The storm finally broke.
Not with thunder, but with the sound of boots.
Twelve pairs. Heavy. Synchronized.
They marched across the jade-tiled floor of the Hall of Iron Mandates—each step echoing like a verdict. Behind them, the doors boomed shut. No court musicians. No incense. Only silence and smoke.
The Lord Protector stood at the summit of the hall, his black robe trailing like the edge of a funeral banner.
"My sons," he said, "have turned my court into a slaughterhouse."
No one spoke.
Wu Kang stood ramrod straight, fists clenched. Wu Taian lounged as always, though his grin was brittle now, like a cracked mask. I stood last, quiet and steady, the blood still drying on my sleeves.
The Lord Protector descended three steps. Each movement slow. Measured. Terrifying.
"Minister Yao Zheng is dead. Three nobles have vanished. Half the Civil Affairs archives burned. And now? There are chants in the street—children naming their dolls after ghosts."
He looked at me.
"You," he said. "Turn your victories into poison."
Then to Wu Kang:
"And you..." He pointed to a scroll nailed to the wall. "Have wasted ten thousand horses on silk-road parades while the southern grain routes rot."
And to Taian:
"You've become a rumor in flesh. Your name is now a lullaby mothers whisper to make their children scream."
Taian only smiled wider.
"At least they remember me."
The Lord Protector backhanded him. A clean crack of knuckles against teeth. Taian staggered, spitting red.
Then the old general turned, voice a blade drawn slow.
"This ends now."
The words settled like ash.
"You will each be given one final chance. The Crimson Banner has crossed the western peaks. Twenty thousand men. They want the copper valleys and river grain. Let them have only corpses."
He turned to Wu Kang.
"You will lead the first charge. You failed to keep the east. You will prove you can still command more than wine and memories."
Wu Kang bowed, his mouth a thin scar.
"And Wu An," he said, gaze sharpening like frost, "you will stay in Ling An. Clean the rot you have stirred. Your war has not ended. It has simply changed uniforms."
I bowed.
Taian snorted. "And me?"
The Lord Protector stared at him a long time.
"You will do nothing. Speak nothing. Move nowhere."
Taian laughed.
"House arrest, Father?"
"No." His voice was iron.
"I will chain you to your own legend. Let them fear you. Let them whisper your name. But if you raise your hand again without command, I will break it off and feed it to you."
That night, I stood alone in the Tower of Ink.
The wind howled. The city was quiet.
Too quiet.
Ash still drifted through the corridors. Not from fire—but from me.
Every mirror in the tower had been draped. Every basin emptied. I no longer trusted reflections. They moved when I didn't. Smiled when I did not.
The power I had claimed beneath Cao Wen pulsed under my skin like a second heartbeat. It whispered not in words—but in hunger.
I had thought it would grant clarity.
Instead, it unmade me slowly.
I could feel my thoughts unraveling at the edges—names of soldiers I could no longer remember, faces of allies that blurred when I tried to summon them. Only the voices remained. Echoing. Gnawing.
I sat at the war table, ink flowing across a map as if guided by some unseen hand.
It drew spirals. Always spirals.
And then, a knock.
Liao Yun.
He entered without waiting for permission, holding a sealed letter.
"From the southern garrison," he said. "A magistrate caught whispering prayers to a statue with no face. Three of his men gouged out their own eyes."
He placed the scroll beside me.
"Also, your mirror."
I looked up.
"What about it?"
"It cracked. On its own. Without touch. The servants are too afraid to clean it."
I said nothing.
He studied me.
"You should rest."
I laughed quietly.
"Rest is a gift the dead enjoy."
Liao Yun hesitated.
"You won this round," he said, "but what did it cost?"
I wanted to answer. But I no longer knew.
On the northern road, Wu Kang rode with steel and fury.
He did not smile. Did not speak. He broke three captains for slow discipline before they reached the river crossing.
But the Crimson Banner was already there.
Their war drums sounded like thunder under skin. Their soldiers painted in soot and ochre. Their chants rose with the wind—not in language, but something else.
Old. Hungry.
Wu Kang led the charge anyway.
He remembered glory. He remembered legacy.
He did not remember mercy.
In the temples of Ling An, the lotus altars began to blacken.
One priest swallowed ink and drew stars on his chest in blood before collapsing.
Another was found kneeling before a shrine that had never been there the night before—a twisting shape of bone and copper, shaped like a lotus blooming inward.
I watched from the tower as the capital tried to pretend the world was not breaking.
But I knew better.
Because every time I closed my eyes, I saw the vault.
I saw the pool of ink.
I saw it open.
And I saw my own face reflected in it—but not mine.
Something that wore me
The Lord Protector summoned me once more before his war table.
"Ling An holds," he said. "Barely. Wu Kang pushes the Crimson Banner back, but he's bleeding men. If he wins, it buys us time. If he loses—"
He paused.
"Then the throne burns."
He looked at me, then beyond me, as if peering through the veil of flesh.
"You're changing," he said.
I met his gaze.
"You taught me to become what was needed."
He nodded once.
"Then don't become more than what is needed. Or the thing that rises will not be my son."
I bowed.
But I knew he was already too late.
That night, I dreamed of spirals.
Endless, shifting, hollow.
The ink did not speak.
But it watched.
And somewhere behind it, so did something else.
I woke with my mouth full of ash.
And no memory of what I had seen.
Only the silence remained.