The march north began in silence.
No drums, no horns—only the rhythm of twenty thousand boots dragging through ash. The sky had turned the color of old coins, and the smoke from Huai Gate followed them like a ghost that refused to be left behind.
Wu An rode at the front. Behind him, Shen Yue and General Sun kept the column in order, their voices hoarse from shouting at men too tired to care. The Lord Protector remained behind at the river fort, promising to hold the line until the South's god was forced to kneel.
They both knew it was a lie dressed as duty.
The road to Ling An wound through villages that had stopped pretending to be alive. Doors hung open; wells were choked with flowers that had no business blooming in winter. Once, they passed a shrine still burning from the inside out. No one had lit it. The ash on its threshold had formed itself into spirals.
Wu An's horse refused to step over them.
He dismounted, pressing a palm to the ground. It was warm—breathing. "She's awake," he said.
Shen Yue froze. "Who?"
He didn't answer. He didn't need to. The soldiers who heard the question began to whisper the name anyway: Wu Shuang.
The Weapon.
The forgotten bloodline sold to the South and now returned.
By the fourth night, the fires of Ling An were visible even from the mountains—low, orange, pulsing. The city burned not like wood, but like breath. A storm that did not move.
In the capital, the ministers who had been left to govern huddled in their silk-wrapped halls. The sky above the palace was black even at noon. The sound beneath the streets—an uneven heartbeat—had not stopped in three days. Courtiers whispered prayers in empty chambers and got answers that were not in human tongues.
In the Lotus Hall, Wu Jin stood with Wu Shuang before the old imperial map, its ink veins spidered across yellow silk. He traced the rivers with one finger, following their lines to the capital's center.
"Do you hear it?" he asked.
She smiled, her expression thin and deliberate. "I am it."
The lamps dimmed as if nodding. From outside came the sound of soldiers shouting—and then laughing—and then not shouting at all. The wind carried a copper tang.
Wu Jin turned. "You've done something."
"Not yet," she said. "But soon. When he returns."
"Wu An?"
Her smile widened. "When the thing wearing him remembers what it is."
She reached for his hand. He hesitated for a breath and then took it. The air around them bent, soundlessly. Their shadows fused into one shape across the floor, long and formless.
From the palace roof, the first bell cracked in half.
On the road, riders from the northern watch met Wu An's column halfway. One dismounted, face gray with dust and fear.
"My lord," he gasped. "Ling An—"
"I know," Wu An said.
"The ministers are dead," the rider continued. "The temples are open. The wells speak. People vanish when they pray."
Wu An looked toward the horizon, where the flames pulsed like a heartbeat too large for any city. "And my brother?"
"Alive," the messenger said, voice trembling. "He walks the palace with the witch. They say the Lord Protector's banners have been torn down."
Shen Yue's hand gripped her sword hilt. "We ride faster."
"No," Wu An said. "We ride careful."
General Sun frowned. "The longer we delay, the stronger she grows."
"The longer we rush," Wu An said, "the more men she will have to kill."
He raised his hand, and the army slowed to a crawl. Even the wind seemed to obey.
The silence beneath his ribs was no longer still—it was pacing, restless, waiting for something it had known long before him.
As dusk fell, he saw Ling An's walls in the distance—red against the dark, bent inward, as if the city had begun to devour itself.
Shen Yue rode beside him, her face pale in the firelight.
"When we enter," she whispered, "and she stands before you—what will you do?"
Wu An's eyes didn't leave the burning skyline. "Ask her what she's become."
"And if she asks you the same?"
He smiled—cold, tired, merciless. "Then I'll finally have to answer."
The wind shifted, carrying a distant echo—a laugh, too soft for distance, too knowing for chance.
Somewhere inside the city, Wu Shuang felt it too. She turned toward the walls and whispered to the darkness beside her:
"He's coming."
And the darkness—whatever wore its shape—smiled back.