The emperor's breath smelled of rust and lightning.
Moyan's new ears caught the crackle of static in the air as the ghost materialized—not a wispy specter, but a man-shaped void in reality, his edges bleeding indigo light. The Iron Sky Emperor's armor hung in tattered strips from his translucent body, revealing flesh carved with gravity runes that pulsed like dying stars.
"You're smaller than your father," the ghost observed. His voice made the tomb's iron walls vibrate at a frequency that set Moyan's teeth on edge.
Moyan's pulse hammered against the seed in his spine. "You knew him?"
The emperor's laugh sent shivers through the metal floor. "Knew him? Lin Kainan stole three of my sky-palaces before the Serpent caught him." A spectral finger pointed to the earring in Moyan's palm. "That's not just iron. It's prison shrapnel."
---
The tomb wasn't a burial chamber—it was an archive.
Moyan followed the emperor's flickering form past shelves of floating artifacts:
A dagger frozen mid-air, its blade warped into impossible angles by gravitational forces. Scrolls that unrolled themselves when approached, their ink swimming like live eels. The skeletal remains of previous "visitors," their bones crushed flat as parchment.
"Your clan thinks this place purges corruption." The ghost flicked a finger, sending a skeleton tumbling in slow motion. "We just test whether you're interesting enough to keep."
Moyan's foot caught on something—his father's hunting knife, half-melted into the floor. The vibration through his boot told him it had been exposed to energies no mortal metal should withstand.
The emperor noticed his hesitation. "Ah. You feel it too."
---
"Gravity Dao isn't about weight." The ghost pressed a translucent hand to Moyan's chest. "It's about listening to the spaces between atoms."
Agony erupted as the emperor's fingers phased through flesh to grip the seed. The Rootheart screamed through their connection, vines bursting from Moyan's pores in defense—only to freeze mid-air, caught in a gravitational anomaly.
"Traitor!" the Rootheart hissed.
The emperor's smile showed too many teeth. "We both use him, root-worm. At least I'll teach him to survive."
He flicked his wrist.
Moyan's body slammed into the ceiling with enough force to crack stone. As he fell, the ghost whispered the first axiom of Iron Sky cultivation:
"Fall upward."
---
By the third impact, Moyan's nose was broken. By the seventh, he'd learned to twist mid-air, letting the emperor's gravity wells slingshot him between walls.
"You're slower than Kainan," the ghost taunted as Moyan barely dodged a floating dagger. "He danced through my palace storms like—"
A new vibration cut through the tomb. Not the emperor's power—something deeper. The floor plates trembled, then parted like water, revealing a hidden chamber where seven skeletons knelt in a circle. Their hands were fused around a single object:
A scale model of Verdant Abyss, its continents arranged in a perfect spiral.
The emperor went very still. "You shouldn't have seen that."
Moyan's seed pulsed in recognition. "The First Pattern," the Rootheart whispered. "Before the Serpent came."
Above them, the tomb's ceiling cracked open. Not from damage—from something outside pressing in.
---
Jian Luo's voice echoed down the newly made fissure: "Fetch the abyss-rat before the Surge peaks!"
The emperor gripped Moyan's shoulders. His spectral fingers burned like dry ice. "They'll use you to restart the harvest. Your choice now—"
A gravity rune flared between them:
Stay and learn enough to escape, but risk the clan's wrath.
Return with fragments of power, but remain a pawn.
Moyan reached for his father's knife still embedded in the floor. The metal screamed as he wrenched it free, its edge now singing with residual gravitational energy.
Above them, the first ropes descended through the crack.
The ghost sighed. "Just like Kainan." He pressed a rune-carved finger to Moyan's forehead. "Remember—the sky lies heavier than the earth."
Then the world inverted.