Granite shards showered the chamber like grapeshot. Sarnai whipped her twin curved blades from their sheaths before the dust even hit the flagstones, her boots finding purchase on the slick shale. Through the smoky breach strode two dozen figures cloaked in midnight silk, their chests bearing the iron lotus sigil. At their front walked Sect Leader Temür, his gaze glassy and blank, veins of putrid yellow pulsing beneath the skin of his temples like writhing worms. "The execution begins ahead of schedule, traitor," Temür intoned, his speech flat, stripped of human cadence by whatever venom controlled his skull. "Grand Elder orders your head mounted on the dais before the third bell." "He couldn't even wait for the sun to rise," Sarnai spat, steel ringing against steel as she crossed her blades. "Coward." Targen took a measured step into the dust, brushing masonry dust from his faded grey sleeves. Pogo perched atop his shoulder, claws clicking anxiously against the linen. "Pardon the intrusion, Sect Leader Temür," Targen said, bowing at a crisp forty-five-degree angle. "It is extraordinarily late, and Senior Disciple Sarnai has not yet finished her tea. Might I suggest we reschedule this gathering for dawn, as previously decreed? The highland paths are notoriously treacherous in the dark, and your balance seems slightly compromised by the necrotic poison in your skull." Silence fell over the cavern. Even Temür’s vacant gaze twitched. The enforcers flanking him shared bewildered glances, unsure whether to execute the intruder or commit him to an asylum. "Kill the useless stray," Temür droned, raising an iron rod. "Take the woman." "A shame," Targen sighed. Within his soul-sea, Jochi belched, the golden vintage of the Divine Wine sloshing through the god's spectral belly. *Squash them, boy. Show some spine, or spit out my blood and burn like tallow.* "Understood, honored senior," Targen muttered. He extended his right arm, fingers spread wide in an open, welcoming gesture that belonged in a tearoom, not a bloodbath. "Excuse me, gentlemen. Please mind the downdraft." He pushed his hand out. The Heaven-Sundering Palm did not merely strike; it rewrote geography. A pillar of pure, churning ivory pressure erupted from Targen's open palm, delivering the force of an overturned ocean. The cavern walls did not crack—they vanished, pulverized into microscopic grit. The twenty-four elite enforcers flew backward like leaves caught in a forge furnace, their armor cracking like dried eggs. The blast tore through the granite face, cleaving half the crag clean off its foundation. Tens of thousands of tons of rock and soil ceased to exist in an instant, opening a jagged, three-mile trench directly into the Iron-Lotus Pavilion’s grand central amphitheater down below. Cold night air rushed into the vacuum, whistling through the freshly carved canyon. Sarnai stared through the massive, smoking trench at the distant pavilion below, her mouth slightly open. "You... destroyed half the peak," she whispered. "I tried to aim high so as not to ruin the local flora," Targen replied apologetically, lowering his smoking sleeve. "Shall we walk down? The stairs seem to have relocated." "You absolute lunatic," she hissed, though the fierce gleam in her eyes contradicted her scolding. She grabbed his arm. "Move!" They slid down the debris trail, landing squarely in the sunken center of the Execution Plaza. The courtyard was already packed with thousands of sect members and Elders who had assembled early on the Grand Elder's orders, all of whom now stood frozen, gaping at the newly created chasm in the sacred peak. On the high viewing balcony, Oyun sat draped in scarlet fox fur, her face contorting from bored arrogance into absolute fury as she saw Targen and Sarnai emerge intact from the rubble. "Insolent dogs!" Oyun shrieked, springing to her feet. Her hands danced across a row of jade levers mounted beside the podium. "Do not let the heretics breathe! Seal the square! Trigger the Blood-Lotus Array!" Scarlet lines flared across the paved square. Thousands of carved runes burned with foul, coppery light, forming an inescapable net of razor-sharp spirit threads designed to slice through bone and siphon the prisoners' cultivation. The ruby dome snapped upward, sealing Sarnai inside the kill zone. "Die!" Oyun screamed, laughing maniacally as she flooded the array with raw energy. *Crunch.