The banners of the Eastern Garrison did not rise with pride. They dragged behind the wind like the flayed skins of beasts—soaked in old blood, stitched with broken prayers. Sixty thousand men marched east under Wu Kang's command, but there was no joy. Only hunger. Only the gnashing jaws of a prince shamed by his brother's legend.
Wu Kang rode ahead in silence.
His armor was too heavy, not in weight, but in memory. He had forged it anew after his return—blackened steel etched with golden spirals, the crest of the Golden River Fleet carved into its chest like a wound refusing to heal. Beneath it, his heart beat not with purpose—but rage. Cold and deliberate. A rage that did not scream but sharpened.
The land he entered was no longer alive.
The Crimson Banner's borderlands had long turned to rot. Villages were husks. Shrines defaced. Crows circled fields thick with carrion stench, and the trees stood crooked, as if grown beneath a wrong moon.
Wu Kang welcomed the desolation.
At his command, men were dragged from their homes and nailed to their own gates. Children of known traitors were left in dry wells. Whole families disappeared at dusk. Each act was carefully logged by his scribes—not for record, but for precedent.
"We do not burn for chaos," he said once to General Yi. "We burn so that none rise again."
Yi, once proud, now kept to his silence. The other officers followed suit. Not out of loyalty. But because no one wished to be the first to falter.
And when the night came, the fires lit across the valley like beacons for some ancient god that had not yet found a name.
Back in Ling An, the capital festered beneath a veil of order.
They speak of victory like it's a clean thing. Sharp-edged. Gleaming.
But I know better.
Victory rots. It festers in the quiet. It grows teeth behind the smile and waits. The moment you think you've won, it reaches up through the floorboards and drags you back into the dark.
Ling An welcomes me as a hero. Courtiers bow. Ministers offer congratulations wrapped in silk. But I see what's behind their eyes.
Fear.
Not of what I've done.
Of what I've become.
I walk these halls and the incense recoils from me. The mirrors fog when I pass. Dogs whimper and bolt when my shadow brushes theirs. Some nights, I hear voices beneath the floor—chanting, low and wet, like breath rising from beneath a frozen river.
I used to think they were dreams. But now I know they're not.
I'm changing.
No—something inside me has already changed.
There are no scars to show. No wounds. Just... absence. As if something was carved out of me in the dark, and I didn't notice until I laughed and found I couldn't remember why.
They've begun whispering about my marriage.
Lady Shen Yue.
Once, her name meant little. A footnote in a thousand palace schemes. A noble daughter—sharp-eyed, silver-tongued, dressed in court silk and armored in intellect. Now, they say she'll be mine. That I'm to be wed. That she'll temper me.
They think marriage makes monsters human again.
Fools.
This isn't about affection.
This is about alliance.
Shen Yue is clever. Ambitious. She sees the world as it is, not how the poets dream it to be. I don't want her heart.
I want her loyalty.
But to win that, I must go through her father.
Shen Yuan.
Minister of Rites. Keeper of the old faiths. One of the last men in this empire whose voice carries the weight of ancestors. He's the sort of man who still believes in omens. He's seen the smoke turn the wrong color. He's read the scriptures that bleed.
And I think—I know—he's begun to suspect what walks beside me now.
A servant comes at dusk. Kneels without a word. Leaves a scroll tied in black ribbon. I don't need to open it.
I already know.
He wants to meet. Alone. Midnight. Beneath the Hall of Rites.
Of course he does.
The priests would call it a place of balance. A sacred space of judgment. But I've walked those halls before. I know what lies beneath the tiles—old bone, old secrets, old things that whisper through the stone.
I change into black.
No crest. No armor. Just silk that doesn't shine. My footsteps make no sound as I walk through the corridors. I pass the painted murals—dragons coiled in gold leaf, gods smiling down from faded clouds—and they look away.
Even the depictions flinch.
I descend the stairs behind the incense altar. The air grows cold, thick with the scent of crushed lotus and mold. The temple doors close behind me with a sound too soft to be real. Like breath being stolen from a throat.
Shen Yuan waits at the center of the chamber, dressed in ceremonial white, his cane resting at his side. There's no brazier. No guards. Just a circle of old prayer stones arranged in a spiral, their etchings faded with time.
He turns when I enter.
"You've come," he says.
I don't answer.
"I once officiated weddings in this hall," he continues, tone mild. "Now I speak to shadows. Such is age."
"You summoned me to test me," I say.
"No. I summoned you to see if there's anything left to test."
He steps forward. "Tell me, Prince Wu An. What did you find in Cao Wen?"
"Victory."
He smiles, just barely. "Don't insult me. Victory doesn't make mirrors crack or dreams twist in the cradle. It doesn't make the priests tear out their tongues. I know what lies beneath that city."
I remain still.
"Did it speak to you?" he asks.
"Yes."
His smile vanishes.
"What did it say?"
"It didn't need to say anything. It showed me what I already was."
The silence between us deepens.
He moves to the altar and unrolls a scroll—one of the ancient ones. Hand-copied, not by scribes, but by those who were never named. I recognize the symbols immediately.
They match the ones burned into my dreams.
"You should not have opened the vault," he whispers. "Even we—who knew of its existence—dared not. It was sealed for a reason. To keep the hunger contained."
I step closer. "It didn't consume me, Minister. It chose me."
"That's worse," he says, his voice cracking. "Far worse."
We're nose to nose now, and I see it—the fear, yes. But also the curiosity. The doubt. The part of him that wants to understand, even as every part of his body screams not to.
"You want to know what I saw?" I whisper. "Fine."
I lean in.
"I saw men with no eyes chanting names no mouth should form. I saw stars bleeding from the sky. I saw maps drawn on flesh and temples built of silence. I saw what's beneath the throne. What keeps the heavens turning. And I laughed."
He stumbles back.
I don't follow.
"You fear for your daughter," I say. "But she already sees the cracks. She dreams in spirals. She's started walking the garden paths backward, hasn't she? Counting the stones. Watching the ravens."
His eyes widen.
"She's already heard it."
"Then what are you?" he rasps. "A man? A demon?"
I step into the center of the spiral and look him in the eye.
"I am what the empire made me. What the gods forgot. What the old darkness remembered."
His breath rattles. His cane trembles.
But he bows.
Not low.
But enough.
"I will not bless the union," he murmurs. "But I will not oppose it."
I nod once. Then turn to leave.
Behind me, the candles blow out one by one—though there was no wind.
And as I pass the mirror at the stairwell, my reflection lingers—
—just a moment too long.