The last image seared into his mind was Xiao Feng's sneering face, twisted with vicious delight, as the brute’s heavy boot connected with his chest, sending him sprawling over the edge of the precipice, a final, cruel flourish to the Sky Cloud Sect’s ‘mercy’.
Burn, Jian had rasped, the word thick with his own blood, just before the impact. You will all burn.
Now, the wind tore at his ruined clothes, a freezing gale that threatened to rip the very flesh from his bones. Above, the stars were rapidly receding pinpricks of light, indifferent witnesses to his final descent. The purple mist, which from the precipice had looked like a distant, ethereal sea, now enveloped him entirely, a living shroud that clawed at his skin and choked his every breath. It smelt of corruption, of ancient decay,
