Page 89 of The Wind Dancer
Fouche opened his eyes. The altar’s pulse throbbed in his skull. Knowledge flowed through his veins like poison.
“They’ll be here soon,”a voice whispered in his mind.
He nodded, knowing exactly who she was talking about. The Secret Chancellery. That damn boy, Feng Lao.
He could feel them coming. It was like the throbbing of a splinter under a nail.
The Shadow’s name rang out in the ritual circle, written on the tendons, burned into the bones.
An ember that could be extinguished before it turned into a blaze.
Mercenaries were waiting on the main steps of the platform. Their faces were hidden behind demonic dog masks, their eyes glinting like steel. They hadn’t come for money. They had been promised something far greater — rebirth. A new form, free from weakness. Their bones would be reforged, their souls sanctified. They believed in the cause.
“Get ready,” Fouche said. His voice slowly poisoning everything, like an ink drop in clear water. “Blood will be spilled at the first strike of the gongs. The festival is our cover. Their joy, our fuel. Today, we will reveal the truth that they have been hiding for centuries. We aren’t servants. We are lords.”
Five priests stood at his side.
All of them were wearing masks made of human skin. Each was holding a vessel of a strange material that was neither glass nor metal. Essence bubbled inside, forming embryos of dreams, hazy, half-alive, pulsating with a blinding light. It began to scream.
The five vessels were connected to five altars hidden across the city. One had been destroyed. Yet the residual energy still flowed — warped, but unbroken. The network as a wholepowered the ritual. It was like a cluster of hearts, linked by black veins.
When everything merged, Lian Rui would get what he wished for. Distortion. A divine plague that would tear apart the fabric of reality.
The sky flashed crimson, though the sun had not yet set. The temple’s shadow quivered, and the air buzzed.
The platform shook. The chains hanging from the pillars rattled. Not from the wind, but the Distortion breathing. It was already here. If he stretched out his hand, he could use this power.
Creatures crawled out from under the stones. One was covered with growths, with a spine like a fortress wall. Its tentacles writhed, spreading poison. Behind it was a two-headed creature, black steam spilling from its throats.
Fouche knew that the trap had worked.
A broken compass powered by blood had just turned to dust. The Shadow had entered the lower tunnels. Perfect. The Mother’s gift was already waiting for him there.
His flesh would be torn apart, his bones jumbled, and his soul distorted. And the Mother would have a new toy.
Everything was ready.
Fouche closed his eyes. His heart beat in time with a gong that hadn’t yet rung.
“She’s coming,” he whispered.
At that moment, the first gong rang out over the celebrating city.
CHAPTER 25
Since I became a dragonblood, I felt uneasy in places with no natural air currents. Something inside me told me it could be dangerous here.
The sewer tunnel reeked of mold, shit, and the indescribable stench of rotting remains. The river was locked between stone banks, and slowly carried the city’s waste to the sea. This was the path I took to the ritual. The stones underfoot were smooth, worn down over hundreds of years. And no matter how hard I tried to walk quietly, the treacherous splashes echoed loudly against the stone walls of the sewer. I walked slowly, trying not to make any noise, so as not to give away my presence. Fouche may be mad, but I was absolutely certain that he would be prepared for everything.
The heavy stench penetrated the cloth mask I wore, soaked in herbs. It was so thick that every breath felt like warm, disgusting slime seeping into my lungs. I couldn’t imagine how my mentor had mapped all these tunnels. Then I reminded myself: he was a dragonblood attuned to water, so the dampness that bothered me only made him stronger. The smell was still terrible, though.
My fingers tightened on the handles of daggers, not out of fear, but as a way of grounding myself. As a reminder of who I was. I wasn’t an official or a noble hero. I was just a shadow who always got even, and Fouche owed me a lot. For setting those lotus pricks after me. For everything that happened at his cursed altar. For daring to summon the Distortion abominations to my city. The streets taught me to always settle the score. And this would be settled with blood.
My mentor had yet again helped me even after his death. Without his maps, it would have been impossible for me to get through these tunnels quickly. I would have loved to have a few more free weeks to decipher his diary. The first pages talked about his project to collect information and how he had plans to use it further. If just these little fragments had stirred up so much, then I was afraid to even imagine what awaited me when I deciphered everything.
I stopped at one of the turns. There was an unnaturally smooth slit in the stone to the right, as if someone had slid a blade across the stone. Above it was a still fresh trail of blood. Someone was ahead of me. And they might be wounded. Or that someone was being dragged, which I thought was more likely. These sick bastards needed live victims. To the Demons, now wasn’t the time to think about the fate of the prisoners.
The tunnels looked different the further I went. The walls became rougher and more ancient. The stones were uneven and strange, as if they had been melted, then frozen, then broken. A murky, foul-smelling slime oozed out of the cracks. It was vile, like the rotten insides of a creature that should have died a long time ago, but for some reason refused to die.
