The darkness smelled of rust and forgotten wounds.
Ling Tian came to consciousness with the slow, sickening awareness of a body pushed beyond its limits. His wrists ached where the soul-suppression cuffs bit into his scales, their cold metal leaching the warmth from his blood. The air hung thick with the scent of damp stone and something fouler—the metallic tang of old blood mixed with the sour sting of fear-sweat.
A drop of water struck his forehead, tracing a slow path down his temple like a mocking tear. He blinked, his vision swimming into focus as the dungeon resolved around him—a circular chamber of blackened stone, its walls carved with faces frozen in silent screams. The Violet Thunder Sect's insignia glowed above him, its lightning-bolt sigil casting jagged shadows that seemed to twitch at the edges of his vision.
"You're awake."
The voice slithered through the darkness, smooth as oiled steel. Ling Tian's head snapped up—or tried to, before the chain around his throat jerked him back. Across the chamber, a figure lounged on the rusted remains of a torture rack, peeling an apple with a clawed finger. Crimson robes. Blackened scales creeping up his neck like a corruption.
Xue Yao.
The demonic cultivator took a slow bite of the fruit, his golden eyes reflecting the dim light like a cat's in the dark. Juice dripped down his chin, the sound obscenely loud in the suffocating silence.
"Little brother," he crooned, the words thick with mock affection, "did you really think the Dragon Art was yours alone?"
Ling Tian's mouth tasted of blood and something fouler—the aftertaste of whatever drugs they'd pumped into him. His tongue felt swollen, useless. When he tried to speak, all that emerged was a dry cough that sent spikes of pain through his ribs.
Xue Yao flicked the apple core aside. It struck the wall with a wet thud, and the dungeon... shifted.
The carved faces on the pillars twisted, their stone mouths parting to release a chorus of whispers that skittered across Ling Tian's skin like insects. Shadows pooled at Xue Yao's feet, rising into ghostly figures that reeked of burnt flesh and old magic. A scene unfolded in the air between them—
—A younger Xue Yao, bare-backed and bleeding as violet sigils were carved into his flesh by laughing elders.
—The mural from the arena, but whole and terrible in its clarity, showing nine dragons bowing to a human figure holding a key that burned with black fire.
—A man with Ling Tian's eyes driving that key into the largest dragon's heart, the beast's roar shaking the very air.
"The Ling Clan weren't victims," Xue Yao murmured, watching the shadows dance with something like nostalgia. "They were jailers. They bound us—the Nine-Heaven Dragons—into human bloodlines. Stole our power to keep the Eclipse God imprisoned."
Ling Tian's breath came in short, painful gasps. The Fox's Paw embedded in his chest pulsed like a second heart, sending waves of heat through his veins that made the manacles around his wrists sizzle against his skin. The stench of burning flesh joined the dungeon's other odors.
"You're lying," he rasped, though the shadows showed the truth in relentless detail.
Xue Yao laughed—a sound like breaking glass. He pushed off from the rack, his movements liquid and predatory as he crossed the chamber. His claw traced the scar over Ling Tian's heart, the touch burning like brandished iron.
"Then why does your blood wake the seals? Why do the murals sing for you?" His breath smelled of rotting apples and something darker, fouler. "Why does the Fox's Paw choose now to stir?"
The door creaked open before Ling Tian could respond.
The Crimson Witch entered like smoke given form—one moment the doorway stood empty, the next she was there, her dagger already pressed to Ling Tian's throat. Her breath smelled of poisoned honey, cloying and sweet beneath the dungeon's stench.
"Hello, jailer's son."
Her blade dragged downward, not breaking skin but tracing the outline of the Fox's Paw with terrible precision. The scar burned, the mummified flesh beneath twitching as if alive. Ling Tian's vision whited out with pain as memories surged—
—A child's hand (his?) pressing against a door that pulsed like a living thing.
—A voice (his father's?) screaming "Never let it out!" as shadows tore at his robes.
—The Fox's Paw ripping from someone else's chest into his own, the pain beyond anything mortal flesh should endure.
He vomited—not bile, but ink-black blood that sizzled where it struck the floor, eating through stone like acid. The stench of burning rock joined the dungeon's symphony of odors.
The Witch caught his chin, her fingers digging into his jaw with bruising force. "The Eclipse God doesn't want to escape his prison," she whispered, her voice slithering into his ear like a serpent. "He wants to break it. And you, little Ling, are the hammer."
The explosion rocked the dungeon before Ling Tian could respond.
Dust rained from the ceiling as the wall burst inward, revealing Qing'er silhouetted against the torchlight beyond, her sword gleaming with borrowed moonlight. Behind her, the dungeon guards lay in heaps, their eyes wide and unseeing, the stench of voided bowels adding to the chamber's miasma.
"We're leaving."
Xue Yao sighed, stretching like a waking predator. "How rude to interrupt family time."
The fight that followed was a blur of steel and pain. Qing'er's blade met the Witch's dagger in showers of sparks that stank of burnt metal. Ling Tian wrenched against his chains, the soul-suppression cuffs cracking as the Fox's Paw pulsed in warning, sending waves of molten agony up his arms.
Xue Yao watched it all with amused detachment—until Ling Tian's claws tore through the last chain. Then he moved.
His strike aimed not for Ling Tian, but for Qing'er's exposed back. Ling Tian intercepted, taking the blow meant for her throat—Xue Yao's claws sank into his shoulder, twisting with cruel precision. The pain was a living thing, chewing through his nerves like acid.
"Remember this pain," Xue Yao breathed, his golden eyes inches from Ling Tian's. His breath stank of rotting meat and cloying perfume. "It's the only truth our kind can trust."
Then—
A blast of azure fire lit the dungeon, the heat searing Ling Tian's face as the flames roared past. Xiao Yan stood in the ruined doorway, his hands ablaze, his expression unreadable beneath the dancing shadows.
"The Blood Saber Valley is at the gates," he said coldly. "Run or die."
They fled through the sect's underbelly, past cells filled with forgotten prisoners—men and women with gold-flecked eyes and scaled skin that glimmered faintly in the torchlight. The air grew thicker here, ripe with the stench of unwashed bodies and despair.
One prisoner, a withered elder missing both legs, grasped Ling Tian's wrist as he passed. His fingers felt like dry twigs, his breath reeking of infection and rotting teeth.
"The Key isn't what you think," he rasped, his voice barely audible over the distant sounds of battle. "It doesn't open the prison—it is the prison. And you..." His grip tightened painfully. "You're the last lock."
Then they were in the open air, the night screaming with battle cries and clashing steel. The Violet Thunder Sect burned behind them, its towers crumbling under the Blood Saber assault, the scent of burning timber and charred flesh overwhelming.
Qing'er pressed a hand to Ling Tian's bleeding shoulder, her fingers coming away black with tainted blood that reeked of sulfur and something impossibly ancient. "What did they do to you in there?"
Ling Tian looked at his reflection in her sword—his left eye now fully gold, the pupil a vertical slit that didn't belong to any human.
"They reminded me what I am."
The words tasted like ashes in his mouth.