The mountain slept beneath us as we moved.
We left no trail. No fire. No conversation to be carried off in the wind.
Yaozu stayed half a pace behind me, silent as always, his steps matching mine even when the terrain sloped sharply down into Baiguang territory. The trees grew thinner the farther south we pushed, stripped bare by winter, their black branches brittle and reaching. Like fingers that had forgotten how to hold.
Shadow flanked my right. He didn't make a sound either.
By the time the sky started to pale with false dawn, we were already crossing the ridge that marked the old border—the one Baiguang declared theirs after a minor victory more than a decade ago. The same battle that earned them the right to plant a sapling elm on that blood-soaked hill and carve a poem into stone beside it. A shrine to a day they never should have won.
A day they'd rewritten into legend.
I was here to set the record straight.
"There," Yaozu said, stopping behind me.
