Rate the first sentence above you

5/10- It would fit better with story around; alone it seems out of place. Although it does beg the question: What is Sai Thi? Is it a place? Why does the air stink?

The moon's silver light cascaded onto her still body, which lay on the cold ground.

3/10 - lots of adjectives. The nouns make me wary of cliches, and the main verb is a bit of an overkill, since light can't cascade. The focus on the moonlight itself detracts from the potential for drama, action, suspense, etc.

Sneaking onto the palace grounds had been much easier when she was small.

8.5/10 -- it definitely pulls me in, and it's a quick introduction to a viewpoint character, a bit of history, and some action to give a bit of a backdrop to whatever comes next. At the same time, I kind of feel like it's... missing something that would give it that last bit of oomph.

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He had been waiting a thousand years.

8/10. I'm kinda hung up on the past perfect, but I'm very curious as to why you're using it over straight up past tense. I want to keep reading.

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I wondered if this was how souls felt, waiting for judgement after death.

7/10. Establishes character mood effectively. Fails to place reader in any concrete context. I'd read on.

Jon scrubbed the meat-cleaver with a ragged sponge, and the water, tinged red, slid down the drain.

negative gazillion out of 10

You abused a comma, bro. Don't need one after "sponge." Otherwise I am of course interested in what Stephen King mayhem this character has gotten into, and would read on.

We rode to battle on the subway.

8/10. It's intriguing and catches the reader's attention. Why are they on a subway? Who's going into battle? What are they fighting for? You set up questions in the reader's mind quickly and lure them into reading more to find the answers. Also, it's a very unique opener!

The night was clear and crisp.

3.5/10. This gives me no setting, no character, and nothing to latch onto. It sounds potentially interesting, but it's an overused cliche that leaves the reader with no images in their mind. The following paragraph would have to be really good to pull this one out of the mud, for me.

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The stranger lurched in at half-past eight.

6/10 though it does intrigue, it seems like your trying to get me to say that it's cool.
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The Jeep was old and battered and it didn't bode well for protecting from zombies.

5/10

Plain old description and the ending of the sentence is cliche. In fact, the whole sentence sounds like something you'd get out of a zombie fan fiction. Not enough suspense in it, it has the potential though.

(Mine's not much better.)

Lights defined the shape of the city.

5/10

It doesn't hook me, nor does it give me a clear visual of what-do-I-expect. It's also a drab introduction to a commonplace fact--where there are cities there are lights. Unless, of course, this isn't your commonplace city but an ancient underground civilisation that has just been discovered and... //rambles

So, slightly intriguing, but not enough to reel me in.

~*~

The cold had a serpentine quality to it that night.

XD. 8/10

Not a bad description, but apart from the serpentine it doesn't add anything else to the sentence. However, the word does give it a nice twist as to why it would feel that way.

I woke up today, or yesterday or maybe even tomorrow, how would I know, time had no jurisdiction here.

6/10.
The concept is solid, but the wording is so clunky that we get lost in it.
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The unbleached cotton dress flew up in the breeze, eliciting a violent rearranging from the girl standing on the riverbank.

9/10
Vocabulary and grammar is great!
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There are plenty of monsters in my room! You can look under my bed, behind the dresser, in my closet, just don't look up because she hates to be looked at.

4/10 -- It gives me a very childish feel, which is not necessarily bad, but the grammar isn't great in the second sentence (run-on) and you could use a dash instead of a comma to elicit some emotional response from the reader and add tension. As it is, I don't feel like there's much tension at all, even though you've obviously introduced a tense plot element, and you repeat "look" three times in the same sentence. Maybe edit it to something like "don't look up, because she hates people watching her"? As it is, it's not a successful hook for me.

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“Lucielle, pay attention when your mother is talking.”