The Ancestral Sanctuary of Great Liang stood at the highest point of the inner palace, a dark, eight-sided pagoda of black spirit-iron roofed in blood-red tile.
Around it, the Great Liang Nine-Dragon Blood Lock Array had been woken. Nine iron pillars, each carved in the likeness of a roaring dragon, glowed with a sickly crimson light. The array drew upon the blood oaths of thirty thousand royal guards, each of whom had sworn at enlistment to give his blood to the throne when it was called for, and upon the old earth-veins beneath the capital. Above the pagoda it raised a dome of thick, boiling blood-fog that could melt the divine sense of a Soul Transformation cultivator on contact.
Across the capital, thirty thousand guards who had only just risen from the broken plaza felt a hook set in their hearts. They did not know why they had suddenly grown so tired.
Inside the Sanctuary, three withered old men sat in a triangle around a stone altar.
Their gowns were crimson and gold, and their skin was so dry and dark that it looked like old parchment stretched over bone. They were the three Supreme Ancestors of Great Liang, living fossils who had used secret blood-sealing arts to sleep beneath the earth for three hundred years, and who had woken only when the throne was in danger.
At the center of the altar knelt Emperor Li Tian, the reigning monarch of Great Liang, and the father of Li Xuan. His dragon robes were disordered and his eyes bloodshot with terror. He was pouring his own blood, thread by thread, into the core of the array.
"Ancestors!" His voice was hoarse and shaking. "The unfilial beast killed Li Chen with a tap of his broom! He cut Protector Zhao in two with a single stroke! Strike now, while he walks! Loose the Blood Strike and erase his soul!"
The First Ancestor, whose scalp was bald and spotted black with age, slowly opened his milky, blood-red eyes.
"Li Tian." His voice was two rusted iron plates grinding together. "Three months ago you told us that the Crown Prince’s dantian was ruined and his spirit-veins drawn whole into Li Chen."
"They were!" The Emperor wiped the cold sweat from his brow. "I watched the court physicians..."
"You watched them draw the first six threads," the Second Ancestor hissed. His skeletal fingers tightened on a cane of dark jade until the stone cracked. "Then the boy cut himself. Your own guards say so. The Consort’s maids say so. It has been the talk of every teahouse in the capital for three months. And you did not tell us."
Silence. The Emperor’s mouth worked, and no sound came.
"Half," said the Third Ancestor, his voice thin with venom. "We woke from three hundred years of sleep and bled for a rite that gave Li Chen only half of what we were promised. The other half the boy burned, or hid, or kept. You gave us half a sacrifice and called it whole."
"I did not know he would..."
"You did not know your own son," said the First Ancestor. "Which is why you are a poor emperor and a worse father."
The Emperor bowed his head.
The First Ancestor stretched out one yellowed finger, and the blood-fog above the altar parted to show a pool of dark water. In it, as in a mirror, a young man in a servant’s robe walked down a black stair, one stone at a time, with a broom upon his shoulder.
"Look at him," the First Ancestor said. "What do you see?"
"A monster," the Emperor whispered.
"A man leaning on a broom." The old eyes narrowed. "A true master needs no staff. He did not fly. He did not cross the air. He took the stair, because he could not do anything else. The Dragon-Vein answered him, yes, but the Dragon-Vein is a borrowed sword, and a borrowed sword must be returned. He paid for that stroke. I could smell it from here."
"Then strike!"
"Not yet." The First Ancestor lowered his hand. "He said the first snow. A proud boy gives dates. We have a month, perhaps two."
"There is a difficulty," the Second Ancestor muttered, and his cane scraped against the stone. "The key that woke the Suppression Array beneath his floor. The Founding Architect built our Nine-Dragon Array to the same pattern, with the same hand. If the boy comes to our gate with that key in his grip, the Array may not obey us."
"Then we do not let him come with the key," said the Third Ancestor. "The blood domain presses every cultivator who enters it, and halves what he can do. Let him step through the gate at the first snow. Then we close it behind him, and tear his soul to pieces with the ancestral curse."
None of the three knew that the cultivator they meant to press carried scarcely a thread of Qi, and that the weight they were building would find nothing in him to crush.
"Fill the array," the First Ancestor said. "The thirty thousand guards are not enough. Begin the Blood Levy in the outer districts at the new moon."
"The people..." Li Tian began, in a very small voice.
"What people?" The First Ancestor did not even turn his head. "Your people are fuel, Li Tian. They always were."
The Third Ancestor leaned forward. "There is the girl of the Feathered Frost. She bowed to him. We could take her."
"The Feathered Frost keeps no quarrel with Great Liang," said the First Ancestor, "and I will not give it one. Not yet." His blood-red eyes rested on the dark pool. "Send word to the Poison Sect, instead. Let them learn that Grand Elder Du Mo went down into the Archive and did not come up. A sect’s grief is a cheap weapon, and it needs no feeding."
The Second Ancestor chuckled, a sound like dead leaves.
"And you said a single word when the Stair opened," he said. "I felt it."
"I said ’interesting.’" The First Ancestor’s lips drew back from his black gums in what might have been a smile. "For three hundred years I have slept, waiting for one thing in this dynasty to be interesting. Pour, Li Tian."
The Emperor pressed his bleeding hand against the core of the array, and the red dome above the Sanctuary pulsed once, like a heart.
Ten zhang beneath the plaza, in the cold light of the Fourth Aisle, Li Xuan paused in the middle of a stroke of his sweeping.
Something heavy was building above him. He could not hear it. He could not see it. The stone beneath his feet simply felt a little colder than it had a moment before.
A month, he thought, and took up his broom again. Perhaps two.