The Immortal Who Holds the Demon Lord's Heart novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Seal Cracks
Han Zhaohe feels the Frost Tomb seal break through the heart in his chest, and the Demon Lord he sealed walks into his fort to take it back.
For three hundred years, the heart in Han Zhaohe's chest had beaten in one steady rhythm.
On the night the Frost Tomb broke, it beat twice.
He was standing alone on the north wall of Azure Gate Fort, a cup of cold tea in his hand.
The beat came again, a hard double knock under his ribs, and the cup slipped from his fingers.
It fell a long way through the clouds and did not make a sound.
Han pressed his palm flat over his armor, over the old thin scar on the left side of his chest.
"No," he said to the empty wall.
Far to the north, past ten thousand li of sky and sea, something enormous had just woken up.
And the heart in his chest knew it.
It pulled toward the north, so hard that Han's boots slid on the white stone.
"Qin Shu," he said, without raising his voice.
His adjutant was at his shoulder in a breath, round face pale.
"Marshal?"
"Ring the fort. Every gate, every wall. Tell the Court the Frost Tomb has opened."
"The Frost Tomb can't open. You sealed it yourself."
"I know what I did," said Han.
He did, too.
At the Frost Gorge, three hundred years ago, he had torn the Demon Lord's heart out of his chest and carried it home.
He remembered the duel up to the last blow, and then white light, and then waking in the snow.
The Court had told him the rest.
He had taken the heart, the Lord had fallen, and the priests had sealed the body under the Ice Sea.
He had never doubted it, because a heart that was not his own beat inside him every hour of every day.
The bell began to ring across the fort.
Before it finished the first round, the southern gate blew inward in a rush of black wind.
Han drew Dawn Crane and walked down the wall at a calm, even pace.
He had been a marshal for four hundred years and had not run since the war.
The soldiers in the courtyard were already backing away.
In the middle of them, in a ring of broken flagstones, stood a man in black.
He was very tall and very broad, and his hair hung loose to his thighs, white as new snow.
His robes were open to the waist, and his chest was bare, with the same old scar on the left side that Han had.
His eyes were the red of a coal that had just been breathed on.
"Marshal Han," said Mo Xuanyi, Demon Lord of the Black Tide.
His voice was low and pleasant, a little rough.
"You haven't aged a day. How rude of you."
Han's sword was already level.
"Lord Mo. You are on sacred ground."
"I'm on your ground, which is worse."
Mo looked around at the three hundred Azure Gate soldiers with bows half drawn, and smiled.
"Tell them to put those down. I'm here for one thing, and you know what it is."
"My heart?"
"Mine."
"You have no heart here."
"Oh, but I do." Mo tilted his head. "Can't you feel it knocking?"
"It's been knocking for three hundred years, and I have a very bad temper about it."
Han's pulse jumped, and he hated that Mo could see it.
"Archers, withdraw," he said.
"Marshal?"
"Withdraw. All of you. This is mine to settle."
The soldiers pulled back to the walls, and the courtyard was suddenly very wide and very quiet.
Mo took one step, and it was over before Han had time to move.
He had forgotten how fast the man was.
Dawn Crane rang off the stone and Han's wrist was caught in an iron grip.
His back hit a white pillar hard enough to drive the air out of him.
Mo's body filled all the space in front of him.
Heat came off him, the dry heat of a banked fire, and the smell of snow and smoke.
"There you are," Mo murmured.
He lifted one big hand and laid it flat on Han's chest, over the armor.
The armor split open under his palm with a small clean sound, and the silk beneath it parted.
Han went rigid.
Mo's hand was warm on his bare skin, directly over the scar.
The heart in Han's chest leaped to meet it.
It did not hurt.
That was the terrible thing.
It rose into Mo's palm like a bird coming home, and a hot, helpless wave of pleasure ran down Han's spine to his knees.
A sound came out of him that he would have bitten off his tongue to take back.
Mo went completely still.
"Interesting," he said, softly.
"Take your hand off me."
"In a moment. Be quiet, I'm listening."
His thumb moved once across the scar, and Han's heart slammed twice against it.
"It knows me," Mo said. "Three hundred years, and it knows my hand."
"Then take it," Han said through his teeth. "Take it and go."
"I'm trying." Mo's eyes lifted, red and bright and a little dazed. "It won't come out, Marshal Han."
"What?"
"I put all of my strength into pulling and it's holding to you like a root. Not to the thing that sealed it. To you."
Han stared at him.
His chest was heaving against Mo's hand, and every breath pushed his heart harder into that wide warm palm.
"That's not possible," he said.
"I agree. I'm furious about it." Mo did not take his hand away. "Don't move. Your pulse is doing something I like."
The courtyard was silent.
Three hundred soldiers watched their marshal pinned to a pillar by Heaven's greatest enemy.
Not one of them dared to breathe.
"It doesn't want to leave you," Mo said, quietly, so that only Han could hear.
Then his mouth curved, and the fire in his eyes turned into something far more dangerous.
"We'll fix that."
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend