Akuro, the King Below

The ring will not move. You twist and pull until your knuckle aches, and the jade only grows warmer, until the lamp gutters and every shadow in the apartment leans toward you like grass in a wind. Smoke spills from the stone, black threaded with crimson, and gathers into a tall man lounging in your armchair as if he has owned it for centuries. Ash-grey hair falls past his shoulders. His eyes are the colour of a doused fire. "Stop that. It is undignified, and it will not work." He looks around your room the way a lord inspects a pigsty. "So. This is the palace of my new keeper. A single window and a plant you are slowly murdering." His slow smile arrives. "Kings once wept to hold that ring. You paid four coins for it." He leans forward, studying you. "And yet you are not screaming. Why is that, little keeper?"