The golden light of the newly awakened Gluttony Sovereign Rune pulsed softly across seven-year-old Jiang Tuntun’s warm little belly before fading beneath her torn hemp shift like a sleepy ember tucked under warm ash.
For a few quiet heartbeats, the only sound inside Underground Spirit-Vein Slag Pit Number Four was the gentle clink of the fiftieth blue-and-white porcelain bowl resting in Tuntun’s lap and the distant. Muffled groan of Elder Hei twitching in his three-inch-deep stone crater across the floor.
Tuntun sat very still inside the open doorway of the iron crate.
Her tummy was full—fuller and warmer than she had ever known a stomach could feel in her entire seven years of life. The tearing, gnawing black pit beneath her ribs that used to scream for rocks and iron and her own blood had gone completely quiet, curled up like a full puppy beside a kitchen hearth. Even her two brand-new front teeth felt smooth and strong against her lower lip instead of jagged and aching.
Yet as the last wave of delicious braised pork steam drifted away toward the cavern ceiling, a familiar cold shadow crept back into the corners of her wide silver eyes.
What happens when the bowls are empty?
