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straight down his back, the sorcerer studied his handiwork. There were no breaks in the circle. That was a common warning in the writings of all the wizards: Give a demon space to thrust a single hair, an African shaman had cautioned, and he will poke your eye and blind you with it.
    No breaks, and the ingredients proportioned correctly according to a consensus among the alchemists he had read. Beside him, within the circle, was a lighted brazier, the coals red beneath the diaphanous flame, the iron poker glowing nearly white-hot. Outside the crumbling temple, the sun was sliding below the horizon and the full moon was already in the sky. The time was right: the two eyes of P'an Ku were above him, looking down.
    Everything was in readiness, including Shang Tsung. Years before, he had left his position as a tax collector, feigned his death by killing and disfiguring another man, and changed his name in order to do what his wife's brother Wing Lao had done: experiment... quest... seek knowledge.
    Wing had been lucky. He'd had a job that took up little time, and children who were able to help him, so he was free to spend his nights at home, experimenting. For as long as he could remember, Shang had tried to do the same, driven by his earliest memories, recollections of tormented dreams, of nightmares that told him to get up, to study, to explore, to understand. Visions of what seemed to be previous lives spent inhaling fumes of potions, poring over candlelit writings, digging in graves and killing for fresh souls –
    Now and then he had gotten to study ancient scrolls, visit distant temples, or spend time with herbs and minerals and roots, mixing them to see what they did. But when Wing was killed in an explosion, his misfortune was also Shang's misfortune. Wing's two sons were now orphans, and instead of turning the children over to the priests of the temple, Shang's wife insisted that they raise their nosy nephew Kung and his little brother Chan themselves.
    Shang Tsung filled with bile as he thought of the bitter arguments they had over the boys. Not about money, for the children were nothing if not industrious, and continued to work as water carriers for the village. They argued about his research. Chen insisted that delving into the affairs of gods and the dead was not only dangerous for him, but was creating an unhealthy environment for the boys. Then, five years ago, just two months after Wing's death, she waited until her husband was out collecting taxes from the village of Amiko. While he was gone, she sold his tools and jars, powders and scrolls. Upon returning in the small hours of the night, Shang saw what she had done and left – stealing back the scrolls from the library at the temple, placing them in his cart, and riding until he came to the shore of the East China Sea. There, he bought a boat and sailed into an area perpetually concealed in mists. Though the fishermen of Zhanjiang had warned him not to venture into the region, he knew it might hide what he craved: isolation. No responsible sailor would navigate into the mist, and superstition would keep the locals away.
    He had set sail late in the morning, and it was late in the afternoon of the next day before hard rowing and mercifully cooperative currents carried Shang into view of his new home. When he reached an almost supernaturally clear eye in the fog, the sun was already behind the central peak of the island, and the jagged mountain's shadow threw the rest of the island into a deep, deep darkness. As he came ashore on the strange, hot, ruddy sands, Shang experienced a sense of isolation deeper and more disturbing than any he had ever experienced. It wasn't only that the island seemed uninhabited – no birds circling its shores or insects on its dead tree trunks or fish near the surface – it also had an air of what he could only describe as wrongness . The shadows were not just dark, they seemed to drain the color and health from everything they