The South moves at dusk.
Not loudly.Not all at once.
I feel it before the horns sound—before messengers arrive breathless, before banners crest the southern ridges. The Presence recognizes the pattern the way bone recognizes pressure: a shift in intent, a tightening of routes, faith rethreaded into momentum.
They think this is opportunity.
They think Ling An is stunned, leaderless, bleeding.
They are wrong.
I stand at the inner palace balcony and watch the horizon darken with incense smoke. Columns form where there should be none. Camps appear too quickly, as if the land itself has been instructed to receive them.
"The Southern Kingdom advances," a captain reports from behind me, voice shaking despite himself. "They march under the Emperor's blessing. They claim restoration. They claim—"
"I know what they claim," I say.
I turn.
Every man in the chamber stiffens. Some avert their eyes. Others force themselves to hold my gaze and regret it instantly.
"They will split," I continue calmly. "One force presses the southern gates. Another circles east, looking for sympathy inside the city. A third moves through the old canal road to test whether the Black Tigers still exist."
I pause.
"They will fail."
No one questions it.
Not because they trust me.
Because the city already has.
"Signal the Tigers," I say.
The command ripples outward.
Not shouted.Not relayed through ceremony.
Drums beat once—deep, subterranean. Gates across Ling An grind shut in perfect sequence. The southern approaches thicken with steel and shadow as the Black Tigers emerge from positions no scout ever mapped.
The South's vanguard collides with the outer defenses an hour later.
They are confident.
They sing.
Their priests chant restoration sutras, incense heavy enough to choke the air, banners declaring the return of the rightful Emperor, the cleansing of a false dynasty, the end of northern heresy.
Their faith shatters on contact.
The first assault does not break the gates.
It breaks cohesion.
Black Tigers do not meet them head-on. They cut supply lines. They pull commanders into alleys and leave bodies arranged as questions no doctrine prepared them to answer. Cannons fire from unexpected angles, ripping apart formations that still believe they are marching into a city, not a trap.
I watch without emotion.
Not satisfaction.
Assessment.
Behind me, footsteps approach—measured, controlled.
The Lord Protector.
He stops a careful distance away.
"You've become efficient," he says.
I do not look at him. "You've become predictable."
His breath tightens. "You will draw Zhou back in if you continue this."
"They're already watching," I reply. "So are you."
He studies my back, trying to find the son he once shaped, the weapon he once tuned.
He does not find either.
"The South thinks the throne is vacant," he says. "Wu Shuang's death created a vacuum."
I turn then.
The Presence does not surge.
It settles.
"There is no vacuum," I say. "Only delays in comprehension."
For the first time, the Lord Protector looks uncertain.
"And Wu Jin?" he asks.
"He's alive," I answer. "That is all he needs to be—for now."
Outside, the southern assault falters. Their second force is discovered and annihilated before it reaches the eastern canals. Their priests attempt a mass invocation and find their words dissolving mid-chant, syllables refusing to obey.
They retreat.
Not in order.
Not in glory.
But they do not withdraw fully.
They dig in.
They adapt.
The South is learning.
Good.
I step past my father and issue the next command.
"Lock the inner rings. Rotate the Tigers. No pursuit. Let them breathe just enough to believe they can try again."
A pause.
"And prepare contingencies against internal fracture," I add. "He will attempt it."
The Lord Protector turns sharply. "You think I would—"
"I know you will," I say quietly. "You always do."
Silence stretches.
Beyond the walls, the South consolidates, banners still raised, faith unbroken but shaken. Within the city, Ling An tightens into something that no longer resembles a capital—it resembles a mechanism.
Two enemies now stand before me.
The Southern Kingdom, cloaked in righteousness and ambition.
And the man who raised me, standing just behind my shoulder, waiting for the moment I expose a weakness.
The Presence remains still.
It does not hunger.
It does not rush.
It understands this truth better than any of them:
The next battle will not decide who rules Ling An.
It will decidewho survives being wrongabout what I have become.