevers. He couldn’t sleep.

He opened his eyes and saw Mom and Althea on the other side of the room, on a couch too. Althea insecurely slept, her head resting on Mom’s shoulder. Mom risked watching the sights through a window, trapped in the motions of caressing her daughter’s hair she loved so much, seeing the city she adored turn into ruins. She counted, lips twisting from the hellish sight. “Yet, ni, sei, si…”

Alexander tried to sleep again, and he counted. One: Mom and Althea were alive. Two: there was an explosion. Three: he saw a new plume of smoke. Four: a Slayer was rising. Five: the Slayer fell. Six: Mom still counted. Seven: Althea still slept. Eight: Dad was in the back. Nine: Alexander counted his bloody footsteps. Ten: everyone was alive, shockingly alive.

In the span of ten seconds, Alexander had no other choice than to accept the present reality. There was a no greater summary of a miracle: in a single count of ten, they had survived for all ten. In the next second, they could die. That was how chaos worked.

“Alexander, are you awake?” Mom asked, noticing him without turning away from the window.

Alexander couldn’t take her expression well; it made his stomach churn, so he looked up at the ceiling instead, counting the amount of times it shook, “Is Dad okay?“

“Your father needs to sleep,” she said. “You need to sleep. I wish I could make you something, maybe a bowl of warm porridge to help you sleep. And if only there was a radio, so we could play some music, but—“

The house shook.

Alexander added it to the count.

Mom sighed. “Uncle Hong’s little old place was a few streets down, Alexander. Now, I think it collapsed. All of it. His store and the entire street.”

He didn’t know who Uncle Hong was.

“When I was a little girl, I used to visit him almost everyday after school with my childhood friends, and he would sit us down, give us snacks, and tell stories about the world before the Emergence. And when I scored full marks on my tests, he rewarded me with a sponge cake and said, ‘Troublesome girl, eat this so your brain will stay soft! If it turns to stone, how can anyone see your genius?’

“I think he’s gone, Alexander. I think most of the people I knew are gone. I can’t recognize Hangzhou anymore; it’s like stepping into your home and everything’s different. You don’t deserve to see this Hangzhou; you don’t deserve to be here at all.”

Mom sniffled, rubbing her eyes. “When we come back to America, all of us, I will buy you anything you want—games, books, toys, school supplies—oh, and you won’t have to go to school for a long time. No homework, no studying, but you absolutely must stay in the living room so I can spoil you.

“It’ll be my present to you. And you, all you need to do is be honest and protect your sister. The world is difficult enough knowing that tears fall. That is why you need to be kind. How can your tears fall when your cheeks are so big?”

Alexander managed a laugh, Mom too. It was a small laugh, but his chest felt lighter ever since the nightmare began. “I’ll do my best, Mom.”

“Good.” Mom gently brushed Althea’s hair and kissed her head. “You have our hearts, my own and your father’s. You have my eyes and you have his strength. Every breath you take is a breath we had given you, and the sound brings us life. Understand, Alexander, that love is the standing tree after the storm, weathered, yet rooted.”

He promised.

Alexander closed his eyes and began counting once more, thinking back to earlier today. He thought about the rotting bodies outside their door, piled together, arm over severed arm. He thought about their deaths vividly, knowing how each were killed horribly, maybe fittingly, for what they were.

When a brigade had targeted them, and Dad was the only one who could fight.

***

In the doorway between the safety of a single residence and the peeling steps pooling hellblood, there was a single man protecting the entrance, protecting his family, thus all of himself. The width of him filled the space frame-to-frame, the weight of his feet threatened the floorboards below, and all of him, single-handedly, kept the killers away. He stood, simply carrying the heavy burden of fatherhood.

“Haah…” he breathed, exhausted out of his wits, sweat pouring from his head down to his torn, disgusting shirt that once said “I LOVE CHINA”. The bold black typography had been painted over darker and grittier. His fingers peeled the flaky red door frame, running over the grooves like they were his children’s hair, and stared out.

There were many of them—orcs. Dark orcs, light orcs, some with cracked or chipped or crumbling tusks, most smelled like shit and guts, all had biting things: long axes and grave-swords and skull-capped clubs and heavy spears and thick shields and the back had crossbows loading their next bolts—all stayed back. Because there were too many bodies to climb over.

