The succubus was still clicking.

  Her glamour dissolved, leaving behind a spindly grey-skinned horror with far too many joints and eyes reflecting the bruised purple of the Underworld sky. She lay in the grey dust, chitinous legs twitching in a rhythmic involuntary spasm. Jian looked down at her with a sneer of pure unadulterated disgust. To any other man, she might have been a nightmare. To him, she was just a poorly constructed prop, a discarded bug from a play that had stayed on the boards far too long.

  "Pathetic," Jian rasped. The orange glow of the Dragon Core hissed against the cold air.

  "Quite," a new voice said.

  Not from the shadows or the mist. It came from the air itself—a cold metallic resonance like a bell tolling in a deep well.

  Jian turned slowly. Standing twenty paces away was a figure that actually looked like it belonged in the Backstage. Tall, encased in armor of blackened soul-iron that seemed to drink the meager light of the abyss. He carried no weapon, but his hands—clad in heavy articulated gauntlets—were stained with the faint violet residue of a thousand crushed souls. Not a discarded shade. Malakor, the Chief Inquisitor and Underling to the Regional Lord of this sector.

  Malakor looked at the mangled succubus, then at the smoking crater where the incubator had been dismantled, and finally at Jian.

  "The Dragon Boy," Malakor said with a faint grinding sound in his throat that might have been a laugh. "The one who bit off more divinity than his throat could handle. You’re a noisy one, aren't you? Bringing the sun into a world that’s finally found its peace."

  Jian’s eyes ignited with a copper-gold flare. His Ember-Steel Plate vibrated with a sudden aggressive hum. "I’m not looking for peace, puppet. I’m looking for the exit."

  "There are no exits in the Underworld, little firefly," Malakor said, stepping forward. His gait was heavy, deliberate—the walk of a man who knew exactly how much the world owed him. "Only levels. And you’ve just made a very messy entrance onto mine. You talk about puppets, yet you’re the one dancing to the tune of a core that’s currently melting your ribs."

  Malakor’s fist blurred.

  Jian didn't use a flare. He didn't use a blast. He met the blow with his own forearm. The impact sent a shockwave through the grey dust that cracked the obsidian ridge a hundred yards away.

  The fight that followed wasn't the explosive chaos of the garrison or the temple. It was a study in lethal surgical precision. Malakor fought with the Stance of the Iron Judge, a style utilizing the opponent’s own momentum to crush their joints. But Jian moved in a way that defied the laws of human martial arts.

  As Malakor swung a heavy horizontal blow meant to shatter Jian’s ribs, Jian didn't duck or parry. He twisted his body at a mid-air angle that should have snapped his spine, his legs snapping out in a series of rhythmic whip-like kicks bearing the unmistakable cadence of a Naga warrior.

  The memory flickered—a jagged painful shard of another script.

  He was in the Epoch of the Serpent-Sea. The Old Man had been bored with human Jian, so he unraveled Jian’s soul and stitched it back into the body of a six-armed Naga Prince. For three hundred years, Jian was forced to learn the Flickering Coil style—a martial art requiring him to move his internal organs to avoid strikes and use the rhythmic contraction of his tail to generate power. He lived in that cold wet skin until he forgot how to walk on two legs, until the Old Man decided it was time for the Great Drought act and let the serpent-Jian desiccate in the sun for a century.

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  Then came the Epoch of the Silver Kilin. Four legs. Hooves that could crack diamonds. A neck that could withstand the strike of a mountain-giant. Jian had been every race, every form, every biological variation the Old Man could dream up. He hadn't just learned their secrets; he had been them.

  Back in the grey dust, Jian’s hand shot out, fingers forming a C shape that hooked into the joints of Malakor’s gauntlet. A Kilin-style grapple designed to pull the weight of a beast three times his size. He jerked Malakor forward, then pivoted, driving a knee into the Inquisitor’s midsection with the explosive force of the Dragon’s Yang.

  Malakor stumbled back. His soul-iron armor dented, a hiss of violet Yin escaping the breach. He looked at Jian, eyeless visor radiating sudden genuine intrigue.

  "Naga flexibility. Kilin leverage. Human spite," Malakor mused, straightening his posture. "You’ve lived many lives, Dragon Boy. And none of them were yours, were they?"

  Jian stopped. He didn't drop his guard, but the copper light in his eyes settled into a cold observant simmer. He looked at Malakor. Really looked at him. He didn't see the insect he had seen in the succubus. He saw a soul tempered by the absolute weight of the abyss. No script here. No gag. Malakor wasn't trying to lure him or mock him; he simply existed in his own truth.

  "You're real," Jian whispered. The realization hit him harder than Malakor’s fist. "You're not a puppet. You're just... the Judge."

  "I am the law of this dust," Malakor said. "And the law says that you don't belong here. But..." He looked at the mangled succubus again. "I’ve always hated these seductive little bugs. They make the Underworld look like a cheap brothel."

  Jian let out a short dry laugh. He lowered his hands, the Ember-Steel Plate cooling slightly. "We don't need to fight, Judge. I don't want your sector. I just want the core that can anchor this fire."

  Malakor nodded, a gesture of respect between two predators who realized the other wasn't worth the effort of a kill. "The Tainted Yin of these low-level shades won't help you. It’s like pouring mud into a furnace. If you want a True Yin Core, you need to go to the Palace of Frozen Whispers. The Regional Lord... she’s a Nine-Tailed Void Fox. Her heart is a glacier of pure refined Yin."

  "A fox spirit," Jian muttered, the hilt of the Eclipse Fang humming under his hand. "Let me guess. She has a script about a lonely goddess waiting for a hero?"

  "She has a script about flaying the skin off anyone who looks at her the wrong way," Malakor corrected. "She is the only thing in this realm more volatile than you. If you can take her core, you’ll be balanced. If not... you’ll just be another pile of ash for me to sweep up."

  Jian turned toward the horizon, where a distant silver light pierced the purple gloom. "The Palace of Frozen Whispers. Got it."

  He began to walk, but stopped when he heard the clicking sound behind him.

  The succubus and the newly-arrived incubus—a tall emaciated thing with bat-like wings that looked like wet parchment—trailed after him. They weren't attacking. They were scurrying, eyes fixed on the back of his glowing armor.

  "Why are they following me?" Jian asked, not turning around.

  "Because you just beat the Chief Inquisitor to a standstill," Malakor said, voice fading into the mist. "In the Underworld, strength is the only master. They’ve decided that if the Dragon Boy is going to kill the Fox Spirit, they want to be the first ones to bow to the new Regional Lord."

  The succubus chirped a high-pitched servile sound. "Long live the boss," she hissed, many eyes blinking in unison.

  Jian rolled his eyes. A flicker of genuine human annoyance crossed his face. "If they get within ten paces of me, I’m eating them."

  "We understand, boss!" the incubus chirped, fluttering his parchment wings. "We'll stay at eleven paces! Very respectful! Very loyal!"

  Jian let out a long weary sigh and continued his march toward the silver light. He was a lunatic, a calamity, and a man who had forgotten how to love. But as he walked through the grey dust with a judge at his back and a pair of bugs at his heels, he felt something he hadn't felt in ten million years.

  He felt like the director. And he was about to give the Fox Spirit the performance of a lifetime.