* The laughter died in her throat. At the array's central foundation pillar, Pogo sat happily on his haunches. The Cloud-Weaver Pangolin paid no heed to the lethal death-matrix humming above him; he had found the core conduit—a thick pipe fashioned from pure, aged spirit-marrow jade—and was gnawing through it like a starved rodent through a turnip. *Crack. Snap. Gulp.* Pogo swallowed a massive chunk of glowing green jade, burped a tiny puff of golden smoke, and bit into the secondary junction. The catastrophic array sputtered. The glowing lines running through the stones blinked once, turned a sickly mud-brown, and fizzled out with the sad sound of a wet firecracker. "My... my formation!" Oyun shrieked, grabbing handfuls of her elaborate hair. "The beast is eating my formation! Kill it! Kill it now!" Pogo licked his nose, grabbed another crystalline chunk with both paws, and scampered behind Targen's heels, looking entirely pleased with his late-night snack. "Oyun, your engineering continues to show great promise," Targen shouted up politely. "However, spirit-marrow jade is famously brittle when unsealed. Perhaps a titanium alloy next time?" Oyun flushed purple, coughing up a mouthful of furious, humiliated blood onto her fox fur. Movement flashed in the shadows behind Sarnai. Temür, broken and half-crushed from the mountain blast, dragged himself from a collapsed pillar. His eyes burned with foul black fire, his shattered limbs propelled by dark puppet strings. In his right hand, a bone spear dripped with caustic black venom, aimed straight between Sarnai’s shoulder blades as she turned to shout orders to her few loyalist comrades. "Sarnai, watch your posture!" Targen called out. He didn't draw a blade. He didn't raise a shield. Kind to the point of utter stupidity, Targen simply crossed the distance in a single step, placing his own chest directly in the weapon's trajectory. The blackened spear punched through his back and burst out through his sternum with a sickening crunch. Sarnai spun around, the color draining from her lips. "Targen!" Spectators in the stands gasped. Oyun began to laugh again, triumphant and shrill. Temür sneered, twisting the haft to rend the young man's internal organs into paste. Targen looked down at the bloody tip protruding through his faded tunic. "Oh dear," he murmured softly. "My best robe." Deep within his core, the scarlet tear boiled. Chaotic dragon essence surged through his torn chest like molten bronze. The black venom didn't corrode him; the foreign power devoured it instantly. The bone spear cracked, splintered, and dissolved into grey ash inside his ribcage. Flesh knitted over bone with the violent speed of struck lightning. Muscles clamped shut, skin sealed without a scar, and Targen gently expelled the remaining splintered wood from his chest with a soft cough. Temür fell backward onto the stones, his mind snapping under the impossible sight. "A monster... he cannot die..." Sarnai grabbed Targen’s collar, her fingers digging through the torn, bloodied silk into his miraculously whole chest. Her face was flushed, terror and sheer disbelief warring in her gaze. "Are you out of your mind? Taking a spear through your chest for me? You have a year to live, you reckless idiot!" "It would have been terribly rude of me to let a lady get impaled when I possessed the capacity to absorb the impact," Targen said, offering her an earnest, reassuring smile. "I could kill you myself," she rasped, though her hand lingered on his chest, her pulse racing wildly. A slow, heavy sound echoed across the silent courtyard. Clap. Clap. Clap. The shadows at the base of the sovereign platform parted. The Grand Elder walked out into the torchlight, his ornate violet robes rustling against the stone. He did not look at the fallen Sect Leader. He did not look at Oyun. Behind him, dragged by eight adamantine chains held by shivering sect initiates, lurched an abomination. It was gargantuan, skeletal, its scales rotted away to reveal blackened bone and petrified sinew. Empty eye sockets burned with unnatural corpse-flame, its serpentine spine twisting unnaturally against the earth, trailing the stench of stagnant centuries. Inside Targen's skull, Jochi’s lazy, drunken arrogance vanished instantly, replaced by a hollow, shuddering snarl. *My body,* the god whispered in pure horror. *He dug up my corpse.*

Excuse Me, I Need to Break This Array