The morning after Huailing smelled like a forge that had learned to breathe. Smoke lay low over the streets, thin enough to see through, heavy enough to taste. Men dragged the last of the bodies to the carts, their boots sinking ankle-deep in mud where blood had thickened the ground. No one spoke. The silence was not peace but the echo of screaming that had exhausted itself.
Wu Kang was hauled from his crate, wrists roped, mouth cut at the corners where fruit and fists had found him the night before. He stood as if daring his own knees to betray him.
"March," I said.
They did.
Huailing's gates groaned when they opened. The square was still wet; the stones refused to drink quickly. Children were kept indoors, though a few peered from cracks in the shutters, wide-eyed, catching the sight of their fallen Protector dragged through the street like a sack of bad grain.
Shen Yue walked beside me, helmet off, her hair bound tight. The air between us carried no warmth. I did not offer any.
"You told him his men would be spared," she said at last, low enough that no one but I could hear.
"I spared him," I said.
"That is not the same thing."
"No," I agreed.
General Sun rode up, his expression carved out of duty. "The city is pacified," he reported. "Merchants have been seized, scribes catalogued, temples cleared." His tone was neat as the ink drying on his ledgers. Only his eyes betrayed the weight he carried.
"Leave the temples locked," I said. "No prayers for three days. No festivals for a week."
Sun hesitated. "That will breed resentment."
"Let it," I said. "Resentment is quieter than rebellion."
We set out.
The road from Huailing stretched like a pale scar. Behind us, the carts rolled with their dead cargo, the smell of iron and smoke following like a second column. Ahead, Ling An waited—though whether it waited in fear or hunger, I could not yet tell.
The march was not hurried. That was deliberate. I wanted every village between here and the capital to see Wu Kang brought low. I wanted them to count what treason cost.
At the first town, the people lined the road, silent as laundry hung in a windless day. I dismounted, stood where they could all see me, and gestured toward Wu Kang.
"This is the Protector who would have burned your city," I said. "This is the man who took the Emperor from his hall and called it justice."
Wu Kang raised his chin, blood drying in cracks along his jaw. "Better my justice than your mercy," he said.
I let the words hang until the air bent under their weight. "Justice," I said, "was buried yesterday. Mercy, this morning. What remains is rule."
The villagers lowered their heads, some in obedience, some in fear. Both were acceptable currencies.
As we marched on, I felt the thing inside me stir—not in anger, not in hunger, but in a cold approval that spread through my ribs like ink in water. It was not satisfied. It would not be satisfied.
Shen Yue kept her silence after that. When she glanced at me, her eyes held no plea, only a careful watchfulness, as though she was waiting to see whether the man she followed still had a shadow that was human-shaped.
By the third day, the men began to whisper. They said the crows followed us too closely, that the smoke from Huailing had not dispersed but had found a way to ride the wind behind us. Some swore the wells we passed had turned black. Others swore that when they looked into the water, they saw faces that were not their own.
Liao Yun handled the murmurs with a soldier's precision, but even he came to me at dusk, his face troubled. "The men are speaking of omens," he said.
"Let them speak," I replied.
"They fear you," he said bluntly.
"They should," I said, and went back to sharpening my blade.
Wu Kang endured the march without breaking. At night he slept bound, his face to the sky, refusing water unless it was offered in silence. When Shen Yue brought him a cup once, he took it and drank, then spat the last mouthful into the dirt between them.
"You will hang me in Ling An," he said to her.
"That is not my choice," she answered.
He smiled around his cracked lips. "No. But you will hold the rope."
She did not answer.
At the fourth village, an old priest dared to step into the road, his hair white as frost, his hands trembling but not lowering. "Spare the boy," he said, pointing at Wu Kang. "The city is already ash. Do not turn the North to ash as well."
I looked at him until his shoulders began to shake. Then I spoke, softly enough that only those nearest could hear:
"The North remembers by blood," I said. "Not by prayers."
The priest fell to his knees. No one else moved. The villagers scattered like frightened hens when we passed through.
By the time Ling An's outer towers came into view, the army had stopped singing on the march. The sound of the wheels, the creak of the leather harnesses, the steady step of boots—that was all that marked our passage. The silence under my ribs had deepened into something almost companionable.
General Sun rode up again, his face grim. "We have outriders from the capital," he said. "They bring word that the ministers convene nightly. Some call for Wu Kang's immediate execution. Others call for trial."
"And the Emperor?" I asked.
"They say he does not speak," Sun said. "Only listens."
"Then let him listen when we arrive," I said.
That night, as the camp settled into its uneasy sleep, Shen Yue sat across from me at the fire. Her eyes reflected the flame but did not soften.
"You have made fear into a road," she said quietly.
"It takes us where we need to go," I said.
"And what will be left when we arrive?" she asked.
I looked at her, and for a heartbeat I considered answering honestly—that I did not know, that perhaps I no longer cared. Instead, I said:
"Whatever remains will be enough to hold the roof."
She looked away first.
When we broke camp at dawn, the sky was gray, the color of cooled steel. Wu Kang was hauled upright, blood still caked on his face. He smiled at me through cracked lips.
"Will you show me to the capital like this?" he asked.
"Yes," I said.
He laughed then, a hoarse, broken sound. "Good," he said. "Let them see what kind of brother you have become."
I looked at him and felt the silence inside me answer—not with words, but with weight.
"Let them," I said.
And we marched on.
By the time the sun cleared the horizon, Ling An's bells had begun to toll—not for prayer, not for death, but for judgment.