What’s Sealed at the heart of this mountain?Lan swallowed the question as Dé’zilifted fist to palm, then bent into a long, deep bow.
“Masters of the School of the White Pines,” he said, “and above all, my friends: it is the greatest honor of my life to fight by your side. May the Path guide us all.”
The hall sprang into action, masters sprinting this way and that, the light of the lotus lamps flickering wildly in the commotion.
“Lan, with me,” said Dé’zi, and she hurried to follow him as he strode rapidly from the hall. The night air was alight with torches and movement in the courtyard as the disciples followed their respective masters to their positions.
Dé’ziwalked so fast that Lan struggled to keep up. He was making for the entrance, for the path down the mountain.
Pulses of qì continued to emanate from that direction. Like invisible waves, they swept over Skies’ End, sending the light from candles and lamps shivering and flickering from the yin.
Zen.
“Grandmaster.” Lan sprinted to overtake him. Without thinking, she grabbed his sleeve. He slowed but did not stop. “You said there was a reason we need to guard this mountain. Is it to do with what’s Sealed in it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what is it?” she blurted, unable to quell her curiosity. “Does it have to do with Zen?”
“It has to do with everything, Lan,” the grandmaster replied. “In this moment, I have a request for you. Find Shàn’jun. Brief him on what is happening with Zen, if he is not already aware; he will know what to do. Can you do that for me?”
She held on to the grandmaster’s sleeve, wanting to press him further to answer her questions. But with each passing moment, she was delaying any help, any hope, for Zen.
Slowly, Lan uncurled her fingers, and Dé’zi’s sleeve slipped from them. She met his eyes and nodded. “Yes, shi’fù. I can.”
The grandmaster hesitated. He brought a hand to one side of her head, cupping it gently. For a moment, she thought he might say something to her, something that would answer all her questions, that would tilt her world back on its axis.
But then he drew back.
He left her standing on the stone path, staring after his disappearing figure until the darkness took him.
The greatest of walls fall with a single misplaced brick.
—Lady Nuru Ala Šuraya of the Jorshen Steel clan,Classic of War
He was adrift in a starless sea of night, of flames that burned like black water. Here, cocooned safely within, there was no pain, no fear, no sorrow that could reach him.
He’d come here once before, after the last of his clan had been massacred. It had felt as though his body, mind, and soul had fractured, no longer belonging to him—as if he watched all that he did from behind a paper screen like a shadow puppet show.
Now, rejected by the place he’d come to know as home, Zen felt his grief welling over, tided by a surge of fury—and power.
It felt good to be a god.
To feel nothing at all.
You are filled with regret.The Demon God’s voice rang out in Zen’s mind and all around him.Perhaps I should show you what happens when one begins to regret. When one grows soft and believes power must be fettered and balance kept.
The voice was lightening, coalescing into a single, humantimbre. The darkness in his mind, too, began to take shape. It molded itself into the silhouette of a man, tall and muscular and dressed in armor that was horribly, achingly familiar: shimmering scale and gleaming lamellar, black with red flames twisting along the seams. As his face formed, Zen tensed with the shock of it: one he had seen in paintings or sketches in ancient tomes, features twisted in cold resolution or exaggerated ire depending on the source.
But never in this expression of helplessness. Of desperation.
“Please,”Xan Tolürigin begged softly, his eyes fixed on a point behind Zen in the memory.“If you spare my clan, I would agree to a truce, to rein in the power of the Black Tortoise.”
On the same plane of memory across from Xan Tolürigin’s form, tendrils of smoke began to form into another man. One who wore gold-plated armor, new and glittering and utterly unscathed by marks of war. On the pommel of his jiàn curled a golden dragon.
The sigil of the emperor.
Yán’lóng.
