THUD.
The sound was not loud. But it possessed a sickening, hollow thickness that shook straight through the frozen granite into the soles of Lu Chen’s boots.
It came from beneath nine inches of solid cast cold iron.
THUD.
A second strike followed, three heartbeats later.
The sound was deliberate, measured, and rhythmic, like a scholar politely rapping his knuckles against a study door before entering.
Yet with every impact, the nine-foot iron coffin shifted half an inch against its timber chocks.
The eight massive draft warhorses hitched to the wagon lost all semblance of military training.
They screamed—a high, piercing animal shriek of primal terror that echoed off the frozen limestone crags.
Their hooves churned the mud, iron shoes slipping on ice as they reared against their heavy leather traces.
White foam whipped from their bits, splattering across their armored brow plates.
“Hold the lines!” Tie roared, his voice cracking through the pandemonium. “Blindfold the beasts and drive the anchor stakes!”
Six royal soldiers broke formation, scrambling toward the horses with strips of black canvas.
Their hands shook so wildly that one man dropped his lead rope into the slush, slipping on his knees as a scared draft horse nearly trampled his ribs.
THUD.
The third knock rang through the mountain air.
Along the seam of the coffin lid. There, the cold iron met the lip of the basin, the yellow parchment magic charms turned black.
Not from fire, but from an oily, acid-burning decay that spread outward from the red stone calligraphy.
The paper crumbled into gray flakes, scattering in the wind like dead skin.
Where the magic charms crumbled, a film of crystal-clear black frost crawled across the surface of the iron.
It wasn’t normal mountain frost.
It was pitch-black rime, sharp as needles, weeping a greasy, semi-clear fluid that smelled of copper coins and embalming vinegar.
The black rime spread down the iron brackets into the hardwood wagon bed.
The massive timber beams groaned under sudden heat shock, their dense fibers cracking with sounds like pistol shots as sub-zero ghost frost froze the sap in the wood.
The axle grease inside the six iron wheel hubs froze solid in less than five seconds.
A thick mist of rotting chill rolled off the wagon bed, pooling across the snowdrifts like liquid lead.
In the corners of Lu Chen’s eyes, the air began to warp.
Ugly hearing hallucinations clawed at his ears. Faint, high-born murmurs of royal court rituals mingled with the wet slurping of tearing meat.
The Uncanny malice streaming through the iron was dense enough to distort the sense field of anyone standing within twenty paces.
Lu Chen kept his breath even, standing motionless.
He reached his left hand smoothly into his sleeve, retrieving the four-inch unpolished iron bone awl.
Without looking down, he pressed the square pyramid point into the scarred callous of his left palm.
He drove the iron shank downward with a calm, practiced snap of his wrist.
Half an inch of cold metal sank into his flesh.
Fresh crimson blood welled around the iron, steaming vigorously at sixty-five degrees.
A sharp, brilliant needle of pure physical pain shot up his arm, instantly burning away the hallucinatory court whispers.
His mind cleared into ice-cold focus.
Lu Chen murmured under his breath:
“Flesh breathes; blood resists; anchor checked.”
The reality seam held unmoving.
He withdrew the awl, wiped the dark blood against his canvas travel trousers. Then he returned the tool to his sleeve.
Lu Chen focused his gaze on the iron wagon.
Eighteen thousand Newtons per impact.
That was the impact force of a battering ram swung by six siege engineers.
The entity inside was not merely thrashing in blind panic.
It was calculating.
Every strike landed on the exact load-bearing center of the coffin lid. He tested the pulling yield limit of the seven cold-iron chains.
“Get the red stone buckets!” the royal vanguard sergeant screamed, his face white as salt. “Pour the dog blood and tighten the fourth link!”
Four armored soldiers rushed forward. They carried heavy bronze pails filled with thick, sticky, foul-smelling black liquid.
They sloshed the mixture of mountain dog blood and red stone paste over the coffin lid.
The moment the blood touched the black frost, it began to hiss and bubble wildly. That turned into foul yellow steam that stung the eyes like sulfur smoke.
THUD.
A fourth knock rang out.
The wagon shook wildly. Its six iron wheels lifted three inches off the ground before crashing back into the frozen ruts.
SNAP!
A sharp, ear-splitting metal crack tore through the courtyard.
One of the backup iron chain links near the coffin’s foot snapped apart under huge pulling load, the shattered iron link whistling through the air like a cannonball.
It slammed into the station’s heavy timber watchtower, burying itself four inches deep into the solid pine post.
The soldiers scattered in terror, diving into the snow with their hands over their helmets.
Station Master Han shrieked, crawling on all fours into the ruined stable to bury himself beneath a mound of dirty straw.
Only Commander Tie and Lu Chen remained standing in the open yard.
Tie drew his heavy notched headsman’s saber with his uninjured right hand, his knuckles white against the corded handle.
His scarred face was soaked in cold sweat, his breath coming in shallow, ragged pants.
“Sergeant!” Tie barked, though his voice lacked all its last royal arrogance. “Drive the iron wedges into the wagon frame—if the lid shifts an inch, we all die here!”
The soldiers paused, numbed by the overwhelming aura of evil cold rolling off the wagon.
Lu Chen adjusted the grip on his twelve-pound ox-bone cleaver.
He took three slow, deliberate strides forward, stepping past the burned officer.
His boots melted a steaming path through the black frost that carpeted the ground.
“You said it was dead,” Lu Chen said.
His voice was quiet, steady, and cut straight through the panicking shouts of the royal guards.
Commander Tie didn’t look at him. His wild, bloodshot eyes remained fixed on the bulging iron lid.
“It died seven days ago,” Tie whispered through clenched teeth.
“Then what’s knocking?” Lu Chen asked.
THUD.
A fifth knock answered him.
This time, the sound was with a wet, scraping screech—the sound of long, iron-hard fingernails dragging against the underside of the lid, scoring deep grooves through solid metal.
The cold shining from the coffin intensified.
The pails of red stone blood that the guards had poured over the iron turned into black ice, freezing solid mid-drip like ugly icicles of clotted gore.
Lu Chen stopped three paces from the wagon’s heavy front wheel.
He could feel the huge, ancient malice throbbing behind the iron barrier like a rotten second heart.
It was far darker and more packed than the centenary fox he had butchered.
It possessed the rotting, putrid scent of high-born nobility steeped in forbidden sorcery.
“Seven chains,” Lu Chen observed. He pointed the square tip of his cleaver at the groaning iron links.
“One is broken.”
“The third and fifth links are shearing at the welds.”
“It will break out before you reach the pass.”
Commander Tie lowered his headsman’s saber, his shoulders sagging beneath the weight of his layered-scale armor.
The veteran commander looked at the broken chain link embedded in the watchtower post, then looked back at the nine-foot coffin.
The arrogance of a royal courier, the power of the Council of State, and the fear of treason all dissolved in the face of total, certain slaughter.
Tie let out a shuddering breath that frosted against his iron gorget.
“It was supposed to stay dormant until we reached the capital,” Tie said. His voice shook with exhausted despair.
“The royal alchemists swore the cold-iron coffin would suppress the mutation for thirty days.”
“They lied.”
Lu Chen turned his head slightly, his gaze locking onto Tie’s scarred face.
“Who’s in the coffin?” Lu Chen asked.
Tie closed his eyes for a single heartbeat, his jaw working as if chewing on broken glass.
“A royal prince of the Great Yong Dynasty,” Tie whispered.
“Prince Rui.”