After the gates opened, Pei Jing stayed on the bridge until his hands stopped shaking. He wrapped the pieces of the cleaver and drank a little water. Nearly two hours passed before he tied his straw hat tight and walked the two hundred paces to the island. His boots rang on the stone. His back felt strange without the weight of the cleaver, though he was walking at his usual pace. Ten days in the vault had changed him enough that the pull of the deep no longer made him watch every step.
The island was sixty paces across, a circle of black rock floating above the magma. Three steps of polished slate rose to a stone throne.
Sword Sovereign Xiao sat upright with his head bowed a little. About twelve hundred years had passed since he sealed the tomb after his last campaign and died here. His flesh was gone, but Pei Jing could see every small bone in his fingers. The bones were dark and clear like smoky quartz, with fine lines of gold and silver. Nine cycles of Sovereign-grade Marrow Washing had made them hard enough to outlast the ages.
Xiao held a rock in his lap. It was about the size of a bull’s skull, with dents from its fall out of the sky. Blue light pulsed faintly beneath the surface. Frost spread across the floor near it. At the edge of the frost, the heat from the magma turned it to mist.