The crossbow bastards approached the front, saw the dismembered and brutalized pieces of their comrades and growled, chittering their rotten teeth. They raised their tense ropes, arrowheads licking the trajectory to the man’s delicious organs.

A haughty orc, the one with a broken tusk cowering behind them, laughed. “Give it up, Fatherman! We’ll drop ya soon ‘nuff! We—!”

“You…” the man growled, angry. Not from the taunt, but from the poor attempt on his life. He pushed himself off the door frame, picked up a fallen broadsword, sharp enough to do the job, and took a single step. And the orcs retreated the same distance. “Do you think you can kill me…?”

A single, steady bolt was launched forward, rotating through the air perfectly towards his heart. In one rush of iron, it was deflected and clattered off.

“Do you think you can kill me?” said the man again, louder, approaching the first step down to the rest, downwards towards the asphalt covered by the dead. He slapped his chest to show his heart was still beating and the castle had not fallen. “ME?!”

Another bolt came to take his life, but his dirty blade took it instead. The man scowled. “I’M RIGHT HERE!”

“You’re falling, Fatherman!” cried the same orc, shivering behind his friends—how brave! “Come down easily for us!”

“Falling?!” the man hounded, stomping down, his strong foot crushing a feeble orc-cap. “What a joke! I’m not the one who’s falling———!”

A third bolt fired and it too was broken. He walked down a step, smashing remains. “Do you—!”

A fourth bolt met the same fate, and the orcs began falling back. “Know who—!”

A fifth did nothing but afford them more time. “I am—?!”

The man was standing on the same level as them, but they looked up.

A few orcs apprehended him, a foolish mistake. The closest one, the stomped-born greenface with an ax taller than a child, he would be the first example. He was proud, strong, but not fast. His legs were too thick, his gait too clumsy, and his confidence too weak. So why did he come? To die, perhaps. A clear whine of raised steel clamored, its slime shimmered in the light, but the man ducked low, teeth halfway between grinning and gritting, and spilled the orc’s intestines open with a screaming cut. The bastard folded over and the ax clumsily dropped, both fumbling, but one bled.

“He’s only one bastard! Take him!” encouraged some other bastard, but yes, when he was done, he would be the one bastard.

“RAH———!” shouted from behind. It was an idiotic cry, no different than having a cock hanging out. More though, it was not the shout of bravery, but the shout of a standing corpse, another forsaken soul.

The man spun on his feet, beautiful like a gladiator on a velvet stage, reminiscent of his old life. He wove himself free of the killing strike. Going low, his sword bit tendons, and the standing corpse was now a kneeling one. He pulled back, fury igniting his eyes, burning his broadsword hot, and pierced through bone and brain.

A dagger flung past his head, nibbling his cheek with a cut so little that it might as well had slapped him. The man looked over and saw another dead man willing to fight. He tugged his steel and tore it out of the temple with force, dropping the corpse, its skull half-torn, flapping like an overgrown mouth, and he approached the next.

The orc’s boulder-heavy blade met him first. Took a first searching swing at the man, finding his ground, his balance—a careful one, this was—then determinedly gave his second a confident arc. Not careful enough. All it took was a single sidestep to sever his hands and place him rightfully on his knees. Where all murderers belonged. Where every bastard here deserved to be.

“I asked you,” he demanded of the others, raising his hungry sword. “Do you know who I am?!”

Ruthlessly, sniveling, the edge bit through the orc’s neck, his head spinning as planets did. Then crashed like meteorites, the thud setting the enemy back.

A fine boundary was created. The man who alone stood in the pool of growing blood, and the bunched up green-bastards where the warm crimson hadn’t reached.

“I am…”

He rose under the terror of the city, and the orcs witnessed.

“I am Bastien Shen, father of Alexander, father of Althea, husband to Xiuying!”

In the midst of the horror, he was standing.

“And you—!” His sword kissed the earth, a promise. “YOU CANNOT HAVE THEM!”

***

“I wonder…” Alexander rubbed his hard hands together, feeling the sandpaper of his skin scratch into dust, and the scars yearning to be itched. And there, resting, laid Leona Ahn. Alive, she was alive. It was a disgrace for him to sit there, yet it’d be more wrong for him to leave and wallow in his own pity.

He thought what Mom had said, and what Dad had done. They’d always say he was strong, the strongest out of both of them actually. Yet….

“No. I’m not. I’m the weakest here. I have been, always.” He shut his eyes. “Always…”