The damp cellar beneath the workshop forge smelled of cold bedrock, wet limestone, and the bitter tang of fresh pine sawdust.
Ye Chen stood before the green nephrite sarcophagus, his pale, permanently chilled fingers resting flat against the translucent lid.
Through the polished stone, Lin Xi’s face appeared completely serene, her features undisturbed by the roaring foundries on the streets above or the ticking clock running down in her veins.
The dark violet Chaos concealment glyphs he had traced along the cellar walls hummed at a low, steady frequency, keeping the necrotic frost locked behind the thermal boundary, but the diagnostic readout from System V2.0 remained cold and exact: eighty-eight days of stability before the necrotic frost breached her internal heart chambers.
Ye Chen
