Page 66

In the Bonseyo Shadowshafts, serpents fall in sprays of emerald blood.

Two twin deities fight back-to-back, silver arrows splitting through the air, a golden sword flashing with alarming speed, spraying scales and severing serpentine tendons.

A wise advisor’s hands, gripping his gnarled staff, rise to prevent a hungry Imugi’s maw from closing around him. Wood splinters but holds steady, harvested from the strongest pines in the Wyusan Wilderness.

The last Gumiho shifts into her fox form, white and sleek, and fights with sharp claws and knife-point teeth. The Imugi, betrayed, hiss in grief as they battle, circling each other—a fox and snakes.

Bonseyo’s bastard prince swoops down from the Shadowshaft’s dirt ceiling, eyes narrowed in determination. After this, he tells himself, his father will see him. After this, he will have a place by his father’s side—a family, a home.

It is all he has ever wanted.

The soldiers fight, some slamming against the Shadowshaft walls, thrown by the serpents. Others shout in victory as they wield their fireswords in quartets. And although the Bonseyo soldiers are barely trained, they are bolstered in bravery by the presence of the gods.

Sonagi, Mother of Imugi, wails as her children begin to fall.