The blade is still in my hand.
I do not remember picking it up.
The throne hall burns with dust and shattered light. The southern cannons do not pause anymore — each blast is closer than the last, each impact loosening something structural, something ancient in Ling An's bones.
The Southern Kingdom has reached the palace courtyard.
Black Tigers fight in tight formation at the inner gate, shields overlapping, muskets firing in disciplined volleys. Smoke coils upward in choking spirals. Every time a Tiger falls, another steps forward without hesitation.
But there are fewer now.
Fewer horns.
Fewer signals.
Zhou's banners shift again beyond the northern ridge — not fully committed, not yet — but their frameworks glow faintly in the distance, testing the weakened geometry of the capital.
They are ready to step in.
They are waiting for the fracture.
Inside the hall, my father advances.
Measured. Relentless.
He no longer wastes words.
His blade moves like inevitability.
Each strike forces me back a step. Each parry grows heavier. My arms tremble. My ribs scream with every breath. The Presence hums low, not triumphant, not roaring — strained.
"You see it now," my father says quietly between strikes. "Strength without control decays."
I block, barely.
Steel grinds against steel inches from my throat.
"You pushed too far," he continues. "You accelerated beyond your structure."
Another cannon blast shakes the hall.
A column collapses behind me.
Dust fills my lungs.
I swing wildly — not calculated, not precise — and he steps aside with effortless efficiency. His counterstrike slices across my shoulder, tearing deep.
I stumble.
The Presence surges violently in response.
For a moment, everything warps.
The torches elongate. Shadows crawl. The jade floor ripples like disturbed water. Wu Jin cries out from somewhere behind the throne as reality folds inward, unable to sustain the strain.
Then it snaps back.
But not cleanly.
I feel it — something slipping.
Not the Presence.
Me.
I am losing the edges of myself.
Thought fragments. Breath fractures. Anger swells where strategy once sat. The line between necessity and annihilation blurs.
"You're unraveling," my father says, calm as ever.
Outside, a Black Tiger horn cuts off mid-blast.
Southern soldiers flood deeper into the palace grounds.
The inner gate shudders.
Another explosion.
The hall trembles.
Wu Jin stares at us both, pale and shaking.
"This isn't survival," he whispers. "This is extinction."
I try to answer him.
But my voice doesn't form properly.
The Presence presses outward again, harder this time, not as permission but as replacement. It fills the spaces my hesitation leaves behind.
My father lunges.
I catch the blade — too late.
It tears across my chest.
I fall to one knee.
The world tilts.
Blood pools beneath me, thick and dark.
The Presence hums louder now — not protective.
Hungry.
My father stands over me.
"You are not ready," he says quietly.
The words cut deeper than steel.
Outside, Southern troops breach the palace courtyard entirely. Gunfire erupts close enough to echo through the hall. The Black Tigers are fighting in retreat, formation compressed to half its size.
They are losing ground.
Zhou horns answer from the north again — closer than before.
The trap is closing.
I try to rise.
My body hesitates.
My vision flickers — flashes of memory, flashes of rage, flashes of a throne that no longer matters.
Something inside me loosens.
The Presence expands — not violently.
Deliberately.
My father watches carefully.
He sees it.
"This is what I feared," he murmurs.
Or perhaps what he expected.
The jade floor cracks outward from where I kneel.
The air thickens.
The torches bend sideways as if drawn toward a center that is no longer physical.
I can feel myself slipping further — deeper — into something colder, something simpler.
No compromise.
No politics.
No thrones.
Only removal.
"Stop," Wu Jin whispers.
I don't know whether he's speaking to me.
Or to my father.
Or to the city itself.
Another cannon blast shatters part of the ceiling.
Sunlight spears downward, illuminating dust and blood and broken stone.
Southern soldiers begin flooding the outer hall.
Black Tigers fire desperately from the staircases.
Ling An is falling.
And I am dissolving.
The Presence swells again, filling the space my doubt once occupied.
If I let go —
Everything ends.
If I don't —
I might.
My father steps forward one final time.
Blade raised.
"Choose," he says.
But I no longer know if the choice belongs to me.
The Southern Kingdom surges into the palace.
Zhou's banners begin their slow descent from the north.
And inside my chest,
something ancient stretches its limbs.