The scent of burning incense and bitter fear hung heavy in the Hall of Celestial Judgment. Lin Xue knelt on the cold jade, its unforgiving surface leaching the warmth from her bones. The sharp, shattered fragments of her family's crest dug into her palms, a grounding pain in the sea of her numbness. Above her, on the high seat carved from the heart of a fallen star, sat Wei Lang. The man she once called "brother." The man whose gentle smile had haunted her dreams, now twisted into a mask of cold triumph.
His voice, smooth as poisoned silk, echoed through the cavernous hall. "Let it be known that the House of Lin, guilty of high treason and consorting with demonic entities, has been purged. Its line is extinguished."
A murmur rippled through the assembled disciples of the Azure Sky Sect. Some looked on with pity, others with barely veiled greed. The Lin family's lands, resources, and secrets were now up for grabs, and Wei Lang was the hawk circling above the carcass.
Xue kept her head bowed, her unbound black hair a curtain over her expressionless face. She felt nothing. No sorrow, no anger. Just a vast, hollow emptiness where her golden core used to be. Wei Lang had seen to that personally. His "mercy" in not killing her was a far crueler fate than a swift death. He wanted her to live. He wanted her to see everything he had stolen.
"But by the grace of the Heavens," Wei Lang continued, his voice dripping with a condescension that made her stomach clench, "a single drop of tainted blood remains. Lin Xue, once the pride of our sect, now a broken vessel."
He let the title hang in the air, a weapon meant to flay her pride. She had been the pride. The youngest to reach the Golden Core stage in a century, her future a constellation of brilliant possibilities. Now, she was less than an outer disciple. A cripple.
"Her life will be spared," he announced, and the hall fell silent. This was the moment they had all been waiting for. The climax of her public shaming.
Xue knew what was coming. A public execution was too clean, too merciful for Wei Lang. It would make her a martyr. He preferred a living death, a cage where he could watch her spirit wither day by day.
"You are to be wed," he said, and a cruel, sharp smile finally broke through his placid facade. It was a look she had never seen on him before, and it chilled her more than the jade beneath her knees. "To the Tyrant General, Mo Ran."
A collective, sharp intake of breath. The name itself was a curse, a legend whispered to frighten disobedient children. Mo Ran. The man who had once been the realm's greatest hero, a celestial dragon in human form whose power had shaken the very foundations of the heavens. The man who had led the celestial armies against a demonic incursion only to be accused of the very heresy he fought to prevent. They said he slaughtered his own men. They said he bathed in the blood of innocents. They said his rage was a force of nature that could tear the sky.
He was the monster that parents used in stories, the ghost that haunted the battlefields of the Western Reach. And he was not dead. Death, it seemed, had been too afraid to claim him. Instead, the six great sects had combined their power to seal him away in the Gilded Cage, a living prison from which there was no escape.
"To be married to a ghost?" a disciple whispered nearby, his voice a mix of horror and morbid fascination. "It's a fate worse than the Soul-Devouring Pit!"
Wei Lang's smile widened at the reaction. "The marriage contract will be sealed at sundown. You will reside in the Gilded Cage, to serve as his companion... and his warden."
A warden. The word struck her like a physical blow. He wasn't just exiling her to a prison; he was making her a part of it. A key, perhaps, that only he could turn. Her life, her very soul, would be tethered to the realm's most infamous monster.
Two disciples, their faces stony and their grips like iron, moved forward and hauled her to her feet. The movement was so sudden it made her head spin. Her body, still weak from the core-shattering, protested violently. They dragged her toward the center of the hall where a small, black altar stood, a single crimson scroll resting upon it. The Cursed Marriage Contract.
As they forced her to stand before it, Xue's eyes, for the first time since the trial began, lifted from the floor. They swept past the sneering faces of the elders, past the pitying or jealous gazes of her former peers, and locked onto Wei Lang.
And in their depths, he saw not fear, not despair, but a promise. A promise written in the ashes of her family and the ruins of her own life. It was a silent vow of vengeance, cold and absolute as the winter frost on the highest peaks. For a fleeting second, his smug confidence faltered.
The head elder, a withered old man whose eyes held no light, stepped forward. He unrolled the crimson scroll. The characters on it seemed to writhe, written not in ink, but in condensed blood essence. It was a vile, forbidden art.
