The cold didn’t burn like mountain frost. It bit like rusted iron filed to a jagged edge. It scraped the marrow inside Lin Ke’s shins before the air even reached his lungs.
Thirty paces below the rim of Yellow Springs Gorge, the black shale was sweating needle-thin crystals of negative-heat ice. The heat gauge sewn into his collar registered minus thirty-two degrees. But the heat-powered slope felt fully broken. Surrounding moisture was not freezing into snow. It was collapsing into a greasy, curdled grey smog that clung to the stone like stale engine oil.
Ten paces to his left, an outer sect patrol student fell to his knees with a dull thud.
The boy’s eyes were wide, glassy, and fully unblinking. His jaw worked with clockwork, rhythmic jerks, clicking like an ungreased pawl on a ratchet wheel.
“Clear the... Clear the... Clear the...” the student whispered, his tongue stiff and grey.
The sound didn’t hitch or vary in pitch. It was an unvarying audio loop, repeating every one point four seconds. Meanwhile, the pulse at the boy’s main neck blood vessel slowed to twelve sluggish beats per minute.
Behind him, two mortal miners collapsed over a wooden ore cart, their lips twitching in matching sound lockstep: “Down below... Down below... Down below...”
