The red light of dawn peered through the dragon's eye as it gazed over the ancient cathedral's altar. Laid like sacrifices, the stained glass bleed dim light across the rest of the way beyond the altar steps in speckles of gold and red until a black mass blocked the sun from its rest across such a hallowed passage.
Four candelabras flickered and danced at the sight of the sorcerer in black robes as he approached them like an old friend. Shang Tsung crossed the path from light to the shadow that cooled the stone steps up to the lit altar and gazed back into the dragon's eye.
"It begins here." He raised a natural linen pouch to the dragon and spoke to it as a follower that sought guidance, or forgiveness. "An offering."
The string loosened and the linen opened, Shang Tsung summoned from the pouch a dried mound of flesh, crinkled in on itself, barely able to hold its original shape. Revealed to the dragon, the heart was placed in the light of the altar with care.
Shang Tsung's eyes narrowed on the flesh, on a moment of thought and self reflection as the withered remains of a once living mortal now crumpled like the dust it would eventually become. When the light through the eye reached a golden hue he looked back to it and then down to the heart before a subtle step back as if the offering he had presented was not yet enough for the great ancient dragon in the window of the cathedral.
"With this sacrifice, return your blessing to me."
At his waist belt a vial was tucked in a leather pouch fit just for its size. Small, only a four ounces filled, he withdrew it and revealed the crimson beneath glass to the harsh light of day.
The blood soaked in the energy and heat of the sun and the glass gleamed with beauty and satisfaction as the heat caressed its callous surface.
He could feel the energy through his hand, even through the leather glove that protected it. The tingle that poisoned his veins and coursed down to his shoulder as he could feel as though the great eye was pleased, but not yet satisfied.
The cork popped. Silent in such sacred space, but the drip echoed like gentle footsteps on the stone stairs that lead to the altar itself.
Drip.
Drip.
The heart, dried and old, withered and decayed was bathed in the blood. It formed rivers in the cracks, crevices, the crinkles and the curves of dead flesh.
"Like this offering, bring me new life."
His eyes closed and his prayers trickled like music through the stave of his mind until he could feel the warmth of that new dawn regenerate his blood, his muscles, his life. He could almost sing as he took in a deep breath, but in the moment he held it and darkness played like a theater before his closed lids, Shang Tsung allowed just a shadow of doubt to pluck the troubled notes on his ribs and snap the beat of his heart.
When his eyes opened and the world was as it should be for the new world that had become his misery, he expelled disappointment silent, but every the rat that banged on the cage of his skull.
Like an arrow with butterfly wings, he turned with grace, yet defeat in the failure to strike true. The long distance between the altar and the exit, lit barely by the sacrifice of light that laid across the floor and the candles that gently licked the rest of the way in dim flames seemed to stretch to eternity for the wayward sorcerer. Outside of this church, in the very direction he came was a brutal and harsh reality he prayed every night never to dwell in, but each morning and each night he would turn from the beautiful and glaring silhouette of the ancient dragon only to take the long trek into the cold, bleak reality that waited for him outside.
"I present you day in and day out with the blood of my enemies. I offer you sacrifice after sacrifice. How can I hear your whispers?"
In the red light where the heat creased over his eyes and forced them closed if just for a second, a memory flashed before them, only for a second.
Here in what was once Shao Kahn's great cathedral were priests adorned in the robes of the shadows and their chants filled these halls as loud as screams in the flesh pits.
They served Shao Kahn under the direction of Shang Tsung, but when Kitana had taken hold of Outworld they had been cast out and scattered the ruins of the fallen conquerers like brittle artifacts buried beneath stone and dust.
Kitana was dead.
Outworld had a new leader.
A thin worm tail of a crook writhed at the corner of the sorcerer's lips.
"You have been chosen, Skarlet. Much to my delight."