“Intruder!” Scarface bellowed, his shout cracking through the alley like shattered glass. He whipped a black chain from beneath his cloak and snapped it toward Flaxseed’s hiding place with the violence of a man strangling a serpent.
The links bristled with backward barbs, each joint bleeding a greasy, ink-black mist. This chain was made to drink spirit itself, a punishment far crueler than death. Flaxseed knew better than to stand his ground. He pivoted and ran, loose robes flapping behind him.
The white-robed swordsman was faster. Golden arcs peeled from his blade and streaked after Flaxseed like falling meteors, driving the trickster into a desperate zigzag retreat.
Each sidestep shaved moments from his life. Sword light slashed new seams across his coat, smoke curling from the fresh cuts.
“Take alive! Do not let that rat slip away!” Scarface barked as charged. The black chain whirled above his head, weaving a net that dropped with the certainty of nightfall. A rancid stench rolled off the iron as though it had been quenched in the bile of hell.
Flaxseed slammed a golden charm onto the stones. A column of flame howled upward, bending the alley itself beneath its heat.
The blaze roared like an uncaged beast, forcing Scarface and the swordsman to reel back, arms raised against the searing tongues.
Seizing the heartbeat he’d bought, Flaxseed slipped into a side passage scarcely wider than his shoulders. Rough bricks scraped his sleeves as wriggled deeper into the shadow. He had covered barely ten paces when his chest slammed into someone standing silent in the dark.
“Easy there, friend. What’s the hurry?” the stranger asked, voice smooth as warm wine.
The man wore homespun robes and an easy smile, the very picture of a harmless passerby caught after dusk. Yet when their sleeves brushed, Flaxseed tasted the metallic tang of Celestial Palace authority. It clung to the stranger’s aura like hidden steel beneath velvet.
Alarm bells screamed inside him. He spun, ready to bolt once more.
A hand settled on his shoulder, light, unhurried, inescapable. The stranger’s smile iced over. “You’re already here. Might as well stay, and tell us exactly what you overheard.”
Numbness flooded from that touch, a strange current burrowing through muscle and meridian, sealing his cultivation as neatly as wax over a letter.
Weight crashed onto him, a mountain could not lift. Scarface and the white-robed swordsman appeared at the alley’s mouth, closing a tight ring around their prize.
“So, just a wandering cultivator bold enough to spy on the Celestial Palace,” the swordsman sneered.
He brought the blade to Flaxseed’s throat, edge gleaming like winter moonlight. “Speak! Whose dog are you, and why were you sniffing around our affairs?!”
Flaxseed clenched his teeth and swallowed every answer. He knew truth would not save him; it would only make his death uglier. Scarface drew a dagger of pitch-black metal, dark-red runes pulsing across it like living worms.
“Silent, eh?” growled. “Then the Soul Devouring Dagger will teach you how it feels to lose a soul one scream at a time.”
He waved the blade before Flaxseed’s eyes, the alley air turning icy along its passage.
The dagger stopped nine centimeters from Flaxseed’s brow. Its chill bored through bone and spirit alike. He felt the weapon’s hunger, a shadow-beast crouching inside the metal, ready to lunge and swallow whole.
Every strand of hair on his body bristled, broadcasting naked terror. His heart hammered against his ribs, desperate to escape the cage of bone before the dagger did.
A golden streak burst from the mouth of the alley, the silent night ripped open as if lightning had decided to fly low to the ground.
Crack! The bone-splitting report rang sharp and cold, like a funeral bell struck by death itself. The Soul Devouring Dagger clanged against the cobblestones, its fall loud and lonely inside the tension-thick passage.
