I Sealed the Demon Lord for a Hundred Years, Now He Wants His Jailer novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Ice Breaks
The seal under the frozen lake cracks, the elders shove their swordsman out in his own sect's chains, and the demon lord rises laughing, then learns the seal fed on the swordsman's years by the swordsman's own choice.
The ice on Mirror Lake split from the shore to the middle with a sound.
Three elders of Azure Peak shoved Cen Wuhen forward by the chain on his wrists, and he stumbled onto the cracking ice.
The chain was jade-iron, forged by his own sect, and it burned cold against his skin.
Black light poured up through the cracks, and a man rose out of it with water running off his shoulders.
He was tall and bare to the waist, with two black horns and eyes the dark red of old blood.
Yue Chenjue looked at the elders, then at the chained man, and laughed.
"They gave me you?" he said. "The fools."
Wuhen's knees nearly went.
He had not seen that face in a hundred years, and it had not changed at all.
One of the elders put a hand between his shoulder blades to push him again.
"Take your hand off me," Wuhen said.
"Sword Saint, the Sect Master ordered..."
"I know what he ordered. I'm walking."
He shook the hand off and set his foot on the ice by himself.
The chain dragged at his wrists, and every step cost him.
His cultivation was a cold ash in his belly, and he could barely hold up his own bones.
He walked anyway, because he had decided to a long time ago, and nobody was going to say they had dragged him.
On the shore, Sect Master Jiang Wenshan stood with his sleeves folded and his face grave.
"Lord Yue," he called. "Azure Peak offers you its greatest sword in tribute. Let the old war end here."
Chenjue did not look at him.
He was looking at Wuhen coming across the ice, and the smile on his face had gone strange.
"Look at your hair," he said.
Wuhen lifted his chin.
The black hair that hung to his waist was white at the temples now, and white in a streak across the front.
"You look rested," Wuhen said. "I can't say the same for me."
"You look half dead, Jailer."
"I've been busy."
Chenjue crossed the last of the ice in three strides.
He took Wuhen's jaw in one big hand and tilted his face up to the light.
It was how a man looks at a blade he used to own.
His thumb pressed under the bone, and it was hot, and Wuhen's whole body remembered it.
"Your core is a puddle," Chenjue said quietly.
"It's what they gave you. Be grateful."
"Can you stand?" Chenjue asked.
"Obviously."
His legs folded.
Chenjue caught him under the arms before he fell, and lifted him off the ice as easily as a child.
Wuhen's chained hands landed against that bare chest.
It was warm, and it was solid, and under his palm a heart beat slow and strong.
"Put me down."
"No," Chenjue replied.
"I said..."
"I heard you." Chenjue turned toward the shore with Wuhen held against him. "Sect Master. I accept your tribute."
Jiang Wenshan bowed deep.
"Lord Yue is wise."
"I'm not wise. I'm going to burn your peaks one by one."
Chenjue smiled, all teeth.
"But he's mine first, and you can wait."
Then black fire opened under his feet and the lake, the elders and the sky went out.
Wuhen woke to red lanterns.
He was lying on a bed so wide it could have held a squad.
Above him, a ceiling of black jade was carved with dragons eating their tails.
The Black Palace.
He had stood at its gates once with a sword in his hand.
The chain was gone from his wrists, and his hands lay open on the black silk.
A cold weight sat around his left ankle instead, and when he moved, a jade-iron link rang.
"Good," Chenjue's voice said from the dark. "You're awake."
He came into the lamplight and sat on the edge of the bed.
He had put on a black robe with red lining, and left it open on his chest.
Wuhen stared at the ceiling.
"If you wanted a body on a leash, you could have asked the elders. They'd have been honored."
"I wanted yours."
Chenjue laid a hand flat over Wuhen's belly, just below the ribs.
Warm qi flowed in, slow, searching, the way it had in the old days when they had stolen nights in places neither army could reach.
Then it stopped.
Wuhen felt the moment it stopped.
He felt the hand go still, and the heat go still, and the whole room go very quiet.
"There's nothing in here," Chenjue said.
"I told you. Puddle."
"No. There's a hole." The red eyes came up, and they weren't laughing anymore. "It's the shape of the seal. Something fed on you."
"Yes."
"For a hundred years," Chenjue answered.
"Yes."
"The seal needed a keeper, and the keeper was the anchor, and every day it drank a little more of him," Chenjue said.
Chenjue said it flatly.
"The elders didn't do that to you. They only watched."
Wuhen said nothing.
"Cen Wuhen."
The hand on his belly pressed down, and the room felt like the moment before a storm.
"Who made you pay?"
"No one," Wuhen said.
"Who?"
"No one made me. I sat down on the shore, and I chose it," Wuhen replied.
For a long time Chenjue did not breathe.
When he spoke, it was soft, and it was worse than shouting.
"A hundred years of your life, Jailer. And you signed it away yourself?"
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