Zen’s back arched, his mouth open in a silent gasp. The last of the whites of his eyes were fading even as he looked at her with desperation. “Go,” he rasped. “I—cannot—control—”
Lan slid the dagger from his side. Blood began to spill again, but Zen had no reaction. The blade of her knife was completely red.
What’s happening?She directed this thought at the Silver Dragon.I cut him with this blade. Why is the Black Tortoise’s qì not severed?
Their qì is beginning to fuse,came the response.The being that you call the Black Tortoise exerted much power to bring him back from the brink of death. Its control over the boy grows. Their connection is no longer something so easily broken.
Zen was going to lose control. The Black Tortoise’s power would grow unfettered, dangerous, destroying everything in its path—as it almost had at Skies’ End. It needed to be stopped.
Her hands shook as she lifted her dagger high above Zen’s chest. Lan fought to steady the trembling in her hands.
No,came the warning from the Dragon. Its core stirred; she thought she glimpsed a shimmer of scales as it unwound behind her.You cannot kill the boy. Not unless you wish to provoke the wrath of the Black Tortoise. Not unless you wish to war with one of the Four.
Her breath shook. Slowly, she lowered her dagger and severed the connection between her and the Dragon. Her mind grew quiet.
There was no more helping him; even the power of That Which Cuts Stars was helpless against a Demon God that had begun to lay claim to its binder. No, the only way left todestroy the Black Tortoise and to release Zen was to find the Godslayer.
Summoning all the qì she could, Lan turned and kicked off with the Light Arts. The world blurred. Zen’s gaze was seared into her mind.
We want the same thing,he’d said to her.Am I wrong?
No,she thought now, swiping a fist across her face. Her vision cleared.You’re not wrong, Zen. We want the same thing, but we’ve chosen different paths to it.Walking the Wayward path—yielding to power and corruption rather than maintaining balance—in order to achieve the greater good did not justify one’s actions. The end did not justify the means and the trail of suffering left behind.
Perhaps none of their choices even mattered. What awaited them after all this was the same ending to their stories, blazing in the star maps and in the legacies that had been left to them—a tale begun and a fate written long ago.
The Demon Gods had to be destroyed.
And with them, the souls of their binders.
First thing upon rising, the emperor takes this broth, served in a porcelain bowl. Soon his qì steadies and his mind clears, allowing him to begin conducting state affairs.
—Imperial Physician RénFu,Records of the Physician’s Visits to the Imperial Court,Era of the Middle Kingdom
He was adrift in a lake of darkness. The currents were icy, the waters unfathomably black, bearing him along as though he were a leaf in a gale. He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear. He might have become a part of the water.
There were shapes. Smoke in the air, billowing before him to form silhouettes.
He saw her first: pale silken páo, chin-length hair like black silk, a smile turned to sorrow, the glimmer of tears. He reached for her, intending to wipe them away.
Under his touch, she broke like a reflection in water, fading into nothing.
In the darkness came other shapes. Voices, echoes.Temurezen,they called.Temurezen…
He recognized them as a part of his past, voices that had collected dust and faded to whispers in his mind. People who had turned to ghosts. Far above, so faint he might have missed it, a glint of light appeared. He began to swim toward it.
Aba,he tried to cry out, but this was one of those dreams where he had no voice.Amu…
His calls were swallowed by the waters, which had taken shape before him.
Xan Temurezen,came that familiar rumbling, borne by the currents. He could sense the Demon God’s presence curling around him tighter, and suddenly the waters he swam in weren’t waters at all but great waves of qì. The Black Tortoise was a lake, an ocean, and he merely a speck of sand struggling within it.
No, impossible. The present had begun to filter in, along with a piercing pain in his back. He remembered, between bouts of wakefulness and unconsciousness, that Lan had pierced him with That Which Cuts Stars, which should have severed the demonic energies inside him.
The Demon God shouldn’t be here. His mind and his body should be his.
When Zen drew breath again, he was lying on cold, hard ground. It was still night, and he was freezing.
Something was wrong.
