The bronze floorboards of the Nine-Dragon War Chariot groaned under Crown Prince Zhao Lie’s wild, pacing steps.
He was still brandishing his five-clawed dragon saber. His arm shook from the sheer physical hard effort of holding twenty-eight pounds of hardened star-steel aloft for forty minutes. His throat felt like a patch of scorched earth, every ragged cough tasting of dry iron and bile. Across the rolling plains, the gentle hum of two hundred thousand well-fed men enjoying hot noodles seemed to mock his every breath.
“Cowards...” Zhao Lie rasped, his voice dropping into a broken, breathless whisper. “I’m the Son of the Sun... I’m the dragon sovereign of the south... You can’t desert me... You can’t abandon your sacred royal oaths...”
Suddenly, the golden sunlight bathing the chariot vanished.
A cool, violet-tinted shadow swept over the gold-trimmed prow, extinguishing the glare of the brass dragon heads. The surrounding air dropped several degrees, scented not with the smoke of battlefield fire, but with the crisp, clean ozone of high mountain glaciers and silver starlight.
Zhao Lie froze.
Slowly, with clockwork stiffness, the young prince turned his head.
Standing upon the polished bronze deck behind him was a creature forged from midnight itself. Twelve feet tall at the shoulder, its muscular frame was cloaked in sleek, pitch-black fur that seemed to absorb surrounding light. Across its chest and flanks, fine, detailed silver star-pattern runes pulsed with calm, rhythmic majesty, mirroring the sky wheel of the northern sky. Two burning ruby eyes, ancient…