"Lin Xue," the elder rasped, "do you accept this union and the fate it carries?"
She said nothing. What was there to say? Refusal was death. Acceptance was a slower, more agonizing death. She simply stared at Wei Lang, pouring every ounce of her hatred into her gaze.
"Silence denotes acceptance," the elder declared, as if he had expected nothing less. He picked up a slender, golden needle. "Extend your arm."
The disciples forced her wrist out, baring the pale, fragile skin. The elder pricked her finger with the needle. A single bead of dark blood welled up. He guided her finger, pressing it against the bottom of the scroll. The moment her blood touched the vellum, the crimson characters flared with a malevolent red light. The scroll rolled itself up with a snap, the seal of the Azure Sky Sect burning itself onto the outside.
Then, it shot into the air and dissolved into a thousand points of light, which swirled around her wrist before coalescing into a single, intricate mark. It was a tattoo of interlocking chains, the color of dried blood, searing itself into her skin. A cry of pain escaped her lips as a wave of icy cold, followed by searing heat, shot up her arm and spread through her body. It was the contract taking hold, binding her life force to another.
The Gilded Cage was located in the most desolate corner of the sect's lands, a place shunned even by the most hardened disciples. It was a structure of black, obsidian-like stone that seemed to drink the light, a single, monolithic tower that pierced the grey sky. No birds sang nearby. No grass grew. The air was still and heavy, thick with the pressure of ancient, powerful seals.
Xue was escorted there in a silent, armored carriage. The journey gave her time to think, to let the numbness recede and be replaced by a cold, clear rage. Wei Lang wanted to break her. He wanted to watch her fade away. He had given her to a monster, hoping the monster would finish his job.
He had made a mistake. She remembered her mother, a woman whose gentle smile hid a mind as sharp as a blade. Her mother had not been a powerful cultivator, but she had been a scholar of the old ways, a master of ancient spirit arrays that the modern sects had dismissed as esoteric nonsense. Knowledge is a weapon, Xue, she used to say, one that can never be taken from you.
Xue had a photographic memory. Every complex diagram, every forgotten rune her mother had ever shown her, was etched perfectly into her mind. She had thought it a useless hobby, a relic of a bygone era. Now, she saw it for what it was: her only hope.
The carriage stopped. The door was opened, and she was unceremoniously shoved out. She stumbled, catching herself on the rough, black stone of the tower's base. Her escort, a stern-faced elder, gestured towards a single, massive door made of a black metal that was not iron.
"The entrance to the Cage," he said flatly. "The contract will allow you passage. No one else can enter, and you cannot leave."
He pressed his hand to a smooth panel on the door. A complex array of light flared to life, glowing with the same energy as the mark on her wrist. He then grabbed her hand and slammed her palm against the panel.
The light flared violently. The mark on her wrist burned with an intense heat. The massive door, silent and seamless, ground open, revealing a passage that descended into darkness. A cold, ancient air wafted out, carrying the scent of dust, old blood, and something else... something wild and powerful, like a sleeping storm.
"Go," the elder commanded, his voice devoid of all emotion. "Your new life awaits."
Xue looked from the gaping maw of the entrance to the elder's impassive face, then back at the grey sky. This was it. The end of her old life, and the beginning of her new one. She took a deep breath, straightened her back, and walked into the darkness without a backward glance.
The door slammed shut behind her, the sound echoing like a final, definitive sentence. She was plunged into absolute blackness. But she was not afraid. Fear was a luxury she could no longer afford.
As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she saw she was in a circular chamber. The walls were covered in faintly glowing runes, the very same runes that bound the mark on her wrist. In the center of the room, a single figure sat cross-legged on a raised dais.
He was perfectly still, like a statue carved from shadow and ice. His long, black hair fell like a waterfall of night around his shoulders, contrasting with a simple white robe that was pristine despite his imprisonment. Even seated, he radiated an aura of immense, coiled power, a dangerous energy that made the air crackle.
This was Mo Ran. The Tyrant General. Her husband. Xue took a step forward, her heart hammering against her ribs not with fear, but with a strange, fierce anticipation. She was a prisoner, yes. But so was he. And in this shared cage, she would not be his victim. She would be his queen, or she would be his destroyer.
She cleared her throat, her voice steady and clear in the suffocating silence.
"Hello, husband," she said. "It seems we're both trapped here. So let's make a deal."