The air didn’t grow cold. It grew heavy, like lead shot pouring into an iron hopper.
Lin Ke felt the pressure first in the crowns of his back teeth. A dull, grinding ache shook through his jawbone. It set off a sympathetic hum in the Ashen Iron lattice fused into his skeleton.
Across the outer courtyard of the Hall of Heavenly Penalties, thirty junior students dropped to their knees with wet thuds. Two of them vomited clear bile onto the polished paving stones.
The clouds above the mountain split apart, not by wind, but by the sheer moving shifted weight of a dropping fighter.
A man floated downward, hovering five feet above the ground before his boots touched the slate.
He wore high-necked robes of woven gold and black silk, bearing the five-clawed dragon of the Great Yan Imperial Censorate. His skin was pale as animal fat, his beard trimmed to a razor-sharp point. His eyes burned with the dull, choking amber glow of a Half-Step Golden Core.
Chief Inquisitor Yan Tiexin.
In his right hand, Yan held a metal tube of dark, pitted bone bound with scarlet twine: the Imperial Nine-Rounds Soul-Leash Scroll. Even sealed within bone, the ancient object came a wet, metal heartbeat that made every pulse in the courtyard stutter in sync.
