Chapter 1 Excerpt

The execution platform reeked of burnt mercury and sanctimony. Lin Yuan knelt on obsidian tiles still warm from the last heretic, his bound wrists dripping blood onto the Eight Trigrams Array. Crimson banners depicting the Heavenly Sword Sect's insignia snapped in the wind, their edges embroidered with arcane calculus only the tribunal elders understood.

"Lin Yuan of the Azure Frost Pavilion," intoned Grand Inquisitor Wu, his voice magnified by a floating jade amphitheater. "You stand convicted of regicide through forbidden shadowstep techniques. Let the astral lenses record this—"

A thunderclap drowned his sentence. The crowd gasped as the ritual dagger above Lin Yuan's head began rotating against the wind, its shadow carving glowing runes into the stone. The prisoner's right sleeve disintegrated, revealing flesh that rippled like molten brass.

Not possession. The thought cut through Lin Yuan's terror. This feels...older.

The amphitheater's enchanted stones shrieked as spatial layers peeled apart. Through the fractalizing air, Lin Yuan glimpsed clawed constellations and a cityscape where pagodas merged with gothic spires. His arm twisted – tendons reforging into quicksilver, knuckles elongating into articulated talons.

Grand Inquisitor Wu's condemnation turned to wet gargles. The old man's jade pendant pulsed, his cultivated energy streaming toward Lin Yuan's mutated hand in visible amber threads. Tribunal members collapsed like emptied wineskins as the drain spread, their decades of meditation unraveling in seconds.

A figure emerged from the spatial tear – not a man, but a silhouette wearing starlight as robes. "Interesting," said the Starway Peddler, adjusting crystalline goggles that showed nine overlapping realms. "You've inherited the Draconic Dissolution Glyph. How many minutes until the Heavenly Sword's Celestial Vanguard arrives? Three? Let's discuss terms..."

The air tasted of ozone and paradoxes. Lin's transformed arm throbbed with stolen qi, Grand Inquisitor Wu's lifetime of cultivation now churning in his veins like liquid wildfire. He stared at the Starway Peddler's crystalline goggles, each lens reflecting a different version of himself – one engulfed in dragonflame, another impaled on celestial spears.

"Terms?" Lin spat blood onto the fracturing execution platform. The dragon sigil beneath his skin pulsed in rhythm with distant thunder. "You'll sell me salvation like cabbages at the market?"

"Salvation?" The Peddler chuckled, his form flickering between a wizened merchant and a multi-jointed entity with too many elbows. "I deal in consequences. That Dissolution Glyph you're hosting? It's chewing through your mortal coil faster than you can scream." He tossed a prismatic vial that hovered above Lin's palm. "Drink this, and you'll stabilize...for three moons."

Lin's enhanced vision detected shifting runes inside the glass. "At what cost?"

"Three memories from your childhood. Not the traumatic ones – those are too bitter. I want the scent of your mother's hairpin oil, the exact shade of persimmons in your first training courtyard, and..." The Peddler's grin widened impossibly. "...the name of the girl who left chrysanthemum cakes by your window."

A tremor rocked the plaza. In the smoldering distance, golden-armored figures materialized atop winged guan dao blades – the Celestial Vanguard's advance guard. Their leader's mask emitted a sonorous hum that made Lin's dragon arm spasm violently.

Dragon's Whisper (Internal Conflict)

The vial smells of forgotten graves and spring thaw. Drink, and you live to see another betrayal. Refuse, and become the monster they claim you are.

Lin shattered the vial.

The Peddler sighed as luminescent liquid pooled around Lin's feet. "Sentimentality is currency here, boy. You'll learn that when the Glyph starts eating your core meridians."

"Or," Lin growled, leaping onto the amphitheater's collapsing archway, "I'll take their power instead." His mutated hand lashed out in a movement that blended the Heavenly Sword Sect's Seventh Form with something far more primordial. Five Vanguard scouts screamed as their armor's enchantments reversed polarity, qi streaming into Lin like rivers meeting a hungry ocean.

The spatial tear spat Lin Yuan onto a cobblestone street that smelled of roasted chestnuts and ionized ether. His dragon arm reverted to human form, though the obsidian scales on his left pinky remained. Above him, a crimson moon cast the city in perpetual twilight, its surface marred by glowing cracks that pulsed like veins.

"Move it, offworlder!" A steam-powered rickshaw nearly clipped Lin's shoulder, its brass-plated driver cursing in a dialect that blended Mandarin with guttural syllables. The streets teemed with beings that defied categorization – fox-eared alchemists peddling glowing vials, clockwork monks chanting binary mantras, and hooded figures whose shadows moved independently of their bodies.

Lin's stomach growled, a reminder that even half-dragon hybrids needed sustenance. His nose caught the scent of sizzling pork buns from a nearby stall, but the vendor's sign gave him pause:

"Essence-Infused Delicacies!

Warning: May cause temporary astral projection or spontaneous combustion."

Before he could decide, a mechanical crane's shadow engulfed him. Lin spun, his hand instinctively reaching for a sword that wasn't there. The crane's owner – a woman with jade-green eyes and a prosthetic arm adorned with poison reservoirs – smirked.

"First time in Crimson Moon Port?" Her voice carried the lilt of someone who'd grown up between worlds. "You've got that fresh-out-of-execution look about you." She tossed him a coin stamped with a dragon coiled around a gear. "Buy yourself a meal, then meet me at the Stormsteel Forge. Ask for Mei Ling."

Lin caught the coin, his dragon arm reacting to its metallic composition. "Why help me?"

Mei Ling adjusted her crane arm's pressure valves, releasing a puff of lavender-scented steam. "Let's just say I've got a vested interest in people who can disrupt Celestial Vanguard formations." She nodded toward a nearby bulletin board plastered with wanted posters – including one depicting Lin's face, though the artist had exaggerated his dragon features. "Eat fast. The Vanguard's spies have better noses than bloodhounds."

The Vanguard scout's armor whirred as its damaged enchantments struggled to stabilize. Lin's dragon arm reacted instinctively, the obsidian scales spreading to his ring finger. Xiao Wei clutched the Astral Compass, its constellations spinning wildly.

"Run," Lin ordered, shoving the boy toward a side alley. "Find Mei Ling at the Stormsteel Forge."

The scout's baton crackled with unstable energy. "You think a street rat can outrun Celestial justice?" His voice distorted through the helmet's fractured voice modulator. "That artifact belongs to the Vanguard's archives."

Lin's dragon arm pulsed, feeding him tactical data in glowing glyphs: