The cut heads of the three Bone-Frost Court elders hissed as they sank into the boiling slush of the courtyard.
Steam rolled in thick, blinding billows from Lu Chen’s shoulders, rising against the shrieking gale that swept down from the Great Wall’s castle walls.
The blizzard struck his chest and instantly flash-boiled into white vapor. That left only faint droplets that ran down his bronze-and-gold skin like hot oil.
With the Three Grand Elders dead, the outer courtyard fell into a stone-hard silence broken only by the whistling wind and the groaning iron chains of the inner drop-gate.
High atop the crenellations of the General’s Keep, forty paces above the flat stone slabs, the archers of the Black Frost Guard stood numbed.
Their breath froze in pale clouds against their iron visors. Their fingers shook inside their boiled-leather gauntlets.
They were veterans of the northern frontier who had speared mountain ghouls and decapitated frost-beasts without blinking.
Yet they looked down upon Lu Chen as if staring into an open mouth of the earth that vomited living forge-fire.
