It began with birds.
They rose before the dawn, a black tide of wings that blotted the horizon where campfires once spoke of order. Their sound reached Ling An before the horns did. When the first runners stumbled through the eastern gate, their voices arrived as fragments — Huailing burns again… the lines broke… the sky caught fire. Then silence followed, the kind that belongs to a city that understands too much without being told.
By midday, the smell of war reached the capital: iron and wet smoke and the faint sweetness of scorched rice. Servants locked the gates of noble houses. Messengers vanished mid-street, their errands eaten by rumor. In the Hall of Frosted Reeds, the Lord Protector's ministers whispered over maps that had already become fiction. Somewhere in that noise, someone said Shen Yue's name twice and no one answered.
Wu Shuang sat in the inner pavilion, far from the courtyards where gongs measured panic. Her lamp burned low, the silk shade turning her eyes to molten copper. Outside, thunder from the southern front rolled through the floorboards in small, regular heartbeats. She did not look up when the doors parted.
Wu Jin entered without ceremony. His robes were travel-worn but his expression was immaculate — the kind of calm that men polish when they expect to live through storms by watching them. "You choose an odd hour to stay home," he said.
"War is loud enough," she answered. "I prefer to hear what survives it."
He smiled, a careful bend of the mouth. "And what survives?"
"The ones who remember what silence costs."
He joined her by the window. Beyond the lattice, the city's rooftops glimmered with ash that hadn't fallen yet. From the south, bells tolled once, twice, and broke.
"They have crowned him," Wu Jin said finally. "The South names your Emperor as their living law. They proclaim Wu An and your father traitors to Heaven. In every village from the marsh to the coast, the same decree: Kneel, and you will be forgiven."
"Forgiveness," she murmured, "is a word men use when they have run out of soldiers."
"You are not afraid?"
She shook her head. "Fear is for those who still believe the gods choose sides."
His eyes narrowed. "You sound as though you have met them."
"I have," she said simply.
The candlelight folded inward; its flame bent toward her cheek as if listening. "They wrote to me first," she continued. "Before the envoy. Before the drums. When Wu An was still bleeding the frost out of the North."
"What did they write?"
"That they had found an Emperor who could love perfectly," she said. "That love would end war. That I should help them teach him how."
Wu Jin laughed softly. "And did you?"
"I taught him what love costs."
The laughter died. "Then tell me, Lady Shuang — what does it cost?"
She looked at him. Her eyes held too much stillness. "Everything that remembers your name."
Outside, the drums split the air. General Sun's second line faltered and re-formed; Wu An's banners vanished in smoke the color of rusted mirrors. In Ling An the palace lamps trembled, and the koi in the courtyards turned belly-up without a sound. Wu Jin glanced toward the noise and then back to her.
"You speak of them as if they were here," he said.
"They are," she replied. "They never left the rivers. They only needed mouths."
He saw her shadow stretch across the floor and realize it had too many joints. His fingers twitched once before he controlled them. "If you are their mouth," he said carefully, "what do you plan to say?"
Her smile was thin as paper. "Whatever he cannot."
"The Winter Demon?"
"My cousin," she corrected. "Your war."
The palace shuddered; dust fell from the beams like old snow. Wu Jin steadied the lamp. "You told me once you wanted peace."
"I still do," she said. "But peace is only possible when the questions stop."
"And you?"
"I am the last question."
The candle guttered. For an instant her face dissolved into the smoke — and the smoke wore her expression better than flesh. Wu Jin stepped back, calculating distance, breath, exits. His mind was a map of escape routes; his eyes betrayed curiosity instead of fear.
"If you are the question," he said, "what is the answer?"
"Look south," she whispered.
Far beyond the palace, the horizon burned without flame. The sky itself had begun to turn, clouds forming a slow spiral that no wind claimed. Wu Jin watched it and felt, for the first time in years, the precise weight of being mortal.
"He wakes," she said.
"Who?"
"The god your brother brought home."
On the field, Wu An drove his line through smoke that refused to rise. The world bent at his shoulders; men behind him shouted not orders but prayers. Where his sword fell, light forgot to shine. Shen Yue's cohort fought in silence, faces smeared with the same gray that coated the dead. Even the ravens kept their distance.
Back in the palace, the tremor rolled through marble. Tea sloshed in Wu Jin's cup, leaning toward her. He set it down before it could spill.
"You mean to use him," he said. "To end this."
"No," she said. "To begin it properly."
He studied her a long moment. "And what does properly mean to you?"
"When the roof learns which god it was built for."
He bowed — not in reverence but respect for inevitability. "Then I must decide whether to build another."
She turned toward the window. The reflection that stared back was not hers. It smiled at him with a serenity older than kingdoms.
Outside, horns wailed — the sound of the world remembering its hunger. Wu Jin crossed the threshold, leaving her with her lamp and her shadow. The two no longer agreed which one was real.
Wu Shuang watched the horizon bend, the line between cloud and fire blurring until neither knew which was which. "We are all questions now," she said.
And in the distance, the river answered.