Smoke clung to the ridgelines like breath drawn from a dying throat, veiling the scorched basin of the Burning Crescent. What once served as a patrol artery of the Zhong Empire had become a slaughterfield. Blood pooled in broken gullies. Severed limbs and shattered steel littered the pass. Every gust carried the stench of burned oil and ruptured organs. Carrion birds circled high, untouched by steel, unbothered by qi—drawn by the feast that no longer fought back.
Altan had seen traps before, but this was not the work of an angry garrison—it was doctrine sharpened by humiliation. Lord Qiu had learned. After the failure at Gale Citadel—where eight legions were reduced to ash and agony, their march shattered and chased across the steppe like broken dogs—he no longer charged. He set bait. This time, he let the Gale army reach the Crescent's narrowing throat. Then he closed it with teeth.
Altan's forward scouts moved with discipline. Dismounted lancers marked soft ground with bone flags, wary of old glyphs and false footing. But the ground itself rebelled. One step too far, and the world gave way. Oil pits erupted from glyph-runes etched into bedrock, igniting in sheets of blue flame. Spears, barbed and blood-hungry, burst upward from stone mouths. Screams echoed, limbs flailed, and fire devoured bone and breath alike.
Khulan hurled a cracked spear aside and shouted through the swirling heat, voice hoarse and clear. "He turned the basin into a butcher's gallery!"
Altan knelt beside a fallen beast-tamer. The man's body had curled inward, arms locked in final agony, the fur of his companion fused to his own flesh by fire. Altan touched the man's brow with two fingers. His expression didn't change. "Qiu didn't plan this alone."
Stormwake crouched at his flank, blade drawn but lowered. Its edge hummed, tuned to breath and tension. "South garrisons. Maybe Duzhar's siege masters."
Batu, they called him in older tongues. Stormwake was Qorjin-Ke, born of a forgotten tribe that wandered the edges of wind and stone, sworn to no warlord, claimed by no map. His people did not conquer beasts—they listened to them. He had bonded with a bear, Urgan, through frost and famine, not ritual. When Urgan died beneath the walls of Duzhar, Stormwake had gone silent for a full season. But his blade remembered.
Altan stood, brushing ash from his cloak. "He thinks we'll break here."
They didn't wait to prove him wrong.
Midday brought the first true clash. Qiu's center looked thin—artfully stretched like a trapdoor skin. Khulan's right-wing riders surged forward, sabers glinting, hooves pounding. As they committed, the trap opened. Trenches collapsed beneath them. Iron bolts shrieked from the canyon lips. Ivory Shields burst from the flanks like stone ghosts, tower shields raised in perfect line. Arrows fell in black waves. One rider screamed as hidden chains snapped around his waist and pulled him beneath the earth. His scream ended in steel.
Qiu's infantry had evolved. No longer the sluggish masses of older campaigns, these warriors moved in precise formation. Tower shields locked. Halberds struck low—not for flash, but to break joints and hamstring mounts. The enemy didn't waste energy. They didn't display qi. They killed to cripple, and crippled to control.
Burgedai's Rootwake battalion struck the left with thunderous force. Their heels pulsed with geomantic breathwork, the earth cracking beneath each charge. But the riverbed behind the Gale right split open, and Southern Lancers erupted like floodwater—hidden beneath rock skins and illusion tarps. They hit hard, skewering the unready with downward strikes. Horses fell screaming. Rear banners buckled. Confusion surged.
Altan spun, cloak scorched at the hem. "We're boxed in."
Stormwake's voice cut the air. "We hold or we burn."
Chaghan was already moving.
The Stormguards advanced without banners. Born in the Chasm, where all qi died and only will endured, they did not cultivate power as others did. Their path—Stoneheart Resonance—was carved in pain and refusal. They didn't channel light. They redirected weight. They didn't strike fast. They struck final. Where other schools prized speed, Stoneheart taught endurance. Muscle trained through agony. Breath forged under pressure. No flourishes. No second chances.
They moved as one. One caught a halberd, let it twist his arm out of joint, then drove a dagger into the attacker's temple. Another blocked three strikes with his shoulder, broke a shield with his knee, and shattered bone with a reverse hook. Every step forward was agony and intention.
Khulan emerged through smoke, her left arm slick with blood. "That flank's collapsing. We either brace it or we bleed out."
Altan's voice remained low, steady. "Then we carve a way through."
The Glyphcutters arrived with robes soaked in ink and arms tattooed in fresh script. They pressed palms to stone, and runes bloomed across the ground in burning arcs—sigils that pulsed with resonance. The Crescent shuddered. Fire pits imploded. The very earth rebelled against Qiu's command. Siege lines cracked. Engines tipped and groaned. The battlefield broke its own spine.
Altan moved. He was not fast. He was certain.
He led through the breach like a blade made flesh. Stormwake followed, a shadow of death without expression. Altan's spear pierced through armor and twisted upward, shattering ribs. Stormwake's blade slid between vertebrae, taking limbs before screams finished forming. They left no survivors in their wake.
The Gale did not break. It advanced. Not in rage, but in momentum. Like the steppe winds before a storm, it gathered and consumed.
At the battlefield's core, Lord Qiu stood alone, armor shattered, gauntlets slick with blood. Four Gale warriors lay at his feet. His blade was gone. He breathed like a man who had drowned and clawed back only to curse the shore. Still, he stood.
Khulan dragged him down, blade half-raised. He barely resisted.
"End it," he rasped. "Get it over with."
Altan stepped from the haze, face streaked with ash, Stormwake close behind.
"You'll live," Altan said.
Qiu blinked, coughed blood. "Why?"
Altan looked past him, toward the ruined Crescent. "Because one day I might need your mind to stop something worse."
Khulan didn't speak. But her grip on the hilt tightened. Then, slowly, she let it go.
Qiu's gauntlets dropped to the dirt. His eyes closed. The fight was gone from him.
The battle dragged into dusk. Fires flickered low. The Gale army pulled back through the eastern ridge, carrying what wounded they could. No cheers followed. No cries of triumph. Only the steady sound of breath and dragging feet, and the grim silence of survivors too tired to feel anything but the ache of being alive.
Altan knelt beside a dying mount near the edge of the ruin. Its side heaved. Its eyes searched for something no longer present. He placed a hand over its brow and held it until the breath stilled. Then he stood, wiped his hands on the ash, and looked north.
There was no victory here. Only the next march.
Behind him, the wind began to shift.