The reek of stale dragon dung and rot clung to the air, a physical presence in the damp chill of the Forbidden Dungeons. Arthur knelt on the slick stone floor. Water dripped from the ceiling in a maddeningly slow rhythm, each drop a tiny hammer against the silence.
"Look at it, the pathetic stable rat." The voice, slick with arrogance, came from a youth draped in velvet, his face a mask of bored cruelty. He stood with two others, their fine clothes a jarring splash of color in the gloom. "They actually make him clean the century-old ones."
"My father says this one was a mad sorcerer," another piped up, nudging the shriveled corpse with the toe of his expensive leather boot. "Tried to steal a dragon egg. They just threw him in here and forgot about him."
A heavy boot slammed into Arthur's back, driving the air from his lungs. He gasped, collapsing forward, his face inches from the leathery, mummified remains.
"Get on with it, filth," Koro, the overseer, snarled. His breath was a foul mix of cheap ale and garlic. "Lord Valerius wants this cell cleared by nightfall. And he wants the ring."
Koro pointed a thick, grimy finger at the corpse's hand. A skeletal claw was clenched tight, and within its grasp, a simple, unadorned band of what looked like dull iron glinted faintly.
Arthur didn't move. He kept his head down, his tangled mess of hair hiding his face. He let his shoulders tremble, a perfect imitation of fear.
"Did you hear me?" Koro's voice dropped. He grabbed a handful of Arthur's hair, yanking his head back. "Or has the dragon shit finally clogged your ears?"
"It… it's cursed, sir," Arthur whispered, his voice raspy. He pitched it just right, full of the terror of a simple, superstitious boy.
The noble youths laughed. "He thinks it's cursed! The rat has a brain after all."
Koro's face flushed with anger at their mockery. He shoved Arthur's head forward again. "I don't pay you to think. I pay you to obey. Now, get that ring. Pry its fingers open if you have to."
Arthur hesitated for another moment, milking the performance. He felt Koro's impatience build into a hot, tangible thing behind him. It was a predictable, brutish emotion. So very… mortal.
"NOW!" Koro roared, and another kick, harder this time, sent Arthur sprawling directly onto the corpse.
The impact was jarring. The dry, brittle form crackled beneath him. The stench of dust and decay filled his nostrils. His right hand, thrown out to catch his fall, landed directly on the corpse's clenched fist.
He did as he was told. His thin, grimy fingers closed over the corpse's cold, hard knuckles. He began to apply pressure, working to uncurl the dead fingers from their century-long grip.
The moment his skin made full contact, it happened.
It was not a flash of light. It was not a boom of thunder. It was a silence that fell inside his mind, a sudden, complete void. Then, a torrent of something cold and gray poured out of the corpse, not into his body, but directly into his soul. It was a force of pure entropy, of endings, of things returning to dust.
Ah, finally, a voice echoed in the vast, silent theater of his mind. The voice was not Arthur's. It was ancient, female, and laced with a profound, cosmic boredom. A fulcrum. Not grace. Not demonic filth. A principle. The quaint little law of unmaking. How… adequate.
To the outside world, Arthur's body went rigid. A low gasp escaped his lips. His eyes rolled back in his head.
"What's wrong with him now?" one of the nobles asked, his amusement turning to slight unease.
"Probably just fainted from the smell," Koro grunted, impatient. He stepped forward and kicked Arthur's side. "Get up, you useless piece of…"
He stopped.
Arthur's right hand, still resting on the corpse's fist, was changing. The grime and dirt seemed to flake away, and the skin beneath lost its color, shifting through pale white to a flat, lifeless gray. It looked like the hand of a statue carved from ash. A faint, almost invisible wisp of smoke, carrying the scent of burnt-out stars, coiled up from his knuckles.
This mortal shell is fragile, Su Ling's consciousness noted with detached curiosity. Weak. But my Myriad Phantasm Heart required an anchor to manifest in this… rigid reality. This 'Ash Hand,' this power of decomposition, will serve as the first thread.
She flexed her new power, a subtle, internal command. The corpse's fingers, locked for a hundred years, didn't just open. They dissolved. The bones, the dried skin, the ligaments—they simply unraveled into a fine gray powder, releasing the iron ring. It clattered softly onto Arthur's ashen palm.
Then, with a final, practiced shudder, she let Arthur's body go limp, feigning a dead faint. It was a crude trick, but effective for such a crude audience.
"He got it!" Koro exclaimed, his greed overriding any sense of alarm. He lunged forward, shoving the limp boy aside. He snatched the ring from Arthur's gray hand, holding it up to the dim torchlight. "Hah! Knew the old stories were just tales to scare children."
He pocketed the ring, his mind already on the taverns and the women he would spend his reward on. He failed to notice that the corpse Arthur had been lying on was no longer there. All that remained was a human-shaped outline of fine, settled dust on the stone floor, as if a shadow had been permanently burned there.
"Useless," Koro spat at Arthur's unconscious form. He turned to the other guards. "Drag this trash back to the stables. If he's not mucking out the dragon pens by morning, I'll have his hide for a whip."
Two guards hauled Arthur's limp body up by the armpits. His head lolled, and his new, ashen hand dragged along the stone floor, leaving a faint, imperceptible trail of decay in its wake. They tossed him onto a pile of dirty straw in the corner of the cavernous dragon stables, the warm, musky scent of the great beasts a stark contrast to the dungeon's cold rot.
For a long time, the boy named Arthur lay still. The sounds of the stable filled the air—the soft rumble of a sleeping bronze dragon, the clink of chains, the distant chatter of off-duty guards.
Then, his eyes opened.
They were not the terrified, dull eyes of a stable rat. They were clear, ancient, and deep within their dark pupils, a flicker of gold swirled like a dying galaxy. Su Ling sat up, a movement far too fluid and graceful for the clumsy boy she was supposed to be. She looked down at her right hand.
It was still gray, the color of a dead fire. It felt… connected. A tool. An extension of her will in this primitive world. She slowly curled the fingers into a fist, feeling a terrifying power thrum within them—a power that hummed with the promise of turning steel to rust, stone to sand, and flesh to dust.
A world where gods are sculpted from the crude clay of belief, she thought, a smile playing on the lips of her borrowed face. It was a smile that held no warmth, only the chilling amusement of a grandmaster surveying a new, ridiculously simple chessboard. Where order is a cage built by a single, unimaginative deity. How utterly, wonderfully boring.
She uncurled her fingers, watching the phantom smoke curl from her ashen skin.
A fire is most effective when it starts in the trash heap. Let's see what happens when a spark of true chaos is introduced to this perfectly ordered little paradise.
She lay back down in the straw, closing her eyes. Arthur, the stable boy, was asleep once more.
But Su Ling was awake. Her mind was a whirlwind of plans, a tapestry of seductions and manipulations already weaving itself across the millennia. Her first thread was spun. Her first piece was in play.
She focused on the fading presence of the overseer, Koro, his greedy thoughts and base desires as clear to her as words on a page. She could feel the iron ring in his pocket, still humming with the dregs of the power she had just claimed.
A whisper, too soft for human ears, escaped Arthur's lips and dissolved into the stable's gloom.
"Enjoy your final days of ignorance, Koro."